Alan Houser

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1. Northwestern Girls » Say Hi
2. Zero » Yeah Yeah Yeahs
3. Your Ex-Lover is Dead » Stars
4. All for the Best » Thom Yorke
5. Be Here Now » Ray LaMontagne
6. Xavia » The Submarines
7. Social Currency » Children Collide
8. Peacetime Resistance » Kings of Convenience
9. On Glaze » Department of Eagles
10. The Light Pours Out of Me » Magazine
11. The Last One » Cary Brothers
12. Tripoli » Pinback
13. Primitive Man » Fruit Bats
14. In the Sun » Joseph Arthur
15. Sweet Disposition » The Temper Trap
16. Kelly » Van She
17. Photobooth » Friendly Fires
18. Hold Time » M. Ward
19. Battery In Your Leg » Blur
20. All I Need » Mat Kearney
21. Counterpoint » Delphic
22. Banshee Beat » Animal Collective
23. Droned (In Love Version) » Starflyer 59
24. Re: Stacks » Bon Iver

I've always wondered if users ask "why do I need to re-type my password?"

Soundcloud keeps it simple for humans. Nice job!

Adobe Flash Catalyst is currently in its second beta, and I thought I would try it out.

The product is designed to be used between design and development teams, if your end product is Flash. I don't work in Flash, and know very few Flash developers to try, so why would I bother using Catalyst?

As a UI Designer, I work with many front-end and back-end developers. I will often create wireframes depicting page interactions, and will move-on to specify a higher-fidelity design. I've found that one of the more-difficult things to communicate are interactions or animations with moving parts. It's sometimes too late after a component is built to say "no, it should move like this".

After a few hours of playing with Adobe Flash Catalyst, I can say that it’s not as fast for rapid prototyping (as Fireworks or iPlotz) but once you learn the basics, it is fast for showing page interactions, and even animations within those interactions.

Here's a teeny, quick example I built. (on a parked domain)

To Summarize, I'm trying to use Catalyst to better-communicate to developers and clients, by showing advanced interactions on a wireframe.

Exporting
I thought I would use the exported SWF file within a Confluence wiki, but considering there are so many linked files, it looks like the exported files should be installed on a traditional hosted environment. I may even consider running interaction demos locally, while connecting to clients via WebEx/Skype.

You can also export a complete, installable AIR application, which is way-more portable.

Try it out!

For the past few weeks I've been running a Twitter contest, asking designers to tell the world why they love design.

There were some incredible entries, but I'm particularly-fond of this one:

I cannot agree more. Design is not art or necessarily making something pretty. While art is partly made from design, Design should be though of as SOLVING PROBLEMS. And when solving those problems, I get a high from it as well.

I don't consider myself a "blogger" or a writer, so I'll point you to a great article on the topic. Joshua Porter is known for his controversial "Design is (sort-of) not Art" stance. Design is Not Art, Redux (bokardo.com)

So congrats Dani Kelley! @accidentalArt | accidental-artist.com

Subscribe to this journal's RSS and friend me on Twitter so you won't miss the next contest!

Our next episode of CreativeXpert Design Interviews is now live.

43 Kristina Halvorson {43} Content Strategy by CreativeXpert Design Interviews

This week on the show, we had the great opportunity to talk about Web Content Strategy with Brain Traffic's founder, Kristina Halvorson, one of the leading practitioners in the web content world.

Listen to the show now!

That's right, you heard it here first— CreativeXpert Design Interviews is swinging back into action with more design interview awesomeness.

Our first stop will be an interview with guest Kristina Halvorson, Design Strategist/CEO/Founder of Brain Traffic.

We're recording with Kristina this week (2/25), so if you have any questions for the show, send them through the CreativeXpert form, or call and leave us a message at: 317-57-CREATE (we'll play your message on the show).

Be sure to subscribe to CreativeXpert in your iTunes machine, and follow @CreativeXpert on the twitternets.

Until next time, Keep Creatin' Stuff!™

It's the first Creative Component giveaway, and you'll love it.

You can win 4 design books, a 4-pack of Monster Energy Drink and a 3-pack of Field Notes. The only thing better, would be to include a pack of bacon, but shipping may be an issue.

Here's how to win:

You must tweet to the world why you love design. That's it.

Tweet all you want — I'll be looking for my favorites. Just include this block of text in your tweet:

I'm a winner. #iheartdesign http://bit.ly/hrtdsgn

No strings attached! Except for design cheer, I have nothing to sell here. All I want in exchange is more traffic and more Twitter followers. The winner will be announced March 1st on Twitter, so be sure to follow @alanhouser.

The four books include Front End Drupal (Konstantin Kafer, Emma Hogbin), CSS The Definitive Guide - Third Edition (Eric A. Meyer), Design Accessible Web Sites: 36 Keys to Creating Content for All Audiences and Platforms (Jeremy Sydik), CSS Web Site Design Hands on Training CD-ROM included with 60+ Step-by-Step Tutorials (Eric A. Meyer).

Your choice of one Field Notes Brand "Three-Pack" of notebooks in graph, ruled, plain or mixed. While supplies last. (details)

We've had several mornings in a row where there was a dense fog. When the fog freezes on everything, it sometimes forms what amounts to snowflakes. When the breeze hits the trees, it starts to "snow".

I was lucky-enough to be outside with my DSLR + 200mm zoom lens. When selecting "sports" mode (auto-focus), I basically followed individual snowflakes as they flew through the air. I shot over 200 of these shots until I could no-longer feel my fingers. 

Enjoy the set (featured in Distractions)

I'm really excited about this project, and hope to reveal it to the world soon.
Here's a hint: it's really, really fun.

For now, here's a glimpse of the logo progress...

Lately I've been playing with various pixel-fonts, and I landed on FontStruct, where you can build custom pixel fonts right in your browser. You can play a little but here, but click-on through to the site and sign-up for a free account. If you've ever wanted to create your own typeface, then you'll dig it.

I want to show you how to use Posterous to handle all of your Twitter media. The biggest benefit is, you can now customize and apply your own branding to Posterous, so why wouldn’t you use it?

Currently, my posterous is only used for twitter media, but it's certainly capable of doing much more.

I read a little information about this on the Posterous site, and scoured the web for information on integrating Posterous within Tweetie 2. Besides the hundreds of successful tweets of people testing, I couldn't find how to do it, so after I figured it out, I thought I would give-back.

Why use Posterous combined with Tweetie 2?

1. If you’re like me, you’re a little tired of all the ugly apps out there that deal with our Twitter videos and images. There’s yfrog, twitpic, tweetphoto, Mobypicture, Twitgoo, and more. There are way too many ugly apps who are making money from their ugly ads.

2. 140+ characters. No more "Twitlonger" garbage. If you like to ramble-on, then at-least take comfort that the reader will land on your own site.

Now, as far as Twitter apps for iPhone, of-course there’s only one: TWEETIE 2.

View the tutorial below. It's cake, so let's do this.

My styled Posterous blog is here: http://alanhouser.posterous.com

You'll want to follow me on Twitter

The Barbie and Ken versions of the “Mad Men” characters are Joan Holloway, Roger Sterling, Don Draper and Betty Draper.

Sharing powerful stories from his anti-obesity project in Huntington, W. Va., TED Prize winner Jamie Oliver makes the case for an all-out assault on our ignorance of food.

Both independently useful.

David Attenborough presents the Lyre bird, which mimics the calls of other birds - and chainsaws and camera shutters.

Life Is Hard is a very brief platform game offering an exploration of just how difficult life can be.

Directed by James Frost, OK Go and Syyn Labs. Produced by Shirley Moyers. The official video for the recorded version of "This Too Shall Pass" off of the album "Of the Blue Colour of the Sky". The video was filmed in a two story warehouse, in the Echo Park neighborhood of Los Angeles, CA. The "machine" was designed and built by the band, along with members of Synn Labs over the course of several months.

In this episode we speak with Dan Rubin about forming solid partnerships with other designers, developers and creative peeps.

Holy Cannolis! Did you hear about CreativeXpert’s nomination for Podcast of the Year? Why haven’t you voted!? Vote at www.thenetawards.com … NOW!

In this episode we speak with Scott Belsky, founding partner of Behance, designers of products and services that organize the creative world. The creative community is responsible for making the things that make life interesting and enjoyable. On the other hand, the creative community is probably the most disorganized community on the planet. Behance enables the creative individual to make ideas happen.

We’re joined by Craig Birchler, IxD to the stars. We talk about why so many projects fail — it could be the lack of passion across all of your team.

This week Eric and Alan are flying solo — just enough time to get caught-up on a little podcast business.

Remember when you saw #squarespace on twitter everyday, all day for a month? Tyler Thompson, the Squarespace Creative Director joins us to tell us what’s behind the hashtag, and more — why Squarespace is THE WEB PUBLISHING SYSTEM you should be using.

This week we’re joined by Ryan Stewart, Adobe Platform Evangelist who shares the gospel of Flash Catalyst. Adobe defines Catalyst as: “a new professional interaction design tool for rapidly creating user interfaces without coding.”

We meet the Indianapolis-based Interaction Designer, Craig Birchler who is crazy about apps.

We meet freelance designer Dustin Curtis and discuss the letter he wrote to American Airlines about his experience as an AA customer. We also hear what it's like to be a continental drifter-designer.