Today, by chance, I stumbled across a whole realm of computer graphics that I had never even considered… pixel art. Originating before the days of Photoshop and other vector-based programs, this genre of art is created, well, one pixel at a time. Sounds ridiculous, right? See if you still think so after checking out the following images, which are some of my favorites from the eBoy website:

I am amazed by the complexity of these works. They are bright and fun, and it seems as though there is always something new to discover about them. And I can’t even begin to guess at the number of hours that were put into each image. Incredible.

Much of eBoy’s images are done in the classic 3D style, which is a near-isometric projection. This just means that lines don’t converge as they approach the horizon, they stay parallel. Thus, the sides of blocks, walls, and buildings all have a “two pixels over, one pixel up” slope. Not all pixel art follows this formula, however, and can be equally (if not much more) impressive. The following images are from DeviantArt, where you can view hundreds of pixel art entries.

For a final example, I’d like to provide a link to Drububu’s portfolio. He uses pixel art fused with some really nice Flash work to create some very interesting applications and animations. It’s definitely worth a look.

The first pixel art was created as early as the 1970’s, but I would be remiss not to mention the history of art using simple blocks of color. For thousands of years, artists have created intricate mosaics and beadworks with their bare hands. A far cry from a mouse and a computer screen, these art forms are arguably more difficult and tedious than pixel art, and clearly set the precident for the digital manifestation seen today. Regardless, the time and effort put into all these forms of artwork is astounding, and these artists should be applauded for their patience and dedication to their craft.

Wendy MacNaughton recalls her design adventure in a national civic sensitization campaign for the first democratic local elections in Rwanda in late 2000. Sure, mixing your own spray mount from flower and water is tough — a MacGyverism to be admired. But what must it be like to be handed the task of conceptualizing a visual vernacular in a developing nation that has endured unimaginable hardship — as well as ethnic and political tension? This requires a return to an axiom of all good visual communication: “In order to create effective, relevant work, visual communicators need to learn to work cooperatively with members of the communities they are communicating to.”

Wendy’s closing remarks leave some ambiguity as to whether or not her efforts performed as intended. Nevertheless, this is a fascinating case study of an important, gutsy project.

And, let’s just ignore that little blurb about the Mac being “useless”.

Spotted on Byron Center Avenue near the new Metro Health Hospital: COMING SOON: Starbucks.

I’m giddy that this is en route from my home, but I hope the strength of this brand doesn’t result in a rent increase for our nearby Elexicon offices An unintentionally amusing USA Today article (they’re good at those) a few weeks back raised my eyebrow. It says something that a publication would publish a front page article with the headline “Starbucks Nation;” but I’m a bit skeptical. A developer building luxury condos near a Starbucks? Now, that’s a great brand … but a great developer? Hmm.

Elexicon recently created a slick media player for Harris Corporation. From a quick Flash presentation on their home page featuring customer testmonials, you can link to a page that launches a Flash-based “media center” featuring extensive interviews with all five customers. We’ll be rolling out audio-based podcasts soon in a similar format. We think it’s an elegant way to deliver this kind of content, and using XML, maintenance of these video players is going to be extremely efficient.

Want to implement a solution like this on your web site for your video content? Drop us a line and let us know what you have in mind!

Along the same lines as my take on Homestarrunner.com is my thoughts on The Sports Guy — Bill Simmons’ weekly column on ESPN.com. This guy is an entertaining writer whose articles are funny but tend to, shall we say, “ramble.” His often exhaustive takes on sports and pop culture could only survive and thrive on the web, where you can truly experiment with the notion: As a writer, what happens when you can just go on FOREVER? No analog publication has the column inches to devote to all this! Yet, here he is, available any time, just a click away. I chose to link to the particular article above because his “YouTube Hall of Fame” is a fun example of “web worlds colliding.” Boom! goes the dynamite…

McDonald’s has so many billboards and such a well-known brand that it is not much of a risk for them to have some fun with the medium.  Gizmodo pointed out a new McDonald’s billboard outside Chicago that functions as a sundial. 

Billboards can be an eyesore, but this is a novel approach that apparently was dreamed up by the Leo Burnett agency.  I guess they had to search high and low to find a billboard location with just the right orientation.

It often saves time and money if you can learn from the efforts of others. That saved effort can also allow you to propel an idea beyond its initial capabilities.

In web development and programming in general, the concept of patterns has emerged. There are user-interface patterns, object-oriented-programming patterns, information architecture patterns and more.

For months I have been contemplating the need for a web site that outlines common database design patterns. After all, the relational database is at the heart of most web applications and many of the same strategies are required for web applications. Many websites deal with user authentication and validation, hierarchical catalogs of products or data, dynamic site navigation, shopping cart systems, integration with backend systems, scheduling, etc.

The Data and Object Factory is a great resource for the classic Gang-of-Four OOP design patterns.

Dey Alexander Consulting has a nice resource page for links on user experience design patterns, and it includes a link to welie.com–another site I have found useful on this subject.

If you want to track web design trends, check out Design Melt Down for many ideas, or go to the Website Layouts Cookbook for hundreds of wire frames to kick off your design process.

And now, without further adieu, go to Database Answers for a large repository of database patterns. I hope this site takes off and provides ways to enhance, rate or validate database design patterns.

Google offers some nice tools for site owners. One of those tools is Google sitemaps. To read the marketing information about Google sitemaps, you can visit their site.

In short, Google sitemaps are XML files that describe a website in a way that helps Google index it. It tells Google which pages you think are important, which pages have changed recently and which pages change regularly. Of course, it is a “beta” application and they make it clear that it is merely a supplement to the “normal” spidering methods.

Google made their protocol open for any search engine to use, but unfortunately, no major search engine has incorporated it. Despite this fact, Google’s popularity dictates that it is a good idea to include a Google sitemap feed with your website and some of the benefits actually help with site maintenance more than site indexing. Other search engines do support XML formats such as RSS and ATOM, and you could possibly transform your Google site map into RSS or other accepted format “on the fly” for those search engines.

Using Google sitemaps allows Google to give you important feedback about how it sees your site. This translates into the following benefits.

First, Google can provide a list of search queries that actually return your website in the results. This can help with search engine optimization and understanding how people are finding your site.

Second, and my personal favorite, Google can report the errors generated when it tries to index your site. This gives you a great tool for finding broken links and other problems that search engines or users may experience when using your site. Errors can include any of the following:

• Not found
• URLs not followed
• URLs restricted by robots.txt
• URLs timed out
• HTTP errors
• URL unreachable

In the past, sites would publish “gateway” pages to help search engines find all the pages in a site. Search engines have finally embraced this and are now accepting more machine friendly versions of this in the form of XML. In the spirit of Web 2.0 your website can now publish links in a common way that helps other sites include your content and direct traffic your way.