john dilworth archives
Design for the Other 90% , a new exhibition at the National Design Museum takes a look at the efforts made by Designers to tackle projects that help the poorer people in the world (the other 90%) who do not have access to many of the things that we take for granted.
posted by
john
on Monday, May 07, 2007
“ooooo…look, pretty!!”
while conversing on the topic of Designer ADD, Chris, Jason and I were all momentarily distracted by a shiny object.
posted by
john
on Wednesday, Apr 18, 2007
Why the overwhelming number of design flops? Alice Rowsthorn of the International Herald Tribune gives 8 reasons why, despite our best intentions, bad design continues to flood the market.
posted by
john
on Tuesday, Apr 10, 2007
“Among the goals of good information design, maximizing local usability is not the highest—although you want to do the best you can to reduce administrative clutter and inconvenience. More important is the quality, relevance, and integrity of the content; making high-resolution comparisons; showing process, mechanism, dynamics, causality, explanation; and capturing in our displays some of the multivariate complexity of the world we seek to understand. If achieving these higher-level goals takes us to inconvenient display technologies, so be it.”
Edward Tufte, February 4, 2002 speaking reasonable in a discussion about the value of Flash in regards to Usability and Information Design
posted by
john
on Tuesday, Apr 03, 2007
TIME Magazine publishes today with a new design from Pentagram. The new design looks great. I’m loving the bold use of large headline type which is used to identify sections.
posted by
john
on Friday, Mar 16, 2007
I came across some interesting facts about world languages and the how many of them are represented on the Internet.
- There are 6,912 living languages spoken in the world today.
- 36 of these languages make up about 77% of the world’s population.
- There are 311 languages spoken in the United States.
- There are over twice as many people in the world who speak Mandarin Chinese as their primary language over those who speak English as their primary language.
- Arabic is the fastest growing language on the internet. It is growing at a rate of 930% (vs. 131% for English)!
- Chinese, French, Spanish and Portuguese, as Internet languages are all growing at rates 2-3 times faster than English.
- Other world languages (excluding: English, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, German, French, Portuguese, Korean, Italian, Arabic) make up over 18% of the Internet users, and the percentage of those users on the internet is growing at a rate of over 430%!
From: Languages of the World
posted by
john
on Friday, Mar 02, 2007
I visited AIGA today, and didn’t even realize that their site had been totally re-designed by Happy Cog until I read it on Zeldman’s site.
I’m still trying to figure out if the fact that I didn’t notice the re-design at all (until I read about it somewhere else) is a good thing or a bad thing.
posted by
john
on Thursday, Mar 01, 2007
“If clever people have one defining characteristic, it is that they do not want to be led. This clearly creates a problem for you as a leader.”
Leading Clever People – Havard Business Review (via Trizle)
posted by
john
on Thursday, Mar 01, 2007
I had been looking for a good screen recording utility in order to create a couple software & web site demos for a presentation this week.
Late on Monday night the purchase decision between Snapz Pro and Screen Mimic came down to which software I thought I could get licenses to the fastest. Snapz Pro had their own shopping cart (as opposed to a Kagi payment system)— it seemed like the safest bet for me to get the software working instantly was to go with the the automated payment. With Screen Mimic, I might have had to wait up to 24hrs for them to send me my license key. I might have reconsidered if I had been given a full featured time limited demo instead.
After dropping $70 for a copy of Snapz Pro Cameron tells me on Tuesday about iShowU a $20 alternative.
posted by
john
on Wednesday, Feb 21, 2007
“Pouring tons of money, tons of resources, and tons of people at a problem is like using a jackhammer to break out of jail. Putting a few smart people on the problem, embracing constraints, not trying to solve the wrong problems, focusing on precision, not using seven words when four will do, and taking the time to get it done right is like using the spoon.”
Jason Fried from 37signals explains their project and development philosophy, and why you’ve got a better chance of “breaking out” using a spoon over a jackhammer.
posted by
john
on Friday, Jan 26, 2007
What if plastic wasn’t invented?
We are currently undergoing our own “What if?” exercise. It seems to be a great way to spur creative thinking. Innovative ideas begin to emerge through the process of inventing constraints.
posted by
john
on Friday, Jan 05, 2007
“There’s a storm brewing in designland. A backlash is gathering momentum, and what’s more, some of its chief dissidents are design’s leading lights” – an interesting read from Core77
posted by
john
on Wednesday, Jan 03, 2007
If you’ve thought about making a new year’s resolution to be more organized, don’t bother.
In the article Saying Yes to Mess, Penelope Green of the New York Times suggests that studies are showing that the mess on your desk might be positively related to your creativity, your salary, and even your general “coolness” as a parent.
posted by
john
on Wednesday, Dec 27, 2006
Here’s a great sampling of beautiful Iranian Typography via mezzoblue. This kind of stuff really makes you realize that there is little difference between words and pictures.
posted by
john
on Wednesday, Dec 13, 2006
