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Cool Hunting

  • Cirque Berzerk: Beneath

    by Julie Wolfson Naughty burlesque dancers, daring trampoline stunts, scary clowns and steamy duets fill the Cirque Berzerk big top. "Beneath" is a definitely-not-for-kids show, celebrating the dark side of the circus world. Originating at Burning Man, the show since evolved into a full-fledged spectacle, housed in a beautiful new tent custom-built in Italy. Co-founders Suzanne Bernel and Kevin Bourque created a world that mixes...

  • Domecage Prisons

    by Richard Dewitt "I like to call them Sportdomes, not cages," says prison architect Willem Van der Sluis. Indeed, his unusual 2007 project in the Zaandam industrial zone in the Netherlands consists of conjoined geodesic domes that don't look like cages at all. But, these spaces, designed for playing sports, prevent soccer or basketball players from escaping; the users are inmates. Starting with the...

  • Quiksilver Diamond Dobby Boardshort

    Quicksilver's new Diamond Dobby boardshort infuses the latest in fabric technology with their classic design and quirky color schemes, making for a rash-free summer of fun and surf. By using an embossed, diamond-patterned material, the Diamond Dobby technology decreases fabric to skin contact by 30 percent which eliminates chafing and rashes. In addition, horizontal stretch and fabric memory keep the shorts in shape while...

  • Campanas x Lacoste Polo Shirts

    What happens when designers known for making furniture from trash take on one of the most preppy clothing brands? Brazilian brothers Fernando and Humberto Campana ditch French restraint to riff on Lacoste's signature crocodile for a series of limited edition shirts due out this holiday season, the fourth such collaboration for the label. The project also references the designers' own ouevre, playing on a...

  • Paracord Dog Collars

    Outdoor adventurers and dog enthusiasts can blend their passions by purchasing Paracord Survival Strap Dog Collars. Composed of knotted paracord, these durable collars quickly unravel for lashing together a shelter, suspending gear from bears or even saving strangers from drowning in pits of quicksand. While these situations may only sporadically present themselves, the collars are also stylish in their own right, available in nearly...

AdPulp

  • Great Ideas, Personality And Passion Is What Sells…

    Mark Wnek, chairman-chief creative officer of Lowe, New York, claims in Ad Age that he's not a great presenter, but that he has passion for the work and that's what's needed in a creative leader. I have a confession to make: I'm a rotten presenter. When I think about the creative directors whom I most admire, they are all average presenters at best. Where their talents lie is in producing brilliant, effective work for their clients. Most (me included) are no oil paintings. Many drink too much and throw tantrums. Mostly, they shouldn't be allowed out unaccompanied by an adult. Which reminds me of Baudelaire's definition of genius: the ability to recapture childhood at will. The most important quality that all good creative directors share is a passion for great work. And passion isn't always pretty. Often it is messy, inconvenient, and un-house-trained. It doesn't always fit in an expensive suit or smart sports coat. It doesn't furnish its possessor with client-friendly savoir-faire. I find it hard to believe Wnek lacks presentation skills. When I think of the Chief Creative Officers I've worked closely with--particularly Steve Stith at Integer and Scott Seymour at BFG Communications--they own the room when it is their turn to speak. Their personal presence and clear confidence in what they say and do wins clients over time and time again. Wnek also brings up the spoiled child syndrome that threatens to discredit our industry. I have worked with whiny little babies before, but never have I thought they actually belonged in the agency. Advertising is a powerful industry full of creative and passionate people, all of whom ought to be capable of acting their age. I understand some choose to coddle the babies due to their ability to make ads, but that's a mistake in my opinion. There's lots of talent out there, so why drag yourself and your agency down with unnecessary drama?

  • Current TV TwitteRFP Stalls Because Some Things Ne…

    News broke on Adweek yesterday that the Current Media agency review, first announced via Twitter, has been put on hold and that the person who initiated the review, Jordan Kretchmer, has left Current. From Adweek: When reached via e-mail, [New SVP of Marketing Michael] Streefland acknowledged the pause in the review, indicating that Current executives needed time to chart the brand's strategic course. "The Current RFP triggered a lot of constructive internal discussion and we realized we put the cart before the horse and need to lay down some strategic direction before we engage with a creative agency to execute upon that direction," Streefland wrote. "Those discussions are happening right now and we should emerge in a few weeks with an update for the agencies." Now, of course, some agency folks and other observers are all a-Twitter about how this whole thing was a dumb idea all along. My agency and I participated in the early stages of the review and we don't regret it for a minute. Let's face it--the more things change, the more some things stay the same. Advertising account reviews are a shit sandwich and there's little changing that fact. Jordan tried to inject a little transparency and open up the review to new agencies. I think it's great. It wasn't a perfect process and I don't think we'll see many others like it, but that's OK. That Current management itself doesn't have their act together has nothing to do with holding a review via Twitter. Client marketing departments are just as chaotic as agencies are these days. This surely isn't the first agency review that got stalled due to personnel changes. It won't be the last. Just more people know about it, as opposed to most mysterious, backroom, consultant-laden agency reviews.

  • But Wait, There Really Is More: Lessons From Billy…

    What can advertising pros learn from the dear departed Billy Mays? I had a few thoughts, like this one: Make a promise, not an overpromise. Sure, the yelling and selling makes it seem like the product being hawked will save your life, but actually, the promises made in most infomercials are much more mundane. You'll get out tough stains. You'll fix those hard-to-mend rips on clothes. While a lot of advertising implies that consumers will be sexier, happier, more powerful or more self-fulfilled, the infomercials only promise something tangible and little else. Which makes them more honest than most ads. It's the subject of my new column on Talent Zoo, which will be on their home page tomorrow. But you can read it right now absolutely FREE thanks to this exclusive AdPulp offer! (Yeah I know, it is pretty damn annoying, isn't it?)

  • Catch A Big Fish, Then Sell It At The Market

    Two years ago when Microsoft acquired aQuantive--a company that matches up advertisers and online publishers--the tech giant also became the new owner of Razorfish, a digital ad agency. Reports are now circulating that Microsoft wants to offload that particular asset. According to The Wall Street Journal, Microsoft has retained the investment bank Morgan Stanley Co. to represent it in any Razorfish talks. The approaching two-year anniversary of the $6 billion aQuantive transaction will allow Microsoft to receive more favorable tax treatment for a Razorfish sale, if it can find a willing buyer. A sale also removes any conflict of interest for Microsoft's media business units that court the almighty ad dollar from competing agencies.

  • Bogusky Wigs Out

    Agency sites typically suck for a variety of reasons. They tend to be static affairs full of stilted language about proprietary methods and other chest beating nonsense. They also tend to sit idle for years before being swapped out, which is bad form for any company that needs to prove itself in digital media. According to The Denver Egotist, Crispin Porter + Bogusky isn't going to play that tired old game any longer. The Boulder/Miami shop has launched a new site that Alex Bogusky describes as "a giant digital fishing net that gathers everything that's relevant about us and our clients." Because the new design is a direct lift from Modernista's original idea, The Egotist isn't all that stoked: In all honesty, they seem rather late to jump on this bandwagon--so the news is so-so exciting to us. For an agency that prides itself on its own PR, however, it'll be a great way to get the word out and to follow what's happening inside that giant circus tent. I think any entity that's willing to cede control of its message, in part or in whole, to the crowd is making quite a statement (about the value of fearlessness).

AdFreak

....HOW ADVERTISING SPOILED ME....

  • Volkswagen Coupé Cabriolet Eos: Air collection

    Advertising Agency: Agence V, Paris, FranceCreative Director: Christian VinceArt Director: Frédéric DurandCopywriter: Arnaud LabillePhotographer: Jean-Noel Leblanc-bontemps

  • NATURAL HAIR CARE - HENNA POWDER

    Henna Powder is used in India largely for mehendi designs - a traditional art that uses a woman's hands and feet as its canvas on special occasions, mostly weddings. Henna Powder is also used for hair conditioning and nourishment, making the hair shiny, smooth and beautiful.Agency: Mudra DDB, Chennai, IndiaClient: Natural Hair Care - Henna PowderAssociate Creative Director: Arvind RamalingamArt Director: Krishnamurthy IyyappanIllustrator: MuraliPhotographer: Ramesh Kumar

  • Wonderbra!

    An interesting viral ad for Wonderbra!

  • Pepsi - Dare for more!

    Titles: "Surfer", "Climber" and "Boarder"Creative Directors: Veikko Hille, Sebastian Hardieck, Toygar BazarkayaArt Director: Michael PlückhahnCopywriter: Dietmar Neumann Beratung: Heike Flottmann, Annika LauhöferArt Buying: Birgit PaulatProduction: Stefan Kranefeld Imaging, DüsseldorfAgency: BBDO GermanyThey´ve just won the Grand Prix at the Epica Awards. The motifs are inspired by the famous Pepsi-Logo in red, white and blue and show adventurous pictures. Thanks Markus for sending me the ads.

  • Jump higher!

    Advertising Agency: Advico Young & Rubicam, Zurich, SwitzerlandExecutive Creative Director: Urs SchrepferArt Director: Marietta AlbinusCopywriter: Martin StulzPhotographer: Markus WeberVia: I believe in adv

Design Observer: Main Posts

  • Take Me Out to the Old Yankee Stadium

    The new Yankee stadium, like most retro stadiums, bears the burden of being faux, a recreation, like a Disney version of reality. It works and it doesn’t.

  • Alan Rapp: Personal Space

    Robert Sommer’s Personal Space: The Behavioral Basis of Design was published in forty years ago, and its compact title concept — an invisible but perceptible security zone surrounding an individual — caught on. But where is Sommer now? A recent study in Perception finds that listening to music on headphones alters our sense of sociospatial relations. Until these more contemporary strands of inquiry result in a truly new analysis of how we perceive our interpersonal zones today, Personal Space is now available in a new edition, with some additional commentary by Dr. Sommer, from Bosko Books in the UK

  • Today, 06.27.09

    Each morning, before starting work, I spend 30 minutes looking for images that are beautiful, funny, absurd and inspiring. Here's Today.

  • Angela Riechers: Hot Ticket

    To see a play or movie, or ride the Twentieth Century Limited, you needed a ticket, and the development of ticket-dispensing machines paralleled the growth of popular culture.

  • Mad Music

    In 1962, I spent hours listening to Mad magazine’s first LP (Big Top Records), Mad “Twists” Rock ‘N’ Roll. Owning the record made me feel like I was part of a club, which latter evolved into the sardonic, ironic sixties youth culture. It brings me back to a time before art, design, and humor had to be sophisticated to be good.

Authentic Boredom

  • Recent job listings

    A few weeks ago I received the following remarks from Jeff Lin, an Authentic Jobs customer and founder of Bust Out Solutions: Just wanted to let you know that I posted a job probably two years ago for a designer, got several responses, and ultimately found one guy who I tried to hire. It didn't work out at the time, but we kept in touch, and I finally hired him a few months ago. It's worked out great, and we recently launched Best Buy Idea X. I'm happy with the design, and in part thanks to Authentic Jobs for helping me find great talent! Employers continue to find talented web and creative professionals through Authentic Jobs, which has been filling full-time and freelance positions throughout the globe since 2005. And we keep giving back, too, using 1% of our revenue to fund 74 loans to entrepreneurs around the world via Kiva.org. Thank you. Some recent listings are highlighted below. Full-time (International) Cambridge, UK (or New York) Senior PHP Developer at English360 London, UK Senior Developer at Addison Corporate Marketing Limited Full-time (U.S.) Montgomery, AL User Interface Designer/Developer at Southern Poverty Law Center Campbell, CA Rockstar Designer at ZURB, inc, Cupertino, CA Sr. Web Front-End Engineer at Apple Inc. Palo Alto, CA Facebook Communication Designer at Facebook Santa Monica, CA User Interface Engineer at Demand Media Boulder, CO Junior Web Developer at Wall Street On Demand Washington, DC Infographics Designer at Pew Research Center Washington, DC Front-End Developer at U.S. News & World Report Laurel, MD Web Developer at LMD New York, NY Web and E-Media Developer at NYC Department of Transportation Cleveland, OH Contract Front-End Developer at The Sherwin-Williams Company Arlington, VA Front-end Web Designer at Symplicity Corporation Seattle, WA UI Developer at Angry Lapdog Productions, Inc. Seattle, WA Web Developer at msnbc.com Freelance Freelance Sr. Web Developer at Magnani Caruso Dutton Web Application UI/UX Designer at Fantastic Mozilla Firefox Extension Developer at SEOmoz Post a job or find one at Authentic Jobs.

  • The debate over page zooming vs. text scaling

    After posting my reasons for switching back to px for font-size citing page zooming as the primary justification, it was apparent that enthusiasm for page zooming wasn't as unanimous as I had thought. As a refresher from the article, low-vision users (or anyone) can alter their browser's text size by changing the default text size permanently via the browser’s settings, or on-the-fly using the keyboard commands Ctrl+/- (Windows) or Command+/- (Mac). Until recently, these commands would cause all major browsers to scale up or down the size of the text while retaining the formatting and layout of the page, commonly called text scaling or text zooming. Now, however, recent versions of every major browser now default to page zooming instead of text scaling for Ctrl+/- and Command+/- commands AND for the "Zoom" option in the browser's menu. Page zooming literally zooms the entire page — layout, formatting, and text size — in unison. Elements retain their size and shape, which greatly reduces the need for us to compensate for text scaling. In effect, the browser assumes the burden of relative sizing. Below are examples of each. First, page zooming: Next, text scaling: If you're running Firefox or Safari on Mac or Windows, you can easily switch between these two options. Select the "Zoom Text Only" option under the "View" or "Zoom" menus to override page zooming. So, what's wrong with page zooming? There are at least two compelling arguments I've heard that are unfavorable towards page zooming, and I am listening to what is being said: "Low-vision users don't like horizontal scrolling." I've not done extensive research in this area myself, so it's hard to counter-argue. Besides, it's safe to say nobody -- good vision or not -- likes horizontal scrolling. However, I'd like to see conclusive evidence that accompanies statements such as this from "Nik", who commented in my previous article: We found during usability testing for a site with a large proportion of users with vision problems that most of them preferred to use text zoom instead of page zoom because page zoom almost always means horizontal scrolling. We need to know more about how these users configure their browsers in the first place, the keyboard commands they do and don't use, and the like. Being asked to rate the two options in a usability lab vs. configuring and using one's own computer are often two very different things. "What about IE6?" First, if your project, organization, or client still requires supporting IE6, you have far worse things to be concerned about than page zooming vs. text scaling. I have the luxury of not being concerned about IE6 in my corporate and personal projects. That is not a luxury afforded to everyone. With IE6, only text scaling is an option. IE6 (and 7 and 8 actually) will not rescale px values. There are valid arguments for and against this approach, but regardless the only option for text scaling in IE6 is with em and % values. So, if supporting IE6 is still part of your game plan, the argument here is that relative values should be too. Is one site for all feasible?* For me, at the core of this debate is a much bigger question: Is one site for all really feasible? Traditionally, I've believed it is. But increasingly I'm finding that it's not always practical. Some examples: I make the argument in Mobile Web Design that a mobile-optimized site is better for mobile users than a handheld style sheet that marginally modifies your existing site. I published this book nearly two years ago, and today I still believe that to be true, as do several other mobile experts. Although I argue repeatedly in "The Highly Extensible CSS Interface" in favor or markup that endures the rigors of language translation, there are often elements (menus, buttons, etc.) within an interface that are virtually impossible or impractical to code in way such that any amount of text can be fitted properly. I'm seeing this right now with a project at work that has to be translated in 10 languages. The more practical solution has been to have a style sheet for each language, (language).css, that modifies the width, height, padding, etc. of those elements that cannot be compensated for otherwise. In his article for A List Apart, "Big, Stark & Chunky", Joe Clark points out the fact that merely compensating for text scaling may not be enough for low-vision users. Separate CSS files specifically for these users may be needed. "Standardistas were able to stomach the idea that blind people were simply ignoring the appearance of their sites because, self-evidently, they were blind," he states. "It was no big deal; nothing happens to your visual design when you accommodate blind people. But to accommodate low-vision people, you have to totally rearrange your multicolumn site. You have to knowingly destroy your original graphic design." The reality of all this debate is the fact that, as I've already mentioned, every major browser seems to be trending towards page zooming as the default for the "Zoom" option, whether via keyboard or menu option. This trend, along with the other arguments in this article, leaves me unsettled about the right approach for extensibility within a layout, and even unsettled about px for font-size. So, if you were expecting a conclusion of some sort at the end of this article, there isn't one. I'm thinking aloud. Please do the same -- let's keep the discussion going. Additional reading: Drew McLellan: The Fallacy of Page Zooming Zoe Mickley Gillenwater: Why Browser Zoom Shouldn't Kill Flexible Layouts Pierre Igot: Safari 4's Full-Page Zoom: Impressive Universal Usability in Practice: Blind and Low Vision User * This heading text is taken from a report of the same name, "Helping low-vision and other users with Web sites that meet their needs: is one site for all feasible?" by Mary Frances Theofanos and Janice Redish. The report, which is one of the references in Joe Clark's article, can be purchased here.

  • Coding like it's 1999

    UPDATE: Please see The debate over page zooming vs. text scaling. Recently I made the switch back to HTML 4 for DOCTYPEs and px for font-size (sound like 1999 again?), and I've tweeted about it occasionally. I'm documenting the switch more thoroughly here. HTML 4.01 Strict I've chosen to go with HTML 4.01 Strict as the DOCTYPE in my projects moving forward, favoring it above XHTML 1.0 Strict and HTML 5. I'll briefly explain my reasoning. XHTML 1.0 Strict – This is what many of us in the industry, including myself, have been using for the past few years. However, Dave Shea offers a compelling argument to drop XHTML with an eye towards HTML 5: "Six years ago, many of us thought XHTML would be the future of the web and we'd be living in an XML world by now. But in the intervening time it's become fairly apparent to myself and others that XHTML2 really isn't going anywhere, at least not in the realm that we care about.... I'm not ready to start working through the contortions needed to make my sites work with an HTML5 DOCTYPE yet, which leaves me with the most recent implemented version of the language.... [U]ntil I get a better sense that HTML5 has arrived, 4.01 will do me just fine for the next four or five years." HTML 5 – In a nutshell, HTML 5 is the next major version of the hypertext markup language. The good news is meaningless div and span elements will be replaced by more meaningful elements such as nav, header, and video. This means instead of marking up something such as <div class="header"> <h1>Page Title</h1> </div> or <object><param><embed src="http://vimeo.com/3956190"></embed></param></object> we'll be able to mark up the same HTML like this: <header> <h1>Page Title</h1> </header> and this: <video src="http://vimeo.com/3956190"> The bad news is HTML 5 is not currently supported adequately by major browsers (notably Internet Explorer). Estimates range from months to years before HTML 5 is fully supported and therefore a viable option for all of us creating websites. An alternate approach is to maintain that same watchful eye towards HTML 5 by writing markup using current DOCTYPEs but with semantic, HTML 5-like class names. Jon Tan covers this approach beautifully in "Preparing for HTML5 with Semantic Class Names". For example, using the nav element, HTML 5 markup would be <nav> <ul> <li><a href="">Item 1</a></li> ... </ul> </nav> while our semantic, HTML 5-like markup using HTML 4 or XHTML 1 would be <div class="nav"> <ul> <li><a href="">Item 1</a></li> ... </ul> </div> However, the drawback to this approach is you potentially end up with a lot of extra divs. If our goal is meaningful and lightweight markup, the most optimal markup right now would instead be the following: <ul class="nav"> <li><a href="">Item 1</a></li> ... </ul> So, my opinion about HTML 5? We'll all adapt just fine when it's ready for prime-time and fully supported. The mental shift will be minimal. Until then, I'll keep coding the way we've always done it. Additional resources: 12 resources for getting a jump on HTML 5 Wikipedia: HTML 5 Adactio: The Rise of HTML 5 O'Reilly: Google Bets Big on HTML 5 Webmonkey: Google Throws Its Weight Behind HTML 5 px for font-size For a number of years, px was the de facto standard for sizing text with font-size. It gave designers transferring their design from Photoshop (or other software) to HTML a consistent, absolute unit for text size. Then, as we became more knowledgeable of and concerned with accessibility, relative text size (em or %) gradually became the preferred unit. This enabled low-vision users, and really anybody, to change their browser's default text size permanently via the browser's settings, or on-the-fly using the keyboard commands Ctrl+ and Ctrl- (Windows) or Command+ and Command- (Mac). Accordingly, and up until recently, all major browsers would scale up or down the size of the text while retaining the formatting and layout of the page. This is commonly called text scaling or text zooming. This adaptation required us to create markup that allowed for relative sizing of any elements containing text. For example, if a div contained text set atop a background image, we would have to either repeat the image as the div grew larger with text scaling or create the image larger than necessary to compensate for growth. This is something I covered in detail in my "The Highly Extensible CSS Interface" series of articles. However, recent versions of every major browser -- Safari, Firefox, Google Chrome, Opera, and yes, Internet Explorer -- now default to page zooming instead of text scaling for Ctrl+/- and Command+/- commands. Page zooming literally zooms the entire page -- layout, formatting, and text size -- in unison. Elements retain their size and shape, which greatly reduces the need to compensate for text scaling. In effect, the browser assumes the burden of relative sizing. What does all this mean? It means px can again be considered a viable value for font-size. It means the difference between setting text with absolute units or setting text with relative units is negligible for users. For you and me, however, the the difference is substantial. The burden of calculating relative units throughout a CSS document is replaced by the convenience of absolute units -- 14px is 14px anywhere in the document, independent of parent elements whose font-size may differ. Additional resources: Wilson Miner: The problem with pixels 456 Berea Street: IE 7 does not resize text sized in pixels Mezzoblue: Zoom Ordered List: Hello Old Friend I suppose the only legacy practice left to switch back to at this point is tables... UPDATE: Some of you may have been led to believe I've given a mandate for the industry to move to HTML 4 and px. Please note I've documented only my switch here and the reasoning for it, and that px can be considered a viable value for font-size. As I mention in the comments, you need to make the right decision based on your audience and users. If XHTML and relative sizing is the right choice for your project, no one else can tell you otherwise.

  • Free download: Good vs. Great Design (summary)

    If you've not yet signed up for next month's HOW Design Conference in Austin, Texas, now is the time to do so. The conference organizers have been gracious enough to allow me to publicly post the handout that will be provided in my session, "Good vs. Great Design". This 10-page summary of my presentation is something I've been hoping to compile for quite some time now, and HOW has finally provided the impetus for making it happen. Download good-vs-great.pdf (PDF, 588 KB) Highlights from other sessions and speakers include: Print to Web Breakthrough The Secret of Project Management for In-House Designers Keeping Creative Control with Difficult Clients Communicating Up, Down and All Around the Organization 10 Things You Didn’t Know Fonts Could Do Craft + Activism = Craftivism Studio tours (frog design, Olive Interactive Design & Marketing, others) for pre-conference attendees DJ Stout (Pentagram), Thomas Phinney (Adobe), Cynthia Rapp (Cartoon Network), Lia Braaten Hager (Proctor & Gamble), and nearly 50 other speakers Hope to see you there.

  • Authentic Jobs: Advice for Staying Gainfully Emplo…

    The redesign for Authentic Jobs, which is coming along swimmingly thanks to your feedback, will include a blog to allow myself and others to post articles on the topic of employment, freelancing, and the like. The following is one such article. I've been bookmarking the links below over the past few months in anticipation of the new blog. However, because the redesign is taking longer than I had hoped, I've decided to post the article now given the timeliness of the subject. The last 6 months or so have been rocky for just about everyone and every business, and with layoffs and budget cutbacks, job search is certainly no exception. Many more applicants, but far fewer job openings. The good news is that things seem to be on the way up. We saw the same number of freelance listings in April as we did in January, but full-time listings increased by 34%. Currently on the site, you'll find listings from Apple, HUGE, Facebook, frog design inc., Berklee College of Music, Backcountry.com, Comcast, Magnani Caruso Dutton, and plenty of other great companies small and large. On to the advice. Whether you're on the clock with an employer or a full-time freelancer, I'm fairly certain you'll find the following remarks from authors around the globe to be helpful for staying gainfully employed in today's economy. Ross Johnson: How to Respond to an Authentic Jobs Posting Ross Johnson of 3.7 Designs posted a freelance listing on Authentic Jobs, then in turn offered advice to those replying to his and other listings. He offers 6 tips for applying, one of which is the following: I was surprised at how many applications failed to answer questions I specifically asked to have included. Others ignored large portions of the listing (like experience with common open source CMS solutions). Even if you had no experience (or little) I spent twice as long considering the applicants who at least addressed all of the points. smashLAB: Stop acting like a sissy and market your company Eric Karjaluoto of smashLAB argues in favor of maintaining or even increasing marketing efforts during tough times, not decreasing them. "The problem-of-the-day has less to do with numbers," Eric mentions, and more to do with "fear, panic and our own knee-jerk reactions." What baffles me about all of this is how people are choosing to cut their spending. I can appreciate reducing office space or negotiating a lower lease rate. I similarly understand reducing staff members or entertaining job sharing options. What I can’t quite grasp, however, is this tendency to narrow the pipe for incoming sales. When you aren’t getting dates, you don’t go home and watch re-runs of Matlock; you get out of the house and meet people. A nice office space doesn’t directly drive sales. Office perks may heighten morale but they don’t necessarily bring in new clients. In times like these, all of us have to look at what keeps the machine running. As such, there’s one simple truth that I want you to embrace: your company has to accelerate its marketing and sales efforts. Design Observer: Designing Through the Recession A top-notch article by none other than top-notch advice giver Michael Bierut. In your desperation to compete for work, you'll be tempted to do things that you might not do when times are good: take on work for a shady client, start a project without a contract, ship a finished job to someone who's fallen behind on an agreed payment schedule. Do not do these things. Not only will they not help, they will almost certainly end in tears, probably your own. The modern design studio can't help but subscribe to the cult of asap. But while working at full speed is great for profit margins, it's not so good for quality control. A design solution almost always benefits from a second, third or fourth look. Take advantage of the slower pace of a recession by remembering what it was like in design school to spend a full semester on a single project. What seemed then like torture may now feel like a luxury, and your work will benefit. New York Times Opinion: Designing Through a Depression Partly a response to The Times' own article arguing design loves depression (which received a well-deserved rebuttal from Design Observer), Allison Arieff's piece encourages using the power of design to make smarter choices for the consumer and the environment. Maybe one way the recession as good for design is to see it not as a form of punishment for frivolous designers but rather as an opportunity to allow for a rethinking of design itself — and the role of the designer within it. This rethinking needs to come not just from designers but from the manufacturers, companies and other clients who decide what products and projects will be produced. There’s no excuse not to examine and re-examine what’s made, how it’s manufactured, what materials are used (and which are recyclable), what benefit it’s giving the consumer (or lack thereof) and what contribution, if any, it’s making to anything other than landfill. D. Keith Robinson: Hanging In and Helping Keith, co-founder of Blue Flavor, on staying ethical in difficult times: If you’re running your business scared and making all your decisions by fear I think you’re doing it wrong, regardless of the economic situation. I know I didn’t start a business just to survive and get by. This will pass. It might take awhile, but it will and I want to be right with my business and myself when it does. I’d rather go down fighting for what’s right than bend a bunch of rules just to get by. A List Apart: Filling Your Dance Card in Hard Economic Times A solid round-up of advice by Pepi Ronalds for freelancers and full-timers alike. People in our industry enjoy far more flexibility than ever before, due to the buoyant economy we’ve had for the last decade. The new economy won’t eliminate flexible working arrangements, but employers and clients do have more bargaining power and may expect more of you. Your employers won’t necessarily ask you to work longer, but they will ask you to be more focused, committed, accountable, and reliable when you’re in the office. They’ll appreciate it when you arrive on time and that you work when you’re at work. Minimize chats and distractions. Shut down personal messaging programs, Facebook, email, etc., until you’re on break or until the end of the day. Boagworld: 5 options when website budgets get slashed Paul Boag: We spend the majority of our ever decreasing budgets on adding bells and whistles to existing websites when there are large number of potential customers who never reach our sites. Instead of sinking your budget and efforts solely into your website consider looking further afield. Could your web strategy be better served by putting resources into a Facebook group or a twitter account for example? ... Ask yourself where your target audience congregates. Instead of constantly trying to draw users to your site begin to spend time where they already meet. New York Times: Weary of Looking for Work, Some Create Their Own A report from the New York Times on several entrepreneurs around the United States making the most of a largely barren job market. Economists say there are some peculiarities to this wave of downturn start-ups. Chiefly, the Internet has given people an extraordinary tool not just to market their ideas but also to find business partners and suppliers, and to do all kinds of functions on the cheap: keeping the books, interacting with customers, even turning a small idea into a big idea. The goal for many entrepreneurs nowadays is not to create a company that will someday make billions but to come up with an idea that will produce revenue quickly, said Jerome S. Engel, director for the center for entrepreneurship at the Berkeley Haas School of Business. Mr. Engel said many people will focus on serving immediate needs for individuals and businesses. Think Vitamin: 15 Tips for Freelancers Starting Their Own Business A generally helpful list of tips from Ed Raynham, particularly this one: You should contact the customer on a regular basis (every 3 months if the job is over) to inquire how things are going. This will help to make the customer feel important and that you are still interested in their business even though the project is finished. It will also help to keep you in their mind for future projects. Try to avoid a sales push with every contact else this goodwill will be broken and they will dread your calls. Jeffrey Zeldman: Recession Tips For Web Designers Running a traditional business is like securing a political position in Chicago: it costs a fortune. That’s why bad times crush so many companies. But you are a creature of the internets. You don’t need an office to do great work. I ran Happy Cog out of my apartment for far longer than anyone realized. My clients, when they learned my secret, didn’t care. Web design is a people business. If things are slow, email former clients. If you just lost your job, email former agency clients with whom you worked closely to inform them of your freelance business and find out how they’re doing. Best practice: focus the email on wishing them a happy holiday and asking how they’re doing. Let your email signature file tell them you’re now the president of Your Name Design. Leading with the fact that you just lost your job may earn sympathy (or commiseration: the client may have lost her job, too) but it’s not exactly a sure-fire project getter. Shimon Rura: Working from Home: Why It Sucks The reason I've included this article? It highlights the imperative need for in-person feedback. I take for granted how helpful this is in full-time employment. And if I ever go back to freelancing, this observation has changed my perception (positively) towards flying in to meet with every client at the start and throughout the project. In an office you get feedback constantly. At the coffee pot in the morning, eye contact shows interest in your latest tasks, or nods express sympathy about difficult colleagues and bosses. When you have a question about something, your coworker’s eyes and facial expressions will tell you, consciously or subconsciously, if you’re sounding smart or stupid. Chances are, you depend on this feedback more than you realize. You need it both for work-specific communication, which is easy to see, and for maintaining your self-image, esteem, and motivation–which is harder to see because the mechanisms are subconscious. There you have it. Take some time to peruse the articles I've linked to. Add a comment for other articles that should have been included here.

Typographica

  • Marlene

    Marlene is an elegant, high contrast Egyptian face with a distinctive and contemporary calligraphic flourish. When I first saw it I was impressed at how incredibly crisp it was, as if drawn with a pen so sharp it could just as easily cut the paper as leave ink there. The italic expresses this sharpness with [...]

  • Archer

    A slew of slab serifs were released in 2008. Most of them continuing last year’s trend of following the cute and chunky approach, often to delicious effect. But as marvelous as so many of those slab serifs were, sadly they were let down when it came to lighter, or more usable text weights. For me, [...]

  • Turning the Page

    “How do you know you should start a blog? Because people keep telling you to shut up. You just won’t shut up about a subject.” — Merlin Mann, SXSW Interactive 2009 “Obsession times voice” is what luminary bloggers Merlin Mann and John Gruber offer as a simple formula for successful writing. It’s exactly these qualities that Joshua [...]

  • FontBook, 4th Edition

    Long before there were hi-res laser printers in every design firm and PDF specimens on every foundry website, typographers discovered, compared, and selected type using specimen books. There is too much separation from the display to the printed page for a designer to see how the curves, the straights, and the joins truly interact. The [...]

  • Glosa

    Contrasting sharp serifs with rotund ball terminals, Portuguese designer Dino dos Santos evokes the vibrant work of 18th-century punchcutter Johann Fleischman with his 2008 release of Glosa. Dos Santos is clearly aiming for something beyond a revival though, and introduces enough contemporary flair and personal quirk to do so successfully. Designed as an extended series of [...]

Jeffrey Zeldman Presents The Daily Report

  • XHTML WTF

    The web's future isn't what the web's past cracked it up to be. 1999: XML is the light and XHTML is the way. 2009: XHTML is dead—kind of. From the W3C news archive for 2 July 2009: XHTML 2 Working Group Expected to Stop Work End of 2009, W3C to Increase Resources ...

  • Design management

    Clusterfuck, despite its saucy name, does not refer to a pleasurable group activity. Its origins are military, its antecedents bloody. The Urban Dictionary offers ten pages of definitions. Our favorite is a double entendre on "cluster bomb" and the oak leaf or star cluster insignia worn by incompetent military brass ...

  • The new old minimalists

    The earliest websites were minimal in the extreme, but without the style and flair to make a virtue of their simplicity. 37signals and Kottke pioneered the combination of simplicity with deft design sense. Cardigan made it art. Although it is never popular, never the dominant trend, rarely wins design awards, and ...

  • Sour Outlook

    It's outrageous that the CSS standard created in 1996 is not properly supported in Outlook 2010. Let's do something about it. Hundreds of millions use Microsoft Internet Explorer to access the web, and Microsoft Outlook to send and receive email. As everyone reading this knows, the good news is that ...

  • Beauty and Code

    In Issue No. 286 of A List Apart, For People Who Make Websites, Patrick Lynch explains why beauty matters in design, and Mark Birbeck introduces us to RDFa. Introduction to RDFa: Learn how semantic features normally confined to the head of an HTML document can be used to add semantic richness ...

hicksdesign - journal

  • Icons for Interaction

    Last week I had the pleasure of attending @media 2009 in London, where it has to be said, I had the best conference experience I’ve had for a long time. I prefer the more cosy nature of the event – a single track, not too large and overwhelming quantity of people, and simply great talks. I can’t pick one favourite presentation, as I came away feeling really inspired and energised by everything. It was also the last @media curated by Patrick Griffiths, who is moving on to follow other passions (from next year the conference will be in the able hands of the Web Directions Team). I want to take this opportunity to thank Patrick for encouraging me to talk, and giving the best possible environment to do it in. After giving the presentation, I realised that there are 2 areas, only touched on briefly here, that should be expanded on: Icon Accessibility and Icon Usability Testing. Those are big topics for another day/talk/blog post, so until then here are my slides for my talk on ‘Icons for Interaction’: Download the Icons for Interaction PDF (18mb). All links are available on my delicious account, tagged icondesigntalk. My speaking notes are also included in the PDF, hopefully this will be enough to make the slides meaningful. The typeface I used for this was Comic Crafts Astronauts in Trouble.

  • Unite

    Today, Opera launched it’s jewel in the Opera 10 crown: Unite. Around 3 years in the making, this service and it’s APIs allow you to easily share content from your computer to the world at large or just a select group of friends. It’s an ad-hoc personal webserver where you just choose a service (Photos, Media, Files. etc) and tell it where that content is – Unite does the rest. Lawrence Eng’s post on labs.opera.com does a great job of explaining Unite further. I was a little nervous that the marketing talk (“Reinvent the web”, “servers belonging to strangers”) would distract from what is a great fun service and idea. Fears were unfounded though, as a majority of people have embraced Unite for what it is, and love it. If you haven’t tried it yet, head over to the labs and remember: like any service with an API, the real excitement is in waiting to see what people do with it…

  • Discovery

    Discovery are a new project by members of Vampire Weekend and Ra Ra Riot. Vampire Weekend was my favourite album of 2008 – like a breath of fresh air to my collection – and this looks set to be a contender for 2009. Go see the Discovery site created by David Emery and his team of boffins.

  • Daniel's Daily Monster

    Every school day since May 7th I’ve been drawing a little Monster Card for my son Daniel’s lunchbox. Not totally sure why I started this, but he enjoyed the first one, and it’s become a ritual. Every morning when making his lunch, I give myself 5 minutes to draw a monster on paper from one of those memo pad things, give it a name and quickly photograph it with the iPhone. Sometimes they come out OK, sometimes they’re not so great. The important thing is seeing his reaction at the end of the day. #2 Mrs Wetherby didn’t go down too well – it was a bit girly for his tastes! So far, I’ve managed 16, and I’ve started a Tumblr account to show them all: danielsmonster.tumblr.com

  • The Art of Penguin Science Fiction

    Wonderful collection of Penguin Sci Fi Covers

mezzoblue

Signal vs. Noise

  • QUOTE: 'Rock Star' is perhaps the most abused phra…

    ‘Rock Star’ is perhaps the most abused phrase in the history of job listings. Nobody should be looking for a “rock star” accountant, HR recruiter or janitor. Whomever is posting these jobs is grossly misinformed as to the nature of rock stardom. Or accounting. Or both. —AvoidThisJob.com on the differences between a Rock Star and a Planet Funk Store Manager

  • Product Blog update: New Basecamp features, Highri…

    Some recent posts at the 37signals Product Blog: Basecamp New File Uploading features in Basecamp We’re excited to announce a batch of improvements to File Uploads in Basecamp. Now it’s easier to attach multiple files at once, we’ve improved our progress bar to show you as each file is uploaded, and you can click thumbnails to zoom image attachments without leaving the current page. These new features make it faster and easier to attach, review and discuss files in Basecamp. Here’s a demo video to show you all the improvements. New Basecamp feature: The Daily Digest We’re excited to announce a great improvement to Basecamp. The new Daily Digest feature makes it easier than ever to track the progress of your projects. The Daily Digest is an email that Basecamp sends you once a day. The email tells you about any to-do items or milestones that were checked off or added in the last day. Daily Digests are per-project, so you can subscribe to the projects you really care about without being distracted by any unnecessary information. Now you’ll always know day-by-day as work is completed or new work is assigned. It’s a really powerful feature. Timy: “An easy-to-use desktop application to fill out your Basecamp timesheet” Timy is “an easy-to-use desktop application to fill out your Basecamp timesheet.” More...

  • Oldie But Goodie: Sketching with a Sharpie

    I’ve always preferred sketching UIs with an as-thick-as-I-can-find Sharpie over a thin ballpoint pen or finely sharpened pencil. Ballpoints and fine tips just don’t fill the page like a Sharpie does. Fine tips invite you to draw while Sharpies invite you to just to get your concepts out into big bold shapes and lines. When you sketch with a thin tip you tend to draw at a higher resolution and worry a bit too much about making things look good. Sharpies encourage you to ignore details early on. If you sketch, try a thick Sharpie next time. You may find you’re better able to focus on the concept and less on the drawing. That’s a good thing.

  • Design Decisions: Results from the Basecamp accoun…

    Just about two weeks ago we launched the a redesign of the account chart in Basecamp. This is where people can upgrade or downgrade their accounts. The goal was to increase overall upgrade conversions and encourage people who are on Basic plans or lower to upgrade to the Plus plan (our lowest priced full-feature plan). Results I’m glad to report our design hunches appear to have paid off. We’re only about two weeks in, so we don’t have a ton of data yet, but we can compare the 14 days since the upgrade with the 90 days prior to the upgrade. Average upgrades/day: up 13% Average Plus upgrades/day: up 33% Average $ value increase per upgrade: up 8% We’re thrilled with these numbers. We’ve moved the new design to the Highrise account chart as well. We’ll watch and see if we see the same improvements with Highrise as we have with Basecamp.

  • Working at 37signals

    It’s been several weeks since I was hired here at 37signals so I thought it might be interesting to share some of my experiences so far. Ready, set, go! One of the best things has been how quickly I’ve been able to jump in and start contributing. The very first project I worked on was a refresh of the Account screen in Basecamp. What started as an exercise quickly escalated to a new design that we wanted to actually put into the app. So it wasn’t long before I moved from Photoshop right into the app code to integrate the new design. This required me to build on my limited experience with Ruby on Rails, setup my computer for development, learn enough Git to be dangerous, and get a feel for application structure and conventions. None of this could have happened without the patience of my co-workers and the solid development structure/process that is in place here. Here are a few general observations: The 37signals community is huge! Every change is noticed — sometimes within minutes of being launched. Receiving instant feedback to your work is great (at least so far :) Git has been a surprisingly nice addition to my workflow. The ability to quickly switch branches and compare my version to the original has saved me countless hours There are new things being added to the apps constantly. It’s exciting to see all of the new features and improvements every day. It can be hard to appreciate all of this activity from outside the company, but we’re working on that No longer supporting Internet Explorer 6 is liberating! In the first ten days or so I was able to design and implement a single screen redesign, get it deployed and write it all up at Signal vs. Noise. It’s pretty great to feel like you’re contributing and making a meaningful impact so quickly. Working remotely One of the biggest changes for me when joining the company was working 100% remotely. 37signals is based in Chicago, but half the team works outside the office — even the Chicago crew isn’t in the office every day. So it has been great to join a company that knows how to work with a widely distributed team. As you might assume, communication is the key to making the team effective and productive. Here are a few ways we stay connected: Campfire I have to admit that I didn’t get Campfire before I started working here. I’d been a long time user of Basecamp and Backpack, but Campfire never clicked for me despite a couple of attempts to bring it into a team workflow. What I was surprised to see is that Campfire might be the most important app that we use. Our “All Talk” Campfire room is where the entire team gathers each day — we all stay logged-in anytime we are “at work”. Throughout the day we post questions, share screenshots, get feedback, collaborate on copy, and troubleshoot code. Campfire also talks to our apps so we get notifications when they are updated as we develop. It also serves as a way to quickly note to the team that you’re heading to lunch or will be away from the computer for a short time. But it’s not all business. We also find time to talk about the latest gadget/news/link/app/controversy and generally have a good time. Campfire is where all the typical conversations that happen in a physical office occur, but the difference here is that everyone can hear them, anyone can pay attention to what they want to, and it’s all archived so we can search through it later. Campfire is also used along with instant messaging for the one-on-one and sidebar conversations when we want to chat, but stay out of the noise of the All Talk room. Jumping into our Small Talk room to work through a bit of code lets me work directly with a co-worker AND allows me to save a link to that conversation for future reference. This has been immeasurably helpful for me as I dig more into the tech side of our apps. Screen sharing via iChat is another great way a couple of us can quickly work together on a tricky bit of code. In/out Another key part of knowing and sharing what is going on with the comapny is with Backpack’s Journal screen. The journal lets everyone on the team set their current status (e.g., “Reviewing design comps”, or “Out to lunch”) and log the last few things that they have recently completed. There is no forced structure to it, we typically just update it a couple times a day as necessary. It’s a great way to get a quick snapshot of what is going on, who is working right now, and what they’re working on. Of course we also follow project updates in Basecamp and keep an eye on external communications by checking into our Highrise account. Everything is out there for us to keep up with as we need to or want to. Perfect balance At 37signals I really feel more connected and current with what is going on than in any physical workplace I’ve been a part of. It is effortless to keep up with what my co-workers are doing and how what I’m doing contributes to the whole. I’m free to keep up with projects and learn new skills as they fit my interests. We collaborate how and when it makes sense, and stay away from each other when that’s the best way to work. That makes for a really effective working environment.

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