Posts

20 October 2008	Relative readability	Why go so big on type? There’s a short answer and a long answer.	46 Comments
15 October 2008	Excuses, excuses	Some people might suggest it’s not worth redesigning a site I only post to twice a year. They’re missing the point.	46 Comments
12 April 2008	The Optimizer	Every designer is wired differently. Some people are idea people, some people are artists. I’m an optimizer.	19 Comments
5 October 2007	Indistinguishable from magic	I love video games. I’m terrible at most of them. But I’m a sucker for a game with a good story.	15 Comments

Photos

• 5 January 2009 Alight
• 9 September 2008 Booth
• 19 April 2008 Look at love

Links

5 January 2009

• flipping typical Great little web tool (toy?) for previewing popular fonts installed on your machine.
• Objectified: A Documentary Film by Gary Hustwit New documentary about industrial design from the director of Helvetica. Looks good, if only because Jony Ive does the world’s best voiceover interviews.
• Historical Tweets Some of these are actually really funny.
• Steve Jobs to the media: "Shut up." So far, Wall Street seems to like it.
• Space Miner Saturday, my wife decided she should have a blog. Two days later (with a little design assistance and a custom Tumblr theme by yours truly), she’s got more quality content than I usually scrape together in a year. Try if you like: smart, good-looking and tall.
• General Projects, the work of I think Ben Pieratt has the best portfolio site on the planet, bar none.
• Goldfish. Greg calls the industry to arms: “Let’s not go into this next year with blind enthusiasm or crushing anxiety, but with a great sense of kinsmanship and and eager promise. Let us all work together to do what we can to grow our network into a future titan of industry. One that contributes to the community and the economy, global and local.”

3 January 2009

• Now, more than ever “It is the business of the future to be dangerous; and it is among the merits of science that it equips the future for its duties.”

2 January 2009

• JPG Magazine: Archives All the back issues and outtakes are available for download at least until Monday.
• JPG Magazine Says Goodbye This is very sad news, not just because my wife has put so much into this thing over the last couple of years as designer and then editor — and all the other great people who have made it what it is — but mostly because it’s incredibly sad to see a really powerful, creative, flourishing community get shut down.
• The DIY Drones open source business model “Business model for my open source robotics startup: disclose the cost of everything and charge 40% markup. Want it cheaper? DIY!”

31 December 2008

• Magdalena Czarnecki Beautiful, beautiful print work.

23 December 2008

• 24 ways: Contract Killer Andy Clarke’s piece on writing design project contracts is great, and the sample contract is the best part. I was just recently trying to transform the fussy-sounding official contracts I’ve used for freelance projects in the past into something more natural and straightforward. This is a great template.

22 December 2008

• Chris Pullman: What I've Learned Some excellent reflections on working as a designer by the former VP of Design at WGBH in Boston. This has been quoted a lot recently, but the whole piece is worth reading for any designer.
• Africa Wins Again: Far Cry 2’s literary approach to narrative This is a great in-depth discussion of the most interesting aspects of a game I still haven’t made my mind up about. The thing that strikes me about all these games focused on “moral choices” as a core story mechanic is that they’re not actually asking you to choose what’s right for the world or your character, they’re asking you to choose what’s right for the narrative – not so much moral choices as dramatic ones.

Ephemera

• Watch Reprise

  I had to be drug to see this movie. It’s Norwegian, postmodern, and mostly about writers and depression. But it’s also a really fun coming of age movie and a warm love story. And now I‘m trying to convince everybody else to see it.

• Listen Volume One

  As if Zooey Deschanel could get any more charming, she also happens to sing like a particular brand of female vocalists that nobody pays to record anymore — sort of Carole King by way of Julie London. Add M. Ward and a couple of vintage romantic covers and this is an album I like more every time I put it on.

• Read Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees

  I know what it looks like. It looks like an arty art book about an artist. And it is. But there's more clarity and wisdom in here — about what it means to do meaningful work, no matter what you do — than just about any book I've read on any subject.