Introducing Basic Maths, a Theme for WordPress

Things that have been keeping me from blogging: raising a brand new baby, having grown-up time with my girlfriend, walking my dog, holding down a day job and, now finally revealed: working on Basic Maths, a brand new theme for WordPress that I designed with my friend Allan Cole.

After months of plugging away at in during whatever free time we’ve been able to find, we’re finally releasing it into the wild today, to coincide with WordCampNYC 2009. (In fact, I’m heading over to that conference later today, and Allan will be speaking there early this afternoon, so if you’re there, be sure to say hello.) It’s available right now for purchase at this link — for a limited time only, it costs just US$45, which is less than half the price of other, far less awesome WordPress themes, if you ask me.

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Watching Yankees Spending

New York YankeesLast Wednesday The New York Yankees beat the Philadelphia Phillies to win their twenty-seventh World Series. After a nine year title drought, the victory predictably thrilled Yankees fans like myself while also re-igniting the old complaint that the franchise is a bully in the baseball market, that the team uses an obscenely resourceful payroll to effectively and unfairly buy championships.

Actually, the pilot light for that particular criticism never goes out, whether the team has won or lost its most recent bid for the World Series (or even when they make no post-season appearance at all, as happened in 2008). For almost a decade, the Yankees have consistently maintained the highest payroll in Major League Baseball while failing to bring home a World Series title, and during that time the grousing took the form of ridicule. What Yankees fans heard then was: “See? You Yankees can’t buy championships, even with all of your money.” What we hear today is: “See? You Yankees just buy championships with all of your money.”

This is not a coherent line of argument, but then again it would be naïve to look for any motivation here other than envy, because the logic at work is so suspect. It’s pretty safe to say that a good number of those who hate the Yankees because of their payroll are unabashed capitalists, too; they’d be very unlikely to begrudge the fact that the highest valued, best performing organization in any given market also led that market. That’s not just capitalism, it’s the way capitalism is practiced in America.

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Bruce Tognazzini Proposes a Redesign of the iPhone Home Screen

Ratings

2 of 5 stars
What’s this?

The noted interface and usability expert identifies and solves the creeping problem of iPhone users running out space for all of their apps. “I have purposely made this new design compatible with the old, both so users wouldn’t face a sharp new learning curve and so that it might better pass the ‘Steve Test’: This new iPhone Springboard, unless and until such time as a user chooses to invoke the new features, could continue to look exactly the same as the app looks now.” I’m not entirely sure it would really pass the “Steve Test” though as it’s a little inelegant. Still, it’s smart thinking.

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Personal References

I get a very minor mention on page fifty of Armin Vit and Bryony Gomez-Palacio’s new book, “Graphic Design, Referenced,” but that’s not why it’s worth blogging about. Rather, this book is notable as an ambitious and largely successful attempt at capturing the current state of graphic design, or at least its current state as seen through the uncommonly thorough gaze of two young, talented and already influential designer-editors.

Vit and Gomez-Palacio, operating under the name Under Consideration, were responsible for the now shuttered but once widely-read design criticism site Speak Up, where they played a key role in shaping the graphic design conversation over the past decade. Now, in “Graphic Design, Referenced,” they’ve capitalized on their rather breathtaking ability to pull off massive editorial feats with a kind of contemporary history of their chosen field, a beautiful, page-turner of a tome that aims to be “A Visual Guide to the Language, Applications, and History of Graphic Design.”

I received my copy in the mail not long ago and was frankly astonished when I opened it up. I was vaguely aware that they had been working on a book, but I had no idea that they had aimed so high. So I felt compelled to find out more and struck up an email conversation with Armin, a friend of mine, to find out more.

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Enhancements to Georgia & Verdana Typeface Families Announced

Ratings

4 of 5 stars
What’s this?

Matthew Carter, the original designer of both, has embarked on a project with Ascender Corp. and Microsoft to update these ubiquitous type families. The project “intends to optimize the Verdana and Georgia fonts for many new applications, including extended text formatting on Web sites and in print. The Georgia/Verdana project will provide a variety of enhancements to these fonts including: new weights and widths beyond the original four fonts in each family; extensions to the character sets; extensions to the kerning: OpenType typographic features for enhanced typography.” Expect the results to start rolling out early next year.

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