Howdy!

Looks like everyone out there on the internet has been heads down this summer. Whether it’s a new website, new publication, new app, or a new t-shirt series, here’s to diving in and getting things done.

We’re pumped about the release of Jason Santa Maria’s new book, On Web Typography. The first chapter, “How We Read” is a unique look at typography for reading—not just typography for the web. It’s great to see our friends at A Book Apart round out its series—arming us with everything we need to know to create better websites.

As summer nears its end, some of our friends have been busy launching new websites. Take a gander at the new 31three responsive site for some fun animations and beautiful illustrations. Weightshift just released an impressive new site that “lets the content and story of things, well, tell the story.” The folks at Bearded also launched a streamlined new site along with a blog post about not being too precious about your work:

And sometimes you don’t need a full redesign to upgrade. In an effort to improve their sites, Dave Rupert and Scott Jehl spent time dispelling the RWD bloat rumors and making their sites load “fast as heck.” We tried our own experiment too. When our site wasn’t performing as well as it could, we scaled back on file sizes and Typekit font packages. We ended up shaving down a third of our page weight.

In an effort to improve its digital processes, the White House launched U.S. Digital Service, an initiative to institutionalize the approach that saved Healthcare.gov. The team’s mission is to make all government sites more consumer-friendly and provide education on how to identify and fix problems before disaster strikes. From what we’ve learned at Happy Cog, communication can be a major pain point in a project. Learning to communicate and avoiding that tiny little word “just” can help things to go more smoothly.

But sometimes disaster strikes anyway, and your perfect plan doesn’t go, well, as planned. On Cognition, Brenna Heaps describes a strategy to help get more frequent feedback from clients. If you’re at the helm of a digital project and need tools to keep it on track, attend the Digital PM Summit in Austin this October.

Harvard Business School + Happy Cog

Read our newest case study about our work with Harvard Business School. We collaborated with the team at HBS to create an extensible design system that showcases its narrative and values and sets the stage for the team to drive future expansion and growth of the Business School’s digital ecosystem.

What have you been launching? Tweet us, we'd love to hear what you've been doing over the summer.

Your Friends at Happy Cog