my blog. for you.

Let’s talk digital.

I’m an independent IT consultant and entrepreneur in the Internet and software business. I’m interested in design, enterprise applications, web apps and SaaS products. I design and develop business solutions and applications. I help companies in terms of software quality and knowledge transfer, e.g. with Angular and Spring Boot.

Creative Use Of Symbol Fonts: Time Display

In his article The Era of Symbol Fonts, Brian Suda refers to Timepiece Rounded, an OpenType font that makes use of the symbol font concept and specifically ligatures to display clock hands! For instance, a time string such as "19:52:45" will be displayed as follows: The source code for this contains merely text and and a bit of CSS styling: <div class="timepiece missswiss"><span class="clock" id="missswiss" style="display: block; font-size: 226px;">19:52:45</span></div> Pretty awesome!

Sunday April 21st, 2013 by Bjoern in Design, Web Applications

A Few Notes On Responsive Design

I've been doing quite a bit of work involving responsive web design lately, which is why I thought I'd share a few useful resources I came across. First, there's an article by Luke Wroblewski about the importance of considering mobile devices first for websites and web applications. Ethan Marcotte describes foundations and some techniques of responsive web design. An article by James Young deals with 'the top responsive web design problems and how to avoid them' Brad Frost wrote about responsive navigation patterns, e.g. how ...

“Developers Just Can’t Design!”

Time and time again I hear statements such as: Developers just can't design! I think this point of view is mistaken. Not only does it state that software developers have a somewhat innate inaptitude for design but to some extent it also implies that for developers design is something not worth comprehending. „Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works." There's a huge misunderstanding in this mindset: Design is not about painting. Design is not about drawing ...

Sunday March 24th, 2013 by Bjoern in Design, Software

How-To: Instant Website Optimization for Retina Displays

Last month I recommended an article by Reda Lemeden about designing for Retina displays. Today, as a follow-up, if you will, I'd like to suggest reading a how-to by Kyle J. Larson on website optimization for Retina displays. 'Instant Website Optimization for Retina Displays' describes the process of creating and optimizing various website elements such as images, fonts, icons and backgrounds for high-resolution displays. The author starts off with creating high-density images and continues to outline various optimization tools and techniques. Furthermore, the ...

Wednesday March 20th, 2013 by Bjoern in Design, Web Applications

Great Review of ‘The Design of Everyday Things’

At UsabilityPost there's an excellent review of Donald Norman's seminal book 'The Design of Everyday Things' that not only describes the book but also tells a whole lot about user experience design.

Wednesday March 13th, 2013 by Bjoern in Design

User Efficiency vs. Machine Efficiency

Nice example on how machine efficiency doesn't necessarily equal user efficiency: For example, which of the following takes less time? Heating water in a microwave for one minute and ten seconds or heating it for one minute and eleven seconds? From the standpoint of the microwave, one minute and ten seconds is the obviously correct answer. From the standpoint of the user of the microwave, one minute and eleven seconds is faster. Why? Because in the first case, the user must press the ...

Tuesday March 12th, 2013 by Bjoern in Design, Software

Designing For Retina Displays

Under http://coding.smashingmagazine.com/2012/08/20/towards-retina-web/ there's a nice article about what to consider in terms of high-resolution / Retina displays when designing your next website and how to address common issues with how websites are rendered on Retina displays.

Sunday February 17th, 2013 by Bjoern in Design, Web Applications

Live Tools For Building Website Elements

Ui Parade have released a series of design tools that allow you to have common website elements generated in HTML / CSS: http://livetools.uiparade.com These tools include: Button Builder Form Builder Icon Bulder Ribbon Builder Have a look at Ui Parade's actual website, too. It lists quite a bunch of useful and inspiring design elements.

Sunday January 20th, 2013 by Bjoern in Design, Web Applications

Bauhaus and Web Design

The other day I've read this somewhat older yet still relevant article by Simon Collision: Bauhaus Ideology and the Future of Web Design. In a stream of thought kind of way it deals with the main tenets of the Bauhaus school of thought and how those relate to modern and future web design. It draws upon Bauhaus ideas such as "form follows function", simplicity and the unification of art, craft, and technology - most of which seem oddly familiar in the context ...

Sunday December 16th, 2012 by Bjoern in Design, Front End Development, Web

Piano Stairs – A Brilliant Design

How to improve a millenia-old design:

Saturday December 8th, 2012 by Bjoern in Design, Ideas

Björn Wilmsmann

my blog. for you.

Let’s talk digital.