Focus.

I’ve been working at Evernote for close to a year and a half now and there are a lot of things I like. Maybe the most exciting part of my job though is what I’m building. We have been very clear that we are working on building a 100 year startup. That has more implications than I could possibly list. However, there is one that is the foundation – security. Security affects everything.

We are asking people to trust us with the most important things in their lives – namely, their memories. In a world where the common business model is selling people’s information, we’ve decided to run in the opposite direction. We often say we don’t have a big data set – we have a lot of small data sets. Since we aren’t selling data, and we aren’t planning on some big exit strategy, our main mode of income is through our users paying us. Private data means that people can trust us, which is something unique on its own, but it also means that we don’t have the pressure of selling information.

We have no conflict of interest. Every single thing we do is for our users. Many companies, are struggling to find a way to monetize their mobile apps. Meanwhile, we’re working to make our mobile apps more engaging and more focused on accomplishing our user’s goals instead of distracting them with ads. Our focus isn’t split, we don’t have to make the app good for our users AND for our advertisers.

We still have a long way to go, but today I’m really proud of our team for releasing a product that is really beautiful and hopefully serves that one focus better than before – being the central trusted repository for all of your life’s memories… for a REALLY long time.

Oh, and just in case you wanted to be a part of something like that, we’re hiring!

Here’s a quick rundown of what’s been going on.

Evernote in China

On Wednesday night of last week we flipped the switch on a totally separate service in China. Essentially we duplicated everything we are doing here… in China. All new servers, all new chinese staff, all new everything. The current international Evernote service remains completely unchanged but we have been putting a lot of love into China to make sure things go smoothly. We are aware that other big companies have failed miserably and we know this is a big challenge, so we are doing everything we possibly can to make this work right. Part of that was separate branding for both Evernote and it’s sub products. This was a fun project and one I hope I can share more with you soon as some details become final.

Evernote and Orange team up

This one isn’t new. In fact, I’d finished most of the work for this a while ago. However, we also just recently launched a deal with everyone using Orange in France to give them Evernote Premium for a year. This is a pretty sweet deal and it was fun working with a huge brand like Orange.

New Version of the Mac App

I don’t generally work on the Mac client, but the designers here are always crossing borders (in fact, I’m not sure we have borders), so I helped design a couple of new features in the Evernote Mac app. The first is available now from the App Store. My contribution was nothing more than an account info panel, but it was a good experience designing for the Mac nonetheless. We also released a new version of Evernote for iOS. I had nothing to do with that :)

Lots More Monies

Oh, I guess this is a big one too. It’s been almost ten days so I almost forgot. We also recently announced that we have just received an extra $70 million in funding. This is a huge deal for us and allows us to do things liks acquire some new businesses and move into new markets (like China!). The funding comes with a valuation of a cool billion. No biggie.

Evernote Acquires Penultimate

We’ve also just announced our acquisition of Penultimate which is, as of now, the second most popular iPad app of all time. Of course, I didn’t have too much to do with this one, but I’m excited to be working at a place that is acquiring some of the world’s greatest apps.

All in all, it’s been fun around here lately. Sometimes I just have to take a step back and breathe big. It’s fun to be in a place where so much is happening and the stuff I’m doing is making such a huge global impact. But tomorrow is another day, and it’s time to hit the drawing board again and see how we can make things even better.

Thanks for sticking around!

This is an incredible tool for those of us who want to get a quick look at what something will look like in a new font. It’s particularly useful when trying to really nail down the tone of something you are working on. In typography heavy work, this is invaluable. Up until now, this has always been a huge mess. I remember doing huge hacks, just to get an idea of what something might look like in my own colors and in the context of my own artwork.

Of course, FontShop is never going to make it too easy to use all of their fonts without buying them. The plugin works by making a copy of the text in a new rasterized layer. This obviously means that this tool isn’t going to be useful for bigger design projects. For that, you’re better off buying the typeface you want. However, I think they’ve made a really great compromise with this tool. It works well, and I’m sure it will lead to more sales of some of their fonts – at least from me

You should download the new plugin on the FontShop website.

One of the things I love about what I do is getting to be around really talented people that are doing awesome things. Increasingly, I see my role as a facilitator and someone that brings designers together – both with each other and with other projects. This connection factor is one of my favorite aspects of what I do. So I recently launched a small project to showcase some of my favorite people.

Project Gracias is an experiment in giving thanks. I’ve been working with 6 artists from all over the world to make business card size thank you notes. The idea is that our culture has the casual “hey thanks” and the very formal thank you card. One is often too much and the other doesn’t really communicate real gratitude very effectively.

Each artist was challenged with finding a way to communicate the idea of thanks in a new way, and through their own artistic voice. The result is a good breadth of ideas – and one that I hope we can continue to improve upon in the future.

You can buy the cards now and share them with friends when you feel gratitude creeping up. But remember, it doesn’t have to be anything big. That’s part of the experiment, I think it will be fun for us to express to our friends that we are thankful – even for the little things. In fact, especially for the little things.

Head over to ProjectGracias.com/store to get your own. The artists all get a portion of the profits from the sale of their own cards. So buy the cards of the artists you like most.

I’d love to know how you are using them, so let me know your stories!

Kony2012 has 80 MILLION views on youtube as of this writing. It was posted just over a week ago. And that’s just on youtube. Visible Measures says that it got to 70 million views faster than any other viral video – ever (4 days).

The video has been somewhat controversial, for a variety of reasons (many of which are valid), but Invisible Children has been pretty clear from the beginning that they are here to bring awareness more than anything else. And it has become clear in the last week that they are more than qualified as a hype machine. But it didn’t just happen overnight.

I first heard about Invisible Children in 2004 because my sister-in-law was friends with the founders (and ended up doing a lot of their video work for a few years). From the begining, they focused on the human side of the story and have spent thousands and thousands of hours on the road and through numerous campaigns bringing awareness to this situation. This latest video is by far the most successful, but it is by no means out of the blue.

Secrets to their success

BBDO put out a pamphlet recently about how to start a revolution. One of their main points was to identify a common enemy. Invisible Children has been building an army of young people that are passionately opposed to Joseph Kony for years now, and that revolution has been growing.

Still, they have gone against all odds. The video is almost 30 minutes long, it is not a light subject matter, and it just plain doesn’t fit into any category as far as successful viral videos. And yet it is one of the most successful.

I’m not going to try to pretend to have the answer to why this has happened, but there are a couple of interesting aspects.

• Their history of building awareness has given them a passionate user base that was ready to act (or share at least).
• Contrary to popular opinion, people DO care about things. The US media is extremely sigle minded and doesn’t talk about a lot of issues. I think a lot of people are interested in other topics, and this video proves that.
• They shamelessly ask for their viewers to share the video. This isn’t something you can do if you are trying to make yourself famous. You can only do that if you are fighting against something. (think SOPA)
• Controversy. People love to talk about NGOs that aren’t doing things the “right” way. There has been a lot of critique of this video and the organization, but I think it has only lead to more media and more publicity.

At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter what you think about Invisible Children and what they are doing. The point is that they have just completely shattered a whole wave of thinking that tried to define what makes a good viral video. I will be really eager to see how this effects new campaigns in the future.

If you read this blog, you are super cutting edge. No really, there are only about 12 people that make their way here, so you are one of the privileged few. That is to say, I don’t write here to speak to a community, or spread big ideas, or be an expert on any topic. So what gives?

Why I write

I write because I feel like I have something to say. Quite honestly though, I have to work on it. It doesn’t come naturally to me these days. When I was in college, I used to write quite a bit, but lately, I just haven’t made the time, which means I’ve gotten worse and worse. This year I’ve been forcing myself to do it more. I’ve found that, by forcing myself to get my theories and opinions out, I also have to organize them. It feels like I have too many ideas in my head that are waiting to come out. So I’ll keep going until I AM a good writer, and until I find my voice and it feels natural and brings me joy again. Then I’ll be able to explain things better, and hopefully, with more entertainment value.

I write to share. Like many people who are on the internet a lot during the day, I run into a lot of interesting things. Sharing them with the twelve of you is something I like to do. It’s always fun to be the first to discover something new (to that end, tell all your friends about this really cool undiscovered blog to gain extra hipster points).

I write to be a part of something bigger than myself. When I was first getting started in design, finding good content was the thing that kept me interested. It was how I learned about the trade – about the craft of things. When people write on their blog, you get a unique view into who they are that you just don’t get from other online media. It’s a great way to share who you are, and for others to learn who you are. It’s a community thing I guess.

I write to express myself. When I redesigned my website last year, I decided to keep the blog, not because it was so successful, or because I wrote a lot, but because it shows a unique perspective on who I am that a portfolio just doesn’t get to. When someone meets me and I send them to my website, I don’t want them to see a bunch of portfolio pieces. If that’s all I am, then I’ll quit right now. Instead, I want them to see someone that is thinking through what is happening in the design world and responding to it. I’m thinking through movements and trends and the philosophy of life. All of that influences my work, and there’s just not a better way for me right now to express that than a blog.

In the end, I write because I’m alive. I’m here dammit!

With the insurgence of web typography over the last few years, a lot of us have been asking when we could expect a font service from Hoefler & Frere-Jones. It looks like the wait may be coming to a close. This week at least two sites have been spotted using a private beta version of their ScreenSmart fonts – and as we may have expected, they look really good.

The official Barack Obama website is using Gotham which renders exceptionally well. They have definitely spent a lot of time making Gotham render well even at small sizes. Like most web typography it renders better at larger sizes (16px) bu we scaled it down to 10px and were surprised by how crisp it looked.

Kottke.org is the other lucky tester that I’m aware of, and is using Whitney, another beautiful sans-serif, once again set large-ish for big passages of reading.

When H&FJ does finally release its service I’ll be interested to see if their entire catalog is available. I would assume not. However, the new Readability app for iOS also offers their fonts (Sentinel, Vitesse, Mercury, Whitney and Gotham Narrow) which makes me think we may have some pretty good options right off the bat.

Paying for it

All this appearance of great screen type in the last week makes me extremely hopeful, but I’m also aware that it may still be quite a while before we get the service we’ve been hoping for.

But one thing is for sure – when it does come it won’t be cheap. H&FJ have never tried to produce low price fonts for mass distribution. This is actually a selling point to me though. I will be more than happy to pay more to have high quality fonts on my websites, especially if that means that they aren’t on every other website. Ii could be a good point of differentiation.

Whatever the future holds, I can’t wait, and I’m sure I’ll be putting them in to use the first chance I get.

We’re all familiar with typeface specimens and we know they can be a work of art unto themselves. But I personally haven’t ever seen one quite like this. I think it’s a great experiment. I would love to see more type foundries producing little videos that give us more background information about their typefaces. It’s a perfect way to get me hooked. I’m surprised I haven’t seen more of this, but I hope I see more in the future.

In the past, we were fighting to make sure that we could fit all this important content onto the webpage and the only place to go was down. The mouse got the scrollwheel, but the horizontal scroll never really developed. Instead, we have been recently been introduced to the concept of swiping, which seems to be working rather well on mobile devices.

I think this accounts for at least a part of the success of tablets and mobile phones. For once we have devices that are oriented in the direction of the content without a ton of wasted space. The proper use of space is one of those things most people won’t ever tell you that they love in a product, because it is experienced subconsciously. But I think we can all perceive a good experience when we have one, and a 960px column in the middle of a 2000px screen isn’t a good use of space.

Recently, we’ve seen many designers trying to fill this space, but that normally amounts to making a bunch of things bigger or just shoving extra features (or ads) onto the sides. That’s an inherently broken approach.

I’m not claiming to have some magical answer here, but I think it’s time that we take another look at how websites can be displayed on huge desktop monitors in a way that is not so scroll dependent and does a better job at captivating users.