I wrote a few words in Offscreen – Issue 3. Buy it, it’s beautiful.
A statistical anaylsis of how a year of living with Rdio changed one man’s purchasing and listening habits. Some useful insights here, but I’m not sold on his ‘investment’ concept: that buying discrete chunks of music makes us better, more focussed listeners. How about the (totally free) mixtape your first love made you? The band you downloaded because you noticed their t-shirt on someone you look up to? Social factors are far more influencial, and companies like Rdio are in great position to fully realize this.
The always brilliant Dan Hill reflects on how Domus Magazine made it’s way to the iPad. Some lovely sketches, and proof of what a small, distributed design team can achieve if they’re sensible and focussed.
Great interview with a great designer.
For all the science, books, and doctors we’re not that good at sleep. Maybe we need to stop obsessing about 8 uninterupted hours?
“The first few years of the social media revolution have been a golden age of tech utilitarianism, where maximizing users’ delight was considered, quite literally, the only currency that mattered. In Part II of the revolution, the desired currency is poised to change from attention to profit.”.
I’m bullish on Stripe.
Concise critique of this Geary/Facebook partnership.
Read chapter 1 of Content Strategy for Mobile before you buy it.
I wrote a few words in Offscreen – Issue 3. Buy it, it’s beautiful.
The ‘client’ is associated with professional agencies and firms who maintain ongoing, tailored professional services. We think of a customer as someone who walks in to a business, buys something, and walks out.
An successful internet business attempts to have it’s cake and eat it too – forge a long-term financial relationship without the expensive one-on-one communication between staff and customers (usually reserved for when something goes wrong).
They’re not clients, but they’re more than customers. A better reference point might be a successful musician who sells to millions of devoted fans she’s never going to meet.
Fans are the best types of customers. They’ll buy (or at least consume) everything you release. They’ll talk about you, they’ll blog about you, they’ll wear your t-shirts. They don’t need to be pandered or pleaded too. The best fans want to be challenged by you. Aim for fans. Not clients, not customers, and definitely not users.
Full of personality, humour and thoughtful business strategy. Companies are rarely built with this much care.
Let’s stop pretending that you can be a ‘rock-star’ without being a band.
Bookmark this bad-boy if you’re actually serious about learning to code.
If you’re not sick of reading about Instagram I suggest this cultural, artful, and considered piece.
I’m not going to try and summarize this one. A wonderful starting point if you think “The New Aesthetic” sounds cool and want to join the creative digital elite.
Colleague and mate Tim cranks out great code and helps run Icelab from the Philippines. I hate clutter, and have started from scratch twice in the last 18 months so can certainly relate with his sentiments here. Get rid of things. It feels good.
Pairs well with Bingaman’s Instagram piece above. Take a look as this too. Hard to tell where the irony starts and stops.
Technical but a great resource for anyone considering self-publishing.
I learnt a lot about babies in 2011. I read piles of books about them. I received advice from doctors, midwives, doulas, friends, relatives, strangers and a hypnobirthing instructor. On December 14th a brand new baby entered the world, into my hands. Looking back there’s things I wish I knew at the outset and things I think are worth sharing.
On top of navigating our first pregnancy, my wife and I were navigating the US health care system for the first time. With wide eyes and nodding heads we’d agree to every suggestion, procedure and test. You don’t have to. Some things can’t be negotiated, but most can. If you don’t feel like you’ve had enough time to make a decision, ask for it. Defer it till your next appointment (don’t worry there are plenty of them) and use the time to research and consider your options.
Get even tougher with your relatives and loved ones. Tell them what you need, what you don’t want, and when you need space.
Your primary provider should offer a genetic counseling service, usually provided by a third party. These services are designed to screen for, test and advise on fetal genetic abnormalities (e.g. down syndrome, cystic fibrosis, and spina bifida). The service is often free and entirely optional. Don’t sign up just because it seems like a cheap way to get extra ultrasounds, tests, and peace of mind.
We nodded our heads and signed up. The first step is a detailed ultrasound that looks for indicators that a genetic abnormality is present. Our baby had a higher than ‘normal’ nuchal translucency measurement. We were bluntly told our baby had a 1 in 5 chance of having down syndrome (these calculations did not include the outcomes of my wife’s blood tests, our family history, or any other indicators).
It was strongly suggested we move on to a CVS test (chorionic villus sampling) – an invasive, but very accurate test that involves removing and testing DNA cells from the placenta. We apprehensively agreed and nervously waited two weeks for the result. Our baby was cleared of all genetic defects but further tests were scheduled.
At this point we had more information than we expected or needed, had been through 4 very stressful weeks (at a time you’re meant to be quietly celebrating), had no worrying family history, and were both well under 35. It was at this point we pulled out, wishing we’d had the strength to say no earlier.
Consider and discuss your level of risk with your doctor. Give even more thought to if this type of information is useful to you. Would it help you to make decisions about your pregnancy?
The US healthcare system is crazy but I suppose it has one thing going for it: you can choose (and change) your healthcare provider. Most expecting parents go out and chose a hospital or doctor in the early stages of their pregnancy – not a bad idea. Unfortunately we met many new parents who did so, but later realized they wanted something different. Sadly and strangely they felt obligated to stick it out with their original choice.
Be wary if the hospital has beautiful artwork and a delicious sounding menu, but won’t give a clear answer when asked their c-section rate, or doesn’t allow doulas in their labor and delivery rooms. If the way you want to have your baby changes and your healthcare provider is not a natural fit: change your provider.
I believe that women in labor for the first time deserve support beyond their bumbling inexperienced partner and a hospital midwife who visits sporadically.
Consider bringing in a true expert employed by you, to help you navigate the most difficult and challenging experience of your life. After 30 hours of helping your partner through labor consider if you might like a helping hand, or some words of wisdom and support.
Your doula will visit you before and after the labor, and help you develop your birth plan. She will also have access to all the resources and people you’ll ever need. The best $1600 I ever spent. When choosing a doula go with your gut instinct. This person will see you at your most vulnerable. Make sure it feels right.
Your doctor or provider will test Mum for GBS. A totally normal bacteria commonly found in women. If GBS is present at the time of birth there is a chance that mum can pass it on to baby, which can present risks.
To counter this hospitals use an IV to pump Mum (and baby) full of antibiotics. Being constantly connected to an IV can be a real departure from the type of labor you might have envisioned.
Luckily there’s things you can do to avoid this. Ask a doula for providers in your region that can independently test for GBS (once you test positive with your hospital there’s little you can do). If you test positive ask for information about a range of natural treatments you can utilize to better your chance of testing negative with your healthcare provider.
An honest and wise book from America’s most influential midwife.
Here’s what we ended up with. Elwood Albert McGinness at about 3 weeks old:
My biggest gripe with the agency model is well articulated by Andy Budd:
So while clients buy into the seniority of the team, then end up getting none of the benefits. In many cases web design consultancies can be little more than employment agencies, hiring people in cheaply and simply slapping a margin on their day rate.
I’m regularly disturbed when I get the opportunity to do a head count at an agency. Sales staff, project managers, account people, executives and administration staff commonly out-number the people producing the products paid for.
We have the advertising industry to thank for this legacy. Right or wrong, this is how business was built. Landing the client was the biggest job. Finding and developing the idea a mystical process that justified the final whopping invoice. The eventual implementation (an advertisement) seems trivial once these two hoops have been jumped through.
Agencies make software now, and software is never finished. Great software starts small, and requires ongoing iteration. Amazing software requires cross-disciplinary teams empowered to make decisions. The advertising business model is almost completely irrelevant. We need to find ways to put makers (designers, engineers, writers etc) directly in touch with the people who need their expertise. We need new ways of selling our time.
Alexander Payne (co-founder and Chief Technology Officer at Simple) on what I like to call “tech-business bullshit”.
But, as I observe discussions of business matters in the startup community, I can’t help but think that none of us – for all the blustering blog posts, crowing keynotes, self-published manifestos, and chest-beating sound bites fed to hungry reporters – have little more than the slightest idea what we’re doing.
We mistake dumb luck for a machine that produces success. We rely on induction when we should rely on deduction, and then, having realized our mistake, we lean on “data-driven decisions” in lieu of common sense. We chase patterns that aren’t there and miss eager markets right in front of us. All this while projecting the confidence, real or manufactured, that’s necessary to play the game.
Honesty and humility. It’s refreshing and powerful, particuarly coming from someone in the banking industry.
Last night I watched designers and developers bitch and moan about the Oscars (and the entertainment industry) on Twitter.
Humor me with a thought experiment. Imagine the general public cared about Silicon Valley’s success stories, personalities, fashions and fads. I bet our industry leaders would revel in the glamor and back-patting in the exact same way; Armani suits, designer dresses, bad jokes and millionaires handing gold statues to other millionaires.
I agree with Matthew Smith’s sentiments, “I’d like to see less back patting and more challenging articulate critique executed with a healthy measure of grace.”
Should designers code? I don’t know. The best web designers do, and here’s why:
Pick any buzzword you like, you can’t ignore that web design is changing. Cross-platform design is in it’s infancy and it requires problem-solving designer willing to get their hands dirty and push boundaries. We’ll continue to use tools like Photoshop, but handing a 960px fixed-width PSD to a team of engineers is starting to look plain silly.
An explosion of new techniques brings a universe of aesthetic possibilities. Dynamic typography and the very nature of web-fonts means any truly cutting-edge typographer is designing in the browser. Pushing text-boxes around in Photoshop doesn’t cut it anymore.
We can’t see into the future, and we can’t design for all interactions and edge cases in Photoshop. We discover interaction problems, and brilliant ideas as we build out interfaces and applications. Being technically involved provides a more complete understanding of our products. It also allows for rapid, organic adjustments.
The web moves. The graphic-only web designer ignores this crucial fact. Building an complete experience, and getting the details right requires working with JavaScript and CSS.
A website, application or online product is never finished. We learn the most about our products after we let them into the wild. The best designers take these learnings and feed them straight back into the production cycle.
The design trends, practices and methodologies above demand designers with technical expertise. The web designer who doesn’t code is becoming increasingly irrelevant.
Thinking of moving on? Entering the start-up world? Time to freelance full-time? Or just want to get a feel for the market?
Large global listing of design related jobs. Great filtering – search by location, category and employment arrangement.
An engineering focus but you’ll find some quality, tech-driven companies.
A wonderful mix of companies. You’ll find agencies, start-ups, media companies, NFPs, and much more.
A handful of positions added each day. Design focused.
Looking for equity in an early stage start-up? Want ownership over a product, and to be part of a small fast-paced team? Elegantly is a great place to start. Designers must apply, and are then able to anonymously browse pitches from start-up founders.
More access to early stage companies. Also a great place to get a feel for the market. AngelList Jobs is great because companies list the salaries and equity they are offering.
A wide variety of creative roles.
Am I missing any other great employment resources? Please let me know.
Less than two years ago I’d preach to my university students about the benefits in separating structure, presentation, and behavior. I’d tell stories about how far we had come since the <blink> tag. Kevin Dees highlights my hypocrisy. Separation is a useful concept, but it over-simplifies the way we work.
A not particularly easy to read, but incredibly insightful piece on the modern corporate office.
Is popular culture is stuck on repeat?
Bootstrap 2 is here! To celebrate, go and read the story of how it came to be.
Software developers are in a unique position. They can generate wealth faster than any other economic force. They are of such value, in such high demand, that even when companies and markets crash they have no reason to frown. Before the dust settles, and investors and business people prepare to squabble over pennies, the talented developer walks away, into another high-cash, or high-equity position (often both). Rao argues that smart investors should find ways to invest in these people, not their software.
Design articles. Lots of em.
A thoughtful, ephemeral ramble by Chimero on learning, fear, making things and love.
No more excuses if you’re not using git. Here’s the perfect intro to the basics; installation, adding, commiting, branching and merging. Do it.
We’re the designers. We’re the builders.
Wilson Miner’s talk at Build. Everyone is talking about it. I finally watched it.
I’ve loved Textmate for over five years. It doesn’t bother me that it’s a dead piece of software. In a field where everything changes all the time it’s nice to have something stable. I wasn’t interested in trying anything new (except for the super-sexy stripped-back iA Writer) until Noah Stokes prompted me to finally give Sublime Text 2 a try.
It’s awesome. You can still launch from terminal, it has it’s own console, a badass command pallete, it supports Textmate themes and bundles, and has a nice distraction free (full-screen) mode. Install Package Control, Soda Theme, and read this article. Also be sure to give the multi-cursor functionality a whirl – it will wig you out.
The super talented Drew Wilson has just launched Pictos Server. Similar to Typekit, it hosts the icons you use on your site and serves them as a web font. Should provide great performance & design flexibility, particularly if you’re using something like SASS for CSS.
Khoi Vinh’s reflects on Google’s new Android Design creative vision/resource.
What struck me the most about the site, though, is that its vision is so broad that it becomes broadly generic, too. There’s nothing about “enchant me,” “simplify my life,” and “make me amazing” that’s objectionable, but there’s also nothing about those concepts that sets the platform apart from what iOS or Windows Phone are trying to do, either. The design principles are smart and illuminating, and in fact everyone should read them as they offer a lot of good advice. But again you could apply these to just about any design system, whether an OS or a suite of products.
Agree. Impressive content, well written, and a welcome resource (to designers and product people in general). The challenge is in shaping and influencing the platform’s existing developers and product designers. A difficult but worthwhile goal that will require more than well crafted style guides.
It’s time for the design community to follow in developers’ footsteps and fundamentally realign its focus. We need to think about products over posters and people over page views. We need this to happen at every level: in design schools, in design writing, and in the things we celebrate online and in person. We have a new purpose: elevate design and help change the world. Let’s talk about how to do that.
Yep, a wonderful and lucky time to be a web designer. Let’s not just enjoy it, but make the most of it.
You don’t need millions of customers to be successful. I’ll take 1000 customers paying me $25/month any day of the week.
Noah Stokes shares thirty five pieces of wisdom after thirty five years of life.
Agile methodologies were designed to optimize the production of software by focussing on achievable goals, and defending against client or management interference. I haven’t met an (motivated) engineer that has worked in a (suitably implemented) agile environment that hasn’t enjoyed the empowerment, environment, and ability to get things done. If things go to plan, small engineering teams become collaborative decision makers, designers and managers of their own time, and produce results at pace. Sounds great if you’re an engineer right? But many ask, and wonder, how does a designer fit into an agile team or process?
I’ve put together some general tips, advantages, disadvantages and things to avoid:
Awesome front-end blog, some fantastic open-source JS resources.
Curious how the beautiful CSS animations on the iPhone 4s page actually work?
I feel that a typography-first, content-out approach to web design moves us one step further away from the unnecessary distractions of design-for-design’s-sake and one step closer to becoming true typographers.
It’s true. The recent explosion of typographic possibilities paired with the inherit challenges of web design (client-side variations) is re-inventing the technical art of typography.
Holman continues with his “How Github works” series and starts to explain how a company of 42 operates like this:
We do things differently at GitHub: we work out of chat rooms, we don’t enforce hours, and we have zero managers. People work on what they want to work on. Product development is driven by whoever wants to drive product.
Where is American (interface) design headed? Fabricant has some concerns after looking at the euro-trashy Windows 7 interface, the “distinctly Disney-esque, almost kitschy quality” of some of Apple’s applications, and the soft “blandly attractive design language” Google have recently embraced in favor of their previous data driven approach.
Irish explains how Microsoft’s browser release and deprecation cycles could have us soon developing for 76 browsers. Scary stuff – take a look.
Boyd explains the many benefits of pseudonymity and the many negative effects of enforcing “real names” on social networks.
Fascinating piece on Sean Parker. Bertoni spends a few days with the man, and gathers comments from Jack Dorsey, Peter Thiel, Ron Conway, Mark Zuckerberg, and many more.
“What happens to us on the Internet when we die? A slew of electronic death startups are offering to help write your final chapter … before someone else does.”
“How did the dog become our master?” You’re a dog person? Read this.
An oldie but a goodie and I couldn’t agree more. What’s worse than owning something worthless? Paying for something you don’t use.
A great post by Luke Beard on front-end implementation at Zerply.
Amazing resource by Jonathan Snook. I’ve linked to the ‘full’ version so you can ‘read later’.
I love Instapaper. I use it every day, and it’s kindle integration has dramatically changed the way I read and enjoy content from the web.
This is what Instapaper looks like you log in:
I spent an hour or two imagining how I might improve things without any fundamental changes to the layout, typography, colors and stripped back philosophy (click for full size):
New icons are in SVG format and the design could be implemented without a single image.
DENVER, Co. Aug. 24, 2011 – appendTo, the company dedicated to jQuery, the world’s most popular JavaScript Library, released data today showing that the percentage of websites that have jQuery deployed has officially surpassed the percentage of websites that have Adobe Flash deployed. Statistics compiled by HTTP Archive, which analyze the world’s top 17,000 websites, show that 48 percent of the sites use jQuery, while 47 percent use Flash.
Design is such an influential part of Facebook’s strategy that Cox and 64 other members of the design staff occupy desks that form a U-shape around founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
The more I think about it, the more I wonder if Facebook’s business provides the scope for roughly 64 designers (many of whom are absolutely brilliant) to all be at their best?
Frank Chimero and Andy Rutledge recently answered this question with a big fat YES.
I completely agree. You don’t get to call yourself a web designer if you’re illiterate in HTML & CSS (let’s not get bogged down in whether this is ‘coding’ or not). The discussion seems to come around regularly and it’s amazing that there is actual resistance to this idea (see Rutledge’s article for a succinct rebuttal).
But why do people resist this idea? Do they think markup and CSS is hard? Set in their ways? Scared it might be a slippery slope into nerdom?
If you’re brilliant enough to design beautiful websites you’ve already spent years mastering typography, composition, content strategy, visual design techniques, and some very complex tools. Learning HTML & CSS is a piece of cake in comparison. You’ve got no excuse, you’re obviously smart enough and you’re lucky. With HTML5, CSS3, modern browsers, Github, SASS & Compass it’s not just easy – it’s fun.
Interactive visualization featuring screenshots of each major browser release.
Debate is usually an indication of intelligent human pursuit. But not always. One issue for design students—this no-brainer, simplest of issues—has ever been kept alive within the inane realm of debate since it first arose. As such, it is an unflattering indictment on those who contest the simple fact that a web designer must craft markup and css.
Good, bad and interesting. Get your daily dose of UXUI UXUI.
Old SF is an amazing location-based collection of archived photos around San Francisco. ISO50 found these great photos of the Marina Branch Library.
Onformative, a Berlin based generative design studio (in their own words) use Processing to build an damn slick image generation tool as part of a comprehensive branding job.
Eliss is an oldie but a goodie, and my favorite iOS game. The game made early and perfect use of the multitouch surface, had an incredibly focused and beautiful aesthetic vision, and an addictive generative quality. Steph Thirion, the genius behind it has a teaser for his new game, Faraway. I’ve got a feeling the audiovisual overlap is to feature even more strongly, can’t wait.
I made a video teaser for my upcoming game Faraway.
Cool fact: it was all made in code, it’s an uncut programming sequence. No video editors were used.
- The game will come out this fall on iOS. Specific date and platform are TBA.
During the early 20th century residents of Fort Bragg, California chose to dispose of their waste by hurling it off the cliffs above a beach. No object was too toxic or too large as household appliances, automobiles, and all matter of trash were tossed into the crashing waves below, eventually earning it the name The Dumps. In 1967 the North Coast Water Quality Board closed the area completely and initiated a series of cleanups to slowly reverse decades of pollution and environmental damage. But there was one thing too costly (or perhaps impossible) to tackle: the millions of tiny glass shards churning in the surf. Over time the unrelenting ocean waves have, in a sense, cleansed the beach, turning the sand into a sparkling, multicolored bed of smooth glass stones now known as Glass Beach
(via Colossal)
A developer at Github gets straight to the point with quotes like, “Hours are Bullshit”, and “Meetings are fucking toxic”.
Now here’s some perspective. Buffett publicly declares how much income tax he paid last year ($6,938,744, 17.4% of his taxable income) and explains why it’s not enough.
An interview with Soleio Cuervo, the man behind the ubiquitous thumbs-up icon (now on 2.5 million other sites). My favorite quote:
If a design—even one that took months to create—isn’t working, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg will toss it out entirely. “It is nerve-wracking for new designers,” said Mr. Cuervo. “I think of the stuff we do [as being] like building sand castles.”
On the difference between the hard correct decision and the easy wrong decision.
Richard Saul Wurman the original founder of TED has a new formula for the 21st century conference. Ignore the wankery (like “intellectual jazz”) and it might have some promise.
Klosterman argues that Breaking Bad is superior to Mad Men, The Sopranos, and The Wire. A well considered piece about the only TV shows worth talking about.
Rutledge’s redesign of the NY Times website caused quite a stir. Unfortunately it seems many of his critics failed to read the article. They not only missed his main point, that digital news is broken, but failed to even critique the design itself. Khoi Vinh (previous design director at the NY Times) gives a fairly balanced reply but it’s disappointing that it turned into a discussion about unsolicited redesigns rather than how we can improve online news, which I’d agree needs a thorough re-think.
Vinh takes a small step back after declaring The End of Client Servies. No arguments, companies will continue to need hired guns (design expertise) but the digital agency that continues to use an almost completely irrelevant advertising agency model does so at their own peril.
It’s gobbling up a remarkable amount of talent — an All-Star Team, if you will. The problem with all-star rosters, of course, is that as a team they often suck. It’s an odd phenomenon, but if you put too much greatness in the same room, things don’t always turn out so… great.
Matt Drance wonders if Facebook are taking a risk by putting too much talent in the same room. It’s an odd concern. A individual doesn’t need talent to ruin a good team (but ego might help). This all boils down to the individuals involved and Facebook’s ability to give their brilliant new talent scope and room to work. One thing is for sure, you don’t lower your recruitment standards out of a superstitious belief that an “All-Star team” is going to fail.
To be fair, the article acknowledges this and the leadership challenges involved, but ends by wondering if Facebook can replicate Apple’s design driven success. Why an Apple (or Steve Jobs) comparison is necessary I’m not sure, but seeing important companies put such great value in design is encouraging to see – no need for alarm bells.
Now we’re taking our publishing technology and everything we’ve learned and are setting off to help design the world’s largest book, Facebook.
Facebook continue to build what might become an unrivaled web design team (see here and here) and facility.
Great for the hundreds of of millions of Facebook users (and any future Facebook iPad offerings), although it’s a little sad we won’t get to see Push Pop improve on their brilliant work thus far.
Basically, I came to the conclusion that if I wanted to design great user experiences then that old model of being a design contractor or a studio or an agency would not work. Instead, it’s necessary to be a part of the company that owns the product, to be in a position where I can continually work on and improve the product without the artificial constraints of a services contract.
Khoi Vinh, the author of popular design blog Subtraction, previous Design Director for the NY Times, and previous founder of a design studio reflects on his recent decision to start his own company (more info on that is said to be coming soon).
Anyone who has worked in a digital studio will empathize with Vinh’s story. A team puts great work into the first iteration of a product only to see the money dry up, the contract end, and a product neglected when it most needs love – after real users get their hands on it!
Well written piece, and a nice (perhaps a little more considered) follow-up to Ben Pieratt’s recent article.
A nice bit of perspective as Australia debates a price on carbon.
For the data visualization people out there. Park searches for and analyzes visualizations that take the form of Tufte’s rarely adopted “slopegraph”.
The City of San Francisco has provided Twitter with massive tax-breaks to keep them in the city, and hopefully rejuvenate a blighted area of the Tenderloin. Are the tax breaks going to do much good if the employees enjoy catered lunches, private gyms, and rarely leave their office?
You don’t need to be a soccer fan to enjoy this one, if you enjoy excellent sports writing, here’s a brilliant example.
It’s clear that that educational institutions aren’t even close to keeping up with the demands of the internet industry. Elliott starts to consider what this might mean for our industry in the long term. For further reading see The UX Design Education Scam by Andy Rutledge.
Says little about working for a start-up, but an interesting and rather scathing insight into working on Wall Street.
An intense autobiographical piece of journalism. The story starts in Haiti, one year after the the “earthquake that shook the country into ugly chaos.” Also see this response from a group of female journalists and researchers who have lived and worked in Haiti.
Exactly as the title says.
Advice for keeping your company “flat” (as written about by Jason Fried of 37signals). For further reading see You weren’t meant to have a boss by Paul Graham.
Ever imagined going on a romantic walk in the woods with world’s richest man under 30? It could happen.
Your press checks are bullshit
Your personal logo is bullshit
Your employer is bullshit
Your studio is bullshit
A bold article by Ben Pieratt from Svpply on why designers might want to reconsider their careers.
The awkwardness, ambiguity and near uselessness of the 404 page.
I couldn’t believe my eyes. Who designed this evil (but kinda fun looking) death trap?
DesignersMX invites designers to submit a mix and design an accompanying cover. Knock Knock?
Filmed at Lautner’s famous Chemosphere House. If you like the building find yourself a copy of Infinite Space, a wonderful documentary on Lautner’s work (including this building). If you like Sasha Grey I don’t think you’ll need my help finding more of her.
The power of collaboration. Would love to see this in person.
(via ISO50)
And don’t say that you’re the idea guy. Having an idea is one piece, but it’s a very, very small piece. In fact, it’s so small that it’s actually better to earn a technical co-founder without the idea in place so that you guys come up with it together.
Excellent advice. It doesn’t matter if you’re looking for a co-founder, a designer, or even working with an agency. Your idea is useless until talented craftspeople get their hands on it. If you let them, they might be able to make it work. If you don’t, they are probably polishing a turd, and not enjoying the smell.
When I see a very talented (and professionally proven) designer, writer or engineer asking for charity on Kickstarter I can’t help but feel that something is a bit whack – on two counts.
1. The creative (or arguably the entrepreneur in this case) is selling themselves short. We often see Kickstarters justifying the amount they are asking for by playing down any idea they will be paid and noting that the money will go towards bills, materials, etc. Why shouldn’t a talented creative, working on a project that people want be paid well!?
2. Where’s my equity? We are seeing start-up costs be funded without any exchange in return. What if Openphoto grows to the size of Flickr? The earliest of angels receive nothing for their investment (in some Kickstarter projects in the many thousands of dollars), or even a promise of being paid back.
I doubt this is the first software project on Kickstarter but it’s come right out of Sunnyvale, and an ex Yahoo/Flickr employee. There’s angel capital flying around The Bay Area at the moment – I can’t imagine being in a better place to access investors (big or small).
Somewhere there’s probably a line between personal creative projects, and professional or commercial endeavors. I’d suggest it’s somewhere between:
I need more wool so I can knit my grandchildren beautiful sweaters; and; I need $25,000 to bootstrap my new start-up for free.
That being said, I’m not against charitable behavior in creative projects, I understand there’s many without access to capital, and it seems that people want to give, so best of luck to all involved. I’m just confused about who is actually benefitting here.
Syncing Instapaper and my Kindle has been one of the best moves I’ve made in a long time. I’m reading more of what I want to read, more often. Here’s what I’ve been reading lately.
It’s unlikely you’ve missed this one, but if you have, it’s a great read. Jose Antonio Vargas, a well regarded journalist uncovers himself as an illegal immigrant the US, and explains how he did it.
Marc Drummond against device specific design, urging us not to go to great lengths to support poor mobile browsers. IE6 haunted us for so long because we went to great lengths to support it. Let’s not repeat the same mistakes.
I’ve never owned (or even worn) a wet-suit. I’m convinced it’s time to try.
Is Apple’s plan to build the perfect office building repeating corporate and architectural mistakes we’ve seen many times before? Is this a big missed opportunity for Cupertino?
We fuss about code-based front-end optimization, but often neglect our biggest bandwidth hog.
Digital’s effect on how we produce, distribute and consume content, from one of the best thinkers in the space.
A brilliant look at the current (rather poor) state of retail in Australia, the innovators elsewhere, and potential futures. It touches distribution patterns, fabrication, local economies and localism etc.
Exactly as the title says.
An interesting critique on the typefaces MoMA selected to feature and add their collection.
It’s great news and more evidence that Apple are willing to lead the way in mobile browser development. position: fixed and overflow: scroll are also on their way with iOS 5, but let’s not get excited until Android catches up. Until these handsets enable position fixing and full overflow support we’ll have no choice but to continue to add JavaScript to fake these behaviors.
I’m not sure I buy into this ‘build in the browser to fuck with Apple’ idea. Steve Jobs evangelizes HTML5 and standards-based development and Apple backs this up by building the the best available mobile browser (which is probably the exact reason Facebook are working with it).
Let’s say Facebook succeeds with “Project Spartan” and becomes a distribution centre for browser based applications. I doubt Apple would be upset by Facebook (a company with unrivaled reach) showcasing the capabilities of Apple’s mobile products. I also doubt that people will stop developing native Apple applications.
If this is a war, it requires Apple to be against the evolution of browser-based application development. I don’t think they are. I think the quality of their browsers is evidence enough for now.
I recently stumbled across the Facebook Analog Research Laboratory and I’m really impressed. Working as a designer at a software start-up (if we can call Facebook one) doesn’t usually provoke images of ink, paint, raw materials and hardware.
Although it’s clear that Facebook are currently working to acquire (and here) a world class design team, most wouldn’t think of Facebook’s crisp and minimal design ethos as one that includes decorative practice and paint spills.
It turns out that Facebook (like any big company) use printed materials and physical artifacts for a variety of reasons – events in particular. Outsourcing is expensive, and I’m not just talking about the printing bills, but the administration, the transportation and timing logistics, processing the purchase orders and invoices etc.
Facebook are both saving money, and speeding up the production process. Need some signage for a developer event tonight? Why not design, print and construct them – right now! It allows the same flexibility and agility we strive to give developers in a start-up environment.
I’m yet to meet a designer that doesn’t love paper, raw materials and the workshop environment. A workshop like this must also help in attracting (or closing the deal with) versatile design candidates.
But best of all, it encourages, engages, develops and nurtures the companies’ creatives.
Need evidence? FPO profiles the tickets the Facebook team produced in less than 24 for Obama’s Town Hall event at Facebook’s headquarters.
Take a video tour of the Facebook Analog Research Laboratory.
Fixed elements (sidebars in particular) are becoming popular. You know those sidebars that wait until the top of window hits them, and they magically stick?
In simple situations (this site for example) CSS will do the trick. But what if dynamic content at the top of your page changes this calculation (a flash or notification message for example)? Or your header likes to change size?
Ozan helped me solve this problem, and I thought I’d share.
We’ll start by selecting said element, calling our custom function, and specifying how far from the top of the page it lives:
$('#fixed').myFixture({ topBoundary: 20 });
And our function looks something like this:
$.fn.myFixture = function (settings) {
return this.each(function () {
// default css declaration
var elem = $(this).css('position', 'fixed');
var setPosition = function () {
var top = 0;
// get no of pixels hidden above the the window
var scrollTop = $(window).scrollTop();
// get elements distance from top of window
var topBuffer = ((settings.topBoundary || 0) - scrollTop);
// update position if required
if (topBuffer >= 0) { top += topBuffer }
elem.css('top', top);
};
$(window).bind('scroll', setPosition);
setPosition();
});
};
Let’s revisit our first block of code, and base the calculation on the height of a header element above it:
var header = $('header')
, topBoundary = header.outerHeight();
$('#fixed').myFixture({ topBoundary: topBoundary });
Another (even more flexible) approach would be to make topBoundary equal to the offset().top of the #fixed element on load.
Enjoy!
The Topguest team took some friends to Lake Tahoe the weekend before last. As you can see, it’s a really beautiful part of the world.
A post I wrote over at the Topguest blog on rapid blog development with Jekyll – the same platform I built this blog with. If you’re interested in front-end development I think it’s worth a read.
Great news. As of August 1st Google Apps (including gmail and docs) will drop support for IE7. If Google can do it, so can I.
“As the world moves more to the web, these new browsers are more than just a modern convenience, they are a necessity for what the future holds.”
Have found some simply stunning Anni Albers (the wife of my favourite artist, Josef Albers) prints at the National Gallery Of Australia.