In a little over a week I’ll be heading cross-country to the City by the Bay for the Voices That Matter conference to talk about trust in design. The ideas I have researched and will discuss center around one central idea that I argue is the most important yet most over looked aspect of successful Web design: trust. Trust, sincerity, credibility. These seem to be ideals that we assume are the natural result from our designs, but are in fact considerations that go hand-in-hand with audience analysis and defining site objectives.

Designing with sincerity is not a one size fits all solution, but something that should become a guiding principal within your design process. At VTM I’ll be discussing this process and how to play skeptic to your own designs in order to gain and keep your visitors trust.

Tags: Culture, Technology by Jason Cranford Teague
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At my SXSW Book Signing. I don't usually look this menacing.

At SXSW last week, I read Chapter 3, “The Myths of CSS”, from my forthcoming book Speaking In Styles, and then did a book signing for CSS, DHTML, & Ajax at the Barnes & Noble booth. It was an interesting session, where I talked to several nice people, and even signed copy of my book for someone from Microsoft (hopefully he won’t be returning it).

SXSW posted an audio recording of my reading on their site and I am happy to re-present it here.

Speaking in Styles: A CSS Primer for Web Designers

Tags: Culture, Featured, Technology by Jason Cranford Teague
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I had a great time at SXSW 2009. Met a lot of great people, heard a lot of great ideas, and ate a lot of great food. While I was there, I did a quick interview with Gary-Paul of New Riders about my upcoming book, Speaking In Styles, although it was not the most flattering of angles:

Tags: Culture, Featured, Technology by Jason Cranford Teague
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It’s a little over a week until I’m at SxSW to talk about Online Comics with Richard Bruning (DC Comics), Ron Richards (iFanboy.com), and comic artist Rivkah. Richard is providing an industry perspective, Ron a reader’s perspective, Rivkah an artists perspective, and me? Besides moderating, I’ll be providing a technical perspective on what is possible with User Interface design.

In advance of the panel, I wanted to get down some of my ideas about User Interface design and online comics for feedback from interested readers.

Based on user interface design, I separate online comics into three basic categories:

Page Mimics

Balance & Grace Online Comic Mimics a Page turning Metephor

Use the page metaphor with the linear “panel” concept for sequential story telling, either using fade, slide, or even simulated page flipping to transition between virtual-pages. Often these online comics are simply scans of print comics, so they keep the same vertical aspect, which is not optimal for the generally more horizontal computer screen.

Examples include:

• Balance & Grace (SpaceDog)
• Zuda Comics (DC)
• Image Comics Online (Image Comics)

Motion Comics

Sparks Motion Comic

Although easily mistaken for a cartoon, these comics take existing sequential art and use a “tweening” process to create pseudo-animation. The story is still linear in nature, but becomes a more passive experience than static comics, which engage the reader to imagine the motion themselves. That said, motion comics are better suited than static images for the screen and Internet, but are still a young medium that I hope will become increasingly interactive.

Examples include:

• Watchmen Motion Comics(DC Comics)
• Sparks (Catastrophic Comics)
• Invincible (Image Comcis)

Experimental UI

Experimental Comic "Shadows Never Sleep"

These are still comics in that they use static and/or sequential art, but presented in ways that break with other comic conventions in ways only possible in the online world. For example, “Shadows Never Sleep” allows the user to zoom in and out of the story, exploring the art and narrative at will. “ZoomQuilt II” breaks with the traditional horizontal nature of comics, instead allowing users to zoom vertically down the narrative.

Examples include:

• Shadows Never Sleep
• ZoomQuilt II
• Infinite Oz

Tags: Culture, Featured, Technology by Jason Cranford Teague
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Pontificating about the future.

Last year, I was a speaker at the New Riders Voices That Matter conference in Nashville, TN. While there, I was interviewed by Nikki McDonald, with whom I discussed everything from getting blackballed by gGogle, to how to protect yourself online, to the future of communication. Check out the interview on the Peachpit Web site: How to Protect Yourself in the Future with Jason Cranford Teague.

(Notice the clever  Yuri’s Night product placement on my T-shirt.)

Tags: Culture, Technology by Jason Cranford Teague
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Watchmen on the iPhone

So, it looks as if the legal bru-ha-ha between Fox and Warner Brothers is finally over, and the long awaited Watchmen movie will make it to the big screen on time (March 6th) with Fox much the richer for it. But this is not the first time the Watchmen will have been brought to life in motion.  In conjunction with the Movie, DC comics is releasing “Motion Comics” of the 12 issues of Watchmen, taking the original panel art and adding simple animation, a music score and a single narrator reading all of the parts. 

Currently, episodes are available up to issue 10, each lasting a little under half an hour and selling for $1.99 each through the iTunes and Amazon.com. 

The Interactive Watchmen iPhone App

Although I’m sure the author, Alan Moore,  would disagree, the overall effect is quite good, and makes for a great way to enjoy the story on the go. The art is well preserved and the animation is smooth, although not nearly as complex as it might be if it had been fully animated. Still, it’s miles better the Clutch Cargo.

The single narration voice is not completely to my liking, they could have at least splurged and gotten a female narrator for female characters. Silk Specter may smoke, but the narrators gravely voice is about as sexy as a lime green polyester pants suite.

What intrigues me most about the Watchmen Motion Comic, though, was how seemingly easy it was to take the static images of the comic page, which require a more active role for the reader to animate the action in their minds, and turn it into the more passive video format. Although this is far from the atrocity that colorizing old black and white movies was in the 1980′s, it does give me some pause for thought.

Moore commented in a recent interview with the LA Times that, “There are three or four companies now that exist for the sole purpose of creating not comics, but storyboards for films.” In fact, It looks as if they don’t even need to make the film, but simply take the storyboards and animate them. But why is this a problem? It does take a dimension out of the hands of the reader, placing it back into the creator (or a creator’s) control, but is that necessarily a bad thing?

This is one of the important questions I’m hoping that my panel at SXSW will be addressing next month in Austin. If you have any thoughts or will be at the panel and have suggestions, leave a comment her or email me.

Check out the Watchmen Chapter 1 Teaser, and let me know what you think.

Tags: Culture, Technology by Jason Cranford Teague
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Heavy Liquid: Cyberpunk in the cyber-age.

At its best, a good Cyberpunk story will drag you through a gritty future reality while simultaneously taking you to see a world beyond that reality. The graphic novel Heavy Liquid, starts strong along that path, promising even to be an inspired addition to the genre, but eventually becomes too bogged down in secondary charchters and sub-plots to warrant its epiphanal ending.

Although Heavy Liquid starts to touch on political themes and the individual’s role within an monolithic World government and ubiquitous technology, like other themes in the book, it feels as if the author has picked it up to do something meaningful, and then gets distracted trying to push the story forward, forgetting where he left the theme. And that’s a shame, because it feels as if he has a lot to say on this, but never arrives, pushing the reader to think, but not really taking them anywhere.

Still, this was an enjoyable read with a realistic look at one possible future as we head into the singularity. I’m wondering if this is a stand-alone story or the first in a series. If a series, then I think this is a good, though flawed, first chapter.

Tags: Culture, Technology by Jason Cranford Teague
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The Spirit Movie

The holiday break was crazy busy for me, but I spent as much time with my family as possible, as evidenced by the fact that I saw a movie about a midievil talking mouse rather than a dead guy with a red tie. I went snow tubing with the kids, which I had never done before–it was a blas–and I’m still icing my thumb from playing too much Batman Lego on the Wii with the wife.

But tonight I finally did get to see Frank Miller’s The Spirit (the aforementioned dead guy with the red tie) and loved it. Yes, I’ve seen the negative reviews, and even the disappointed comments from my friends, so, maybe I went in with low expectations. But like the pulp comic that spawned it, this movie was something ridiculously fun, with the emphasis on ridiculous.

If you are going to see it, don’t expect Batman: The Dark Night or even the Tim Burton Batman. This is not X-Men or Iron Man or like any other comic book hero brought to the silver screen. The closest comparison is Miller’s own Sin City, but, even though he uses a similar styles, The Spirit goes for wry humor over angsty violence.

There are laugh-out loud moments, smirking moments and even some great groan moments. If you look at The Spirit as a movie to have fun with watching, it’s a fun movie to watch.

Tags: Culture, Technology by Jason Cranford Teague
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Wow, I’ve been busy the last several weeks! Besides entertaining the in-laws for Thanksgiving, a presentation on Web fonts to Refresh DC, and of course my full-time job at AOL redesigning Pixcetera and teaching classes on CSS, I’m working on and finishing a few side projects. Over the next few days to warm up for a good nights writing on my new book, I’ll blog a bit about what I’m up to. Tonight! Sci-fi!

Blake’s 7 Web Site

Blake's 7 Web Site

Last Winter I was at The LA Doctor Who convention (yes, I’m a huge Doctor Who fan) and met Andrew Mark Sewell who is rebooting another one of my favorite Brit Sci-fi shows, Blake’s 7. If you are not familiar with the story, it was a great and epic space opera that I have little doubt was part of the inspiration for the awesome FireFly series. We got to talking, and I agreed to do the site.

Eight months and a lot of work later, I’m proud to announce the launch of the new Blake’s 7 Web site! There are still some details to iron out, but it’s ready to promote both the exiting audio adventures and the planned animated and live action series.

I decided to use WordPress as the CMS, something I’m doing a lot of these days, added a great flash based slide scroller called Featurific (thanks to Rich Christianson for all of his help), and then did a lot of work laying transparent PNGs with CSS. The overall effect has a lot of overlapping images and gradients seamlessly merging together.

As always, constructive criticism is appreciated.

Tags: Culture, Science, Technology by Jason Cranford Teague
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Let’s hope this relationship has a happy ending!

(sorry about the ad, and this site in no way endorses Dell.)

Tags: Culture, Technology by Jason Cranford Teague
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