May 27th, 2009Design
In the annals of design, “Make the logo bigger,” might be the most infamous request you’re likely to hear. But his little kid brother, “Can you fit this in?” is far and away the more frequent interloper to our inboxes.
For the sake of fitting it all in, we sometimes condense (or forget to expand) a design to the point of impinging on hierarchy and causality. Often, the pieces we’re putting together as web designers have relationships that cannot be effectively illuminated through simple adjacency alone.
Debussy defined music as the space between the notes. So should it be with design.
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May 20th, 2009Design, UI, Web Design
“You can’t do long-form writing online.”
Really? It’s 2009 and we’re still having this conversation?
The human brain is extraordinarily well adapted for associative thinking. It helped ensure the survival of our ancient ancestors. Even lacking direct empirical experience of a danger, they were able to piece together the puzzle from snatches of previously acquired data. (Enter predator: “Woah. Never seen that one before. Big claws? Check. Nasty fangs? Uh-huh. Run like hell? You bet.”)
It also, unfortunately, is what leads us to constantly ascribe properties and biases from an old medium to a new one.
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April 13th, 2009Design
Having somehow managed to miss each and every pass Gary Hustwit’s Helvetica took through NYC, I was thrilled to catch the New York premiere of Objectified last week. Like it or not—and I’m definitely in the “like” camp—Hustwit and cinematographer Luke Geissbuhler have put together two solid treats for design fans, with word that a third is in the works. Post-screening, Hustwit, Geissbuhler, and designer Karim Rashid (who also appears in the documentary) took a few moments to mix it up with the audience in an open Q&A session.
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January 14th, 2009General, Life
I hope this meme comes out in the wash. I tried the club soda trick and everything, but no dice.
Okay, so I’ve been tagged for Seven Things. Normally I’d turn my daintily elitist Northeastern nose up at such a thing and demand the house staff see it out posthaste, but this tagging comes by way of drinkerthinker, and hot on the heels of a sensibly populist rationalization from her robotic counterpart. Who am I to refuse?
Well then, let’s make with the reciprocity…
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January 8th, 2009BusinessWeek, Design, Web Design
We now pause for a brief moment of design reflection.
Consider the following screenshots. The first of the BusinessWeek.com reader comment navigation as I originally designed it (eons ago, it now seems) and the latter of how it appeared the other day when my boss tweeted about a story that’s garnered a whopping 3,000 comments and counting.
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