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Dexter Intro by Ty Mattson
I hate Ty so much. So, so much.
Khoi Vinh on Too Much Design
It’s difficult to say exactly how much design is “too much,” but finding that middle ground may be the most important job that an interaction designer has.”
— Khoi Vinh
Charles Eames on The Details
The details are not the details. They make the design.”
-Charles Eames
C.S. Lewis on Danger and Beauty
I do not think the forest would be so bright, nor the water so warm, nor love so sweet, if there were no danger in the lakes.”
— C.S. Lewis, “Out of the Silent Planet”
Lifetime Gear, Vol. I
Vintage wool sweater
Corter Single Wrap Leather Japan Bracelet
Red Wing 6-Inch 875
Muji Gray B5 and Pocket Book Size
Vintage speakeasy key bottle opener
Corter Single Wrap Leather Bracelet
Tanner Goods Utility Bifold Wallet
Red Wing Mink Oil
Raleigh Denim Thin Fit Originals from Union Made
Levi’s Long Sleeve Denim Hood
Jordi Parra’s Spotify Box
Jordi Parra is an interaction design student at the Umeå Institute of Design, and as a degree project is building a stand alone Spotify box that allows you to listen to your Spotify music without a computer, instead using a gorgeously design player. The video below really gives a great walk-through of the project and the product itself. It looks to be a really fun little undertaking, and I’m a fan of how it uses the great part of digital music and combines it with a more classic, old-world means of interaction. I love how influenced Parra obviously is with 60’s era Eames and Braun products.
The design is beautiful, and the packaging is something I would keep rather than throw away. The whole piece is wonderfully designed; there appears to have been a tremendous amount of planning and research put into it, and the quality and skills invested are obvious.
You can read more about the whole project on Parra’s tumblr site covering the experience and TechCrunch’s write-up.
A few pictures of the finished piece:
(Found via Rasmus Andersson)
New YASLY!
Danny Jones continues to rule all of the design world, including your face and eye holes. His talent and skill are remarkable, plus he’s one of the best guy’s I’ve ever met. I’m lucky to know him as a designer, and I’m even luckier to have him as a great friend.
Steve Jobs Killed the Music Business? Nope.
So apparently, Bon Jovi (currently the most relevant of music stars), thinks that Steve Job and Apple—through the power of the iTunes store—have killed the music industry.
A big complaint of Jovi’s comes from his frustration that consumers are no longer “making a decision based on the jacket, not knowing what the record sounded like, and looking at a couple of still pictures and imagining it.”
Huh.
Now, as a designer, I’m all for judging a book by it’s cover (to some extent), but to be mad that the experience of buying music has changed and that buying a record in person without having heard any of it is the fundamentally most important part of a music purchase? All this time I thought that it was the music itself that was the part you needed to worry about and connect with.
Does Bon Jovi think that that was really how people bought records in the past? By randomly dropping $20 on a record they’d never heard? What about hearing songs on a radio, or having a friend recommend an album, or seeing a crappy hair band video on MTV? All of the real reasons people bought records in the past still exist, but just in different forms. I hear new music through more avenues than I did in the past (online radio, broadcast radio, movies, TV shows, subscription services), I still get recommendations from friends, but just through the social web, and I still see crappy videos on MTV various channels.
This is the same noise you hear from other publishers. The demand for your content and/or services has not changed, the only thing that has changed is the channel in which you can deliver that content and/or service. Change and adapt with the times or someone else will fill you spot fulfilling the public’s specific need. And, being a capitalist, I’m totally okay with companies failing or being surpassed by another company who learns how to do what you do better. Competition breads better results.
Another Big Life Change
Hello, my name is Aaron Martin and I now live in Palo Alto, California. I am the new Senior User Experience Design for the mobile team at Aol. Here’s to a new challenge.
Remembering the Challenger
It was Tuesday, January 28, 1986 when Space Shuttle Challenger broke apart, a mere 73 seconds into its flight, taking along its seven crew members. I was only 6 years old and in 1st grade, but I remember it vividly.
I had gotten to school early, I believe to watch the launch, my teach Mrs. Brown had wheeled in one of those great, late 80’s school TV rollers with the stacks of VCRs and the extension cord attached. She turned off the lights and we all sat at our desks, watching the feed on NASA TV. Teacher Christa McAuliffe’s presence on the flight gave schools everywhere a reason to tune in, so more children saw the explosion unfold than did adults, since CNN had the only live feed. 1986 had much less ubiquitous cable television than does 2011.
We all watched as the shuttle lifted off, and then just over a minute into the flight the shuttle blew apart with rockets tacking off in different directions. It took a minute or so for everyone to realize what was happening, as much as a class of 6 year olds could. I remember looking around and wondering what had just happened, and at that moment, Mrs. Brown walked up to the TV, muted the audio, walked back to her desk, laid her head down, and started crying. We sat in the dark what seemed like forever. I don’t remember anything else from that day. I don’t remember Mrs. Brown getting up from her desk and turning the lights back on, to start the day’s classes. That was the last memory I have of Mrs. Brown and that 1st grade year, and in my mind she’s still sitting at that desk, crying, and has been for the last 25 years.
There is one other thing I remember from that time, not school related—though it had as much an impact on me as anything I ever learned in school—and that was Ronald Reagan’s national speech regarding the tragedy. I sat on that floor in my living room with the rest of my family and watched it on TV. I remember just staring at the kindly old grandfather of America, not really understanding what all he was saying, but still being moved by how he spoke to a whole country and tried to lift the tremendous weight of it all.
If you haven’t heard Reagan’s speech in a while, or at all, it’s a monument to presidential leadership, courage, and strength.
Delvard: A New Typeface from Typonine
Delvard is a new face from the fine designers at Typonine. I’m a fan of the small details that bring the whole face together. There are slight curves on the lowercase arms give it a playfulness, crossbars that are higher on the uppercase letters, and really wide-open bowls in some of the lowercase, all of which make the face seem really fun and original. It has a strong Fedra feel, but there are enough differences to make it feel unique, specifically the axis of some of the crossbars and accents. Overall, a really well designed typeface.
My Favorite Albums of 2010
Einstein on Knowledge
If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.”
— Albert Einstein
Seth Godin on The Market’s Taste
When it comes to art, to human work that changes people, the mass market is a fool. A dolt. Stupid.
If you wait for the market to tell you that you’re great, you’ll merely end up wasting time. Or perhaps instead you will persuade yourself to ship the merely good, and settle for the tepid embrace of the uninvolved.
Great work is always shunned at first.
Would we (the market) benefit from more pandering by marketers churning out average stuff that gets a quick glance, or would we all be better off with passionate renegades on a mission to fulfill their vision?”
— Seth Godin
