A transmission from the deep south.
A discourse on the process of designing for real people, from Joshua Porter and Joshua Brewer. I love seeing this sort of project built on Tumblr, and Brewer has included some sweet design details, including the 1–52 navigation in the header, linking to articles tagged for each week.
I’ve made some updates to my Esquire Theme:
Tonight I submitted a major update to Tumblr for approval, it should appear in the next little while in the Theme Garden. Version 1.5 includes much better support for the Disqus plugin (just enter your shortname in the Appearance settings), album art display for audio posts, and an alternative style for quotes (Pete’s zigzag JavaScript wizardry has proven somewhat temperamental).
Masonry-style, infinite-scrolling photo post viewer.
AWESOME use of the Vimeo player in the header of this page.
Thanks! As Ronen mentions, this came our way via Tumblr Projects, and all of the modifications to Jacob’s Redux theme were done by Mike Harding. It’s a great way to get a custom look without having to start from scratch with a new theme.
Inky alerted me to a few extra customisation options for YouTube’s video player:
YouTube’s interface lets you choose one of nine colour schemes, adding two parameters to the embed code:
color1andcolor2. Once you select a theme, you can edit these parameters to use any colours you like.
His suggestion of using a solid white background behind the player controls improves the look of the player out of sight, so I remixed my Vimeo customisation script to do the same for YouTube embeds. Here’s the jQuery function:
$("object").each(function() {
if ($(this).find("param[value^='http://www.youtube.com']").length > 0) {
var parent = $(this).parent();
var youtubeCode = parent.html();
var params = "";
if (youtubeCode.toLowerCase().indexOf("<param") == -1) {
$("param", this).each(function() {
params += $(this).get(0).outerHTML;
});
}
var oldOpts = /rel=0/g;
var newOpts = "rel=0&hd=1&color1=0xFFFFFF&color2=0xFFFFFF";
youtubeCode = youtubeCode.replace(oldOpts, newOpts);
if (params != "") {
params = params.replace(oldOpts, newOpts);
youtubeCode = youtubeCode.replace(/<embed/i, params + "<embed");
}
parent.html(youtubeCode);
}
});
If you’re unfamiliar with such things, there’s a ready-to-install version that includes the jQuery directives to run the code as soon as the DOM has loaded. Let me know if you strike any problems. Here it is in action:
Update: on the suggestion of Billy Disney I’ve added the flag to force HD playback. I’m also investigating the possibility of allowing 16:9 embeds, at present Tumblr outputs all YouTube code at 4:3.
Why do we Tumbl? In the end, we use Tumblr not because it’s a great way to connect with our readers (though it is that), or because we believe this or something like it is a part of a new way forward for interaction between publishers and audience (though we think that too). We use Tumblr because it’s fun and while, you know, you can’t eat fun, or trade it in for fistfuls of dollars to fund serious journalism, we believe there’s a value in doing things we like simply because we like to do them, and that hopefully our fellow Tumblrs will too.
— Newsweek on why they use Tumblr. (via Meaghan O’Connell)
Just when I thought the scrapbook design meme was played out, MetaLab’s Sara White produces what may be the definitive theme of its type for Tumblr, Vintage Scrapbook. It’s a paid theme via Envato’s Theme Forest, but at $12 — and with MetaLab’s customary attention to every single detail — it’s a steal. I’d love to see an option in Tumblr’s Theme Garden for designers to offer paid themes, perhaps with a revenue split akin to the App Store.
Jarred Bishop’s new project is a song-a-day Tumblr utilising recent support for extracting album art from uploaded tracks. Simply brilliant, from the jewel case design to the single-character unicode URL.
Guess who blagged his way into Tumblr HQ today. Here’s a photo of me with the esteemed Editorial Director, as requested by Mike. My huge gratitude to the whole team for letting me bug them for a few hours. Unfortunately this did not result in any change to my Tumblarity…
Liz Danzico’s beautiful new site, designed by Jason Santa Maria, is running on Tumblr. This is a great example of text as interface, and shows what can be done with a little clever CSS, for example the larger introductory paragraph on longer text posts, and the occasional notes which float into the left margin of the body copy. Jason has used Czech type designer David Březina’s Skolar typeface (via Typekit), one of my favourites from the service (and the one I’m also using for body copy here).
Written and designed by Matthew Buchanan. Colophon. Please give credit. Email
