TAKEAWAY: Monday February 28, not just another day for me. ALSO: Assorted items, the new WoodWing application, new font for La Republica
Another Peter Pan arrives
February 28.
It is a date that I usually celebrate as a sort of second birhday. The day I arrived in the United States, an impressionable, somewhat scared, young man, landing in American soil alone, to live with an uncle and an aunt, part of the influx of Cuban children that came to be known as the Peter Pans.
It is an event that marked my life forever, and, so, without much fanfare, this is one date I celebrate with myself. No cakes. No candles. No singing. But when I wake up on February 28 I have this momentary contemplation of what was, what could have been, then I go about my business.
One thing is for sure, the music on my iPhone today as I ran around the camel race track in Dubai was totally Cuban. Indeed, Bebo Valdez, Olga Guillot, Celia Cruz,Omara Portuondo, Gloria Estefan,. And while the sights of the skyline of this, the city of the future, surrounded me, and a couple of tired camels slept in the early Monday morning, the rest was purely Cuban, as if the past, the present and the future mixed into a happy mojito of celebration.
Forty nine years later many happy memories linger, along with a part of the young Cuban boy that manages to stay intact within me.
Of course, Fidel Castro, the reason we all escaped Cuba, also lingers.
For more about this special day in my life, read Refugee.:
http://garciamedia.com/blog/articles/40_years_40_lessons_2—refugee
WoodWing’s and designing for multiple tablets
It is appropriate that we would have this item about WoodWing here today, as we put the finishing touches on the Gulf News of Dubai’s iPad app, to be called, Gulf News Tablet, and where we work in close consultation with WoodWing’s technical team.
So far, most of us design for iPad apps, but we know that the race is on and that several makers are coming up with tablets to give the iPad competition.
Go here for more information about WoodWing’s approach to designing for multiple tablets:
http://www.youtube.com/user/WoodWingSoftware#p/c/0/plXxoFWqU74.
The idea is to design one layout that can be cropped to fit different screen aspect ratios, while allowing designers to target certain elements (like body text) for specific sizes.
Motorola’s Xoom
The new Motorola Xoom: aiming to give the iPad a little competition
Here is a review of the Motorola Xoom, the first true Android competitor to the iPad:
http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/23/motorola-xoom-review/.
The review makes clear that the Xoom is very much a first generation piece of hardware, with very few tablet-optimized apps at the moment. But there is clearly a lot of potential in the platform over the next months, as there is with the offerings from RIM, HP, and perhaps Microsoft.
Custom type font for La Republica of Bogota
Type aficionados, take a peek here for a case study on the design of a custom type family for La República of Bogotá:
http://thecaseandpoint.com/2011/02/la-republica/.
The font is the creation of Colombian type designer César Puertas, who said in an interview that he wanted to give this financial daily a sense of the “serious and sophisticated” through the type used.
