Ben Dunkle's Blog

Let’s start using points.

admin — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 23:16:33 +0000

Pixels are dying. Or rather, they’re riding off into the sunset. Retinal display is the thing, and today’s 1080p is tomorrow’s 640×480.

So as designers, we should stop designing in pixels, completely. We should start using points instead.

% and em are great, but they’re relative. So if you tell me something is 1 em wide, I have no idea how big that is. That’s why pixels are popular; they’re absolute. I have a clear idea as to how big a website is if it’s 960 px wide.

Or do I? In fact, px is a relative unit of measurement. It’s relative to the pixel density on the screen. And on a retinal display, pixels are theoretically invisible.

Print never had to deal with all this. Printers have always been able to render insanely small dots-much finer than the latest retinal screens can. Which is why points, or 1/72 of an inch, have always held sway. That and their older siblings, picas, or 12 points, or 1/6″ of an inch.

A point is a point is a point. If a website is 720 points wide, it’s 10″ wide. Period. And any device that renders it can check with its own screen density settings to figure out how many pixels it should use to render that site.

It would be great to see more designers using points and picas in their css. Of course, basing those units on a percentage of a centimeter instead of an inch would make even more sense, but it’s probably too late for that.

Inside out learning

admin — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 03:24:20 +0000

I’m going to be talking a lot about a concept that’s been brewing in my head lately: “Inside out learning”…stay tuned…

I hate restaurants.

admin — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 00:24:38 +0000

Most people love restaurants. I’m gonna go on record and state affirmatively that I hate them. I hate being seated, being served (no one should ever be “served” in this world), trying to get the attention of the waiter when something inevitably gets f’d up, looking around at the piles of wasted food everywhere, trying to figure out what the tip is, trying to figure out who owes what, waiting for the bill. Give me local street vendor food and quick/over the counter service, or let me cook it myself.

Eli

admin — Sun, 30 May 2010 23:46:13 +0000

I saw Eli playing with toy guys today-Batman, Frodo, the Mask. I glimpsed him doing it in the front room, in our CA cottage. Probably the last time I’ll ever see it. There is nothing more magical than watching your son play with toy guys; the way their hands and fingers connect with the toy and animate it. I’ll write a book about it someday.

NEA logo entry

admin — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 17:59:33 +0000

So last month I spent a bunch of time working on a logo design in response to Uncle Sam’s RFP: http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/01/wholl-design-the-new-nea-logo-it-could-be-you/
. Regardless of what I think of spec work, I love high scale design competitions. Too much design is born from who-you-know and schmoozing.
Here’s my submission:

The mccondo

admin — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 01:06:13 +0000

I’m at the ft Erie town meeting and 2 hours into it were hearing the same pro-condo heads go on and on. Were all in agreement on this point- the town needs more people, more business.
The people you’re gonna get are not what you want. You want people to fix the cottages and build new ones. Most are gonna be summer residents. Sorry, anyone who thinks CB is gonna turn into year round destination is nuts. We need to maximize what we have.

On “Where the Wild Things Are”

admin — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 01:05:55 +0000

Too much music. Not enough Sea Monster.

Futura vs. Verdana

admin — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 16:02:45 +0000

OK all you typography snobs out there, up in arms over Ikea’s recent switch to Verdana (google ikea verdana), ask yourselves: If you had one store to shop for all of your furniture, what would it be? Ikea, right.
If you had one font to use on everything you designed, what would it be? Well, you basically have to choose a web-safe, sans-serif font to maximize utility, so here are your choices:
Arial
Tahoma
Verdana
Trebuchet MS
Lucida

Personally, I’da gone with Lucida, but Verdana’s as good as any.

Bang Bang You’re Dead

admin — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 15:20:16 +0000

I want this book:
http://bit.ly/2dwULc
The kids basically maul each other in a war. This would make such a better movie than “Where the Wild Things Are”.

Things are better for my kids

admin — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 23:19:57 +0000

A theme you hear is how parents want to make sure their kids have all the things they didn’t. I don’t get that. I had everything; my parents gave us lots of toys and good food and everything. Maybe it was being a child of the 70s/80s, when things were pretty plentiful.

Today I was proud to see my kid Grif riding his bike with his helmet on, while his friends went bare-brained. Growing up, I never wore a helmet, and I rode my bike everywhere. Most of what my kids have I had too, but at least they’re a little wiser.