Patrick Rogan

Graphic & Web Designer

Starbucks Gets The Square

Square and Starbucks have entered into a sweeping and wide ranging agreement that would cement Square’s role in the emerging mobile commerce economy. The coffee giant will accept payments through Pay with Square. Square will also process Starbucks’ U.S. credit card and debit card transactions.

So I’ve heard. I’m glad their catching up. I’m just hoping everyone else catches suit. It’s a bit scary how everything is going digital though. Someone stealing your phone is equivalent to them stealing your identity and they can destroy it pretty fast.

(Source: jamesfletchr)

How to Build an Owl

by Kathleen Lynch

  1. Decide you must
  2. Develop deep respect for feather, bone, claw.
  3. Place your trembling thumb where the heart will be: for one hundred hours watch so you will know where to put the first feather.
  4. Stay awake forever. When the bird takes shape gently pry open its beak and whisper into it: mouse.
  5. Let it go.

This is quite a beautiful poem, and I took an instant liking to it. It reminds me of Alice in Wonderland.

Let’s Drop IE Cold

It makes me cringe to the core every time I see markup that needs to be de-beautified just to make it work in IE. I’m not even talking about IE6-8, because we all know that IE9 has its headaches too. Fixing it requires harming our gorgeous code, making it slower and long, but extra hours that could be spent doing more productive parts of the project. Sure, it’s understandable that Microsoft owns most of the market share in terms of browsers, but really? Who are those users and what is their importance?

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Avatars make me die inside

It happens every single time I see one of those ridiculous cartoon avatars with the cheesy grin and the thumbs up that reminds me of awkward relatives. It’s amazing how oblivious people can become to the negative impact this has on designers. As designers we know that the first impression is usually the only one you’ll get that counts. So riddle me how can one present oneself with a picture that looks like a Pokèmon and still keep a straight face when they say that they endeavor to be as professional as possible? If you wouldn’t walk around with a Santa Claus mask around in real life, why would you do it anywhere at all? If there is a difference, it’s going way over my head.

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