Matt Webb’s presentation slides and transcripts are
Matt Webb’s presentation slides and transcripts are always worth reading through…this one is no exception: Products Are People Too. I hope to catch one of his talks in person someday.
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kottke.org posts about design
Decisions, Decisions: a nice looking hand-drawn flowchart poster.
Decisions, Decisions: a nice looking hand-drawn flowchart poster.
Analysis of Casino Design is one of
Analysis of Casino Design is one of a number of articles on different aspects of casinos, gambling, and slot machines (see links at the bottom of the page). (via spitting image)
One of the causes of feature creep
One of the causes of feature creep in products like consumer electronics is that when customers are making purchase decisions, they’ll likely choose the one with the most features. “But, when they were asked to use the digital device, so-called ‘feature fatigue’ set in. They became frustrated with the plethora of options they had created, and ended up happier with a simpler product.”
Food design by Marti Guixe. I love
Food design by Marti Guixe. I love the 7-Step Cookie…it’s got numbered bite-marks that show you how to eat it. Some larger photos of some of his projects here. (via core77)
Winners of the 2007 National Design Awards, including
Winners of the 2007 National Design Awards, including Apple’s Jonathan Ive and Chip Kidd.
Mocketing: making fun of your product or
Mocketing: making fun of your product or brand in order to sell the product and build the brand. Found out about mocketing from this Book Design Review post on a book called Unmarketable.
Technology Review asked several designers to name
Technology Review asked several designers to name their favorite technology products. Worth a look for the photos of pristine Sony Walkmans, Ataris, and Polaroid cameras.
Fresh Dialogue 23 is an upcoming AIGA NY
Fresh Dialogue 23 is an upcoming AIGA NY event (May 29) that will focus on the increasingly common phenomenon of the former audience lending a hand in designing their own experiences. Speakers include Stamen’s Eric Rodenbeck and Ze Frank. (thx, khoi)
Michael Bierut’s 13 reasons to choose a particular
Michael Bierut’s 13 reasons to choose a particular typeface for a project. “Once I saw a project in a student portfolio that undertook the dubious challenge of redesigning the Tiffany’s identity. I particularly disliked the font that was used, and I politely asked what it was. ‘Oh,’ came the enthusiastic response, ‘that’s the best part! It’s called Tiffany!’”
Why has Apple’s focus on industrial design
Why has Apple’s focus on industrial design been so successful? “The most fundamental thing about Apple that’s interesting to me is that they’re just as smart about what they don’t do. Great products can be made more beautiful by omitting things.” (via justin)
A sizable list of interesting business card
A sizable list of interesting business card designs. The cleverest of the bunch is the reused business card from the secondhand store. (via quipsologies)
Update: Another large cache of well-designed business cards. (thx, rich)
Clever technique for pinching the colors from
Clever technique for pinching the colors from famous paintings using the Match Color tool in Photoshop. “The Old Masters of painting spent years of their lives learning about color. Why let all their effort go to waste on the walls of some museum when it could be used to give you a hand with color correction?”
Colors that have stood for things for
Colors that have stood for things for a long time, like red for stop, green for money, and white for surrender.
The Cooper Hewitt Design Museum has announced
The Cooper Hewitt Design Museum has announced plans for expansion. I was up there this weekend checking out the Design Triennial and found the exhibition a bit small; a similar show at the expansive MoMA might have run to twice the size and would have included larger items. I hope they don’t do too much to the building though…in many rooms, the building is just as much of an attraction as the items on display.
This beta version of the AOL site
This beta version of the AOL site looks a bit familar. (thx, skamptacular)
Designer Eddie Jabbour is on a mission
Designer Eddie Jabbour is on a mission to make a new NYC subway map. The NY Times recently had a piece of Jabbour’s efforts. The new map reminds some of Massimo Vignelli’s 1972 classic map: too abstract for its own good. Here’s Vignelli talking about his map in an outtake from Helvetica and some background on the controversy surrounding it.
Confession: I collected stickers when I was
Confession: I collected stickers when I was a kid. Put them in books. I remember most of these scratch ‘n sniffs. Now I collect links and ideas…I wish they scratched ‘n sniffed. (via quipsologies)
Typographic map of London. That is, a
Typographic map of London. That is, a map made of type (like Paula Scher’s paintings) not a map of typography in London. (via moon river)
I’m not going to lie to you…
I’m not going to lie to you…I didn’t read this whole thing, but I found the sprinkled-in UI redesigns of Amazon’s book listings and other online retail interfaces interesting. (thx, drew)
Pagination and Page-View Juicing are Evil. “The
Pagination and Page-View Juicing are Evil. “The realistic ones at least admit that it’s a cheap way to boost stats. The disingenuous (or naive) ones actually posit that they are improving readability and usability for their audiences by reducing scrolling. Because scrolling is so hard.” See also my pagination tantrum.
A low wattage color palette for web
A low wattage color palette for web designers. The palette is based on the Energy Star wattage ratings for colors. (via migurski)
Feast your eyes on the new design
Feast your eyes on the new design for the US passport. “They’ll never go for this…it’s too over-the-top.” “Perfect!”
No One Belongs Here More Than You
Miranda July, who you might remember from her film Me and You and Everyone We Know, has a book coming out in May, a collection of stories called No One Belongs Here More Than You. The book has a web site that’s one of the most effective and creative I’ve seen in a long time. Here’s a screenshot of one of my favorite pages, just to give you a taste:
The really intriguing thing about the site is that it breaks pretty much every rule that contemporary web designers have for effective site design. The site is a linear progression of images, essentially 30 splash pages one right after another. It doesn’t have any navigation except for forward/back buttons; you can’t just jump to whatever page you want. July barely mentions anything about the book and only then near the end of the 30 pages. There’s no text…it’s all images, which means that the site will be all but invisible to search engines. No web designer worth her salt would ever recommend building a site like this to a client.
Yet it works because the story pulls you along so well; July’s using the site’s narrative to sell a book that is, presumably, chock full of the same sort of narrative. If you think the site sucks and quickly click away, chances are you’re not going to like the book either…it’s the perfect self-selection mechanism. The No One Belongs Here More Than You site is a lesson for web designers: the point is not to make sites that follow all the rules but to make sites that will best accomplish the primary objectives of the site.
On the occasion of Helvetica’s NYC premiere
On the occasion of Helvetica’s NYC premiere tonight, Michael Bierut remembers a time when no one knew anything about type or fonts except for designers and typesetters. “[Today] we live in a world where any person in any cubicle in the world can pick between Arial and Trebuchet and Chalkboard whenever they want, risk free, copyfitting tables be damned, and where a film about a typeface actually stands a chance of enjoying some small measure of popular success.”
Results of the Type Directors Club type
Results of the Type Directors Club type design competition for 2007. I really like Subtil. (via quipsologies)
The Erosion Sink from Gore Design is
The Erosion Sink from Gore Design is a nice piece of design.
The mid-2000s may be seen in
The mid-2000s may be seen in the future as not such a fantastic time for logo design. One further piece of evidence: the what-were-they-thinking? new design for the Dairy Queen logo. “[The] gold and blue curved swishes [signify] food and treats.” Don’t know about you, but that blue swish make me want to cram ice cream down my treat-hole!
Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez pick their 10 favorite movie posters.
Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez pick their 10 favorite movie posters.
Profile of Edward Tufte. “Running his own
Profile of Edward Tufte. “Running his own enterprise, Tufte says, allows him to work ‘elegantly, intensely, gracefully and incredibly efficiently.’”
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