Notebook

A categorized collection of shiny and distracting things we’ve found scattered across the internets.

April 2016

Something New@2X

Time for something new

As of April 4th, I officially joined the team at Shopify. Continue Reading

August 2014

31three 2014

31Three.com - Version 6

This website just got its first refresh in nearly 5 years... and I'm very happy with how it's turned out. My aim is to post a few entries about specific parts of the project in the coming weeks. For now I'd just like to... Continue Reading

July 2013

drewwarkentin 2

Drew Warkentin joins 31Three

Nearly 20 years ago Drew Warkentin and I sat in a small studio on the 3rd floor of his home in Grimsby and talked about how one day we would run a creative studio together. We were in our mid teens at the time, and clueless... Continue Reading

October 2012

InDesign 100% Script

Viewing documents at 100% in InDesign CS6

When InDesign CS6 came out earlier this year, I was excited to try out all of the new features aimed at resizing and reflowing documents. My excitement was quickly tempered by the way that the InDesign team chose to... Continue Reading

May 2012

InDesign Responsive Spread

My Responsive Design Process (So Far)

In response to this recent Twitter conversation… here’s a quick overview of the design process I’ve been using for a responsive design project I’ve been working on. I quickly settled on using InDesign for the... Continue Reading

July 2010

Steinway & Sons Final

Steinway & Sons Redesign

Over the past year I’ve had the pleasure of working with New York based piano manufacturer Steinway & Sons. They’re not just any old piano manufacturers. We’re talking pianos that take almost a year to make by hand,... Continue Reading

November 2009

ical

Minor iCal Fix

I was just using iCal and wondered if the interface wouldn't make a lot more sense with just one minor tweak. The toolbar on the top is how it currently looks, and the one on the bottom is my modified version. Currently, the... Continue Reading
dottedlines-1

Making divider lines in Photoshop

Here's another quick tip I use for making dotted or solid lines in Photoshop. When you need divider lines that are equally spaced for side navigation or tables, try using a text box with a lot of period's or underscores... Continue Reading
31Three Website 2009

31Three.com - Version 5

Last week I had the unfortunate experience of losing most of my previous website (the database was thankfully salvaged) which pushed me to redesign this website a little earlier than I had hoped. It’s still very much a... Continue Reading

June 2009

2b large

Campaign Monitor Landing Pages

When Dave Greiner from Campaign Monitor contacted me a couple months ago to see if I had enough time to take on some landing page designs for him, I was already fully immersed in another project and just wasn’t able to do... Continue Reading

October 2008

eWedding

eWedding Redesign

There’s been a bunch of projects that I’ve done over the last year that I’d love to post here, but haven’t been able to because they’re still under a NDA. One of those projects just launched yesterday (congrats... Continue Reading
Kinoma-6

Kinoma redesign process

A few months ago I had the pleasure to work with the folks at Kinoma on a redesign of their website. The images below are a behind the scenes look at how the design progressed through a few iterations. Continue Reading

June 2008

deeper

Using Stacks for Screenshots

The default set of stacks in Leopard do a pretty good job of keeping your desktop clean of downloads, but for me, the real challenge of keeping things tidy comes from the multitude of screenshots that I take everyday. Continue Reading

April 2008

MyFamily

Design Ideas for MyFamily

Just a quick “behind the scenes” post today, as I’m busy working on another project that I should launch in a couple of weeks. I recently had the opportunity to work with myfamily.com (a sister company to Ancestry.com)... Continue Reading

January 2008

drycleaners

The 411 on 313

A few weeks ago our family went to church and Heather decided to leave Lucy in the nursery for the first time. Each child is assigned a number when they check in, so that if the nursery worker needs to notify a parent that... Continue Reading

Moved Out

Man I’ve been neglecting this blog lately. You’d think finally getting an off-site office after working out of the house for 5 years would be at least worthy of a mention. I actually moved out of the house around 3... Continue Reading

September 2007

mobilewebdesign-home3

Mobile Web Book Design

When Cameron first asked me to do the design for his upcoming book Mobile Web Design, I’ll admit that I was a tad intimidated. Even though we’ve worked together in the past, this was the first project where he would be... Continue Reading

May 2007

31Three 2007

31Three.com Redesigned

​This site has been looooong overdue for a redesign. I gave it a small refresh back in October of 2005, but the basic design has remained unchanged for the last three years. Three. Years. My business has changed a lot in... Continue Reading

April 2007

Embrace Pet Insurance

Embrace Pet Insurace Process

A few weeks ago I gave a behind the scenes look at a project called Embrace Pet Community. What I didn’t mention then was that this particular project actually involved two different websites, and also marked the first... Continue Reading

March 2007

grumpy jesse

Grumpy Daddy

​My 3 year old little girl just drew a picture of me and titled it “Grumpy Daddy”. I was blown away when she showed it to me and blurted out, “Sadie… this is amazing! Great job! I’m going to put it on my... Continue Reading
port ee

Redesigning the ExpressionEngine website

Years ago, I would have jumped head-first into a project like this, and started working on detailed mockups from day one. This approach forced me into making several different design decisions about layout, color,... Continue Reading

EllisLab, ExpressionEngine, CodeIgniter and EngineHosting Redesign… Whew.

Earlier today 4 of the sites that I’ve been working on for the past 5 months went live. Right now I’m extremely excited to finally be able to unveil what I’ve been working on, and extremely tired because I’ve been... Continue Reading

January 2007

Embrace Pet Community

Embrace Pet Community Process

It’s been a loooooong time since my last post, and I’ve been getting pretty eager to share some of the different projects I’ve been working on lately. The only problem is that many of the projects I want to share are... Continue Reading