Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with layout

UK ergonomic keyboard

nam3d — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 17:54:35 -0800

Whilst looking to purchase an ergonomic keyboards like the Kinesis or Goldtouch keyboards they all seem to be in the US layout which is a bit of a problem as I'm used to the UK layout. Could anyone recommend me an ergonomic keyboard with a UK Qwerty layout?

A place of my own

Iteki — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 13:10:47 -0800

Calling for ideas on what to incorporate into my den/workroom/lair! Just moved into my new flat, where I have the luxury of having my very own room. It's kinda small, but it's all mine! I have a number of ideas for what I want to do with the space, but I can't possibly ignore the wealth of crazy suggestions available here. The mrs is planning for her room to be a little more traditional, a musicroom/office/guestroom, so I needn't be too practical in my plans, nor should you.

Likes include crafty and techy projects, all forms of gaming from tabletop to videoscreen, computering, reading, toys, pretending to exercise and meditate, hamstering and cocooning.

The room is 4.23 meters by 1.94, here is a layout sketch. That's about 6x14 feet.

Sorry, no matches for the tag graphic design books across MetaFilter‽

Mr. Anthropomorphism — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 07:19:17 -0800

What are the essential books on the topic of the objective qualities of effective graphic design? I am particularly interested in web design, but anything that pertains to the underlying principles of design and the interplay of aesthetics and content would, I think, benefit me.

I'm not so much after a gallery of "wow, look how easy this is for the masters" but more of a manual that bears re-reading and referencing.

I don't have a mint to spend, but if I could maybe have at least one each regarding layout, color, and typography, I think I would benefit hugely.

Trying to print Word documents with a specific preset from the Finder. Impossible?

bigmusic — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 13:22:04 -0800

OS X (10.5) Printing difficulties: Trying to print Word documents with a specific preset from the Finder. Impossible? I hate clicking documents open to print and then having to close them. I have to print up about 20 word documents in a folder multiple times every week - those documents should be printed with a 4x4 layout - single sided. (n-up 4 in CUPs speak) - I'm switching from Windows and in windows I had two printers installed (actually the same printer) with different layout options, so all I had to do was make sure the default printer was the one with right layout options. However, on OS X presets seem to be ignored if you print from the finder [Finder |File |Print], it goes with the "Standard" preset no matter how I try it, from the automator, the terminal, applescript. If I open it directly in Word, the correct preset always shows up as the default preset.

Things I've tried:
I've located the PPD file and didn't see an option to set up the N-Up 4x4 as an option anywhere.

I've option clicked the print button with the correct preset.

I've tried switching the printer preset in the terminal.

I've tried using the automator, with the supplied word 2008 actions.

I've looked at the cups documentation, and see that there is an option for using the 4x4, I'm just not sure how I would go about setting that option for a specific printer instance, or how I would print to to that specific printer instance - any clues?

Taking my documents from sleepy to snazzy

doctor.dan — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 04:11:41 -0800

I'm looking for a way to snazz up my documents (and in particular my thesis) so it looks a lot less like the canned default Word/Pages themes. Any suggestions on some nice looking (free to cheap) fonts and document layouts I can use anywhere from short report and research proposals to my full-blown thesis? Being lazy and not too artistic, I've always stuck with the default themes in Word (or more recently Pages also). I've been getting bored by them as of late and am looking to give my documents a unique and clean look. I'm not very good at design so be gentle. Any suggestions, or your personal design stories, would be awesome.

Any specific font suggestions would be great as well, Paladino Linotype and Corbel just ain't doing it for me anymore.

iPhone website design ideas for a hierarchical site?

AmbroseChapel — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 17:15:43 -0800

iPhone website design ideas for a hierarchical site? I want to make an iPhone version of a listings website. I'm confident about doing the HTML/CSS/Javascript. It's the "listings" bit that's a bit problematic.

The site is very much based on a hierarchical scheme, as in, you choose Springfield, then "Food and Drink", then "Bars" then "Dives" to drill down to Moe's Tavern.

I'm thinking that all of that is normally done with the horizontal space of a bigger screen in a conventional website -- breadcrumbs, the use of a folder-tree left nav using indentation and so on.

Leaving aside "have a very smart search function" how would you approach this?

Suggestions so far include:

an AJAX "wizard" approach as in "I'm looking for [dive] [bars] in [Springfield] where the brackets represent menus launched from buttons
buttons which jump from one branch to another, as in "show me the same category level, only in Shelbyville"

How would you approach this? Am I thinking about it all wrong? Got a good example of a similar problem solved for the iPhone screen?

Oh and technical question -- given access to users' location, can I say "looks like you're in Shelbyville" to auto-fill that stratum of the data? If I come up with a lat-long polygon?

Blogs or books about the design of rowhouses?

electroboy — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 11:10:31 -0800

Are there any good blogs or books specifically about the design of rowhouses or other long, narrow spaces? We're currently planning renovations for our 1920s Baltimore rowhouse, and could use some ideas. Apartment Therapy is helpful, but we're looking for something geared more towards the long, narrow spaces in a typical rowhouse (about 14 feet wide, in our case).

While we have plenty of space overall, getting ideas for the use of the space is tricky, since AT and most other sources tend towards the squarish shape of the rooms in most apartments and houses.

We're not opposed to taking out walls, since there aren't any interior load bearing ones, but that seems like it would make the spaces longer and more difficult to design around.

Anything with floor plans and photos of how to lay out rooms and furniture would be ideal.

Pretty Up My Word

Miko — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 09:37:48 -0800

How can I make my Word documents look less....boring? Seeking tips & tricks from people with an eye for design. As part of my job I have to write a lot of Word documents...reports, summaries, proposals, etc. These are for mainly internal consumption, but still, I hate the way they look: dull, and always the same. I don't know many ways to use design to state things like: this is important. This is professional. This is hip. I am proud of this product. This is for sharing.

Are there any simple tweaks I can use to avoid handing out page after page of 12-point Times New Roman? It would be great if things that come from my desk look like someone actually thought about their appearance.

I appreciate your thoughts. Thanks!

Stained Glassy Collages?

soelo — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 11:30:09 -0800

What software can I use to make a photo collage using non-rectangular photos? I'd like to make a photo collage similar in layout to the cover of Sims 3 using triangles instead of diamonds. I currently use PhotoScape and have access to but haven't used PaintShop, but I am willing to try some other software if it can do what I want.

I'd like to be able to create my own layout using triangles (or any other non-rectangular shape), select pictures to insert and be able to resize and rotate to get exactly what I want aligned in the triangle. It will look a bit like stained glass with pictures instead of a solid color between the leading.

Is there some Windows compatible software that will let me do this easily? If it's spendy but has a free trial, I'll try it. I'd be willing to do the cropping and rotating before trying to insert the pic into the layout.

What are some examples of "classic" webiste design?

SouthCNorthNY — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 09:56:15 -0800

What are some examples of "classic" webiste design? I'm looking for examples of layouts that haven't changed much over the years (because they were good, not because they were lazy.) I'm looking for things like google.com, not timecube.com

generating tables using mako templates

zippy — Fri, 22 May 2009 04:01:42 -0800

Using a Mako template and CSS, I need to generate a m x n grid display from a variable length list of elements. For simplicity's sake, let's say what I want is a 2 x n table, but I'm fine with unordered lists as long as they appear on screen aligned as if they were in rows and columns.

What does the logic look like in mako to create such a structure? I'm having trouble figuring out when to start a new row or close and old one, while still keeping the template simple and readable.

Please spell things out and use small words as I'm new to both Mako and CSS (but somewhat conversant in Python), and keep me from the temptation to hard-code a solution for a fixed length list of elements.

Centering a div element

jgunsch — Sun, 17 May 2009 00:24:12 -0800

What is your favorite method to get <div style="width:400px;height:300px;"> to be in the center of a page (both horizontally and vertically)? Preferably CSS rather than tables.

Some papers have stars upon thars...

Ogre Lawless — Tue, 12 May 2009 10:52:15 -0800

***** -- My local paper's masthead incorporates a number of stars at the top of the page. I could have sworn I've seen this on other papers but apparently not on our not on our other regional rag. Is this just a bit of layout eye candy or do they have some significance?

How to fix anchors in the One True Layout

grrarrgh00 — Mon, 04 May 2009 16:04:37 -0800

Overflow: hidden is causing anchor links to flip out on me. Help! In Firefox 3 on both Windows and Mac, this link is rendering just fine. This link, however, which merely links to an anchor on the same page, is displaying only the bottom section of the page, with everything below the anchor tag.

This is a recognized problem with the One True Layout solution, but I'm loathe to go back and introduce some lame background-image if there's a reasonably elegant workaround. (The fix at the bottom here strikes me as unreasonably inelegant.) I thought I'd throw this to the AskMefi community, the smartest folks I know. Any ideas?

Thanks in advance!

Does anyone know anything about the back corridors in malls behind the stores?

Sully — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 19:41:34 -0800

Does anyone know anything about the back corridors in malls behind the stores? This is kinda a tricky question because it makes me sound like I'm going to burglarize a mall, but I don't know how else to ask it.

Okay, I'm writing this short story about a group of friends who all work in a mall. They weren't friends before, but got to be friends after they all started working there.

Trouble is, I've never worked retail, and I've never worked in a mall before. Sometimes though, inside a mall, I'm tempted to go exploring, just to answer some questions, but I've always been deterred by the Authorized Personnel Only signs.

I googled 'Mall Blueprints', to find out the layout of malls, but understandably, for security reasons, anything but the basic layout of a mall, like the kinds they have on these black plinths near the entrance for shoppers, aren't shown.

So I guess what I'm wondering is this - I know that there are these corridors that run behind the stores in some malls. They're pretty basic and ugly and sometimes there are cardboard boxes and stuff in them - in my story, my characters like to go into them and smoke.

But I've also got this huge elaborate scene later on and I just want to know if it's possible for someone to exit a store into the corridor, then go to an elevator just off the corridor and take it down to the loading docks, with stops in between that let out into a parking lot structure. Essentially, these kids begin to hang out in these areas. This is their "club house".

I know that a lot of malls are different, and that it would depend on the mall. But does this make sense? Or to someone who's ever actually worked in a mall - would they cry bullshit on this sort of layout?

That's all. Thank you in advance.

Valid solution to the CSS equal height columns problem?

dolca — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 19:23:19 -0800

Is this a good way to solve the equal height columns problem in CSS? I was trying to solve the problem of how to get background colours to fill the full column heights in a three-column layout, as the shorter columns only extend far enough to cover their contents and so don't line up. Being a relative beginner at all this, I looked both in my web-design book and on the internet for how to go about it - and most advice seemed to be either for the faux-columns way, using repeated images, or the huge padding/negative margin overflow way, neither of which seemed ideal. Or other hacks of similar complexity.

But then I thought of using two extra divs - one around the left and central columns, with the central column's own background-color set and the left column relying on the background-color of the extra div to show through its transparency, becoming its background. The containing div naturally extends to the height of the longest column, and so too does the background colour. Same with the larger div, taking care of the background colour of the right column. (brief outline of the HTML structure at Pastebin here)

And with all the divs floated to the left (except possibly the centrecolumn floated to the right), that seems to have solved the problem. But while there have been many solutions suggested on the internet, I don't seem to see this one around - it seems to work really well with most browsers (although it took a little more work with IE6), and I got it to work for the website I'm building in both fixed and liquid layouts. (I used the #wrapper as the #rightcolumnbackground there, which meant I really only had to add one div.)

Are there cons to this I'm not seeing? Or are the book and all the articles I read on this just out of date? What's the easiest way to solve the problem right now?

Is there a way to get overflowing text to appear in a separate div?

carnival of animals — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 20:27:51 -0800

Is there a way to get overflowing text to appear in a separate div? My aim is to create a website layout resembling a two-column newspaper story. Ideally I'd like to have two column divs with all the copy in the first (left column), which has a set height value. Any overflowing text would automatically be sent into the second div (right column).

Is there any way to do this, or to achieve the same result another way? Is there any reason I shouldn't do this?

I'm prepared to manually adjust the copy in the columns if there is no elegant solution, but I would prefer it if I could get my CMS template to handle these columns somehow. I'm resigned to the fact that I'll probably have to do it manually though, as I haven't seen any CMS-run sites with a dual or multi-column layout where the copy just flows from one column into the next.

CSSFilter: Webkit won't keep my elements in their fixed width container.

geos — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 15:44:07 -0800

CSSFilter: I am building a wordpress site that uses a basic two column layout with floating div elements inside a fixed-width div . Any clues why Safari and Chrome appear to be ignoring the fixed-width container div allowing the interior elements to float away to the edges of the browser? Explorer and Firefox aren't doing this. I'll admit that the template is now a total hack, but I'm hoping there's some well-known quirk or mistake that would cause webkit to ignore the container. If it's any help, the floating elements are right up at edge of the browser window without any padding...

A good-looking photo collage calendar?

Methylviolet — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 11:50:50 -0800

Accidental Graphic Designer: I have to make a photo-collage calendar for work. By tomorrow. I have hundreds of pictures, decent Photoshop skills, and the ambition to make something beautiful. But, Oh God, no clue. Hope me? I am a technical writer at a soap factory. You probably use one of our products. My department comprises the guys who cook the soap, their team leaders, and a couple of admins, about 80 people. Part of my job is to make stuff -- job aids, posters, certificates, bulletin-board displays of candid pics -- for morale purposes. And it's not just propaganda: people are in fact pretty happy, especially compared with other departments in Production.

The idea was floated to make a printed calendar for everyone in the department -- primarily as a scrapbook of departmental pics, on a nominally useful item listing company holidays and everyone's birthday. Yesterday we found out the big boss (whom everyone loves) is leaving, so it became an emergency to get this thing out.

What I have:

I have tons of pictures of my coworkers making soap, hanging out, at parties and trainings, receiving awards, posed for group pictures, etc.
I have Photoshop and Office. I do layouts for things in Photoshop, because that's what I have.
A color palette I use a lot: two light blues from our company logo, CDE5EB and 8BC2D2, the dark blue of the uniforms, 3A4772, red for titles and icons, d50707, and sparingly a green 069C18 and a yellow E3B917 for accent. I'm not married to those colors, except the dark blue -- it is dominant in 90% of the pictures.
Calendar data -- I made the calendar part of the calendar in Word.
A good laser color printer.
Total creative freedom!

Now what?
Do I group pictures by theme? A theme a month?
The month they were taken? People whose birthday is that month?
All pictures of people at work are fairly mono-chromatic -- the guys wear dark blue uniforms, and the factory floor is pretty dark.
I have good candid portraits of some people, but not everyone.
Layout as an overlapping pile of pictures? Um... some other way?

Basically what I'm asking is for your design ideas. I've looked at the template sites recommended in other threads, but I haven't seen a photo-collage style that did not look completely retarded. Have you? Thoughts?

Help! I've been drafted!

TomMelee — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 13:45:18 -0800

Help me find 2d drafting/layout software! Also, I'm new to this! Need to design layout of a 6,000 ft2 open building for my new store. A9CAD and CadStd and sketchup aren't what I'm looking for---more of pressing the "wall" button and the "window" button and telling it how big they are and less actual drafting.

I need to draw the building to scale and then layout store departments, maybe show where shelves will go, etc. I need to be able to export to jpg/gif or .pdf.

Free is pretty necessary. I know, I know.

Let me have it!

Layout Inspiration

b33j — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 19:27:47 -0800

Where do you go for page layout (for print materials) inspiration? Websites, books, anything? Extra difficulty - education material for children P-12 written by professionals.

Mediocre Home Makeover, Brokeass Edition

mr. remy — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 19:27:30 -0800

[Interior decorator filter] Help us arrange/decorate an 11-x-16 living area cum office cum tv room for minimal dollars and maximum effect. [ghetto blueprint and list of requirements included] $girl and I have a new place, recession-diminished bank accounts, and an empty place. It looks like this:

corny drawing

We're looking to decorate the place on a very tight budget (say, under a thousand), and we can't realistically paint. We'd love to do something that actually looks rad, feels comfy, and meets the following requirements:

1) A desk screened off from the rest of the room. On occasion I work as a writer, and, per professional mandate, suffer from idiosyncratic work habits. Specifically, I don't like anyone being able to read over my shoulder, even in passing. This is U&K for layout concerns.

2) A TV/loveseat combo would be nice, but not immediately adjacent to the desk.

3) We'd love to have a work-table with two chairs for craft/game/eating purposes. This isn't wholly necessary, but it'd be super handy.

4) A bookcase (cheap, big, sturdy, movable)

5) Furniture that comes flat-packed or is easy to move. We have limited access to a small-ass car. Ikea is acceptable, but we'd love to branch out.

6) Drops hella style on a thin tight dime.

We're in downtown Seattle.

Trying to layout a membership directory in Indesign CS2.

kristymcj — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 14:33:35 -0800

I'm trying to layout a membership directory in Indesign CS2. How do I get sets of data (name, address, email, et.), merged one after another, without setting up individual text boxes and manually placing them? I'm looking for a text flow option of some sort. I imported the data from Excel in CSV. Oh, and I'm in OS10.

[Keyboard Filter] Trying to decide what Keyboard layout to use (Dvorak, Qwerty, Colmak, etc.). Help me decide please!

Javed_Ahamed — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 08:35:41 -0800

[Keyboard Filter] Trying to decide what Keyboard layout to use (Dvorak, Qwerty, Colmak, etc.). Help me decide please! I am a computer science student and I am constantly on the computer for work, surfing the web, etc. you know the deal. I have been using qwerty for my whole life and after hearing about Dvorak that caught my eye because I always wondered why Qwerty was so bad. While looking at Dvorak though It does not seem to be good for programmers because punctuation, brackets etc are way out of reach?

I was wondering what keyboard layouts you use, especially those who are always on the computer and programmers. I have no problem switching to any layout i can put in the work, but im also wondering how these layouts might affect things like vi (h,j,k,l) and emacs editing too. Thanks!

Looking for skillfully-broken layout grids.

nímwunnan — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 07:16:38 -0800

Looking for examples of design that begins with a strong grid but breaks or subverts some of its own rules while remaining legible and user-friendly. A designer I met once told me that the most useful advice he got in school was to make a perfectly-balanced layout, and then break one part of it. I'm looking for examples of this kind of thing in action -- web, print, whatever. This was almost what I was looking for, but the examples were too divorced from the grid. I'm looking for stuff that has the robust structure of grid-based design while communicating the feeling of transgressing those boundaries.