Fri 27 Jan
2012
We just relaunched the Mixel blog yesterday along with a refresh of our main Web site. The main goal was to bring the look and feel of both in line with one another and, specifically for the blog, to create a more editorial-friendly presentation. As I explained in this post, the Mixel blog turned out to be a more text-intensive product than we anticipated, and so we needed a design that would accommodate that. We also needed to switch to a publishing tool that was more suitable for that kind of content. Tumblr wasn’t doing it for us.
I wrote about Tumblr a while ago with great admiration in this blog post, and I still think it’s an amazing company and one of the best social content products out there. As a ‘traditional’ blogging tool though, I’m more ambivalent about it.
Thu 26 Jan
2012
Writer Connie Bruck wrote this piece that ran a few weeks ago in The New Yorker about the men behind a plan to build a new NFL stadium in downtown Los Angeles. One of them, Phillip Anschutz, is a politically conservative billionaire seven times over, who made his fortune in oil and gas, real estate, railroads, telecommunications, and sports and entertainment. It’s a fascinating article, even though I’m not particularly sympathetic to his agenda or that of his compatriots. But I did really like this quote from him:
“It helps to have your back against the wall. Adversity is a huge advantage — as long as you think of it as an advantage — because it helps you do things you never thought you were capable of doing.”
Words to remember. You can read the full article here — but unfortunately, only if you’re a subscriber.
Tue 24 Jan
2012
This Madrid-based designer has a stunning portfolio that uses a contemporary, intricate take on modernism. He’s also apparently a collage artist, as suggested in this poster he designed for what looks like a show of his collage works.
He seems like someone I would like to meet. Visit his site here.
Mon 23 Jan
2012
Architect and designer Jerome Daksiewicz of Nomo Design has produced these beautifully matter-of-fact poster designs that capture the runway designs of various American airports.
You can see them in more detail at this link, or buy prints at their shop.
Fri 20 Jan
2012
Riffing on a post I wrote a year ago called “The Sad Story of Illustration on the Web,” the always-incisive Paul Carr writes in the recently launched Pando Daily that, just as illustration has suffered because of the Web, so too has the rich tradition of punning at news publications been in decline since the advent of blogging.
“Here in the blogosphere [there’s] little-to-no place for editorial cleverness in headlines. Search engine optimization of headlines and a relentless drive for clickthroughs means that headlines must either be absolutely direct……or infuriatingly opaque.”
While Subtraction.com is not a serious news source or a significant publication, Carr’s lament has been my experience here too. I used to really enjoy writing mildly clever headlines for my posts, making frequent and at least passable use of puns. I gave up on that a while back, though, realizing that it wasn’t doing me any good in terms of maximizing the reach of what I write. I changed over to the more direct approach with great reluctance; it felt a lot like giving up something meaningfully human in order to more efficiently appeal to the machines. But hey, they’re going to rule us one day soon anyway, so may as well make nice sooner rather than later. Read Paul’s full post here.
Thu 19 Jan
2012
It won’t be long before podcasting is a whole decade old, which I find amazing because I remember sampling my first podcasts when the medium was still brand new, even before they’d been rolled into iTunes. For almost the entirety of that almost-decade, I’ve been listening to podcasting impresario extraordinaire Leo Laporte, whose This Week in Tech (TWiT) empire has been one of the form’s biggest successes.
That’s why I was so flattered when I was invited to appear on one of Leo’s new shows, TWiT Photo, which he co-hosts with the amazing photographer Catherine Hall. The episode was recorded live on Tuesday and you can download it here.
Truth be told, I was a little nervous about appearing on TWiT Photo because, if you peruse the show’s already deep archives, they typically feature lots of really talented professional photographers. By contrast, I regard myself as nothing more than a lucky amateur, but Catherine and Leo structured a great discussion about the intersection of design and photography, where the two disciplines overlap and how they can each complement the other. And, of course, we got a chance to talk about Mixel, too. It was loads of fun. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast here.
Fri 13 Jan
2012
It’s probably a good idea for everybody involved in design to follow closely what happens with Android Design, a portal that Google launched yesterday as part of a new initiative to raise the mobile platform’s user experience to the next level. Aimed squarely at Android developers, the site sets out a creative vision (tied closely to the awkwardly-named Ice Cream Sandwich, or Android 4.0 release); its central tenets are “enchant me,” “simplify my life,” and “make me amazing.” Those three ideas are supported by a series of design principles and a library of design patterns and building blocks that should make it easier for developers to adhere to the vision.
All in all Android Design is a well-executed package, and it’s significant in that it’s the first — or at least the most cogent — articulation of what designing for Android is all about. It puts forward clearly delineated concepts that Android developers should hold in their heads when they set out to create a product on this platform, and backs those up by identifying the specific, tactical methods that Google feels are most effective at arriving at these ends. Good stuff.
Wed 11 Jan
2012
Designer, illustrator and artist Stephen Wildish made these poster-like film graphics that, to my mind, are much cleverer than the standard film poster er-imaginings that designers often create these days to promote themselves. Each graphic is a visual quiz in which you try to identify a notable film title that corresponds to each letter of the alphabet. Here’s the one from the 2000s:
For film buffs, these are quite entertaining and surprisingly challenging (to his credit it’s not the accuracy of the illustrations that makes them tough). Wildish has also created one each for the 1960s, the 1970s, the 1980s, and the 1990s. See them all at his blog and visit his portfolio site.
Tue 10 Jan
2012
Come see me next Fri 20 Jan at the WebVisions conference when it rolls into New York City. I’ll be appearing on stage with my good friend Alice Twemlow, chairperson of D-Crit, the Masters Program in Design Criticism at The the School of Visual Arts. Our session is called “Design + Entrepreneurship,” and we’ll be talking about the unique opportunity that designers have today to create the kinds of new businesses that only designers can imagine. This, of course, will cover Mixel, and I’ll talk about the genesis of that product and how we turned it into a company.
Here’s an added bonus: if you use this link you can get 40% off the cost of the conference as well as a free pass to Kevin Hoyt’s “Web Standards Playground” workshop. Register here.
An apparently common problem that many iPhone users encounter is that, after many months of use, the home button — the sole physical button on the device’s face — starts to lose its responsiveness, sometimes precipitously. When this happens, it may take several presses, or a prolonged press, to get the button to produce any results. And sometimes where one press of the button is intended, the device registers two. Very annoying.
I was surprised to discover from a friend that Apple technicians diagnosed this problem on her phone as software related, which struck me as counter-inuitive, as it seemed to me to be very much a hardware problem. There has also been talk of the button needing software recalibration. I don’t know if that approach works or not, but I’ll tell you what worked for me: the miracle “water-displacing spray” WD-40.
Wed 04 Jan
2012
I wrote about Ariel Aberg-Riger, one of my favorite up and coming artists, back in September. Since then she’s become both a friend and an incredibly prolific user of Mixel (and even a curator of standout mixels by others).
Ariel’s first gallery exhibition is opening this Friday at TODA in Brooklyn. It will showcase many of her wonderful drawings and, as an added bonus, she’ll be drawing portraits of visitors to the gallery from 4 to 6:00p that afternoon. More info here.
Tue 03 Jan
2012
A roundup of sequels, prequels and franchise extensions that will make their appearance at a multiplex near you in the next twelve months. Also included for good measure in the second part of this article is a survey of the wannabe franchises debuting in 2012.
It’s probably not necessary to lament the preponderance of these kinds of movies relative to the number of original ideas in movies today, but jeez, some of these get me depressed just reading their descriptions. Anyway, it all makes for fascinating reading, which is par for the course for the excellent Box Office Mojo. Read the post here.
Fri 30 Dec
2011
Happy new year everybody! Here’s one last holiday gift: there’s a new build of Mixel, our social collage app for iPad, available right now in the App Store. Version 1.2 adds a few minor interface changes for existing users, but its main feature significantly improves the first-run experience for new users — and for those who have until now been reluctant to give it a try because of our Facebook login requirement: you can now open up the app and browse the entirety of the network without having to login at all.
Another great article from Design Staff, the design-for-startups blog that I wrote about earlier in the month: Writer Braden Kowitz offers one approach to interviewing design candidates:
“…Set up a well-scoped design problem and ask a candidate to solve it on the spot. It can take anywhere from 15-40 minutes depending on depth and complexity. It’s such a good technique because there’s no faking (like showing portfolio work from a big team effort) and when moderated well, it can simulate working together.”
It’s difficult to craft just the right kind of challenge though, and Kowitz suggests that the trick is to pose a problem that can’t be solved perfectly and therefore has many possible solutions.
“The point of the design exercise is not whether someone can get the right answer; it’s to see how people think. And the best way to keep people thinking is to invent a problem that’s impossible to solve.”
This is a more hands on approach than I ever used to hire designers myself, though I don’t doubt its usefulness (and in fact after reading this I may consider employing something like it in the future). In my experience, asking a design candidate to explain in great detail the origin, development, launch and aftermath of a project from his or her own portfolio was almost always enough insight into that person’s thinking processes for me to decide whether or not they would be a good hire. Still, it’s true that the problem of hiring designers, especially for startup founders not accustomed to evaluating design talent, is a tough one. I might write a bit about my own approach in the near future, but in the meantime, be sure to read Kowitz’s post at Design Staff.
Thu 29 Dec
2011
I like it when a Web site chooses a name that spells out its purpose explicitly, yet still manages a bit of unexpected humor. Such is the case with Forget the Film, Watch the Titles, which showcases an eclectic array of film title design. My favorites are the ingeniously simple ones, like “The Tall Blond Man with One Red Shoe,” which is nothing more than a pair of hands doing banal card tricks, and “Ex Drummer,” which rolls back a long sequence in reverse. There are some duds, too, though, like “xXx: State of the Union,” which succumbs to the recent trend of virtual cameras flying dramatically in and out of corny CG-animated spaces. Anyway, there are almost two hundred of these at the site for you to waste an afternoon on. Enjoy!
Wed 28 Dec
2011
Animation writer and historian Amid Amidi, editor at the fantastic site Cartoon Brew, takes a critical look at the “photorealistic cartooning” used in Spielberg’s adaptation of the classic Hergé character.
“Animation is evolving so rapidly before our eyes that we can barely keep pace with these changes. We desperately try to apply old labels and definitions and find them insufficient. Still, ‘Tintin’ at its core is pure animation created frame by frame. True, it was augmented by other processes, but the end result was achieved distinctly through frame-by-frame techniques. And if the mark of a true piece of animation art is the director’s control over every element within the frame, then never has this been truer than in ‘Tintin.’”
It’s an interesting perspective on the current artistry in animation, which is still undergoing massive change thanks to the advent of computer graphics. Amidi’s take is that the film is an important milestone if not wholly successful, and that it is instructive in many ways for the future of the craft. I haven’t seen “Tintin” yet, but I’m very eager to see how successful the techniques that Spielberg (and producer Peter Jackson) used are in conveying both its narrative and in doing justice to the character’s roots. Read the full post here.
Tue 27 Dec
2011
My complimentary ‘digital subscription’ to The New York Times is coming to an end, so I just ponied up the equivalent of US$195 for a year’s renewal. For obvious reasons, I’m emotionally invested in The Times’ survival, and in fact would like to see it prosper for generations to come. But the process of renewing was unpleasant and left me angry, and it wasn’t even about how expensive it was.
The problem is that it’s so difficult for a customer to determine which of the many subscription choices really offer the best value.This is true even for a customer like me, who is dedicated to the brand, technically proficient and a former employee of the company.
Mon 26 Dec
2011
Every year on the day after Christmas, my friend Allan Cole and I put Basic Maths, our theme for WordPress, on sale. This year is no different. Starting today and running until midnight 31 December, this versatile, highly customizable — and mobile-friendly — theme is available for one-third off, which brings the price down to just US$30 — a bargain, really. Get your copy now.
Thu 22 Dec
2011
This concept for “a charity donation platform using New York City subway cards” is a project from students at New York University’s Interactive Telecommunications Program. The idea is to capture the bits of monetary value that often remain on MetroCards but that are too insubstantial for many riders to bother with. The students envision a kiosk-like device where a rider can swipe their card and the remaining value gets transferred to a centralized charity fund.
It’s a nice idea. I haven’t been to a senior thesis show at ITP for several years, but this concept seems more sophisticated and less superficial than many of the others I’ve seen from that program. However, I have my doubts as to whether the Metropolitan Transit Authority is really looking to help its consumers direct those bits of remaining value to a charity fund. Given their seemingly chronic budget shortfalls, I can’t imagine the “lost” money isn’t already accounted for in their spending.
Anyway, find out more at MetroChange.org. There’s also lots of content about what went into the project at the accompanying blog.
Wed 21 Dec
2011
This week I was lucky enough to be invited by the venerable Jeffrey Zeldman to be a guest on his podcast “The Big Web Show.” We jumped on Skype yesterday morning and recorded a ~45-minute conversation that covered such topics as my experience at art school, how I got started doing design, my career co-founding a design services business, my tenure at The New York Times, and of course my work on Mixel, the social collage app we launched last month. It was lots of fun, and many thanks to Jeffrey for the invitation.
You can get an overview of our discussion, audio of the episode itself and a link to subscribe to “The Big Web Show” over at Jeffrey’s blog.
Tue 20 Dec
2011
Chris Wild’s Retronaut is an amazing compilation of visual artifacts from the musty past. I came across this entry tonight: a shockingly beautiful set of photographs from Sir Ernest Shackleton’s ill-fated voyage to Antarctica in 1915.
They look like they may be hand-tinted but apparently they are in fact color photographs, with an ethereal, almost ghostly quality. See the full blog post here.
The venerable design magazine Eye has a great blog that highlights fascinating stuff from the world of graphic design. This post looks at how an acrylic storefront sign is actually made, and includes step-by-step photographs from press to machine-tooling to hand-cutting.
I’ve seen countless signs like this all over the world, but I was surprised to realize that, before reading this article, I really had no idea how they were made. In fact, I have no idea what happens inside a sign-making shop, which is pretty embarrassing for someone who claims to know a lot about typography.
Wed 14 Dec
2011
For obvious reasons, I’m an iPad partisan, but I do want to see the tablet market get more competitive. For that reason, I was excited about the Amazon Kindle when it was announced and so I pre-ordered it immediately.
When it arrived, I had an out-of-the-box experience that, as it turns out, would be indicative of my feeling about the device in general: good, not great. As I powered it up for the first time, the Fire spent about five or ten minutes downloading and installing a software update, leaving me unable to even use it. Not great. But it installed the update just fine, and thereafter it was mostly a glitch-free experience. Good.
Tue 13 Dec
2011
I promise not to turn this blog into a big long marketing campaign for Mixel, but our users continually surprise me with their ingenuity so I can’t help posting at least some of what I come across. Not only are they making great stuff with the app’s purposefully primitive tools, they’re also starting to take some of this stuff offline in ingenious ways.
Mon 12 Dec
2011
Earlier in the year, I wrote a bit about the design services industry in two blog posts: first, I wrote “The End of Client Services” in July, which outlined my thoughts on why the best interaction design is done outside of the studio/agency model. Then in August I followed up with “In Defense of Client Services,” which expands a little bit on why I believe services is such a difficult way to earn a living as a designer. I had meant to write a third post, but getting Mixel out the door got in the way. Over the past several days I was finally able to find the time to hammer out this follow-up.
Actually, I’ve been making notes for this blog post all year long, because it was ten years ago that I co-founded an interaction studio here in New York City, partnering with some colleagues from a previous employer. I stayed with the studio for four years, and I learned a lot in that time. Building that business significantly changed my outlook on the design industry, but I haven’t written too much on why. A decade later seems like the right opportunity.
What still strikes me the most about that experience was how little my former partners and I understood at the outset about what it takes to build a successful services business. In the years since, I’ve met lots of designers who have either founded or had the ambition to found studios or agencies of their own. Most of them, it seems to me, are laboring under misapprehensions very similar to the ones that hobbled my former partners and myself.
So here are a few of the key lessons that I learned from co-founding my own design studio. The usual caveats apply, of course, in that everything about business is contextual, and so your mileage my vary.
Thu 08 Dec
2011
Over at the newish blog Design Staff, Braden Kowitz makes a cogent case for why fit-and-finish is important enough for a designer to fight for, even in the face of indifference from peers on a product team (a situation that I’ve encountered many times throughout my career). Kowitz lays out a few useful arguments and offers helpful tips that might help other designers convince engineers, product managers and others that such attention to detail is not just “design for design’s sake.” Read the full blog post here.
By the way, in addition to having a great name, Design Staff is an excellent addition to the design discourse. Its impressive roster of writers have built many well-known and widely used digital products, and its mission — “Design Staff is dedicated to helping startups design great products” — is laudable. Since starting Mixel and immersing myself in the startup ecosystem, I can attest that many startups struggle mightily with the kinds of design issues covered here.
Mon 05 Dec
2011
Over the weekend I turned forty. Actually, not long before that I was twenty years old, and then all of a sudden it was Saturday night and I was celebrating four decades on this planet.
Forty is a kind of milestone no matter what. But it was extra special for me because I got an amazing gift. Laura corralled several dozen of my friends to each draw, paint, photograph, collage or diagram portraits of me. She pulled this off conspiratorially, so I had no idea at all that this nontrivial creative project was happening behind my back for almost two months. When she presented it to me Saturday, at a birthday dinner with some friends, I was utterly shocked. You can see the portraits over here.
Please indulge a little bit of sentimentality here, because I was overcome with emotion as I flipped through the pages. It reminded me that I have amazing people in my life, and how lucky I am in that respect. It also reminded me that somehow, in spite of nearly four decades of clumsily ambling my way around this planet, I managed to find the right person to spend my life with. Being reminded of that fact was the best possible gift I could have gotten.
Fri 02 Dec
2011
I happened across these two wonderfully detailed drawings in my RSS reader today. This first one is by a third-year illustration student at Middlesex University.
Here’s he other one, by the artist David Barth.
Just sharing.
Wed 30 Nov
2011
I’ve tried several different cases for my iPhone 4 in the year and a half that I’ve owned it. My favorite has been this faux camera design made of real wood from my friends at Photojojo but it was admittedly a bit bulky and it eventually cracked, as wood naturally does. I keep coming back to the the Speck Pixelskin which is lightweight, reliable and not too bulky, yet very homely-looking.
This morning I came across this design concept that looks like it might nail that elusive intersection of form and function. It’s called Elasty and it was created by designer Yoori Koo. It’s a silicone bumper fitted with elastic strips which allow you to stash your headphones, pens, cards etc. on the back of the phone.
At the moment it’s only a beautifully-rendered idea, not a shipping product, but it did win a design award from tech accessories manufacturer Belkin, so maybe it’ll be available for sale soon. Find out more here.
Tue 29 Nov
2011
Next month sees the release of Costello’s “The Return of the Spectacular Spinning Songbook,” a boxed set of live recordings of Costello and his band The Imposters playing songs from his his lengthy discography. The set retails for US$202.66, a price high enough to earn Costello’s own ire. In this blog post, he explicitly advises his fans not to buy it, recommending instead the Louis Armstrong boxed set “Ambassador of Jazz.” I’ve been a fan of Costello’s since forever, so I’m happy to see he still has a bit of his old pugnacity — as well as his sense of showmanship. Read the full post here.