Adapted from HTML5 For Web Designers (A Book Apart)
By Remo Camerota

HTML is the unifying language of the World Wide Web. Using just the simple tags it contains, the human race has created an astoundingly diverse network of hyperlinked documents, from Amazon, eBay, and Wikipedia, to personal blogs and websites dedicated to cats that look like Hitler.

HTML5 is the latest iteration of this lingua franca. While it is the most ambitious change to our common tongue, this isn’t the first time that HTML has been updated. The language has been evolving from the start.

As with the web itself, the HyperText Markup Language was the brainchild of Sir Tim Berners-Lee. In 1991 he wrote a document called “HTML Tags” in which he proposed fewer than two dozen elements that could be used for writing web pages.

Sir Tim didn’t come up with the idea of using tags consisting of words between angle brackets; those kinds of tags already existed in the SGML (Standard Generalized Markup Language) format. Rather than inventing a new standard, Sir Tim saw the benefit of building on top of what already existed—a trend that can still be seen in the development of HTML5.

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The new Magic Trackpad is the first Multi-Touch trackpad designed to work with your Mac desktop computer. It uses the same Multi-Touch technology you love on the MacBook Pro. And it supports a full set of gestures, giving you a whole new way to control and interact with what’s on your screen.

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The iPad is a great tool for both jotting down ideas quickly and working out concepts in detail. Here are three free apps that I recommend for slightly different sketching uses.

Adobe Ideas is a good multi-purpose app to sketch things out. If you only want to use one app for both diagrams and designs use this.

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British street artist Banksy recently made a trip to Detroit, Michigan, there to create several of his inimitable works. One situated in the post-apocalyptic site of the long-abandoned Packard Motors factory (shown above) has sparked a polemic. The work makes sense in its context, within in the sprawling, spectacularly rundown site of the Packard plant, where its plaintive message can't help but resonate with those pining for the mythic era in which the United States had yet to be decimated by the impact of capitalism gone wild.

The piece was apparently later removed via forklit, wall and all, by an entity known as the 555 Nonprofit Studio and Gallery, raising questions about ownership and whether the work should have been left to its fate in the great outdoors. It's worth visiting the Autoblog site to get the background on the tragic saga of the Packard plant, complete with a photo gallery that looks more like a movie set than an echo of long-gone industrial glory. And where is the elusive Banksy in all this? Who knows.

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Chris Dickman
Founding Editor, Graphics.com

The newly released free Flipboard app for iPad brings back the magazine style reading to social media. If you enjoy the layout of shiny periodicals but prefer to read what your friends are talking about then Flipboard is for you.

Here is a video and a few screenshoots to show you how it all looks like.

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Provided as a full-screen application or widget for Mac users, or just as an app for Windows, 27Letters attempts to feature images from 250 "mainstream media sites and opinion-forming blogs." Rather than displaying the most popular photos, its ambitious goal is to every few days feature "the most used, referenced and talked about" images in a wide range of categories. How it does this, whether hand-picked by humans or via algorithm, is not made clear but the breadth of imagery is so far quite diverse.

The interface is slick, with floating boxes each devoted to a letter of the alphabet. I started out with E is for Extra Dimensional Artforms. Clicking the Source link for that leads to a YouTube video about 3D televisions. Zooming out then shuffles things around so that E was then represented by Exposure and Time, which linked to The New York Times photography blog. Once in a while (surprise!) a link will lead to a photo on the Getty Images site but thankfully this isn't overdone.

All in all, 27Letters winds up being a mildly diverting way to discover new sites and different approaches to using imagery, and there's nothing wrong with that.

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Chris Dickman
Founding Editor, Graphics.com

Mashable reports Adobe is working on a new kind of creative software specifically intended to help you publish digital magazines for tablet devices such as the iPad, the company revealed today.

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Check out Pentagram's promotional microsite What type are you, which tells you just that, what typeface fits best your personality. You just need to answer four questions to get your typographic profile.

You can also check out how many people are like you?

I'm Universal, how about you?

Steve Jobs convincingly argues that there is nothing inherently wrong with the iPhone 4. Every smartphone can be shielded with your hands as they demonstrate it with 4 popular phones from various vendors running different operating systems. The death-grip issue affects a very small subset of users. Apple admits to have incorrect formula to display signal strength, which is now fixed in iOS4.01. Basically the signal was showing 5 almost all the time, instead of showing the real value. Apple is giving free bumpers and full refunds if you don't like the phone for any reason for 30 days. They also report the return rate on iPhone 4's is lowest ever. Drop call rate increased marginally only according to AT&T.

Apple handled the antennae gate issue well. They did what they could and I'm buying an iPhone 4 when my old 3G stops functioning. What's your take?

The winning 2010 FIFA World Cup Brazil™ emblem named “Inspiração” (Inspiration) is created by Brazilian agency Africa. The design stems from an iconic photograph of three victorious hands together raising the world's most famous trophy. As well as depicting the humanitarian notion of hands interlinking, the portrayal of the hands is also symbolic of the yellow and green of Brazil warmly welcoming the world to their country.

How do you like it?

Described as "A short unscientific story about evolution and his (sic) consequences," Big Bang Big Boom is the latest animated street art painting by BLU, who a few years ago startled us all with the still-memorable MUTO. BLU generates a steady stream of somewhat disturbing drawings and large-scale wall paintings but for me it's the animated paintings that are the most compelling, watching the camera following the imagery as it adapts organically within the constraints of the outdoor space.

Perhaps that's because I have a weak spot for early 20th century animation and BLU's work is so reminiscent of some of the pioneering work in the field, with of course a totally modern execution. You need look no further than Fantasmagorie, the first animated film created by Emile Cohl in 1908, to see the debt BLU owes to Cohl. If you're in any way involved in animation, you should snag the 2-DVD collection of Cohl's early films, available unfortunately only from an obscure French website.

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Chris Dickman
Founding Editor, Graphics.com

Why it’s important to hire a professional logo designer?

Your logo is your visual ambassador to the world. It must be memorable and unique. Logos exist because we remember faces and landmarks. Your logo is the unique face of your business – your interesting landmark – so people can find you again in the crowd.

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You can build just about any app you can imagine with App Inventor. Often people begin by building games like WhackAMole or games that let you draw funny pictures on your friend's faces. You can even make use of the phone's sensors to move a ball through a maze based on tilting the phone.

But app building is not limited to simple games. You can also build apps that inform and educate. You can create a quiz app to help you and your classmates study for a test. With Android's text-to-speech capabilities, you can even have the phone ask the questions aloud.

To use App Inventor, you do not need to be a developer. App Inventor requires NO programming knowledge. This is because instead of writing code, you visually design the way the app looks and use blocks to specify the app's behavior.

I wish there was a similar app for iPhone app development.

Building websites is a glamorous business, but at the end you still need to consider if that website is usable and works in most browsers. I've built this handy checklist based on some web searches and from personal experience. Feel free to add suggestions in the comments. I want this list to grow!

Before the list, and before you do anything else, get Firefox for your website quality control testing. Add ons like Web Developer, Firebug, and Dust Me Selectors will make your job a breeze. FF even has W3 Validation Tools linked in Web Developer.

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A nice and simple desktop is not only inspiring but helps you find your files quickly too. I recommend you change it regularly to keep your screen fresh. Here are a couple of great desktops from Simple Desktops.

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One of the most important phases of website design is creating mock-ups. Some of the key factors that you should consider when creating wireframes is ease of use for the readers, flexibility for future development and simple hierarchy for the CSS layout.

Here are a couple of tools you can use to create your mockups.

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One of the classic techniques of artists and designers is to play with the sense of scale of the viewer. Radically enlarging or shrinking all or part of a work can capture attention and focus it to achieve different objectives. I recently came across the street art of London-based Slinkachu, a former art director who now creates tiny scenarios in public places, then photographs and abandons them—to be discovered by no-doubt bemused passers-by.

His work is part of Beyond the Street: The 100 Leading Figures in Urban Art, a compendium of street art recently published by gestalten, which also hosts a recent interview with him. I was intrigued enough that I clicked through to Slinkachu's site, with some of my favorites shown below.

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Look at these amazing pictures shoot with an iPhone 3GS and edited with Photoshop afterwards. It proves that great picts depend on great lighting, not the camera.

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Eulda was launched in 2006 as a graphic design award scheme to reward the best logos and trademarks designed in Europe. The competition was subsequently expanded to have an international scope and is known now as Wolda, the Worldwide Logo Design Annual. The competition now includes categories for students and young designers, as well as the ability to submit not just individual logos but logo systems. Giving the awards scheme considerable weight is its endorsement by more than 100 design associations and schools, as well as a broad range of media partners.

Wolda recently announced the winners of its 2009 edition, which includes 92 logos selected from nearly 2,000 entries from all over the world. They're posted on the organization's site but I've included a few of my favorites here. You might recognize the one above, Circus of Magazines, designed by Olivier Courbet, since it not only took home Wolda's Best of the World, Best of Americas and Best of United States awards, but was also an Overall winner in the recent Mediabistro Logo Awards.

Entries are currently being accepted for the Wolda 2010 edition, with this time the winning logos being selected by all participating designers and with winning entries being displayed just on the web site and not in a printed annual, both moves resulting in a lower entry fee of 21 euros.

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