“Art is an idea that’s found perfect form. There are too many possibilities. No matter how perfectly you do something, it can still be improved.”
—Paul Rand
Art…
The Accidental News Explorer
The Accidental News Explorer is a new type of news app that celebrates chance encounters and serendipity. Start by searching for a subject. Once you’ve browsed the suggested articles taken from hundreds of news sources, tap the “related topics” button to discover connected topics, which in turn lead to more articles. Each article leads to new things; the more curious you are, the longer your journey will be.
Love the Lawrence Block quote on their site:
“One aspect of serendipity to bear in mind is that you have to be looking for something in order to find something else.” – Lawrence Block.
Our Digital Crisis
“The Internet is causing mass homogenization of human identity, making us all look the same.
We use the same tools and social networks, fitting into the same templates, designed by companies to maximize page views and profits (with some notable exceptions like Craigslist).
Most online experiences are made, like fast food, to be cheap, easy, and addictive: appealing to our hunger for connection but rarely serving up nourishment. Shrink-wrapped junk food experiences are handed to us for free by social media companies, and we swallow them up eagerly, like kids given buckets of candy with ads on all the wrappers”.
Our Digital Crisis, by Jonathan Harris, Read Full Post
(via pforti)
Great Design
“Great design does not come from great processes; it comes from great designers.” – Fred Brooks
Read the Wired Article
(via @bb_mke)
Advice to Graphic Design Students
In this post Frank Chimero shares every little piece of advice he can think of he would give current Graphic Design Students.
Some of my favorite nuggets of Chimero-wisdom are:
Design does not equal client work.
Keep two books on your nightstand at all times: one fiction, one non-fiction.
Develop a point of view. Think about what experiences you have that many others do not. Then, think of what experiences you have that almost everyone else has. Then, mix those two things and try to make someone cry or laugh or feel understood.
Adobe software never stops being frustrating.
If you meet a person who cares about the same obscure things you do, hold on to them for dear life. Sympathy is medicine.
Start brave and brash: you can always make things more conservative, but it’s hard to make things more radical.
Everyone is just making it up as they go along.
I am wondering about this one:
If you see a ladder in a piece of design or illustration, it means the deadline was short.
Frank, Can you explain?
Manual Curation vs Crowdsourced
“A good example of manual curation vs. crowdsourced curation is the competing app markets on the Apple iPhone and Google Android phone operating systems. Apple fans complain that the Android marketplace has too many low-quality apps for any given task. They complain that it’s hard to find an “official” or “sanctioned” app. On the other hand, Android fans criticise Apple for limiting their choices. They don’t want to be beholden to the whims of a select few. Apple is a monarchy, albeit with a wise and benevolent king. Android is burgeoning democracy, inefficient and messy, but free. Apple is the last, best example of the Industrial Age and its top-down, mass market/mass production paradigm. They deal with the big head of the curve, and eschew the long tail. They manufacture cool. They rely on “consumers”, and they protect those consumers from too many choices by selecting what is worthy, and what is not. Google Android is building itself as a platform for bottom-up innovation. Their marketplace publishes first, filters second, utilizing little more than the rankings of the community.”
— P2P Foundation » Blog Archive » Crowdsourced curation, reputation systems, and the social graph
(via bmdesign)
Beautiful Thinking
“Eunoia is the shortest word in English containing all five vowels – and it means “beautiful thinking”. It is also the title of Canadian poet Christian Bok’s book of fiction in which each chapter uses only one vowel.”
(thank you Arezu)
idea of a worm hole
“My father used to read me bedtime stories out of this book called Evolution of Consciousness,” Case says. One night he drew two points on a piece of paper. He asked what the shortest distance was from point A to point B. “A straight line,” she said. “There’s an even shorter distance,” he responded. And he folded the paper over so the two points touched — “which is the idea of a worm hole. Compressed time and space,” Case says. “He told me this when I was 4 or 5, and I would think about it every single night.” – Amber Case
Amber Case, Digital Philosopher
Why Design-By-Commitee Should Die
There’s a saying I love: “a camel is a horse designed by committee.” A variation is “a Volvo is a Porsche designed by committee.” Some of the best product advice I’ve ever heard goes something like “damn what the users want, charge towards your dream.” All of these statements are, of course, saying the same thing. When there are too many cooks in the kitchen all you get is a mess. And when too many people have product input, you’ve got lots of features but no soul.
- Michael Arrington, founder and co-editor of TechCrunch
Taken from an interesting read over at SmashingMagazine: Why Design-By-Commitee Should Die, by Speider Schneider
Curators and Explainers
“As more governments open their data, journalists lose privileged status as gatekeepers of information – but the need for their work as curators and explainers increases. The more data that’s available in the world, the more essential it is for somebody to make sense of it.”
- Adrian Holovaty, founder of EveryBlock
Full Article: Information is power, by Simon Rogers
(via @brainpicker)
Luck
“Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.”
—Seneca, Roman philosopher
(via @cameron)
Jim Coudal on “What’s Next?”
The Design Glut ladies asked Jim Coudal in this interview “What’s Next?” His answer:
I don’t know what’s next! It’s kind of a joke, but we’re proudly “without business plan” in our 13th year. We’ve had a lot of things not work, and that’s OK too. If it’s a good idea and it gets you excited, try it, and if it bursts into flames, that’s going to be exciting too. People always ask, “What is your greatest failure?” I always have the same answer – We’re working on it right now, it’s gonna be awesome!
Creativity
Making unusual connections is the basis of creativity.
- From Mind in the Making, by Ellen Galinsky
Strategy
We have a strategic plan, it’s called doing things.
- Herb Kelleher, Southwest Airlines
A blog…
A blog is a broadcast, not a publication. If it stops moving, it dies.
- Andrew Sullivan
Honest Interfaces
“To be persuasive we must be believable; to be believable we must be credible; to be credible we must be truthful.”—Edward R. Murrow
(via Honest Interfaces)
happiness
Jessa Crispin on by-products:
I was having a conversation with a writer the other day, and he stated that the best things are always by-products. Happiness is a by-product, and I loved that he said that. You can plot your journey to success or happiness or wealth or whatever it is you’re looking for, but if you’re too focused on the end result, you’re going to miss anything good going on around you.
Via always wonderful bobulate.
The difference between work and Work
“(Capital-W) Work is what we have considered for years: your boss tells you to do something, you do it, and you get paid. By contrast, (little-w) work is motivated by inherent interest and generally unpaid. Think of the difference between an Encyclopedia Britannica editor doing Work, and a Wikipedia editor doing work during spare hours. Big Work drives the economy; little work drives the Internet. Big Work builds skyscrapers; little work generates a half million fanfiction stories about Harry Potter.”
Clay Shirky: Doing work, or Doing Work?
(via pforti)
John Updike on living in NYC
the true new yorker secretly believes
that people living anywhere else
have to be, in some sense, kidding.
- john updike
Chicken Wisdom
Yes, I admit, I have a thing for chickens. So it’s understandable that this post by Bobulate’s struck a nerve: Chicken Wisdom.
Watching the common chicken can help us understand human behavior, evolution, and ethics:
Watching chickens is a very old human pastime, and the forerunner of psychology, sociology and management theory. Sometimes understanding yourself can be made easier by projection on to others. Watching chickens helps us understand human motivations and interactions, which is doubtless why so many words and phrases in common parlance are redolent of the hen yard: “pecking order”, “cockiness”, “ruffling somebody’s feathers”, “taking somebody under your wing”, “fussing like a mother hen”, “strutting”, a “bantamweight fighter”, “clipping someone’s wings”, “beady eyes”, “chicks”, “to crow”, “to flock”, “get in a flap”, “coming home to roost”, “don’t count your chickens before they’re hatched”, “nest eggs” and “preening”.
Distractivity
“Distractivity is what you’re doing when you get distracted from what you should be doing. It’s generally what you want to do, often what you need to do, and arguably, what you’ll do best.”
- John Goodman from Distractivity
(via bobulate)
Design Quotes Display
Alex Giron put together a design quotes display system that can be used as a screensaver. Head over to neography.com/designquotes and take a look for yourself. Mac users can use IdleWeb, a nice little app that allows you to set up any webpage as your screensaver. Just make sure you set it up in “kiosk” mode within the screensaver options.
