July 2008 27 posts

Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday

01

Carsonfied MattScenes from a FranchisePulp Branding

02

Media Matters: Fox News Gives New York Times Reporters a MakeoverNike “Air McFlys” Finally Hit Store Shelves

03

A Word for .MacThinkdust

04

Mac Rumors: Apple to Offer iTunes Remote Control Application for iPhone and iPod Touch

05

Cereal Killers

06

07

08

Steven Heller: The Day I Worked for Clay Felker

09

10

11

12

13

14

Kyle T. Webster Illustration

15

No Contact Is an IslandAisleOne: BBC Design GuidelinesDrawger.com: Felix Sockwell on the New York Times App for iPhone

16

Iconic Logo Designers

17

18

Radiohead Video for “House of Cards” on Google

19

20

21

PC Magazine: 11 Great Apple Technologies That Failed

22

Woe Is MobileMe

23

24

“Obamahaus” PostersDirect Designs “Space Grill”

25

26

27

28

29

30

NYT: 10 Things to Scratch From Your Worry ListNYT: Penalty for China Quake Photos ReportedThe New Yorker: Interview with Françoise MoulyThe Onion: Al Gore Places Infant Son in Rocket to Escape Dying PlanetEmail As a Bridge or a Wall

31

NYT: Tall, Dark and FragileBill Gates on Windows Usability

Thu 31 Jul
2008

NYT: Tall, Dark and Fragile

“How do you arrest gravity? How do you freeze time? It is at this point that art and science converge. You can see that convergence in action in ‘Imageless: The Scientific Study and Experimental Treatment of an Ad Reinhardt Black Painting,” a small, engrossing, meditative exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum.”

Bill Gates on Windows Usability

An old message in which Gates details his experience trying to find, purchase, download and install his company’s own MovieMaker software.

Wed 30 Jul
2008

NYT: 10 Things to Scratch From Your Worry List

Science reporter John Tierney says, “I wouldn’t spend a nanosecond of my vacation worrying about any of these ten things.” With a follow-up on his blog, Tierney Lab.

NYT: Penalty for China Quake Photos Reported

“A school employee in Sichuan Province has been ordered to a labor camp for a year for taking photographs of schools that collapsed in the powerful May 12 earthquake and posting them on the Internet, a human rights group reported Wednesday.”

The New Yorker: Interview with Françoise Mouly

The magazine’s “resident comic-book expert” on Comic-Con.

The Onion: Al Gore Places Infant Son in Rocket to Escape Dying Planet

Hilarious.

Email As a Bridge or a Wall

7:48 AM
Remarks (12)

People who know a lot more about the future than me tend to predict that someday soon that we’ll use software through voice command or even through dimensional gesturing in the style of “Minority Report.” Maybe that will happen and maybe it won’t. But my favorite alternative — or rather supplement — to the windows, mouse and pointer paradigm of controlling software is here today and it’s underrated: messaging. SMS on my phone, for sure, but definitely email.

Like most people, I’m sure, I spend the majority of my day in front of my email program. So when I can do something outside of the natural capable boundaries of email using that same, highly familiar interface, it feels like a real win.

Thu 24 Jul
2008

“Obamahaus” Posters

New graphical work from the candidate’s campaign evokes “die neue typographie.” Via The Daily Heller.

Direct Designs “Space Grill”

I don’t have a back yard (yet) but I almost want to buy one of these today anyway.

Tue 22 Jul
2008

Woe Is MobileMe

12:45 PM
Remarks (39)

MobileMeOver the course of several days last week, I spent a pretty sizable chunk of time trying to work out the kinks in Apple’s disappointingly buggy MobileMe service, the new incarnation of their equally error-prone .Mac. By the end of this first prolonged exposure to the service, I’ve decided that I feel exactly the same way about MobileMe as I did about its predecessor: ideally I’d like it to do much more, but at the very least I wish the stuff it does would work a lot better than it does. And when it doesn’t work, which is far more often than I’d like, it is in my view one of the most frustrating experiences that Apple has ever produced.

Like me, lots of folks are dependent on the features that MobileMe provides, so simply voting with our wallets, i.e., canceling our accounts in protest, isn’t as straightforward an option as some would argue. For me, over-the-air synchronization for my iPhone is something I’ve needed since the first day I bought it. Right now, MobileMe is the only viable option.

Mon 21 Jul
2008

PC Magazine: 11 Great Apple Technologies That Failed

Well, they weren’t all exactly “great.”

Fri 18 Jul
2008

Radiohead Video for “House of Cards” on Google

“No cameras or lights were used. Instead two technologies were used to capture 3D images: Geometric Informatics and Velodyne LIDAR.” Beautiful if gimmicky, like the best music videos. By the way, I wasn’t much of a Radiohead fan before “In Rainbows” came out, but I’m still listening to this album several days a week.

Wed 16 Jul
2008

Iconic Logo Designers

A new project from independent designer David Airey profiling famous logo designers.

Tue 15 Jul
2008

No Contact Is an Island

8:01 AM
Remarks (17)

There’s plenty to like about the iPhone 2.0 Software Update, not the least of which is the fact that it now officially supports a brand new world of third-party applications. However, I’m only being a little facetious when I say that for me Apple really dropped the ball with its Contacts module.

AisleOne: BBC Design Guidelines

BBC.co.uk applies some of the thinking I’ve done around grids to its new, wider page template.

Drawger.com: Felix Sockwell on the New York Times App for iPhone

Felix details the work he did for us designing a bucketload of icons for our iPhone application.

Mon 14 Jul
2008

Kyle T. Webster Illustration

Lively line work and color.

Tue 08 Jul
2008

Steven Heller: The Day I Worked for Clay Felker

A brief remembrance of the recently deceased New York editor.

Sat 05 Jul
2008

Cereal Killers

Forthcoming coffee table book featuring satirical cereal box illustrations.

Fri 04 Jul
2008

Mac Rumors: Apple to Offer iTunes Remote Control Application for iPhone and iPod Touch

Coming with the 11 Jul release of iPhone 2.0 software, the App Store and iTunes 7.7: “Use the new Remote application for iPhone or iPod touch to control iTunes playback from anywhere in your home — a free download from the App Store”

Thu 03 Jul
2008

A Word for .Mac

1:29 PM
Remarks (12)

Apple’s new MobileMe service is due out before too long, and I’m pretty excited about it. In particular, I’m looking forward to what I hope will be a wholesale remedying of the many irritating shortcomings of its predecessor, the useful but error-prone .Mac service.

I know that I’ve said it before, but I’m really inclined to repeat it until a solution for its many problems is actually in place (and not just marketed) — .Mac is a very poor service. In my estimation, it falls far short of the high bar for excellence that Apple has consistently set for itself and met over the past decade.

Thinkdust

Nice design portfolio from Alex Haigh, particularly his typeface BAQ Rounded.

Wed 02 Jul
2008

Media Matters: Fox News Gives New York Times Reporters a Makeover

“Fox News featured photos of Jacques Steinberg and Steven Reddicliffe that appeared to have been digitally altered — the journalists’ teeth had been yellowed, their facial features exaggerated, and portions of Reddicliffe’s hair moved further back on his head.” Amazing.

Nike “Air McFlys” Finally Hit Store Shelves

Thanks in part to McFly 2015.

Tue 01 Jul
2008

Carsonfied Matt

“The Carsonified team have set ourselves a challenge this week: to build a Web app in four days (32 hours) and we’re launching tomorrow at 5:30 PM GMT.”

Scenes from a Franchise

10:50 AM
Remarks (40)

BatmanWhether or not Christopher Nolan’s “The Dark Knight” turns out to be any good when it’s released later this month, I want to just enjoy for a little while longer the situation that we’re in right now. That is, we live in a world in which the most recent Batman movie, Nolan’s three-year old “Batman Begins,” was actually a very good film. For my money, it’s about as rich a super-hero movie as any Hollywood has produced, but I’ll even settle for just a pretty good movie based on what came before it.

Pulp Branding

“Monthly musings on the mysteries of branding.” Thanks to Jeremy.