Japanese illustrator Ryo Takemasa is adept at a vibrant, naïve aesthetic that recalls the warmth of mid-Century children’s book illustrations. There are a lot of illustrators who work in this idiom, but what sets Takemasa’s work apart, for me, are the pieces that display a wonderful mastery of exaggerated, deep perspective. In the examples below, you can see how his simplistic figurative shapes come alive when set within the artist’s surprisingly plausible, dimensional spaces—it reminds me a lot of Tin Tin creator Hergé’s virtuosic scenery renderings.

Many more examples of Takesama’s work at ryotakemasa.com. (Via It’s Nice That.)

This reinterpretation of the opening credits to “The Simpsons” as early video game-style pixel art, complete with an appropriately glitchy soundtrack, is just wonderful. Via cartoonbrew.com.

Update: As reported by The Sydney Morning Herald, the producers of “The Simpsons” will use this video as the opening to this Sunday’s episode.

Twelve hours after the video was uploaded Ivan received an email from the show’s creators, asking him to call them straight away.

‘The email went to my spam folder, so I actually thought it was a hoax,’ said Ivan.

After calling the number Ivan found out the creators actually wanted to use their video to open the next episode of The Simpsons this Sunday at 8pm in America.

With all of the accolades that director Richard Linklater has (justly) collected recently for “Boyhood” it’s easy to forget that his previous work on the so-called “Before” trilogy is equally impressive.

This article by Sheila O’Malley at Movie Mezzanine does a very nice job paying tribute to the first entry in that series, the unexpectedly sublime “Before Sunrise” which, holy moley, is twenty years old this year. I remember watching it for the first time when it came out in theaters with skepticism—its premise of two privileged twenty-somethings talking about themselves for an hour and forty-five minutes struck me as suspiciously shallow, even then when I was in my twenties myself. But I was fully won over by the movie’s quiet magnificence, especially the way its pitch perfect, understated ending reflected real life with startling acuity.

Back to O’Malley’s article, which does a wonderful job teasing out the way Linklater uses time in “Before Sunrise.” Her general thoughts on the movie are well worth reading, but her literary background serves her especially well when she reveals a hidden meaning in the movie that I was previously never aware of:

In the closing scene of ‘Before Sunrise,’ Jessie drops Celine off at the train to Paris. The ‘little space’ between them now reverberates with connections, and they decide to meet six months from that day, at the same place. It is during this conversation that we learn that the entirety of Before Sunrise has taken place on June 16.

June 16 is known the world over as ‘Bloomsday,’ although one might need to be a James Joyce obsessive to really understand what that means. In June 1904, the young James Joyce, overrun by feelings of unwanted identification with religion, family, and state, had a chance encounter on the streets of Dublin with a woman named Nora Barnacle. Joyce, always attuned to the literary, loved the pun in her last name, and also loved that her first name was reminiscent of the famous lead character in a play by his hero, Henrik Ibsen. The two set up a time to meet, and Nora, perhaps understanding that her life was about to change, blew ‘Jim’ off. She was a total no-show. On June 15, 1904, Joyce wrote her a pleading note, saying, ‘I may be blind. I looked for a long time at a head of reddish-brown hair and decided it was not yours. I went home quite dejected. I would like to make an appointment but it might not suit you. I hope you will be kind enough to make one with me—if you have not forgotten me!’

Joyce and Nora went for a walk on June 16, 1904. Three months later, the two fled to Europe, unmarried, leaving a wake of debt and scandal behind them. The two would not get officially hitched until 1930, but they lived as man and wife for decades, having two children and being virtually inseparable.

It’s worth noting that though “Before Sunrise” was released in 1995, the events of the film are meant to represent June 16th of 1994—ninety years to the day after Joyce’s fateful date. Read the full article at moviemezzanine.com.

This video was made for Holocaust Memorial Day last week. It’s part of the Memory Makers project, which pairs survivors of genocide with artists; the latter create works of art based on the life stories of the former. This particular work of art was a collaboration between Holocaust survivor Bettine Le Beau and collage artist Martin O’Neill. The combination of Le Beau’s spoken anecdotes and the exquisitely animated, nearly tactile collage visuals is mesmerizing.

This article at The Economist on the evolution of the office cubicle is fascinating if depressing. It details how the original concept for modular office space was perverted almost immediately—the original intention was to position walls at 120º in order to avoid the monotony so familiar to cubicle dwellers today, but cost efficiency led to 90º angles instead. It was all downhill from there, apparently.

On top of all this, cubicle workers who feel that the walls are closing in on them are onto something. When cubicle spaces are renovated, says a design firm, they often shrink from eight feet by ten per person, to five foot by five. In 1994 the average North American office worker had 90 square feet of space. By 2010 this was 75 square feet. (Executive management gained floor space over the same period, according to the International Facility Management Association.)

Read more at economist.com.

Last October I wrote about how I believe that the iPad is at a crossroads, facing a number of significant challenges on a number of fronts. In an analysts’ conference call yesterday, Tim Cook commented on Apple’s most recent quarterly results (summary: great) and had a few interesting comments about the state of the iPad.

When I look at the customer [satisfaction levels] on iPad it’s literally off the charts, in some cases 100 percent, which is unheard of in surveys to get these kind of customer sat ratings. When I look at the usage, the usage is six times our nearest competitor. Usage measured in web browsing is like 71 percent of total tablets. Also the commerce taking place across the iPad is enormous. Essentially over 80 percent of the commerce on tablets is taking place on iPad.

And so when I back up and look at all of these, and I believe that over the long arc of time, the iPad is a great business. I also have visibility obviously to what’s in the pipeline and feel very, very good about that. That said, I’m not projecting something very different next quarter or the next. I’m thinking over the long run.

In terms of what I think is going on, I think that the upgrade cycle is longer than an iPhone, probably between an iPhone and a PC. We haven’t been in the business long enough to say that with certainty, but that’s what we think. There’s probably some level of cannibalization that’s going on, with the Mac on one side and the phone on the other, and so you probably have a little bit of that that’s shaking out. How much, very hard to tell in the early going, particularly since we just shipped the new phones a few months ago.

And so I think there’s some things like that that are going on. On the other side, I think the partnership with IBM and the work that we have going on in the enterprise is profound. I think we’re really going to change the way people work. I’m really excited about the apps that are coming out, and how fast that partnership is getting up and running, so I think that can move the dial there. So I’m not predicting the 90 day clips, but over the long arc of time I really believe that iPad is a great space, a great product, and also coupled with the product innovation we’ve got, I think there’s a very bright future for it.

This was excerpted from Jason Snell’s excellent transcription of the call over at sixcolors.com.

Writer James Trainor has a collection of photographs from lost New York City playgrounds. As they became a fixture of urban planning in the last century, playgrounds also became a significant intersection of architecture and social science. These photographs capture the high ambitions at the heart of many of the more adventurous ones dreamed up in New York.

More at jamestrainor.net.

I’m a big fan of what the Layer Vault team have built in Designer News. It’s not as big a community as its obvious inspiration Hacker News, but it’s quite vibrant on its own, and I’ve found myself spending lots of time there over the past couple of years with rewarding results.

This afternoon I was lucky enough to be featured in a Designer News AMA. I answered a bunch of questions about Wildcard, building a career in design, what I’ve learned over the years, my tenure at The New York Times, and more. Officially, the AMA lasts only for an hour or two, but as long as the DN team keeps the thread open, I’ll keep answering questions. If you have anything you want to throw my way, head over to this thread,

I love my mom. She lives in California, so I love how technology brings us closer together, too. But sometimes helping her cope with her hardware and software can be challenging. Comedian Tommy Johnagin, on his album “Standup Comedy 3,” has a hilarious bit about providing tech support for his own mom. Warning: recently I played this for someone during a meal and it induced such violent laughter than I nearly needed to apply the Heimlich maneuver.

You can buy the album at Amazon or iTunes.

I don’t link to a lot of infographics here but I like this one, and I’ve always been fascinated by the incremental, barely noticed way some interfaces can change, even when we look at them all day long. This extensive graphic from 7dayshop.com presents a pretty comprehensive overview of how iOS has evolved. The original is so tall that I’ve just cropped the part that’s most interesting to me for inclusion here; you can see the full thing at 7dayshop.com.