LINKS FROM March 2006
Klosterman's April Fool's review of Chinese Democracy
My favorite line: "Several songs make thinly veiled references to the architect who designed Rose's backyard topiary garden, a move that may confuse casual listeners."
Font Spotting the Thank You for Smoking Titles
Typographica IDs almost all the fonts in the titles of Thank You for Smoking.
Tags: font typography movies
"The rules are simple. The illustration is 4.4 inches high by 6.875 inches wide; it has to include the five events, the dates of the week, and the words "High Priority;" and it can only use two colors, red and black."
Tags: design magazines inspiration
New York Times' critic Frank Bruni reviews the Burger Joint at the Parker Meridien Hotel.
Tags: food nytimes nyc reviews
"The ROOT Vaults currently exposes a very simple API for getting out the same clickstream data that users deposit. The API is a RESTful one that takes parameters in the HTTP Query String and returns XML."
"Design is not solely visual. Those who believe it is, make an unconscious decision to confine themselves solely to craft. This limits these individuals from growing and taking on more complex and broad challenges."
Tags: design writing communication
The Art of Driving Your Competition Crazy
"Companies go astray when defeating the competition becomes more important than taking care of customers. When companies become obsessed with the pursuit of excellence, by contrast, they often reach new levels of greatness."
Tags: business competition advertising marketing passion
Sleeve designed by Peter Saville v.1.3.13
Some great record cover design by Peter Saville.
Tags: design music inspiration
"So in this article, I thought I'd rustle up a few paragraphs describing how I go about producing an A List Apart Illustration."
In Search of a Comprehensive Type Design Theory
"Just as the purpose of DNA analysis is to identify the location and function of every human gene, so the study of typefaces can be seen as an attempt to understand the formal appearance of the smallest unit of the written word."
Tags: typography design font trend
Banksy Takes on The Melbourne Street Art Scene
The biggest loser of the Commonwealth games, says graffiti artist Banksy, is Melbourne's street art scene - and London could be next for the whitewash
Tags: graffiti streetart politics olympics london australia
"Autobahn has developped a font wich can be used on fences. The font is based uppon the grid of the fence."
Tags: streetart typography font
Video from Seth Goldstein's presentation on Attention at Etech.
Academic turns city into a social experiment
A different kind of politician: "Knowledge empowers people. If people know the rules, and are sensitized by art, humor, and creativity, they are much more likely to accept change."
Tags: change culture politics creativity education southamerica
Nice looking stuff.
Tags: design inspiration art
Is Amazon S3 the first Tier 0 Internet Service?
"When you get down to it, Amazon S3 is simply a large, distributed hash map with an API. Unless people build applications on top of it, it’s useless. Amazon clearly expects this will happen - and what’s more they expect people will pay for it too."
Tags: amazon api trend internet
Wi-fi set to re-wire social rules
"With more people now using broadband rather than dial-up and online shopping soaring during the weeks before Christmas, there is no doubt that Britons are big fans of the net."
Tags: wifi culture technology mobile
adidas gets it right with adicolor
A German billboard campaign uses street art right.
Tags: streetart graffiti advertising
Earthtools: Time Zone and Local Time
"This service responds with the time zone and local time at the given latitude and longitude."
Tags: api
Understanding Google: Exclusive look at a JupiterResearch report
"Jupiter warns that Google's insularity and intense focus on organizing consumers' information may not scale."
Tags: research google search advertising
"A new service allows you to track your every web move -- but how private is it really?"
Will Wright: "In an era of structured education and standardized testing, this generational difference might not yet be evident. But the gamers' mindset - the fact that they are learning in a totally new way - means they'll treat the world as a place for creation . ."
Tags: videogames education culture youth
"An average day at NYC indie record store Other Music. Produced by Human Giant for the 2006 PLUG Awards." Starring Aziz Ansari.
Tags: funny video music culture
"This helps makes the argument that brands can no longer rely on media or other forms of communication but must influence the cultural fabric of how or what consumers wish to see."
Tags: unbundled marketing consumerism branding
Pandora and Last.fm: Nature vs. Nurture in Music Recommenders
An in-depth comparison of Pandora and Last.fm.
Tags: music recommendation
May Contain Non-Design Content
"But the great thing about graphic design is that it is almost always about something else . . And if I can't get excited about whatever that something else is, I really have trouble doing good work as a designer."
Tags: design ideas bestarticlesof2006
Breaking the Corporation - Redefining Innovation
"Why do we produce the way we do? Why do we focus on the so-called productive when it's patently absurd most of the time? Why do we manage in such obviously self-defeating ways?"
Tags: business innovation
Design is like a Hand of Cards
"The difficulty with design is that each design project has different problems to solve. While we want to be able to generalize those problems, doing so actually hurts our chances at creating an appropriate solution to our specific problems."
A Guest Blogger, and an Unwritten Law
George Clooney doesn't really write a blog post. Arienna Huffington refuses to apologize and says the medium is not the message. Everyone gets real mad. Huffington finally realizes she's wrong and apologizes. Times picks up story.
Tags: blogs journalism celebrity nytimes politics ethics
Four Modes of Seeking Information and How to Design for Them
Thinking about the effect of people who don't know what they need to know on information architecture.
EasyUtil Recommendation Service
"EasyUtil Recommendation web service provides a web API to make recommendations in the format of "people who liked this item also liked those items"." I'm not sure I completely understand that, but it sounds good . . .
Tags: search recommendation api
Some artist in Australia took a bunch of what look like giant milk crates and created a giant person out of them.
Build your own Web Service with PHP and XML-RPC
A pretty nice tutorial from SitePoint.
Tags: programming php mysql tutorial
ILoveJackDaniels cheat sheets for everything from World of Warcraft to mod_rewrite.
Tags: reference programming php mysql css
A members-only BitTorrent site.
Tags: bittorrent
Mission Impossible: In Search of Strangers in New York City
How Game Theory Can Make Seemingly Impossible Challenges Simple
Tags: nyc gametheory
10 Tips That Every PHP Newbie Should Know
The first five of this two part series.
Tags: php tips programming
"The point is that we need to be very careful in the way we interpret statistics purporting to show that one kind of dog, or one kind of drug, or one kind of anything, is more dangerous than other things in its class."
Tags: culture research statistics
"It's turning into what Julian Bleecker calls a 'Theory Object,' which is an idea which is not just a mental idea or a word, but a cloud of associated commentary and data, that can be passed around from mouse to mouse, and linked-to."
Tags: things google language search
"Unlike churches, people in airports aren’t much invested in helping with your problems. There’s not much comfort to be found here. And I guess that’s where Pretzel Time comes in."
Tags: culture religion airports
Eric Asimov's New York Times blog all about wine.
Frank Bruni's new New York Times food blog.
The sharpest knives in the drawer
And that's just the beginning. Here's how Oxo tools became the gold standard for serious cooks.
Tags: design cooking food passion
Craigslist - Design Eye for the List Guy
An imagined redesign of Craig's List.
Tags: craigslist design
Paul Rand's Final Logo Part 2: Doug Evans + Partners
"Paul Rand’s actual final logo was for Doug Evans + Partners. Below are the sketches and final designs. Enjoy."
Tags: design logos process inspiration
"The lesson there is that if you are trying to build a social network, you need to let the members express themselves however they like, even if you don't like how they are doing it."
Tags: socialnetworking myspace friendster
Vertically and Horizontally Centering a DIV
Some nice CSS magic.
Tags: css
Marketing in Accelerated Culture
"If marketing is to lead culture, marketers must create brands that stand for more than product attributes or heritage in the category."
Tags: marketing planning culture
"What I’m not opposed to saying, however, is that the style used in an essay certainly seems to influence grading tendencies, even if that is at an unconcious level."
"Now the same company, has millions of "users" doing the creation and distribution work for free. Is that empowering the little guy, or is that empowering Mr. Murdock and co's bank accounts?"
Internet of things: working bibliography
Lots of great links about the "internet of things."
Tags: things technology internet lists
"The mission of this blog is to educate both clients and Visual Communication designers (also known as 'graphic' designers) about the nature of speculative, or "spec" work."
"Our education platforms should be designed to allow for learners to pull our content into their space."
Tags: education learning unbundled
"Blogging is the closest literary culture has come to instant obsolescence. No Modern Library edition of the great polemicists of the blogosphere to yellow on the shelf."
"This post, however, is about how clever creatives translate different aspects of print media into advertising metaphors. How do most people see a magazine? It has color, it comes in a certain size and it is flat."
Tags: advertising creativity magazines
"Is "The Attention Economy" just another way for advertisers to skewer eyeballs? And why build an economy around Attention, when Intention is where the money comes from?"
This teacher draws out the artist in students
On a high school teacher who teaches design: "My art room has evolved into a safe place for students, where design is used as a bridge to art and science."
Tags: education design teaching
How to design your blog with C.R.A.P.: Contrast Repetition Alignment Proximity.
Perception of Fonts: Perceived Personality Traits and Uses
"This study sought to determine if certain personalities and uses are associated with various fonts."
Tags: research typography font
Manifesto for "blogjects" -- objects that blog
"Ever since this "blogjects" topic has started circulating, I've been asked lots of things, but two questions have come to the fore. First, why would objects want to just blog? Second, why would I care if objects "blog"?"
Tags: blogs future metadata bestof2006
NBC's Flawed Unbundled Strategy
"They're trying to build a sort of MySpace around the NBC brand, but they acknowledge that "people" think they're "just this old media brand." Well, yeah. And why is that? Because the network IS an old media brand."
Tags: media2.0 television video unbundled
2.0 Needs to Help Me FIGURE OUT What I Want
"Media 2.0 will fail without Marketing 2.0, and the evolution of Marketing 2.0 is being impeded by a fundamental principle of human nature  given infinite choice, most of us DON’T KNOW exactly what we want."
Google and the Tyranny of Good Design
"You don’t see the work of sign writers any more; it’s hard to find handmade signs and ramshackle window displays. The urban environment is now over-designed. It's all too branded, too inhuman."
"Media 2.0 is platform centric. It starts with a platform that enables community to create digital identity, connect and share."
An Adoption Strategy for Social Software in the Enterprise
A very good approach for bringing social software into the business world.
Tags: socialsoftware business
From the outside, a CEO’s job looks difficult. From the inside, it’s merely impossible  unless you take charge of the company’s agenda.
Tags: business management
Complexity causes 50% of product returns
"Half of all malfunctioning products returned to stores by consumers are in full working order, but customers can't figure out how to operate the devices."
Tags: design consumerism
"Of course you may use Excel’s graph tool to easily create a bunch of charts  but let’s face it, more or less all of those predefined designs suck. So you have to look for another option."
Tags: design illustrator tutorial
Identity Production in a Networked Culture: Why Youth Heart MySpace
Danah Boyd's excellent look at MySpace and it's impact on youth culture.
Tags: youth culture myspace identity socialsoftware research
"All week I've been attending a conference about the "Attention Economy," but I am still not entirely sure what that term is supposed to mean."
Some negative feedback from Umair Haque on Etech.
Tags: attention conference geeks
The Torn-Up Credit Card Application
Chase accepts a taped together credit card application with a different address and phone number . . . scary.
Tags: creditcard security
Lots of good research from the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association
"Most of us want to practice the things we're already good at, and avoid the things we suck at. We stay average or intermediate amateurs forever."
Tags: brain passion marketing learning
"An edge needs to be sharp and abrubt and distinct in order to generate the light it needs to thrive."
Ten Tips to the Top of the Search Engines
Jill Whalen: "Having a website that gets found in Google, Yahoo, and MSN, etc. isn't hard to do, but it can be difficult to know where to begin. Here are my latest and greatest tips to get you started."
A creative director talking about clients: "They don’t know what they want. That is our job. It was what we do. We figure that out.�
Tags: design business creativity
It doesn't come pre-packaged anymore . . .
"As I've stated before...learning is like opening a door, not filling a container. Content is something that is created in the process of learning, not only in advance of learning."
Tags: education learning teaching writing
"First of all, dismissing visual design as just a matter of “making things pretty� cuts off your ability to communicate with your customers at the knees."
Agencies Slow to Embrace New Media: Not the Problem
Gary Stein: "I certainly don't mean that the spread of digital technology is not an important thing for business and for advertising. But if you're focused on the technology, you're going to solve the wrong problem."
Tags: advertising marketing media2.0 internet business
Why Features Don't Matter Anymore: The New Laws of Digital Technology
" As computing and digital devices move more and more into the consumer space, features and functionalities will increasingly take the back-seat as motivators for technology adoption."
Tags: technology trend design simplicity ux
A really well done Flash portfolio site.
Tags: inspiration portfolio design
Starting points for typographic inspiration.
Tags: typography design tutorial
Curious Guy: Malcolm Gladwell (Part 2)
The conversation between Bill Simmons and Malcolm Gladwell continues . . .
Tags: sports interviews
"With the exception of the prime-time figure skating competition Tuesday, ratings have been subterranean, as the Torino Games have been routinely trounced by everything from American Idol to the Home Shopping Network."
Tags: olympics television media sports
The role of anti-marketing design
This time it's Scoble telling the world how bad design is good for your company . . .
Thousands of Design Resources
Cosby's Lawyers See No Flattery in an Imitation
The New York Times covers Andy Baio (waxy.org) being told to get rid of the Cosby parodies he's hosting.
Tags: copyright nytimes video internet
"So how can we restructure value for advertisers and ourselves in the marketplace of conversation?"
Tags: media2.0 advertising business change marketing communication
"SlashLinks is a tool developed by Eyebeam R&D for automatically mirroring links from the popular social-bookmarking service del.icio.us to your personal or institutional website."
Tags: del.icio.us tools backup
Web 2.0 And Media 2.0 Are Still In the 1.1 Phase
"Media 2.0 is about creating an efficient marketplace for content that enables media consumers to find the highest-yield content from an ever increasing diversity of sources AND enabling content creators to efficiently collaborate."
Tags: media2.0
How Social Bookmarking can lead to the Semantic Web
How combining the collective knowledge of individuals through tags can create some level of intelligence.
Tags: del.icio.us socialsoftware brain tags
Protectionism Or Surrender Don't Work
Tom Gloucer, CEO, Reuters on "what is the role of the media firms in the second decade of this century?"
Litigation Cosby Threatens Waxy, You See!
Andy Baio at Waxy.org has been sent a Cease and Decist for hosting a parody of Bill Cosby.
Tags: law
It's Simple. Design Communicates.
"If you want design to have a strategic role in your organization- find an opportunity where design can be used for real communication and not mere styling."
Tags: design management communication
"ExpressionEngine is a highly flexible, feature-rich web publishing system that empowers individuals, organizations, and companies around the world to create dynamic, content-driven websites."
Inventor Dean Kamen (of Segway fame) talks about solving the right problems in product design.
Project Lemonade: Creating Beauty within Chaos
"Despite the proliferation of gallery sites like Stylegala, there is still an overwhelming amount of confused designers who start off with a great vision and then fail in execution."
Productivity: Meet, Greet, Then Market
"These days, the best way to get people's attention is not to engage consumers with a brand, but to host or facilitate a context for people to engage with one another."
Tags: media2.0 branding marketing community
On athletes: We believe "that players need supportive environments in order to flourish. It would be nice if we were as generous and as patient with the rest of society's underachievers."
Tags: interviews sports culture writing
A Speak Up interview with Dutch design Stuart Bailey.
Tags: design interviews
The Layers of Design: the style layer
"Designing for the Web, as I see it, is a multi-layered process. It’s a process in which each layer addresses specific design needs related to client aims, brand characteristics and site user habits and expectations."
Tags: design
The Inside Track on Firefox Development
The story of Mozilla is long and rich in detail. There are many perspectives. This is mine.
A typophile forum thread about why typographers are so passionate about their craft.
Tags: typography passion design
If West is the NBA's logo, should he be?
"The NBA logo is, outside of the Olympic rings and the Nike "swoosh," the world's most recognizable sports emblem."
Tags: sports design logos marketing business
"Ask why. Question answers. Assume nothing. Especially as you consider design's role in shaping the world."
Tags: design
ABC to Offer Ad-Supported Prime-Time Show Downloads
ABC looks like the first network to have jumped in on this stuff. The shows will include ads different than the broadcast.
Tags: advertising television unbundled
Thinking in Web 2.0: Sixteen Ways
A pretty good look at web 2.0.
Tags: web2.0
"An encyclopedia for everything related to Jim Henson and the Muppets. The Wiki format allows anyone to create or edit any article, so we can all work together to create a comprehensive database for Muppet fans."
"monochrom's attempt to evaluate the actual power of brands by making Austrian people draw a total of twelve logos (nine international, three typically European) from memory, 25 people per brand. Salut, share of mind!"
Tags: branding logos design marketing research
Microsoft iPod packaging parody
What if microsoft redesigned the ipod packaging?
Tags: funny marketing microsoft ipod design
'Born Slippy was a greyhound we bet on'
"Every song has a story behind it. Every songwriter has their own way of working. We asked 12 artists, from a legendary lyricist to a freelance hit-making team, how they created one of their classic tracks "
The New York Times touches on the current fascination with type.
Tags: typography font design trend nytimes