“Barack Hussein Obama is no more a terrorist than George Walker Bush is a device used to help old people get around independently”Andy Zaltzman, via Coudal
As good as Apple is for creating buzz around their new products, and really breaking the mold when it comes to industrial design, they have to figure out a way to make people feel less stupid for having their old products. Yesterday morning I thought my MacBook Pro was pretty sweet. Now it just looks stupid. So does my old iPod. Great marketing of course, to get me out to the Apple Store and spend the thousands of dollars I don’t have. But can’t they maybe introduce more incremental improvements? Instead of rendering this expensive laptop both ugly and practically useless in one press conference?
Jared has another blog and no one told me about it.
The Professor, Mr. Dil, has unleashed his new beast at johndilworth.com. Nicely refined, John. No naked cherub babies, but well done. Who can name his title font?
Keep your eyes glued, as John will be displaying much of his MFA work, and if you’re lucky you can get in on these ridiculously cheap fine art prints he’s hocking. One of my favorites is on sale now, his Act Well Thy Part print. Now I’m just waiting for the Pants of Truth to come out, wherein John asks the vexing question, “Why is the truth concerned with getting its pants on?”
Finally, wine for Mormons. First Blush, juice made from wine grapes (yes, it’s non-alcoholic), with a nice winey description: featuring “the unique, complex flavors of Merlot, Cabernet, Chardonnay and Syrah grapes.” I know someone here will have a problem with this, but check the design! Love the rich colors of the juice, which the design plays very well with.
Maybe now I can finally make good on my threat to start drinking..
From the Dieline blog.
Addictive little game called The Eyeballing Game. Test your ability to eyeball geometry and graphic relationships.
New in Gmail Labs: Stop sending email you later regret. This isn’t a joke, and it’s genius. Enable “Mail Goggles,” and Gmail will ask you a few math problems before it sends your email to make sure you’re sober enough to really mean what you just wrote. The feature is only active late at night in your timezone, and only on weekends, when some people might be prone to doing things they regret.
Love this idea, of designing things to be harder to encourage a certain behavior. We did something similar in our new Mission Office application here internally, making certain financial actions harder by requiring extra clicks or making the controls slightly obscure to discourage using them. Speed bumps are another example of using “poor” design to lead your user to act a certain way.
News coming out of Winnetka, IL, today:
Police: iPhone Left In Hot Car For Three Hours
This normally peaceful suburban town is still reeling following the news Monday that a local resident, whose name is being withheld by police pending a full investigation, left an iPhone unattended for more than three hours in a car parked in the hot sun.
“Responding to calls from concerned passersby, who observed the iPhone sitting in a vehicle in the parking lot of the Westfield Shopping Center, police arrived on the scene at approximately 4 p.m. and immediately intervened to save the device,” said Winnetka police chief Douglas Blaine. “Security cameras have shown that the iPhone had been in the car—with the doors locked and the windows rolled up—since 1 p.m. Due to the tragic and highly emotional nature of this case, we cannot say any more at this time.”
Rule #1 on Seth Godin’s Nine steps to Powerpoint magic is “Don’t use Powerpoint at all.” Amen to that. The other 8 are also worth a read, for those of us who can’t escape a roomful of suits from time to time.
#ldsconf is the biggest trend on twitter right now.. pretty interesting to read responses to General Conference in real time.
Speaking of color, here’s a sweet Guide to Choosing Colors for Your Brand. The graph above was created by Dmitry at Usability Post using a new website called Cymbolism, which “attempts to quantify the association between colors and words.” Nice resources no matter what your color background.
“There are two types of people in the world:Grubing Fireball, on the new iPhone-ready Flickr.
those who can’t tell the difference between
Arial and Helvetica, and those who despise Arial.”
“Mel needs a big wet sloppy kiss.”Aaron, resorting to sheer affection in the face of news that IE 6 may someday be retired here at Church Headquarters. Aaron later agreed to settle for a “knuckle bump” if Michelle would name her first born “Mozilla”.
“There’s a very thin lineGraphic designer David Carson,
between simple and clean and powerful
and simple and clean and boring.”
A slide from Daniel Burka’s April 2008 Future of Web Design presentation, called “Iteration & You”, and it looks like a good deck of inspiring slides (except for the Cameron one).
Looking for some inspiration today, and hoping you guys can help me out. I’m looking for websites that make extensive use of color. Non-white, full color websites that buck the NY Times or Apple (or Northtemple) clean but sterile style of black type on white background.
What are your favorite colorful sites?
“I get this. My view is … why say, ever, anything bad about a person? Why don’t we like them and celebrate them and be happy for her elevation to the ticket? And just say that she was a good choice for him and we disagree with them?”Bill Clinton, on the appeal of Sarah Palin.
We’re happy to announce the new Mormon.org today, the newest Church website launch from our group. Pepe Sustaita and I worked on this site, with hours of help from many other designers on our team.
This project will definitely be written up for a case study at some point, as we encountered so many crazy problems and challenges. This final product represents over a year of hard work, and includes thousands of design decisions and compromises based on technology, client taste, feasibility, content constraints, and other unique circumstances.
The site also represents the work of not only many designers, but our excellent teams of Java developers, QA engineers, Flash developers, program managers, product managers, infrastructure teams, and many others. All in all, over 50 people had a hand in getting this product off the ground and in front of the millions of monthly visitors.
Challenges aside, Pepe and I definitely can stand behind our work and we believe it will bring our church’s most basic beliefs to the world in ways it never has before. One huge feature is the ability for any visitor anywhere in the world to chat live with a member of our church, any time of day. The site is also designed to coordinate with a national print and broadcast advertising campaign around the “Answers to Life’s Questions” theme.
Pull it up and take a minute to browse through it, and please let us know what you think. More details and insight coming soon, for sure.
New Apple iPod Nano ad, featuring the song “Bruises” by Chairlift.