Sweet animated movie listing famous architects from A to Z with their buildings and their location. If you don’t recognize at least half of them, you’re missing out on some of the best building designs in history.
Gannon Burgett from The Industry has listed app design trends he predicts will take shape in 2013. He’s got a good list with great supporting points.
Of the 13 he listed, flatness and gestures are a trend already in full swing; his examples of Windows 8 and Clear, respectively, are spot on. I’ve seen other ‘flat’ apps on iOS – many to do with weather so he’s right with it being number one.
One thing I’m not in agreement on are his thoughts on wider websites. He says:
…when you have the option for creating a responsive site, a 700px wide website leaves too much white space when viewing it on a “Retina” screen or a 27″ iMac.
I’d only agree with him if websites were exclusively targeting 27″ iMacs. But I’m of the opinion they’re going to be targeting tablet and phone users more. As responsive design picks up (which he lists as a trend) and network speeds increase, you’ll see sites steer to single column sites with fonts that are easy to read in portrait mode on an iPad or iPad mini or those narrower tablets from Amazon and Samsung. When I redesigned my website last year, I wanted single column blog with the iPhone and iPad in mind but I’m not a magazine or displaying ads so my design drivers could be different.
All the others seem like good predictions and hopefully they will be 2013 trends. I’m particularly excited about the font prediction, too, because I sometimes feel my site’s font size is too big. If the prediction comes true, I just might feel like a trend setter – a hipster of font sizing, if you will.
via The Loop
Deadspin takes a look at the NFL’s regular season games and comes up with a ranking of how popular or “watchable” they were.
Tough year for Monday Night Football. ESPN’s most watchable game (Packers-Seahawks) was a publicity disaster for the NFL, and other than that the network got stuck with a bunch of high-profile blowouts. NBC got six top-50 games for its Sunday night slot, including the flexed Week 17 super-matchup between the Cowboys and Redskins, the seventh-most watchable game of the year.
The AFC sorted itself out a lot quicker than the NFC this year, meaning that Fox games were 7 percent more watchable than CBS games. Also not a great year for the NFL Network, which proved incapable of choosing good games and got stuck with just three in the top 100: Steelers-Titans (25th), Chiefs-Chargers (75th), and Buccaneers-Vikings (96th). Short-rest football: maybe a bad idea.
They rank the top five best and worst games of the season and watchability by week. All in all it’s a decent ranking. The data is available on Google Docs for your own sorting.
Kickstarter had an amazing year. Many of their figures – from the number of successful projects to the total number of funds raised – were up over 200% from 2011. There has been so much good to come from the crowd funding company, it’s reach is nearly limitless.
Check out the page they made to highlight the accomplishments their community helped achieve.
I’m a BMW guy and I enjoyed this video. I think all car buffs can appreciate – even if you’re not into Porsches.
via Boing Boing