Roger Black interviews Luke Hayman, the outgoing design director of New York magazine.
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kottke.org posts about design
Lisa Strausfeld’s team at Pentagram has designed the interface for the One Laptop Per Child computer. “Users can move outward from the Home view, where they can set preferences like color, to the Friends view, where they can chat with their friends, to the larger Neighborhood view, where they can locate other users and gather around an activity.”
Update: The OLPC human interface guidelines document has a lot more on the interface. (thx, bob)
At The Art of the Book event last week, the panel was asked why there were so few female superstar designers. Milton Glaser took a shot at answering the question (many women choose family over work during the crucial superstar career development years) but judging by the reaction afterwards online, his comments were not appreciated by some. To be fair, Glaser’s comments were taken out of context, I think, and what he said is a part of the overall answer to the question. On Design Observer, Michael Beirut, who was the moderator for that evening’s event, takes a closer look at the issue. “The real question was the unspoken one: ‘Why is it that you guys up there are always…guys?’” Oh, and here’s a list of women speakers for your conference.
The Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics has a logo that changes every time it gets used on letterhead or displayed on a web site. The logo system was designed by Michael Schmitz and is based on cellular automata like John Conway’s Game of Life. “Parameters [for the logo] are coupled to certain factors: number of employees = density, funding = speed, number of publications = activity. Different logos are being ‘bred’ and then picked by fitness in relation to the parameters or voted for by the employees.” Schmitz’s PDF document Evolving Logo is worth a look even if you don’t read German. (Anyone want to do a translation? It looks fascinating.) (via bbj)
Designing for persistence
Took in The Art of the Book lecture at the 92nd Street Y last night. Milton Glaser, Chip Kidd (“a modern day Truman Capote” I heard him described as afterward), Dave Eggers, with Michael Beirut moderating. One of the most interesting comments came late in the proceedings from Dave Eggers, who described one of the main goals of the McSweeney’s design staff as attempting to design the books as well and as beautifully as they could as objects so that people would be compelled to save them. That way, even if people didn’t have time to read them soon after purchase, they couldn’t bear to throw/give the book away and would instead put it on their shelf in the hopes — McSweeney’s hopes, that is — that the buyer would at some point pull it down off the shelf and give it another try.
This design goal runs counter to the design process behind most contemporary book jackets, which are engineered almost entirely for the purpose of eliciting in the potential buyer a “buy me” reaction within two seconds of spotting them. McSweeney’s, as a champion of authors, wants the writing to be read while most major publishing companies, as champions of their shareholders, want books to be purchased. People buying books is important to the goal of getting the writing within them read, but McSweeney’s emphasis on designing books to last in people’s homes is a clever way to pursue that goal after the sale.
Penguin is releasing a series of books with blank covers with the idea being that the reader fills them in. The first books in the series include Crime and Punishment and Emma. Penguin has a gallery of reader submissions…send in your best shot.
Cool slideshow of 221 years of mastheads from the London Times. (via newsdesigner, who has more on the recent Times refresh)
Event at the 92nd St. Y on Dec 4: The Art of the Book: Behind the Covers with Dave Eggers, Chip Kidd and Milton Glaser. Tickets are only $10 if you’re 35 or younger.
Item of note included in the announcement of Luke Hayman’s addition to the NYC Pentagram office: he and Paula Scher are completely redesigning Time magazine, due to launch in January 2007. Hayman was formerly design director at New York magazine.
An oldie but a goodie: Bruce Mau’s Incomplete Manifesto for Growth. “Ask stupid questions. Growth is fueled by desire and innocence. Assess the answer, not the question. Imagine learning throughout your life at the rate of an infant.”
Update: Also old but good: Dean Allen’s Annotated Manifesto for Growth. (thx, oscar)
A collection of two-minute Photoshop tricks, delivered via text, audio, and video.
Portfolio site of graphic designer Si Scott. The navigation is ridiculous and inscrutable, but the work within is worth seeing.
Some mobile phones come with water damage stickers that change color when they get wet, thereby voiding the warranty on your phone if it stops working, no matter if the color change and the breakage is related. “As a designer, I would much prefer to look at the problem as ‘How can we improve the sealing of phones so that water ingress is no longer a major problem?’ than ‘How can we design something to cover our backs and shift all the blame onto the user for our design fault?’”
Praise be! The New Yorker seems to have reversed their position on splitting their articles up into multiple pages…the articles from this week’s issue all seem to be one-pagers (for example). Nice work.
Update: I spoke too soon…they are still doing multi-page articles. What I observed seemed to be a technological hiccup. Booo!!!
Fuck, this pisses me off: the New Yorker is splitting up their longer pieces into multiple pages (for example: Ben McGrath’s article on YouTube). I know, everyone else does it and it’s some sort of “best practice” that we readers let them get away with so they can boost pageviews and advertising revenue at the expense of user experience, but The New Yorker was the last bastion of good behavior on this issue and I loved them for it. This is a perfect example of an architecture of control in design and uninnovation. I want the New Yorker’s web site to get better, not worse. Blech and BOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!
Update: Dan Lockton has some further thoughts on multi-page articles.
Update: The New Yorker seems to have reversed their opinion on the matter. Nice work.
Update: Nope, still busted. Crap.
Collection of x-rated movies posters from the 60
Collection of x-rated movies posters from the 60s and 70s. NSFW.
Alan Fletcher: “I’d sooner do the same on Monday or Wednesday as I do on a Saturday or Sunday. I don’t divide my life between labour and pleasure.”
Images of the dashed line in use (
Images of the dashed line in use (as hidden geometry, movement, paths, ephemeral material, etc.). “I’ve had trouble justifying my excitement about this intricate visual detail, so I thought it would be good to collect a bunch of examples from over fifty years of information design history, to show it as a powerful visual element in ubicomp situations.” (via migurski)
Deron Bauman on design language: “What I am beginning to suspect however is that contemporary designers are spending more time creating products that reflect the design language of the brand than are perpetuating beauty. For instance, it seems more important to create a car that looks like a Pontiac than to create a Pontiac that is beautiful.”
Short profile of designer Paula Scher in Fast Company. “I’m not going to put on a party dress and play nicey-nicey because Laura Bush is having tea with people she doesn’t know who the hell they are anyway.”
Forgot to post this when it came out a month ago, but John Maeda’s book on simplicty is available. Maeda worked on the his ideas for The Laws of Simplicity in public on his SIMPLICITY blog.
A weblog about “architectures of control in design”, an ongoing exploration of products “designed with features that intentionally restrict the way the user can behave, or enforce certain modes of behaviour”.
1000 words of advice for design teachers and another 100 words of advice for design students. “Inspiration and perspiration. You need ‘em both.”
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