I’m on my second round of Girl Develop It classes with the Seattle chapter. I’m learning that HTML5 and CSS3 are pretty powerful and can be dare I say – fun? From a design perspective I think its always a plus to learn some coding skills. It makes it easier to talk with your developers and empowers you to work independently on side projects.
While in class we’ve been inundated with wonderful code resource after resource. Everything from the helpful HTML5 Doctor to learning the possibilities of CSS3 buttons. My favorite so far has been Give’n’go, a CodePen collaboration with Dribbble. Basically developers peruse Dribbble, find something interesting and develop the code snippet. This little squirrel up top is my favorite, Dribbble snapshot on the left, interactive CodePen on the right (go here to see it blinking). You can even inspect the code to see how it was created. I think this would be a great exercise if you’re new to coding like me.
If you’re interested in learning to code whether it be html, css, javascript or something more advanced check out Girl Develop It. It’s likely they have a chapter near you!
When it comes to mockups where I need names I typically fall back on characters from movies, famous people or whatever random thing comes to mind. Names that have made appearances in my internal mockups are everything from Betty White, Justin Timberlake, Minions, Walter Bishop, Olivia Dunham… anything weird I don’t mind staring at.
Behold the brilliant project uinames.com that randomly generates male and female names. Looking at the links in the about, the names are pulled from common names over the last 100 years from the social security database and common surnames in the US. This solves the problem when you need to show a mockup beyond the internal team that is in on your practical naming jokes or when a design is customer facing. It is an interesting idea, I like it.
It seems I’m always looking up the iOS resolutions for various mobile projects, with the ever changing technology (hello iPhone 5 :). And I’ve found it really helpful to have all the specs in one place. If you’re always searching like me, feel free to download my cheat sheet. – Holly
I’m on my second round of Girl Develop It classes with the Seattle chapter. I’m learning that HTML5 and CSS3 are pretty powerful and can be dare I say – fun? From a design perspective I think its always a plus to learn some coding skills. It makes it easier to talk with your developers and empowers you to work independently on side projects.
