thenumber is looking for an experienced ruby on rails developer to lead up the development of our relationship building software, buzztron. It is a flexible, permanent position with growth potential. You will be responsible for bug fixes, ui tweaks, and will collaborate with our design / dev team in the development of new features, and determining the road map.

Expect to play with jQuery lots, share in the server management duties, and work with lots of different obscure gems that do interesting things. Salary TBD based on skills/availability.

We are stoked to be involved in Rifflandia 2010 as the official videographers. Check out artist interviews, sneak peaks and more on our RifflandiaTV YouTube channel:

I like to think of graphic design as the practical application of art.

A graphic designer needs to live somewhere between artist and marketer, dreamer and realist, salesman and creative. Our job is to create objects of beauty that effectively communicate, that engage the target audience, and that ultimately sell the product. That means a constant juggling act between form and function.

So, how do you strike the balance? I don’t think there’s any easy answer, but here are a few questions to ask yourself:

* Which is more important for this project: customer perception, or usability?
* How design-savvy is the target audience? Will they look down on a design that compromises for function?
* How usability-savvy is the target audience? Will that beautiful website be hard to use? Will the message of that beautiful ad be lost on them?
* Who’s paying the bill? Are they more interested in fine design, or functional communication?
* Is there a middle ground compromise? If so, will it satisfy both needs, or just compromise both?

Not only do we love working in graphic design and web design, but we appreciate quality design and great websites. Here are a few resources that help us do our jobs, provide us with inspiration and benefit the graphic design and web design communities here in Victoria, BC and around the world.

Inspiration

faveup.com This is a community collection of logo, business card, and website designs. Good source of ideas and inspiration.

styleboost.com A collection of great websites. More great ideas and inspiration for the web designer.

Typography

typechart.com A very useful site for dealing with the pesky problem of web compatible fonts.

typetester.org Handy site for comparing web fonts.

Color

colorschemedesigner.com This is a handy color scheme program. It uses Johannes Itten’s color chords in a handy interactive color wheel. It also provides hexadecimal color codes for web design. Fun to play with and great for color inspiration.

kuler.adobe.com Another great color reference. Like the above resource, Kuler provides an interactive color wheel and choices of color chords. There is also a community component that allows you to share your color schemes.

Stock

graphicriver.net Stock photoshop files, textures, vectors, icons and more.

flashden.net Stock Flash elements.

themeforest.net Stock website and wordpress themes.

videohive.net Stock videos.

audiojungle.net Stock audio clips.

Community

Creattica Daily Design and creative news and ideas.

Society of Graphic Designers of Canada Just what the name implies.