Unlike a lot of project manager tools, these resources won’t help you manage your workload, multi-task, or prioritize your workflow. Instead, they fulfill our number one task: effective communication.
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Typography for Lawyers: Essential Tools for Polished & Persuasive Documents
by Matthew Butterick

I may not be a designer, but I represent a design company. Each document that leaves my office needs to look deliberate, thoughtful, and legible. And no matter what your resume claims, you’re not proficient in Word until you can nicely format your work.

Enter Matthew Butterick, an attorney/digital type designer. His book, Typography for Lawyers, codified my gut reactions to basic design mistakes and armed me with the tools to fix them. Don’t let the title deceive you. This book applies to anybody who writes on a regular basis. Butterick’s work mixes philosophy with practical how-tos; he focuses on the functional, not the needlessly fancy. For example, rules come with explanations:

I know that many peo­ple were taught to put two spaces between sen­tences. I was too. But these days, using two spaces is an obso­lete habit. The prac­tice was passed down from the typewriter era. Type­writer fonts had unusual pro­por­tions. Using two spaces helped set off sentences a bit bet­ter. We don’t use type­writ­ers any­more. So it’s not stan­dard. It’s not part of typo­graphic prac­tice. Once in a while, you can use two spaces after sen­tences. When? If you’re forced to use a typewriter-style font. These are also known as monospaced fonts.

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Last night I slept for 6 hours 51 minutes, 7 minutes under my monthly average. Decent quality for most of it, looking at the graph. Tap another app: today I’ve consumed 16 oz of coffee (4 calories, since I drink my coffee black.) Better log another cup – those seven minutes are taking a toll.

If I felt like it, I could post graphs of these patterns to Facebook, to bore my Friends with the minutia of my statistical existence.

Or I could think about why I monitor these things in the first place.

There’s a terrific New York Times article from about a year ago called “The Data-Driven Life” on this self-measurement phenomenon. At the time, I thought the tracker lifestyle was pretty bizarre. A few apps later and a quote from the story rings true:

I got nothing from my tracking system until I used it as a source of critical perspective, not on my performance but on my assumptions about what was important to track.

I’m not a true believer yet – and I doubt I’ll ever be a person who creates a statistical analysis of how daily butter intake changes my arithmetic speed. But I started tracking to wean myself off of caffeine, and it’s worked. Unchecked, I consume it like a fiend. Logging every diet soda keeps me from overindulging. Then I wanted to see if my sleep improved on days I drank less caffeine (it does!). The daily graphs have taught me how I sleep and how often I sleep — and how to improve them.

Now if I can only remember to track my hours at work…

As the launch date for Chimps Should Be Chimps approaches, we’re taking a look back at our development process. In this interview, our art director explains how Manning’s company philosophy informed decisions behind the app’s design.

What made the iPad a good fit for Project ChimpCARE?

Patrick Mouser: The iPad and other emerging platforms are really changing the way in which companies, organizations, etc can reach their audience. Traditional media such as print, TV and even the (capital I) Internet can’t rival the level of engagement possible with the iPad. The device is highly mobile – people use it everywhere, it’s intuitive – used by toddlers and grandparents alike, it’s tactile – you literally hold and touch it to interact. Additionally, most users think of their iPad as technology that enriches their experience: they download apps to make things easier, do things faster, to entertain, to learn, to connect. They trust it and welcome it into their lives. And so the relationship they have with the device creates an environment that is fundamentally more conducive to engaging people than the bully pulpit provided by traditional media. And so it’s interesting to explore the idea of how to communicate with users within this entirely new dynamic.
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Combining creative people with the right clients and challenges results in some pretty unique work – like our soon-to-launch iPad app Chimps Should Be Chimps. Working with Project ChimpCARE taught us about the problems surrounding chimpanzees in entertainment. We learned another big lesson from the app itself: that we can find effective ways to use the iPad and other digital technologies to convey important information in an engaging way.
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Back in the days of our CEES iPrep app, Apple made it kind of a pain to distribute works outside of the App Store. Businesses that wanted to create internal tools had use ad-hoc builds — a process that’s pretty difficult for even tech-savvy clients.

Someone at Apple woke up and realized that internal business apps needed their own tools. Enter the Apple Developer Enterprise Program.
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There’s a pervasive “Mommy and me” vision of children’s technology – the idea that every time a child uses a device, someone lovingly guides them through each tap or click.

Researchers know this ideal approach is pretty rare. Here’s a more realistic scenario: The parent downloads an app and swipes through. If it looks kosher, they’ll “pass back” the smartphone or tablet to their child and return to their grown-up tasks. If you can’t depend on Mom and Dad’s web-savvy guidance, how do you make an app kid-friendly?

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