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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Everyone knows that designer Susan Kare was responsible for the seminal icons in the original Macintosh some two and a half decades ago. This blog post, which is reproduced in part as an introduction to Kare’s new, self-published book, shows us something that we haven’t been privy to until now: the original, hand-drawn sketches for many of the icons that are now a permanent part of our visual language.

It’s a nice write-up. Read the entire entry here.

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People on Twitter got a kick out of this so I figured I’d post it here, too. Canon really thinks there’s a market for its new combination calculator and mouse.

To me, it’s a sublime example of how groupthink can produce shockingly hideous design. Even the name — it’s called the “X Mark I Mouse Slim” seems like a compromise between two different internal groups at Canon, each with only the dimmest grasp of good taste. On the other hand, if you’re smitten by this design, you can buy it here.

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In spite of the title, this blog post from the talented Mac and iOS developers Bjango is not quite about grids in the way that I’ve talked about them in the past. They focus more on the issue of screen resolution, and the different approaches to scaling up interfaces in iOS and Android. It’s smart stuff, and illustrates some of the learning curve I had to climb when I started working on Mixel. Worth a read for sure. Read the full article here.

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