Ever want to wear XRAY specs?

What would you see if you looked at your web page? Its skeleton? In this case, its CSS backbone.

If you edit or create your own style sheet, study other style sheets, or just wish you had started knowing what that was all about already, you must check this out.

XRAY

There's info about browser compatibility, but I can tell you it's seamless on today's Safari for the Mac.

See that XRAY button in the middle of the page? Drag it into your Bookmarks Bar. Yeah. Really. Then go to a page you want to XRAY. Pick any page, it really doesn't matter. Then click on that Bookmark Bar XRAY link.

A window appears. Follow the instructions. Suddenly you're in a world where code talks to you while showing you what it does.

Click the x in the upper right hand corner of the dialog box to come back to the world of the living.

A4 papercut

via popurls

It’s amazing what you can do with one sheet of A4 paper.

Scratch that. It’s amazing what Peter Callesen can do with one sheet of A4 paper.

I really can’t say anything more than, “Take a look at Peter Callesen’s A4 papercut online.”

Damn.

Tech Company Logos

via popurls

Some of you may remember what the original Adobe logo looked like, but how many of us could pick Canon's circa 1934 logo out of a lineup? (Considering the company’s name was Kwanon at the time, not many, I’d wager.)

For your tech logo edification, click over to Neatorama’s The Evolution of Tech Companies’ Logos. You might be surprised at the early corporate identities of many (now-)familiar names.

Wrangle Type Design for a Style Sheet

Found a handy dynamic interactive type renderer to help you see what those various standard OS typefaces are capable of if given the right leading, tracking, word space and decoration treatments.

Visit Typetester to quickly see and compare on screen.

Neat-o.

Decapitated advertising

via popurls

File this one under guerilla anti-advertising.

If you’re squeamish about bloodied, headless, bus stop advertising, DO NOT CLICK THIS LINK -->> The Decapitator Flickr set.

(I clicked it—and thought it was great!)

All Signs Say Paul Rand

I was poking around online for some inspiration (always a fun way to circle a task), and I was led, breadcrumb by breadcrumb, to this site about Rand that is the work of Daniel Lewandowski of Atlanta.

Here's what Lewandowski has to say about Paul-Rand.com:

"This site is meant to honor and pay utmost respect to the life and work of Mr. Rand. When I first began this project, I discovered that there were no “single-source” references to Mr. Rand or his works anywhere on the internet. Thus sparked the idea to build this tribute/archive site. I am in no way a philosopher or critic of design but have a great respect for the history of our industry and the people who have shaped it. In the course of building the site, I’ve been able to more greatly appreciate their thoughts and theories on design and develop my own opinions on the subject."

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There's a dearth of images in the galleries as of yet, this looks like a work in progress, but I was drawn to this page of writings and video interviews that might be of general interest to us design types.

I particularly liked the interview with Steve Jobs about working with Rand for the NEXT logo (logotype?)

Learn to type and type faster

via popurls

What does typing (as in using a QWERTY keyboard) have to do with design? Well, since computers are both the main design and communication tool for graphic designers today and the keyboard is one of two primary ways to control computers… uh… that’s what typing has to do with design.

Anyway, if you don’t know how to touch-type or you’d like to type faster, check out Learn How to Type Faster With These 8 Sites at mashable.com.

And, Happy New Year!