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kadavyon Minimum Viable Movie: How I Made a Feature-Length Film for $0

I can confirm that Joe Avella loved Primer. He even sent me a copy in the mail (hey, it was a long time ago).

kadavyon Minimum Viable Movie: How I Made a Feature-Length Film for $0

As I was editing this article, I was thinking the same thing myself. My guess is, it would be pretty tricky to turn a profit: movies like Primer are going to be rare.

But maybe you could get the formula right? Find filmmakers with collaborative attitudes, and put them together to coach them on film making (and marketing).

kadavyon 37signals invests in The Starter League

Great move by both of these companies. I had dinner with Mike McGee (one of the co-founders) a couple of months ago, and could hardly believe my ears when I heard his story of bootstrapping Code Academy. These guys generated serious revenue with nothing more than a static website, then figured it out from there.

kadavyon Why you can't be anything you want to be

> "Want" is not picking a warm-fuzzy-inducing phrase off a list because you feel compelled to make a choice. "Want" is "get the he11 out of my way" compulsive drive which permeates your being.

To many faced with "you can be whatever you want" don't want to do anything; all they "want" is satisfaction of basic urges and amusements.

I think you're articulating perfectly the "delusions" that those in the "me" generation have.

There's a big difference between "wanting" to be, say, a famous singer because you want adoring fans, and "wanting" to be a famous singer because you truly love music to your very core, will sacrifice anything short of your own life to do it, and because you really have a unique point of view to share.

But, even for those in the latter camp, they have to have at least some sensitivity to their audience, and the market forces that enable them to pursue their passion as a livelihood.

kadavyon The effect of typefaces on credibility

Yeah, Verdana is fantastic on screen (this was especially so before anti-aliasing was standard), but looks awful in print.

EDIT: also, didn't know about IKEA's Verdanagate (from your link above). Fascinating!

kadavyon The effect of typefaces on credibility

Actually, while Georgia is a good font overall, the design is Georgia is optimized for the screen. Because of this, it has some peculiarities, such as a very large x-height (so the pixels in the counterforms can be read).

Here's a little more about what I'm talking about: http://www.kadavy.net/blog/posts/design-for-hackers-why-you-...

kadavyon Design Tip: Never Use Black

Avoiding black definitely causes you to make color choices that add more dimension and realism to your interfaces. Interfaces, after all, are representations of reality.

One helpful tip: "warm" colors jump out at you, and "cool" colors recede away from you. You can use this to your advantage when designing buttons, or even when working with typography.

More detail in this article, "Why Monet Never Used Black": http://www.kadavy.net/blog/posts/d4h-color-theory/

kadavyon Ask HN: Recommendations for learning and improving UX/UI skills?

Hey, thanks for the mention!

kadavyon How can a programmer learn to design websites that don’t suck

Hey, thanks for mentioning Design for Hackers!

kadavyon Ask HN: How do you learn to design?

Hey, thanks for the mention!

kadavyon Dear Marketers: Enough with the QR codes

I actually have found QR codes to be effective when used in presentations at tech conferences. At the end of each talk, I have a QR code on the final slide that points to a page where attendees can get more info.

About 1/4 of all people who visited that page at my SXSW talk this year came in through a QR code. This is kind of an anomaly because a SXSW talk is probably the perfect place to use a QR code.

My one complaint is, of course, that they are hideous. It would be nice if there were a central database where you could upload your own symbols and assign them to URLs.

kadavyon Building It Is Not Enough: 5 Practical Tips On User Acquisition

> "The rise in A/B testing and other analytics tools have created fairy tale stories of changing a button color, or moving the CTA from the left to the right and suddenly you have game changing improvements. Once again, these stories are the exception, not the rule. It typically takes 10 A/B tests to find one that produces any improvement at all. And when you do have a positive improvement, it is typically incremental instead of game changing."

Amen!

kadavyon Goodbye Yahoo, Hello Bootstrap and Backbone.

Hey, thanks for recommending Design for Hackers! (I'm the author)

kadavyon A huge listserv. Each day, only one random person can write to it.

Very clever idea. However, it sounds much more beneficial to the person sending the email than to those who are receiving it.

It will be interesting to see if it will collapse for this reason, or if some unexpected mechanic of humanity will keep it afloat.

kadavyon [dead]

http://www.webcrawler.com/

First search engine I ever used. In high school Spanish class, about 1995. Still there! But, no more cool illustration of a spider.

kadavyon How I Wrote and Self-Published a Book: Step by Step

Hey, thanks for picking up Design for Hackers! I was pleasantly surprised by the Kindle version myself.

kadavyon How I Wrote and Self-Published a Book: Step by Step

After publishing a book through a publisher ("Design for Hackers"), I've had some other smaller ideas rattling around that I've considered self-publishing. Scrivener looks like a useful tool.

I'm pretty sure I would hire an editor, though. Unless you're a trained writer, it can be difficult to keep grammar and sentence structure correct.

kadavyon Path(v2) fly out menu already recreated and open sourced.

Cool! I think I'd like for the icons to be in a rising diagonal arrangement. Less work for the first joint of the thumb. Imagine it on the iPhone app...see what I mean?

kadavyon Design for Developers

"There are very little fonts in Google web fonts currently that are worth using." Amen!

I like this multiples of 6 thing, too. Most attempts to get a baseline grid going (like on Blueprint, for example) just look wrong.

kadavyon "Design for Hackers" Comes to DC! - Wednesday, Sept. 28th

Thanks to everyone in the community for hustling to get me to DC!

kadavyon David Kadavy's "Design for Hackers" now on Amazon

Thanks! You do have the narrative correct – this has happened very organically, and today's success is a huge surprise!

I'm glad the community has my financial interests in mind. After all, the better this book does, the more I can dedicate myself to teaching design.

Still, I sympathize with OP, as he appears to be in Turkmenistan. Hopefully there is some legit way for him to get a copy. I'm looking into it.

(I am the author)

kadavyon David Kadavy's "Design for Hackers" now on Amazon

Agreed, he's in Turkmenistan! Checking with my publisher to see what his options are. (I'm the author)

kadavyon David Kadavy's "Design for Hackers" now on Amazon

I'm the author of this book, and I am blown away that it currently ranks #36 on all of Amazon[1], right behind the very deserving Eric Ries, who is also launching today.

Thank you so much to the entire HN community for everything. I can't even list the number of ways you have helped me, and you certainly have come through today. Thank you.

UPDATE: It's now at #22[2]. Right by Tim Ferriss. OMFG. Thank you for buying the shit out of my book today, HN.

UPDATE 2: It's now at #18[3], which puts it on the first page of best-sellers (where more randoms will see it). This is huge!

[1] https://skitch.com/kadavy/f3bw8/reis-and-kadavy [2] https://skitch.com/kadavy/f3net/22-w-tim-ferriss [3] https://skitch.com/kadavy/f3nae/number-18

kadavyon David Kadavy's "Design for Hackers" now on Amazon

Thanks for that explanation! Now I understand better why I don't get a larger cut for ebooks. I guess since Amazon commands the distribution, they can command a larger portion of the sale price.

(I am the author of Design for Hackers)

kadavyon David Kadavy's "Design for Hackers" now on Amazon

I personally haven't seen it on the Kindle, and consuming it that way sounds painful (there are so many illustrations). But, some seem to think it looks good on Kindle Cloudreader http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2997007

(I am the author)

kadavyon David Kadavy's "Design for Hackers" now on Amazon

Thanks! But CRAP! Don't want them to run out.

kadavyon The Last Lean Startup Book Bundle

That's a pretty amazing amount of stuff for buying a few books – also an interesting lesson in aligning partners and motivating people to buy now.

kadavyon Designing with White Space: Why 1+1=3

> the design of the blog doesn't use whitespace effectively.

Could you be more specific? My blog definitely needs a design refresh (your quote is right – I've been writing a book the past year so haven't had the time to design), but I'm sure you don't mean that the entire blog design fails to use white space effectively :)

kadavyon Designing with White Space: Why 1+1=3

This post is based upon a part of my book, in which I do mention the italics, but I left it out on the first run. I've now edited to post so I do mention it. Thanks for noticing / commenting!

kadavyon Most College Students Unable to Properly Use Search Engines

I'm uncomfortable with the notion that there is a "proper" way to use a search engine. It seems like we should design search engines based upon our audience's behavior.