VÄNDER VANDER: Design & Found Things

The XX - Intro

Thu, 18 Feb 2010 21:01:19 -0500

The XX - Intro

thedeviltopay: blahka blahka blahka

Thu, 18 Feb 2010 21:00:23 -0500

thedeviltopay:

blahka blahka blahka

Don't Google URLs you should be bookmarking...

Tue, 16 Feb 2010 11:15:00 -0500

…or you may end up looking like an idiot.

This has been all over the internet by this point, but I still think it’s worth mentioning.

So…

Read Write Web posts a blog post about Facebook Connect and Facebook’s new partnership with AOL to integrate your Facebook friends with your AIM buddies.
Somehow that story rises to the first page of Google results for “Facebook Login”
Despite the fact that it was the fifth result, hundreds of people click the link thinking they’re logging into Facebook.
Confused and angry Facebook moms, grandmas and dads post comment after comment asking where their Facebook is, why they can’t login and why Facebook has redesigned AGAIN!?!

As one of my co-workers pointed out, it’s hard to remember sometimes that this is the way a large segment of the population finds websites. It’s silly, it’s stupid and it makes no sense, but it’s true.

So if you’re one of those people constantly Googling sites you frequently use instead of just typing in the url or (here’s a novel idea!) using a bookmark, make sure the site you think you’re visiting is the one you actually want. Luckily all that happened in this case was people logged in and posted some comments that made them look silly.

3000 Backgrounds to change your life!

Mon, 15 Feb 2010 23:04:00 -0500

…and other design stupidity.

Education is experience and surrounding yourself with people who have more of it than you do. Lately it seems that there’s an abundance of “design” sites with content made up almost entirely of ridiculous lists, all of which supposedly help you become a better designer (SmashingMag, WebDesignerDepot, the list of lists goes on and on). What’s more, they’re typically written by people who don’t know the first thing about design as a craft.

If you want to become a better designer, don’t waste your time reading lists. Lists build site traffic, not great designers.

Go get some books and surround yourself with people more talented than you are. You’ll be a hell of a lot better off.

via alwaysphilthy As awesome as these tattoos are and as much as...

Sat, 13 Feb 2010 20:39:15 -0500

via alwaysphilthy

As awesome as these tattoos are and as much as I think I want some like it, I’ve resigned myself to the fact that I will never have anything like this.

thedeviltopay: (via alwaysphilthy)

Sat, 13 Feb 2010 08:36:53 -0500

thedeviltopay:

(via alwaysphilthy)

I’ve been listening to the charts on wearehunted a lot...

Fri, 12 Feb 2010 20:37:15 -0500

I’ve been listening to the charts on wearehunted a lot lately.

via newfavorites Flickr Find: 101 Alphabets by W. Ben. Hunt and...

Fri, 12 Feb 2010 08:29:00 -0500

via newfavorites

Flickr Find: 101 Alphabets by W. Ben. Hunt and Ed. C. Hunt

(via bloggindergin)

Fri, 12 Feb 2010 08:22:59 -0500

(via bloggindergin)

via grainedit & livenow Some time ago I was diagnosed with...

Fri, 05 Feb 2010 11:06:36 -0500

via grainedit & livenow

Some time ago I was diagnosed with cancer. Instantly perspective changed within me! The fearful, human part of my being wanted to resist this disease, label it as “bad”, and be at the mercy of this situation. But the essence of my spirit knew that this situation could not be isolated from the hidden harmony I seek to follow each day. Having my physical life threatened, provoked within me a strong separation between my spiritual and physical being. Although my physical body was being attacked … my spiritual essence was untouchable.

My experience with cancer was this; Live Now! Cancer changed the way I ate, slept, and most importantly, the way I live. Before cancer I was like most folks, just cruising along. It was during my treatment, when I started to discover what cancer could gift to me - the ability to absorb every moment as if each one were my whole life. The Live Now Project was born!

blergindergin: Haäfe & Hafe have some pretty nice...

Thu, 04 Feb 2010 16:07:22 -0500

blergindergin:

Haäfe & Hafe have some pretty nice ampersands for sale. And at $9.99 it’s almost silly to even bother trying to pirate them!

Hot Diggity Dog! Haäfe & Haph presents a selection of custom ampersands at just 9.99! These 10 ampersands come packaged as .eps vector files and an opentype font!

Loving this watch. Anyone know what the heck it is? EDIT:...

Tue, 02 Feb 2010 13:28:00 -0500

Loving this watch. Anyone know what the heck it is?

EDIT: Mystery solved. It’s a Burberry. Still can’t find any info on it though :/

"We cannot expect people to have respect for law and order until we teach respect to those we have..."

Thu, 24 Dec 2009 09:45:00 -0500

““We cannot expect people to have respect for law and order until we teach respect to those we have entrusted to enforce those laws.” — Hunter S. Thompson”

I’m all for sampling and reworking, but this is just plain...

Tue, 22 Dec 2009 10:59:00 -0500

I’m all for sampling and reworking, but this is just plain lazy and pathetic. They literally took the Yankees logo and reflected the N down the middle. Weakkkk.

Taste... it matters more than you think

Mon, 21 Dec 2009 20:55:42 -0500

I’ve got so many other things I should be working on instead of typing this, but after reading Dustin Curtis’ reply to Mr. X’s email, I had to post it.

A little background

In May of this year, Dustin posted an article on his blog called “Dear American Airlines” in which he pretty heavily criticized American Airlines’ website and offered up a redesign. Like many airlines (American ones especially… ahem Delta) AA’s website and customer service has gone down the drain. So I can’t say I was all that surprised to see his post and redesign. While probably not the easiest to hear for those responsible, his criticisms were valid and addressed a problem common not just to American Airlines, but to so many designers and companies that are just… bad.

Surprisingly, the User Experience Architect at American Airlines not only read what Dustin had to say, he actually responded and allowed Dustin to post his email (provided he was referred to as Mr. X rather than his real name).

The response was mostly what I expected… someone with a lot of experience trying to do a decent job and hindered by the size of the organization and the bureaucracy that inevitably comes with it. Too many people involved at all stages in the process and in the end, it’s a huge mess.

While I’ve been in similar situations, I can’t say I think it’s a valid reason for AA’s site to look like it does. Reading Mr. X’s reply, I couldn’t help but feel it was more of a cop-out and an excuse than the explanation and apology I was hoping for.

So, “What makes for good designers, good employees, good engineers, good employees, and good companies?”

There’s a common attribute that makes for good designers, good engineers, good employees, and good companies. For a long time, I couldn’t figure out what it was. Was it practice? Was it skill? Was it innate ability? Turns out, it’s none of those. It’s taste.

When I first started designing as a hobby, I hated everything I made. I knew it was terrible, and no matter how hard I tried, I could never make it good enough for myself. But I didn’t give up, and after a while something clicked. I started to sort of like my work. But I am still not satisfied; every day I reach higher, trying to grasp the level of awesomeness that I can feel but can’t recreate.

I didn’t realize this was happening until I saw a video of Ira Glass, the host of This American Life, explaining the phenomenon as it relates to writing and production. He points out how that gap between ability and taste drives creative people to achieve great things. But I think it goes deeper than that. I think you can abstract taste one level further from the people of a company and apply it to the culture of the company.

The permeation of bad taste and large organizations

In the same way bad designers sometimes never get better because they don’t know what they’re aiming for, some companies have a culture that just promotes bad taste and doesn’t encourage improvement. The ideology permeates the entire organization, lowering the required level of awesomeness expected from each employee. Companies like this just float along, in the background of capitalism, exchanging goods and services for money. And that is it. They suck.

A lot of people blame bad design and bad customer service in big organizations on the fact that they are big organizations. This is what Mr. X did. But that’s a cop-out. The reason large companies with bad design are the way they are is because they are run poorly from the top, with philosophies that force the entire company to behave like its lowest common denominator. The company ends up making bad products. It ends up treating its customers badly. And if the company is being run by people who don’t have taste, it gets stuck. Eventually, the company’s brand suffers. This is what has happened at American Airlines.

Customer experience is the new brand

I’m not referring to a brand as a logo and a typeface. I’m referring to the new kind of brand, the one is formed by the entire experience of a customer’s interaction. That experience gets branded into his or her memory and leaks into the buzz of modern culture. If you can’t make a good customer experience from start to finish, you’ve failed to generate brand value that will attract customers to come back for repeat business and tell their friends to come back, too. That’s how good customer experience directly affects the bottom line.

It’s not age, skill, talent, education or experience that make for the best designers, companies and brands… it all boils down to taste and it matters. It’s what separates the mediocre from the exceptional. You can have the best designers with the best ideas, but if the decision makers at the top don’t have any taste, mediocrity is to be expected.

New ABC: L - Is for LAN

Fri, 18 Dec 2009 22:03:54 -0500

New ABC: J - Is For JPEG

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 20:18:00 -0500

Another page done for the ABCs. Onward to L!

Elizabeth Gilbert on creative genius

Mon, 14 Dec 2009 11:51:29 -0500

This is kind of old, but I just came across it on Derek Sivers’ blog. I’ve never read his blog until today, but he’s got some great posts and this is one of them.

Creativity is one of those weird things that I think people, especially creative people, are constantly trying to figure out where it comes from. The more you try to figure out where it’s coming from, the more you realize you’ve got no idea and you really didn’t have all that much to do with it… which is pretty scary when your job depends on pulling these ideas out of thin air and somehow harnessing them for something great. Paradoxically, this only gets worse when you actually manage to have a great idea and do something great with it.

So if you’ve got a free 19 minutes or so, it’s worth the time.

"The person who loves their dream of community will destroy community (even if their intentions are..."

Sat, 05 Dec 2009 13:34:49 -0500

““The person who loves their dream of community will destroy community (even if their intentions are ever so earnest), but the person who loves those around them will create community.””

- Dietrich Bonhoeffer

New Supers: Flat Top Black Leather?

Wed, 02 Dec 2009 10:11:03 -0500

Super’s got a new version of their Flat Top sunglasses in black. What’s different about these is they’re covered in leather. They look way better than they sound. I’m interested to see how they age over time.