Paranoia is an application for Google Android mobile phones that aims to assist in the tracking and retrieval of lost or stolen devices. Interested?

We provide tracking via GPS or Wi-Fi positioning, and Call/Text Activity Logging. This allows you to get the location of your phone, and see calls placed or texts made with it. How does it know?

You alert your phone either through our online web service, or through SMS text commands if you do not want to register with us. (We understand your paranoia too. ;)

Want to see it in action? Check out our YouTube video below:

I think you’ll agree that our app is awesome. So head on over to the voting site ( http://vote.smartvasnet.com/mobdev/ ) and vote for us!

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¹ – Actually, I help run and manage this site, and provide the space, if you didn’t notice in his earlier posts. (Though Wil does help a lot.)

So vote for Paranoia from Nohako Studios, or I’ll pull the plug on the blog and throw his laptop on the ground, and you will never again get to read and enjoy his scathing indictments of whatever happens to annoy him.

I will also eat his face. ;)

It is with great pleasure that I present to you the second feature in the Bad Design series: Tuloy Pnoy.

Don’t get me wrong: this isn’t about Noynoy^[1]—this tirade is about whoever^[2] designed this website. Designers are hired for their creativity and thoughtfulness—the person who designed this website seems to have neither.

I’d write more, but I have an exam for which to study. So I’ll leave a list:

1. The marquee on the top-right of the page. That is so 1995.
2. The home button on the menu is the exact image taken from barackobama.com
3. I was under the impression that Noynoy’s campaign color was yellow. So why there more blue than yellow? Oh, wait. I forgot. It was ripped off from barackobama.com.
4. See the form on the right side of the page? The country default is “United States”. It should be “Philippines”.
5. What is that in the footer? A call center company? Why? Why not Powered by HOPE? If you were to copy from Obama’s site, it should be that.
6. Did I mention the logo?
7. This makes Noynoy look bad.

I pity the fool who designed tuloypnoy.com. Ugly websites, I can tolerate. Shameless copycats, I cannot. You are an embarrassment to the filipino design community and I encourage you to give up this job (which is obviously too big for you), and take knitting instead.

***
[1] For those of you who are unfamiliar with Philippine politics, Noynoy is the son of Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino and Corazon “Cory” Aquino. The former is a national hero (he was assassinated) and the man on the 500 peso bill, while the latter succeeded Marcos after he was ousted by the monumental People Power rally on highway 54, known today as EDSA.

[2] Apparently, this is a “fan”-made website, and isn’t the official campaign website of Noynoy. The fact remains, however, that whoever designed this committed a very dishonorable act. The original text of my error is as follows:

“While I have nothing against Noynoy, I must say that he must reconsider his choice of publicity personnel. Designers are hired for their creativity and thoughtfulness. The person who designed this website has neither.”

Thanks to mlq3 for the correction.

If you see strange things happen in this blog, it’s probably me hitting a css/html/php tripwire.

So I’d like to let you know that I’ve been hard at work these past couple of days to fulfill that request and that I’m happy to announce the release of Baseline Aligned Grid. I got a little carried away, and went past “visual representation” and into “web application”. So hopefully, you guys will get some use out of it. I know I will.

If you have any problems with the application, please don’t hesitate to email me at levi.ong@gmail.com or simply comment here. For simple questions regarding operation, just comment here, so everyone can have the benefit of seeing the question/answer.

And now, a screenshot:

I’ve already linked to the app a couple of paragraphs ago, but just for good measure:

Baseline Aligned Grid »

Chances are if you haven’t read those articles or haven’t taken a class in information design or a course similar to that, you won’t understand anything that will follow. Of course, you’re welcome to read on, but I strongly suggest you check out the recommended reading.

Today I will be discussing how to align a grid to a baseline. More specifically, aligning a grid row to a baseline.

I don’t know if this topic has been discussed before, but I’m pretty sure my equation is unique. So if anybody else has produced the same equation, rest assured, I developed this independently. What I’ll show you today is how to turn this:

Baseline at 15 pt, margins at 3 picas, and much horror.

into this:

Much better. Calculations resulted in upper and lower margins of 3 picas, 7.5 pts. (Added: Columns. Don't mind them.)

Using this equation:

B*N*(A+1) – B = P-r (eq.1)

Where:
B = The gutter size as well as the leading/line-height (pretty much, the baseline
N = The number of row divisions you’d like
P = The total page height
r = The “remainder”, or the sum of both the top and bottom margins (if the top and bottom margins are equal, than r = 2m, given that m is the margin height)

A = The number of baseline-heights contained inside a single row. (Obtained via trial-and-error) Must be an integer. Usually ranges from 3 to 8.

The “A” variable may need some explaining, but perhaps it’d be better if I helped you visualize the equation in its entirety.

Let’s expand the first term into:

N*(B*A+B) (eq.2)

Think of B*A as the total row height, and B as the gutter. N is the number of rows. So if you add the total row height and the gutter, then multiply it by the number of rows, you get a series of rows with an extra gutter at the end. This is what the second term does: it subtracts that extra gutter.

This leaves us with the total “printable” page: the whole page minus all the margins. So we equate that to “P-r”.

Now look at B*A. This implies that the row height is a multiple of the gutter. All’s well and good, right? But it’s not that simple. Because A must be an integer, there’s no fixed way to find out how many baseline-heights will fit inside a row for a certain number of rows. The only way is to go through trial-and-error.

Contrary to what you may think, this can actually work to your advantage. If you look at eq.1, your B, N and P are fixed values. The only “unknowns” are r and A. This gives you a flexibility in determining how big you want your margin to be and then balance the row-height, or vice versa. What does this imply? It means that when you’re doing your calculations, you can either start off by setting a minimum margin and then calculate for A and then round off to an integer, or you can start off by setting a cell height and then see if the r value is positive or negative.

So that’s pretty much it. I hope this has been useful to you, and please don’t hesitate to ask questions.

But that’s not the point of this post. If you would scroll down, you might see a little guy named Carl being a bit of a troll, declaring it a “complete toss..!” and “all that glitters isnt gold”^[1] . Normally I wouldn’t really care about trolls, but I noticed the guy had a name-url, so I clicked it. As soon as the page loaded, I was flooded with a mix of emotions and reactions and it took me quite a while to parse it. Should I scoff? Should I laugh? Should I wince? Seriously? You give unconstructive criticism on a design issue and you give me this? Canidesign.com? Can/i/design?

No sir, you cannot.

While not as atrocious as other websites out there, the sheer gall of this guy’s reactions coupled with the pretentiousness of this site causes me to react. That is, to start an entire category based on bad design^[2]. And this guy has the distinction of being the first awardee. Kudos, mate.

»canidesign.com

[1] Complete logic fail. “all that glitters isnt gold”? When you want to use an idiom, make sure you use it right. When you try to modify an idiom for your purposes, make sure you don’t shoot yourself in the foot.

[2] From this point forward, I will post objectionably designed websites, objects and printed material because I am mean. Non-pretentious subjects gain immunity. (i.e. people who don’t go about marketing themselves as some sort of design competition resource, and at the same time demonstrating that they will unequivocally lose whatever design competitions they organize.)

1. I muted the white into a light gray, and lightened the black into a dark gray to reduce the overall contrast. It should be easier on the eyes now.

2. I’m not yet 100% satisfied with the comments section, but it’s already pretty close to how I envisioned it to be. Try not to look at the source code of the comments. You’ll see a lot of strange stuff. :)) Comment threading also works now, so you can reply to other comments. There will still be some changes to this section, but it’ll be kept to a bare minimum.

3. So far I’m liking this layout, and people I’ve asked seem to agree. Special thanks to Wil, Phi and Feanne for their critique.

I’m pretty much done for today; I’ll work on cleaning up the CONSTANTS layout tomorrow, and hopefully, get the archives working.