It’s summertime! From June to August, we are having our summer break. Thus there are no talks, but informal meetups every second Tuesday of the month. Details will be announced here. See you there!

On our 15th meetup we had Gearóid O’Rourke, Frederik Frede & Tim Seifert, and Stephen Coles. Lightning talks by Karl Westin, Robb Böhnke and Johan Uhle.

• Stephen Coles: Cure for the Common Font — A Web Designer’s Introduction to Typeface Selection

  Now that web designers suddenly face the challenge (and delight) of choosing fonts from an ever-growing selection, it’s a good time to recommend some basic principles for making wise type choices.

  Stephen is a writer and designer living in Oakland and Berlin. After six years at FontShop San Francisco as a creative director, he now publishes the websites Typographica, Fonts In Use, and The Mid-Century Modernist. Stephen is also a regular contributor to Print magazine and a member of the FontFont TypeBoard.

  • stephencoles.org
  • @typographica

• Gearóid O’Rourke: Taking print design online

  Newspapers are dying. Print is dead. All hail the online revolution! It has felled the inky beasts. Oh the confidence of teenagers. Web design is a discipline in it’s adolescence — the classic teenager; all existential angst, bad fashion choices, mood swings and earnest attempts at “cool”. It has rightly rejected the mistakes, constraints and pitfalls of “fuddy-duddy” print design, but has forgotten that old-man print still has more than a few things to teach.
  Gearóid spent his teenage years in the world of newspapers. As the youngest designer at Ireland’s oldest newspaper he learned print design from the old hands. Teaching himself web design at the same time, he became fascinated by the insights a grounding in print design can offer to the web designer who is willing to listen. Gearóid will explore these insights under 3 headings – process, philosophy and practicalities.

  Gearóid is a 24 year-old Irish guy who runs a one-man design studio in London. He has worked as an editorial designer with the News of the World, The Irish Times and the Sun. He welcomes our new online overlords in “the cloud”.

  • orourke-design.com
  • @orourkedesign

• Frederik Frede & Tim Seifert: Freunde von Freunden

  The online format Freunde von Freunden is a showcase project that proofs how ideas can grow and develop through digital media, great motivation and a strong network of friends and producers. Producing for FvF is lots of fun in the first place and with the engagement of a creative network became a fertile ground for great client projects and new ideas in digital publishing.

  Frederik Frede is an entrepreneur, consultant, award-winning creative director and founder of the Designstudio and now Coffeebar NoMoreSleep and online magazine and production company Freunde von Freunden.
  Having studied digital communication on a master’s degree Tim Seifert finished his academic career with a thesis on networked and collaborative digital journalism and is a co-founder and manager of the magazine and production company Freunde von Freunden.

  • freundevonfreunden.de
  • @FrederikFrede
  • @timmiseifert

• Nadine Roßa: The letter ß

  For some people it is a trouble-maker in German orthography, for some a shortcoming in typography but to Nadine it is the most beautiful letter – The German Eszett. Throughout history no other character has had to put up with so much and almost no other letter has been the subject of so much discussion. Her surname contains this rare character. That’s the reason why, in her thesis, she decided to put some thought into what could be done to place it in a better light. That was the basis of the project »Eine scharfe Type« – A sharp character.

  Nadine Roßa is a freelance designer and illustrator working in Berlin. She’s one of the publishers of the Design made in Germany Magazine and a co-founder of LAUNCH/CO.

  • scharfe-type.de
  • @nadrosia

• Sven Ellingen: FontFont.com – A more agile design process

  Sven – Designer at Edenspiekermann – will give some insight on the recently relaunched fontfont.com. FontFont is the world’s largest library of original contemporary typefaces. Together with Ivo Gabrowitsch and Jörg Haubrichs, head of marketing and developer at FontFont, the team at Edenspiekermann redesigned the website from scratch in a collaborative and agile way. Almost no Photoshop pixels were harmed in the making of the site. Instead, most of the design took place in the browser using tools such as Haml and Sass.
  Learn about the challenges of an “agile design process”, the latest life-saving tools and greatly underestimated budgets.

  Edenspiekermann is an agency for strategy, design and communication with offices in Amsterdam, Berlin, Stuttgart.

  • Edenspiekermann
  • @se

There will be lightning talks by Tiffany Conroy, Nico Hagenburger and Henrik Berggren.

• Hessam Lavi: SEO 101 - Accessibility

  Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has a reputation for being shady and complicated. Hessam previously spent 4 years at Google where he worked on fighting black hat SEO techniques and webspam in the European market. He will be sharing his knowledge about how search engines find and evaluate web content, as well as the 3 key elements for optimal performance in search engines. The focus in this session will be on avoiding technical pitfalls and building an accessible website.

  Hessam is an a SEO and Web Analytics consultant and a former member of Google’s search quality/webspam team.

  • hessamlavi.com
  • Blog
  • @hessam

• Uli Schöberl: Design Tools

  Whenever Tools of choice are discussed its easy to start off a heated debate. Its 2011 and Websites are still started in Photoshop. We laughed at the print people using InDesign, now it ships with pixel measures and we dream about the automatic recovery when Fireworks beachball crashed again. And of course beyond Adobe, who needs a flat demo of an interactive Design anyways, after all rapid prototyping has been around a while.
  >His talk will showcase different case of Tool combinations, how they fit in a real world workflow and the own choice always seems superior to everyone elses. A heated debate will follow.

  Uli Schöberl is a freelance designer and developer.

  • ulischoeberl.com
  • @aplusplus

• Floris Dekker: How to start a studio in Berlin

  Floris will talk about setting up shop in Berlin 1,5 years ago and about some of the insights they gained by doing it. He will also show some of their own projects and explain why they did them.

  Floris Dekker is a founder and designer at Your Neighbours.

  • @floriz
  • Slideshare

• Mette Ilene Holmriis: 9 reasons to love animation

  Mette gives a brief animation run through, covering some of the most popular and interesting ways of working with animation. If nothing else this talk will at least give you an impression of how powerful a communication tool animation is.

  Mette Ilene Holmriis is an animator from Denmark, now based in Berlin.

  • metteilene.com
  • @metteIlene

• Floris Dekker: On user interface details

  Floris, designer at Your Neighbours, will talk about the relevance and some history of user interface details. He will also go through the success behind his Little Big Details blog and his vision on curating UI details.

  This talk was cancelled

• Torsten Bergler & Thomas Michelbach: Location Based Services

  The guys around the TBWA\ Digital Arts Team developed a service to make data accessible only in specific areas or locations. They are going to talk about the idea behind it, how they used it for a big coffee house and what they are planning for the future.

  Torsten Bergler and Thomas Michelbach are Creative Developers at TBWA\ Berlin.

  • @inananalogworld
  • @torstenbergler

Lightning talks by Natalie Hanke and Peter Bihr.

It’s the first meetup of 2011, and we’re going to get the year started with an amazing programme. Did you make new year’s resolutions to improve your workflow, or finally learn about that helpful tool you always wanted to use in your projects? We’ve got some talks to help you out.

• Tiffany Conroy: How to Build a Bookmarklet

  Get ideas and learn the tricks to make your own bookmarklets, and learn how some of the popular ones work (e.g. Share on Twitter, Read Later, and Readability.)
  What is a bookmarklet? A bookmarklet is a way to inject a JavaScript into any web page. Don’t be intimidated! This practical talk teaches you step-by-step how to create and distribute tiny (or big!) applications that can be used on any website.

  Tiffany Conroy is a Frontend Web Developer.

  • tif.ca
  • @theophani

• Alexander Lang: Git(hub) for designers

  Git is many programmer’s favorite tool to manage their files and collaborate with others. Learn how you, too, can vastly improve your file workflow. Once there you don’t want to go back.

  Alexander Lang is a programmer and runs his own company, Upstream. He also runs up.front’s home, the co.up coworking space.

  • @langalex

On December 14th we are going to gather for a special Christmas edition of our meet-up. Let’s enjoy some mulled wine, munch cookies and hear a lightning talk or two. If you want to share a cool new tool, technology or case that fits into the web design frontend category in a lightning talk (~5min), you are very welcome to share it with us.

We would also like to plan the next meet-ups with you! Which topics do you want to discuss or would you like to be discussed? Do you think theme nights like the last one make sense or would you rather go for mixed evenings, etc. This is also a great chance to give us feedback about past events.

PS: Baked some tasty cookies, bring ’em! :-)

• Till Nagel: Unfolding Data

  Till Nagel gives a short introduction how interactive maps and geo visualization help to explore and communicate multivariate data, and shows a few examples on tangible and multitouch data vis applications.

  Till is a lecturer and researcher at the Interaction Design Lab, Fachhochschule Potsdam.

  • @tillnm

• Georgi Kobilarov: When 1+1=3. On linking open data.

  Open data is everywhere. Institutions and companies all around us start to open up their databases, provide APIs and give the Web community the power to build applications on top. But what if we could combine all that open data to build apps no only of one open data silo, but multiple, by cross-linking all that data data? Wouldn’t that be much more powerful?
  This talk gives an intro to how this little idea - four years ago - became the Linking Open Data project, with hundreds of connected data sources.

  Georgi is the founder of Uberblic Labs, a company of data geeks in Berlin. He developed DBpedia, one of the first Linked Data projects, and helped organisations such as the BBC to use the Web as their database.

  • @gkob

• Edial Dekker: The Networked City

  Handheld electronics, location devices, telecommunications networks, and a wide assortment of tags and sensors are constantly producing a rich stream of data reflecting various aspects of urban life. Managed well, “big data” can be used to unlock new sources of economic value, provide new insights into scions and hold governments to account. Meanwhile, some of the world’s foremost architects, planners, policymakers, builders, and thinkers are trying to understand this data to harness it for answers to our biggest problems.
  In this talk, Edial Dekker will address the benefits of seeing cities as a platform that is able to reinvent itself. A main theme in this talk will be the role of data visualizations and a project called City Crawlers Berlin.

  Edial is part of Your Neighbours, a studio that is focussed on visualizing data and story telling.

  • @edial

• Christoph Rauscher: Using commercial webfonts

  Webfonts seem to be the new savior in webdesign. We are free from Verdana, Helvetica and Georgia, finally! Or actually could be. In fact, one hardly knows anything about the implementation of commercial fonts on the web. I want to give a short introduction to typekit, .woff, .eot & co, but rather want to hear about your opinions and experiences.

  Christoph Rauscher, grown up in the interwebs, is a student of interface design and likes everything regarding (type) design.

  • christowski.de
  • @christowski

• Alex Coles and Sven Ellingen: Rebooting the Edenspiekermann website

  Alex and Sven – Developer and Designer at Edenspiekermann – will share their experience relaunching the design agency’s website in a 2-day-marathon. They’ll offer insight into the tools they used, and explain why they kicked out their CMS in favour of a mostly static solution. Learn about the roadblocks they encountered in the last few minutes, and why this rapid reboot is more than just an academic exercise.

  Edenspiekermann is an agency for strategy, design and communication with offices in Amsterdam, Berlin, Stuttgart.

  • Edenspiekermann

• Malte Müller: More pixels or none at all. Designing interfaces for better screens.

  For once, Apple may have actually gotten it right with their advertising: The iPhone 4 changed everything. At least, if you’re an interface designer. Dealing with different resolutions and screen sizes adds another dimension to both conceptual and technical interface design. My talk provides some basic thoughts and approaches concerning this issue.

  Malte Müller runs electricgecko.de by night and serves as Digital Director at fischerAppelt, furore by day.

  • @electricgecko

• Jan Lehnardt: Minimal templating with Mustache.js

  Jan will give a designer-friendly introduction to minimal templating with Mustache.js in JavaScript and explain why are awesome.

  Jan Lehnardt is Cofounder and Vice President of CouchOne. He’s also a drummer, cyclist and likes living in Berlin.

  • @janl

• Sebastian Kippe: On the future of Flash Pt. 2

  This talk is a bit of the anti-thesis to Alex Feyerke’s Talk at our may meetup. Sebastian will tell us why he thinks that Alex sees Flash’s future a bit too bright and why the new tools around HTML5 will succeed over Flash.

  Sebastian Kippe is a freelance web developer with a focus on Ruby/Rails projects.

  • Sebastian Kippe
  • @skddc

• Malte Müller: Have no fear of perfection. Grid systems in web design

  A short, opinionated introduction to grid systems, how they should be used in contemporary web design and their role within the creative process. Contains pretty pictures.

  Malte Müller runs electricgecko.de by night and serves as Digital Director at fischerAppelt, furore by day.

  • @electricgecko

• Kristina Schneider: CSS layout frameworks

  Are they pure evil? Do we need them at all? This talk will anticipate some common prejudices and identifies possible use cases for CSS frameworks. Kristina Schneider is a freelance webdesigner who can code her own designs.
  More on kristinaschneider.com.

  Kristina Schneider is a freelance art director with a passion for CSS and all things frontend.

  • @kriesse
  • kristinaschneider.com

• Urs Kleinert: Blueprint and Compass

  The Blueprint framework is one of the most popular CSS frameworks. Not only does it offer a customizable grid, but also a typographic baseline. In his talk, Urs Kleinert will give a short introduction to Blueprint with a focus on its customization tools, especially when combined with COMPASS.

• Claudine Brändle: YUI grids CSS and OOCSS

  This talk covers the YUI grids framework and also introduces Nicole Sullivan’s OOCSS.

  Claudine Brändle is a freelance web developer spezialised on Drupal and frontend scripting.

  • @gipsyx
  • nolocation.net

• Simon Perdrisat: 960.gs

  3.6 KB which can simplify your coding life. 960.gs gives us what we want from a framework. It allows you to improve your workflow without spending time learning to use it. With 960.gs you will never be a slave to your framework.

  Simon Perdrisat is a Drupal Developer.

  • @gargarine

• Wolfram Kriesing: App vs. Widget, The mobile web taking over?

  Wolfram Kriesing picks up the current hype around apps and HTML5. Is the app store only a temporary thing? Most apps can be built using web technologies. More and more APIs are coming to the browser. Will a native app still be around in the future, do we need them or just the company that gets the 30% share off of every app? He will show you what web technologies can do where you maybe thought only an app could go, and will also show an outlook of where we are heading.

  Wolfram Kriesing is a co-founder of uxebu.

  • @wolframkriesing

• Alex Feyerke: On the future of Flash

  In the light of the current discussion about Flash vs. HTML5 and Canvas, Alex Feyerke is searching for Flash’s place in the web, exploring where it went wrong, where it got better, and where it’s surprisingly awesome. Followed, hopefully, by a fruitful debate on Flash’s relevance and future (one that goes beyond “Steve Jobs said it’s terrible and has to die”).

  Alex Feyerke is a Freelance Flash developer.

  • @espylaub
  • Presentation

Lightning talk by Nico Hagenburger.