well, back in my day we used to…

After seeing a tweet from Antonio Lupetti, @Woork, asking everyone what they used to do before the web  was born, it made me think back to the early days of the web and how far it has progressed in very little time. From the sounds and tones of AOL’s dial up connection, awful-table-tacky-depthless website designs, to the time it took you to load up a webpage and make a sandwich and brew a cuppa tea; we have progressed beyond imagination. Amazing to think what another 10 years will bring us, huh?

It also made  me think back to the early days of surfing websites and what site I used to browse the most. Mine was definitely good-tutorials.com. Learned all my Photoshop tricks and secrets from it, back when I started out with Photoshop 7. Look at us now, eight versions later (CS5 was just announced and will be releasing shortly).

I also asked my Twitter friends if they remember some of the websites they used to visit most often when they first discovered the web. Here’s what they had to say:

• @kapriforce – WBS Chat
• @sarahfrance – ‘Manystuff‘ design blog
• @designinformer – LOL! Early 2000’s, it was a social networking site called Asian Avenue.
• @lynseydesign – yahoo.com, it was the home page in our middle school computer lab.
• @idesignstudios – I was always on http://webmonkey.com/ – lots of self-teaching going on in the early days!

Feel free to share some of your finest memories in the comments. Don’t worry, we don’t judge age here!

lets play: url abc

It’s Wednesday night and I’m bored—and what better to do when you’re bored than play a game. Lately, I’ve been seeing many designers playing the ABC URL game on their blogs.

The rules are simple: Launch your favorite, most frequently used browser for surfing the web. Start by typing, one letter at a time, the entire alphabet into the search bar to see what pops up first. Record the results.

I’ve discovered new and interesting links and resources from seeing what other designers results were. Below you will find mine.

• A - Revised Font Stack
• B – Best Web Gallery
• C - CSS-Tricks
• D - Dribbble
• E - Elliot Jay Stocks
• F - Facebook *hanging head in shame*
• G - Google Reader
• H - BrianHoff.net
• I - I Love Typography: Sex, lies, & type
• J - Jason Santa Maria
• K - The Kid Whisperer Blog (blog I designed for a client a few months back)
• L - Ligature, Loop & Stem
• M - MFR Currency Management (client website)
• N - ffffound
• O - Owltastic
• P - Pattern Tap
• Q - Amazon.com
• R – Remember the milk
• S - Smashing Magazine
• T - Twitter.com
• U - Unmatched Style
• V - My Ember (my third result, however I wanted to list a new result)
• W - We Love Typography
• X – My Amazon bookstore (again, this was a third, yet new result)
• Y - Flickr Inspiration Stream
• Z - Zazzle (I don’t even remember visiting this one)

Feel free to submit yours in the comments below or share a link to your URL ABCs from your blog.

Birth of a new blog

After 1+ years of running The Design Cubicle, I’ve decided to expand my blogging horizons and start a more personal blog that focuses more on my work, processes, and experiences as a graphic designer, as well as offer information that is of interest to me and the design community, share discoveries, resources and inspiration, tutorials and spread other news that is important to designers.

For those unfamiliar with me — I’m a graphic designer from the Philadelphia. I collaborate mostly on corporate identity and branding, but I’m experienced in building all kinds of quality, strategic design, both in print and on the web. My work focuses on solving problems by balancing usability and accessibility with memorable, timelessness designs.

My other blog, The Design Cubicle aims to not only teach, inspire and helps other designers, but also focuses on client education and design awareness.

I hope you enjoy my new blog and look forward to reading many of your comments. Feel free to subscribe to my feed to receive free updates as they are posted.