Goodbye Darwyn

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Image: DC Comics

Image: DC Comics

According to a post by his family, Darwyn Cooke has just died, at age 53, after a short fight with cancer. His work was clean, hopeful, moving, and perfectly balanced between framing action and highlighting character. From his work on the Parker graphic crime novels, to his own "New Frontier" Justice League, dark and light still came out feeling, well, somewhere we could live in style.

In recent months, DC offered alternative covers to its regular comics from Cooke; these covers brought into high relief the cheer that the age Cooke so loved – of Jet Age and Googie design, of short ties, porkpie hats, and cateye glasses – even as we live with "gritty, realistic" in superhero comics today. For example, one of Cooke's covers showed Superman and Batman not in a "v" death struggle, but relaxing and smiling after they'd defused a bomb together.

To his credit, Cooke did not paper over the problems and inequalities of the times he represented, making text rather than subtext the struggles of women and non-white populations. It was in some ways a patch job, but one in the right direction.

According to his family, donations in his memory can be made to the Canadian Cancer Society and the Hero Initiative.

Prototyping in Comet (now that it's out of beta...)

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I was lucky enough to be in on the alpha and beta of Adobe Experience Design CC (the design and prototyping app formerly known as Comet, which... just seems cooler).

This is a quick prototype, done within an hour or so, of an idea I've been working on. So far I haven't found a good, non-code-based tool with which I can show the key interaction of moving and pairing list items, and I'm discovering limitations of Adobe XD (which I hope will be removed as they further develop the application) – but the act of making and prototyping gave me some insights into how the interactions could work better for the user, and some feature ideas that popped up in the process. So, cheers to prototyping! (Click image to go to interactive prototype.)


Framer.js First Pass at Layers

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In learning Framer.js, I first wanted to get a sense of layers, hierarchy, and positioning. The UK flag posed a unique challenge as the Saint Patrick's Saltire (the red diagonals) would weave over the Saint Andrew's Cross (the white diagonals) but under the white crossbar (which I'd be grateful for explanation of).

To be clear, every element in this image is generated in Framer.js/CoffeeScript. So each element could be transformed within code dynamically, and is exposed to click actions.