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Yojimbo as a web design scrapbook
March 8th, 2008
Filed under Mac, Web design
I’ve tried a number of methods to keep track of interesting artwork and design that fits easily into my Mac-based workflow.
Since I get a lot of content via RSS feeds, I have used Google Reader’s stars and tags, which gets you great search capabilities and a way of accessing content online wherever you are. Unfortunately though, you’re at the mercy of the rss enclosures as to whether you can see a decent image, a link or a useless thumbnail and so it’s not as easy to flick quickly through a series of images. And of course, this can’t include scans, photos and pdfs resident on my mac.
I’ve also trialed DevonThink, which I use to keep track of programming ebooks on my mac. It’s fantastic, of course, for quick text searching, but I haven’t found it a particularly simple input system for images and web archives. I look at DevonThink as a way to intelligently index existing content, rather than as a mildly sophisticated bucket in which to throw bits and pieces as I come across them. For an image-based scrapbook it feels like overkill.
I have now settled on Yojimbo, which can also handle all kinds of content but seems particularly intuitive for images and html. It sucks all that data into an sqlite database so you have to export in order to get at the files (whereas DevonThink does a copy into its Application Support folder) and has Backup and iSync quickpicks.
I usually bookmark a site for one particular element that I find interesting, whether that’s use of colour, striking typography or wicked Flash work. After creating a folder in Yojimbo for each of these, the drop dock sitting along one side of my monitor lets me drag in images and URLs directly to these folders. I’ve found this a lot quicker that using the hotkey to bring up Yojimbo’s Quick Input Panel which offers Name and Tag fields. (Tag fields just sparks off my obsessive need to categorize by every relevant descriptor which takes ages, rather than focussing on the one thing that got me interested in the first place.) I’ve set the Preferences to save a web archive by default, so that even if the site changes I still have a record of that design. It’s not, admittedly, a semantically rich library as content just goes into folder buckets, but it is a great way to find all the inspiration I need under certain categories.
Scrapbook Supplies commented on May 4th, 2009 at 10:32 pm
I use Yojimbo and I am very satisfied with it. I, like you, have a need to tag and label everything, so i find that application particularly fitting.
-Carly