In some respects, I think Muxtape, the popular site for creating so-called “MP3 mixtapes” is a triumph. Ostensibly a tool for creating personal playlists from nominally legal music tracks, it is in actuality very much a piece of social software. Except that the traditional trappings of social software — buddy lists, presence management, intra-membership messaging, etc. — are almost entirely missing. In a sense, it’s a kind of anti-Facebook, and in that functional asceticism, it’s really kind of a marvel.

On the other hand, minimalism has its drawbacks as well as its advantages. To be sure there’s real beauty to Muxtape’s enormous and simple music playback interface — its single-tasking posture may yet turn out to be as iconic as the original Google home page — but it’s also frustrating.

Some NYTimes.com-related business today…

First, there’s a pretty plum job opening with T Style Magazine, the Sunday insert that has become a closely watched showcase for luxury design. The magazine launched an online version last year that, I think all of us involved would agree, is an imperfect first step in marrying the singular immersive qualities of the print edition with an authentically digital experience.

That’s why this position could be so influential. As Janet Froelich, the magazine’s creative director, describes it, “The focus of this position is to oversee the translation of the design approach of the print publication to the Web.” It’s a pretty unique job that requires publication design skills, a refined typographic sense and a good eye for photography — and a sophisticated understanding of the nuances of the Web. We’re essentially looking for someone to really help shape how a luxury magazine expresses itself online. By my guess, there are less than a dozen people in the world qualified for this job; if you’re one of them, send your résumé and cover letter to A. J. Rourk.

No one should listen to anything I say about anything.

For instance. My friend Sahadeva Hammari told me a long while ago that he was working on a new startup that would collect and display links to graphic tee-shirts from all over the Web. My reaction was, “That’s a neat idea, but to what end?” It didn’t strike me that it was a concept that would go very far. As it turns out, the resulting site, Rumplo is pretty damn engaging.

It’s always surprising to me the things I continue to learn about the delicate art of presenting design ideas. Yesterday, for instance, while proving my theory about the power of spacing in interface design, it was made very clear to me that messing with email interfaces is a bad idea.

Or, at least, it became apparent that, as a way of demonstrating how a more discerning application of negative space might improve Gmail, altering the number of email messages presented in the interface created an unnecessary distraction. By adding more vertical height to each message in the list, I effectively pushed a small but significant number of messages below the screen’s ‘fold.’

That particular change proved too contentious for many readers, which makes sense. People get very attached to applications as integral to their daily lives as Gmail, and any suggestion of reducing its efficiency — even if other gains are offered — are unlikely to be met kindly. Changing that variable, for better or worse, was not the point of the argument I was making; I should have known better to have avoided it, but of course all things are clearer in hindsight.

If it’s true that in comedy, timing is everything, then in design, I say that spacing is everything. Or at least it counts for a heck of a lot. This is especially true for Web design, and especially true again for the design of interfaces, which is what the bulk of Web design boils down to. The number of pixels separating elements in an interface plays a critical and frequently underestimated role in the orderliness of that interface.

This is an idea that nags at me all the time, mostly because I see so many instances when a more nuanced attention to spacing could benefit a design at virtually zero cost. And it ’s something that comes to mind especially when I look at the school of Web design that prizes functionality so highly that the deprecation of form becomes a virtue. The argument over whether usability does or does not have to come at the cost of aesthetics is so contentious and frequently debated that I won’t go into great depth with it here. Suffice it to say that I don’t believe they’re mutually exclusive. They better not be, anyway, because that’s what my whole livelihood is based upon.

Whenever it is that I’ll finally get an opportunity to make it to Japan, I plan to take with me a copy of “Art Space Tokyo,” an unexpectedly stunning bit of cultural travelogue from Chin Music Press. It’s a beautiful — and I mean gorgeous — guide to “twelve of Tokyo’s most distinctive galleries and museums,” written in English, lovingly edited by Ashley Rawlings and masterfully designed and curated by a friend of mine, Craig Mod of Hitotoki fame.

Hurray for the iPhone 3G! Really, I’m not mad. I’m kind of excited that 3G is finally coming to the iPhone, and I harbor sufficiently little ill will against Apple for so dramatically lowering the cost of entry to their iPhone platform that I may even go ahead and buy one for myself when it’s released next month.

Looking back at the original iPhone and how that’s worked out, I realize that if there’s anyone that I should be mad at, it’s me. It’s no secret that the value of digital hardware drops precipitously. I guess what’s so surprising — or galling, to many — is just how precipitously the value of an original iPhone, bought in June of last year, has dropped in just twelve months. Take a look at this chart I cooked up.

Most of you reading this probably have only a few days left, at most, to go see what in my opinion will surely prove to be one of the most underrated films of the recent past — before it’s withdrawn from your local multiplexes entirely due to its almost universally poor critical response and its relatively anemic box office performance to date. The name of the movie is “Speed Racer.”

Don’t be fooled by its juvenile source material — an American adaptation of a Japanese anime franchise that originated in the late 1960s — or its unabashed formulation as a would-be summer blockbuster. It really is one of the only movies I’ve seen this year that really qualifies as high art, not just entertainment, but a leap forward in filmmaking. For designers, this movie should also be of some interest: its disappointing reception amongst both the cognoscenti and the popular moviegoing public are a testament to my theory that the combination of graphic design and cinematic storytelling is a surefire recipe for failure.