January 2011
44 posts
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Top 10 of 2010
TOP 10 ALBUMS OF 2010
(Wow! What a year for music! It was very hard to narrow down this list.)
Sigh No More - Mumford & Sons
The Age of Adz - Sufjan Stevens
Winter of Mixed Drinks - Frightened Rabbit
Go - Jonsi
Born Again - Newsboys
The Suburbs - Arcade Fire
Contra - Vampire Weekend
All Day - Girl Talk
Happiness - Hurts
Honorable Mentions: The Way Off - The Books, Disappearing...
December 2010
36 posts
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Year End Review
It’s hard to believe that 2010 is coming to a close. It was a big year for me academically, professionally, and personally. I thought it’d be nice to take some inventory of a few of the big ideas that I wrote about here on the blog this past year and the topics that will likely continue through 2011.
Design is a language. Like the French have words for things we don’t in English, design is...
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“What if, just like STEM is made up of science, technology, engineering and math,...”
– John Maeda on adding art and design to science education to create more meaningful innovation.
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Adding Design to Education →
Dr. Stephanie Pace Marshall, founding president of the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy on the importance of design in education:
I am not a credentialed designer, but as a leader I have always been mindful of the power of design to evoke changes in perception, attitudes, experiences, and behaviors by helping to change the relationships, patterns, and shape of the system. For me, designers...
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New York City – A Photoset
More on Flickr.
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The Simple Software that could — but probably... →
James Somers, writing for The Atlantic, on Etherpad and the idea of software that tracks changes and updates to files instead of overwriting each version:
Forget about saving drafts — Etherpad promised (or threatened) to save every keystroke: every note and idea, every version of a phrase, every snag and breakthrough. It would all be recorded, and labeled, and automatically backed up as...
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Stock and Flow →
While thinking about noise I was reminded of Robin Sloan’s piece over at Snarkmarket on how the economic ideas of stock and flow relate to media:
Flow is the feed. It’s the posts and the tweets. It’s the stream of daily and sub-daily updates that remind people that you exist.
Stock is the durable stuff. It’s the content you produce that’s as interesting in two months (or two years) as it...
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“But living an honest life -– for that you need the truth. That’s the other thing...”
– —Ricky Gervais in Why I Am An Atheist.
I love this quote. Maybe you could put it another way: “the truth will set you free.” Wait, what?
(Sidenote: He never truly answers why he is an atheist other than when he was eight, he questioned God’s existence. Apparently if you have to...
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New Work: Independent Study
If you asked me what I’ve been working some time over the past four months, there is a good chance I mentioned something about an independent study I was doing this semester and then try and explain it by mumbling something about Marshall McLuhan, communication, churches, and religion.
Well, after working the entire semester on this massive project, it is finally complete and back from the...
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On Talent, Competition, and Becoming friends with...
“Talent recognizes other talent and shows appreciation for it, instead of envy.” (via John Meada)
“Most of us need competition to tell us how fast to go.” —Seth Godin
The most important thing I learned this semester is that it’s okay for people to be better than me. In fact, I should seek out people whose talents exceed mine. Heck, maybe even become friends with them.
If you have no one to...
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Adding to the Noise
There is a lot of talk amongst those I follow on Twitter about “noise.” Media is bombarding us from every angle and it’s hard to filter. Jeremy Cowart’s resolution for 2011 is “less emailing, more creating.” Then my pal Zach McNair responded on his blog with his desire to reduce the noise in his life:
To be honest, my mind has been contemplating all the ways that I can reduce various noise in my...
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“There’s nothing wrong with correcting mistakes, and proper form is usually...”
– —Frank Chimero, Syntax.
Yes, yes, yes, yes, and yes! This is everything I’m about.
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‘Let Your Heart Be Light’ – 2010 Christmas Mix
In what has become a tradition for the past several years, I’ve once again put together a Christmas mix full of some new and traditional Christmas favorites. It’s called “Let Your Heart Be Light” and features seventeen of my current favorite Christmas songs.
Click here to download Let Your Heart Be Light!
Here’s the tracklisting:
Jingle Bells - Frank Sinatra
All...
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“If you don’t know who you are or what you’re about or what you believe in it’s...”
– Rainn Wilson on How to Solve Creative Blocks. The short interview is full of some great insight.
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The most read man in the world →
The Economist has a great profile on Matthew Carter, the type designer behind now ubiquitous fonts like Georgia and Verdana:
Most fonts in use at the time were either adapted from type designed for print, or were created primarily for user interface elements. Georgia and Verdana were designed from scratch with monitor legibility in mind. But then, Mr Carter, now 73, has always been a man ahead of...
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WatchThis is my printing press. There are many like it, but this one is mine. My press is my best friend. It is my life. I must master it as I must master my life. My press, without me, is useless. Without my press, I am useless. I must ink my press true. I must print more beautifully than new technology that is trying to kill me. I must ink them before they pixelate me. I will.
Fantastic video from...
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“But I can’t help wondering what we might have said if we hadn’t been stopped....”
– —Steve Martin, responding in The New York Times to his apparently boring interview at the 92nd Street Y a few weeks ago.
I couldn’t believe it when I read the article last week that the Y would be offering refunds because Steve Martin and Deborah Solomon spent the majority of the interview...
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Finals Week Text Playlist
It’s the last week of classes before finals so the next few days look to be fairly busy as I finish up a handful of class projects as well as a few freelance things that have come down the pipeline. That being said, posting may be quite sporadic this week as I juggle these things and get some work done.
At the beginning of the summer, Frank Chimero shared what he calls a “Text Playlist,”...
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“Great people talk about ideas, average people talk about things, small people...”
– Unknown
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“It’s really important to be in over your head, to put yourself in a position...”
– Alexander Isley on taking a job with Tibor Kalman during his interview on Design Matters. This entire interview was great.
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Mixed Feelings about Facebook →
Matt Thompson confesses he has mixed feelings about Facebook over on Snarkmarket. Of particular interest to me is how being on Facebook has changed his perception of the world, specifically when it comes to photos:
For me, the service has replaced the notion of a photograph as a shared, treasured moment with the reality of a photograph as a public event. I realized all of a sudden that I can’t...
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“If I were living in NYC in the ’50s, I’d be a modernist painter, in the ’60s I...”
– —Richard Blakeley, editor-in-cheif of Gawker.TV, as quoted in “Is Social Media Bad for NYC?”
I think the questions posed here can be applied to anyone living anywhere, not just New York City. The question is: is our obsession with tweeting, status updates, TwitPics, Gowalla-ing, etc....
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“You’ve got to learn your instrument. Then you practice, practice,...”
– Quoting Charlie Parker from What Jazz Soloists Know About Creative Collaboration. More good advice:
Pay close attention to those around you. Notice the small things like tone and body language. While others are talking there’s a tendency to be thinking of what you might say next. Resist this urge....
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I, Reader →
I had never heard of writer Alexander Chee before and now I find myself posting something he’s written for the second time this week. This time, he’s writing about books and reading and our relationship to both of them:
My books have moved with me from Maine to Connecticut to San Francisco to New York, to Iowa to New York to Los Angeles to Rochester to Amherst and now to New York once...
