Tag / platform
Meet XRespond Testing Tool: Let’s Make Building Responsive Websites Simpler
The way people consume information is constantly evolving. As web designers and developers, we keep up with all of the different screen shapes and sizes, learning to create beautiful, flexible software. Yet most of the available tools still don’t reflect the nature and diversity of the platform we’re building for: the browser.
When I was making my first responsive website in 2012, I quickly realized how inefficient and time-consuming the constant browser window resizing was. I had just moved from Estonia to Australia, and with a newborn, time was very much a precious resource.
The post Meet XRespond Testing Tool: Let’s Make Building Responsive Websites Simpler appeared first on Smashing Magazine.
Just for kicks: Nike and Virgil Abloh get in step
Like most American teenagers, Virgil Abloh, the multi-dexterous creative behind cult fashion label Off-White, grew up coveting Nike trainers. In his younger days, Abloh and his friends would sketch shoe ideas and send them to Nike (they were politely rejected). This week, Abloh’s highly anticipated reimagining of ten iconic Nike styles is being unveiled in all its glory. Simply known as ‘The Ten’, the collection teams Off-White’s irreverent styling with Nike’s iconic heritage for a fresh design perspective.
In Abloh’s hands, the ten Nike silhouettes – Air Jordan I, Air Max 90, Air Presto, Nike Air VaporMax, Blazer Mid, Converse Chuck Taylor, Nike Air Max 97, Nike Air Force 1 Low, including two new styles: Nike React Hyperdunk and NikeLab Zoom Fly SP – have been revamped with deconstructed and material interventions.
An installation at the Nike Off Campus pop-up
Shoes have been cut by hand and reconstructed, remade with translucent uppers and reversed materials, and emblazoned with ..
Find the Right Metrics for Your Sales Team
“What gets measured gets managed” is a longstanding business aphorism. But today’s sales technologies enable companies to measure almost anything, which leads many managers to try to measure everything. As a consequence, managers don’t have a clear sense of what is really driving sales in their business, while salespeople, who are inundated with dozens of metrics, get lost in the day-to-day noise. The result is poor management of what matters.
The challenge, of course, is to decide on the right metrics. Consider the results of a survey of key performance indicators (KPIs) being used by more than 800 sales teams across industries. Wins are the most common metric used across sales roles and industries. On average, firms measure closed deals and rep production against quota monthly, which isn’t surprising. Selling is a performance art, and “making the number” should be the goal of any sales organization, but a closed deal is an outcome and a lagging indicator; it can’t be used by the sal..
How To Create A Sketch Plugin With Front-End Technologies
UX design hasn't been the same since Sketch arrived on the scene. The app has delivered a robust design platform with a refreshing, simple user interface. A good product on its own, it achieved critical success by being extended with community plugins.
The open nature of the Sketch plugin system means that anyone can identify a need, write a plugin and share it with the community. A major barrier is stopping those eager to take part: Designers and front-end developers must learn how to write a plugin. Unfortunately, Objective-C is difficult to learn!
The post How To Create A Sketch Plugin With Front-End Technologies appeared first on Smashing Magazine.
At CIFF 2017, a new generation of fashion designers is on the rise
On a sunny evening last week, a 100-plus people could be spotted grooving in an out of town car park at the Bella Center in Copenhagen. Bottles of beer and craft vodka cocktails in-hand, they were wearing a diverse smattering of styles – from Supreme X Louis Vuitton dungarees to boiler suits and floral dresses by the Danish label Ganni that recently posted annual revenues of nearly $59m. A giant pink cardboard installation featuring totemic symbols by London-based set designer Gary Card housed the DJ/designer, Charles Jeffrey Loverboy.
It’s not what you might expect from a fashion trade show but then CIFF (the Copenhagen International Fashion Fair that runs in parallel to Copenhagen Fashion Week) is smoothly re-inventing itself as a destination for buyers, creatives and emerging talent alike. The Loverboy pop-up was conceived by Lulu Kennedy MBE, founder of London’s Fashion East not-for-profit platform, one element of a curated programme of shows and stands through which Kennedy intro..
How to Work with Someone Who’s Always Stressed Out
We all know people who seem to be constantly stressed out — who claim to be buried in work, overloaded with projects, and without a minute to spare. Colleagues like that can be difficult to work with, but you probably don’t have a choice. How do you deal with coworkers who can’t handle stress? Should you address the issue directly? Or try other tactics to help them calm down and focus? And how can you protect yourself from their toxic emotions?
What the Experts Say
Stress is part of everyday life. “We all go through periods when we are dealing with a lot of stress,” says Caroline Webb, author of How to Have a Good Day. “Those periods might last 10 minutes, 10 days, or 10 months.” But for certain people, “stress is a habitual pattern.” These folks always “feel overwhelmed, constantly stretched, and always out of their depth.” Working closely with a person like this can be a real challenge. “But you mustn’t make them the villain,” says Holly Weeks, author of Failure to Communicate. “Don..
Eye spy: Apple makes the long-awaited leap to Instagram
That Apple is a conduit for creativity is not, at this point, a surprise (its devices have reconfigured our creative landscape in unprecedented ways, after all). That it doesn’t have an Instagram account is. But that’s just changed.
The Apple iPhone is the most popular camera in the world, responsible for over one trillion photographs every year. Two years ago, the company launched the ‘Shot on iPhone’ campaign, celebrating the finest in community-generated phone photography and highlighting how the easy access and egalitarian nature of the iPhone’s camera has fundamentally changed our relationship with the medium.
[embed]https://www.instagram.com/p/BXffs_QDMVv/?taken-by=apple[/embed]
The launch of the @Apple Instagram account is a natural continuation of this. The process is simple: Instagram users tag their images with #ShotoniPhone and Apple will act as curator of its own channel, choosing the best images via the hashtag and recirculating them from its account, giving almost unim..
Galaxy quest: Cooke Fawcett Architects make Peckham Observatory a star attraction
There is yet another reason to walk up the seven flights of stairs of a defunct car park in Peckham. The latest architectural commission by its highly-acclaimed resident cultural body is revealed. This time, Bold Tendencies has tasked young practice Cooke Fawcett Architects with creating a big viewing platform and kiosk up one end of the top, open-air floor of the car park.
Called the Peckham Observatory, the 3.5m-wide platform of hardwood timber decking attached to a locally-made steel structure is accessed by steps and a bleacher seating system.
At 3.5m above the car park, visitors have increased views on to sunsets over central London and on to Bold Tendencies’ other al fresco delights: Practice Architecture’s crowd-pleasing Frank’s Café, the Derek Jarman corner garden, and installations by artists including Isaac Olvera and Richard Wentworth.
The rooftop carpark is an attraction for Londoners
As well as adding aesthetically to a quieter end of the site, the platform has a func..
How Consumer Brands Can Connect with Customers in a Changing Retail Landscape
When news broke earlier this year about Amazon’s courtship of some of the world’s biggest consumer packaged goods (CPG) brands, it touched off a wave of speculation. Was the e-commerce giant engaged in a long game to alter the relationships between consumer goods makers and their brick-and-mortar retail partners?
However it plays out, Amazon’s outreach exposed a digital divide in the consumer products world. On one side is the growing interest of brands in direct-to-consumer (D2C) models. On the other side are persistent worries about conflict — not just with traditional distribution channels but also with retailers carrying the brand. To bridge this gap, we’ve identified seven tactics that pioneering brands have used to arrive at an effective digital strategy:
Understand how digital serves different consumer segments. Brands can deepen engagement by bringing people together for shared experiences. Kimberly-Clark, for example, specifically designed its Huggies rewards club to attract..
Leading Digital Transformation Is Like Urban Planning
Most companies want their businesses to keep pace with digital startups, but end up bogged down by the need to fix the daily challenges that their decades-old IT systems create. How do you redesign and rebuild major infrastructure while keeping the day-to-day work going? This kind of challenge is often referred to as “repairing the airplane while you’re flying it.” But a more instructive analogy might be the redesign of a major city’s infrastructure.
Specifically, there are three urban planning strategies, commonly followed by major metropolises, that leaders can use for inspiration in the race to keep up with digital competition. They include building glistening landmarks that anchor their digital strategy (as Dubai has done), removing roadblocks and bottlenecks to improve their underlying speed and agility (Boston), or changing course altogether to construct an entirely new city (Shanghai).
Dubai: Erecting Modern Landmarks Targeted investments in striking new sights, like Dubai’s E..