May 2010
85 posts
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Anonymous asked: Would you be able to tell me where/how you obtain most of your clients. I am having trouble finding any types of jobs. Its not so much people are turning me down, its that the jobs themselves are hard to find. I wanted to know if you just had any advise on where to start?
Thanks a lot
Thanks a lot
Anonymous asked: How you do get people to take you and your creative work seriously enough to pay the prices that you set? Do you get people thinking about your designs/photos as something that just about anyone can do because they have a program and a camera, so your work is no big deal, and therefore not worth paying much for?
April 2010
88 posts
Anonymous asked: Do you think the ending of Lost will be able to live up to the high quality of the rest of the story so far?
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Ask →
I’m answering questions on the blog here today. Ask me anything about design, art, creativity, process, culture, etc.
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Time’s 2010 Top 100 People →
I’ve enjoyed reading through Time’s list of the “top 100 people affecting our world.” There are some great inclusions this year like Bill Clinton, Conan O’Brien, Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof, Banksy, Zaha Hadid, and Steve Jobs.
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The coming melt-down in higher education →
Very insightful article from the always terrific Seth Godin:
For 400 years, higher education in the US has been on a roll. From Harvard asking Galileo to be a guest professor in the 1600s to millions tuning in to watch a team of unpaid athletes play another team of unpaid athletes in some college sporting event, the amount of time and money and prestige in the college world has been climbing.
...
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Why You Don’t Mess With Steve Jobs →
Apple has released a lengthy statement from Steve Jobs about why they are not allowing Flash on their mobile devices. The closing statement is 100% Jobs and possibly the best part of the statement:
Perhaps Adobe should focus more on creating great HTML5 tools for the future, and less on criticizing Apple for leaving the past behind.
And for the record, I’m completely behind the decision to...
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Longform.org →
An ever-growing collection of long form writing from around the internets and links directly to your Instapaper account.
I’m really excited about this.
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Less, but Better (Or, how to make time for...
So I read this article this morning from Unclutterer on living the life you want and it really resonated with a lot of the things I’ve been thinking about lately.
You should go read it.
This paragraph really struck a chord with me:
When was the last time you sat down and asked yourself what you really want from life? What makes you happy? What matters — really matters — to you? Maybe it is...
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The iPad, and the Staggering Work of Obviousness →
One of the best articles on the iPad I’ve ever read.
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Frank Chimero Redesigns →
My current favorite designer/writer/illustrator has just launched a refresh of his website. Go read through everything he writes. I love the way Frank thinks.
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“I want everyone to collect art. I want people to be embarrassed if they...”
– Jen Bekman, one of the recently named most influential women in technology for 2010 by Fast Company.
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Is Fashion our Identity? →
Linda Grant argues that fashion is much more important than we often give credit. The entire article is worth reading, but I think her opening story was my favorite part. She quotes a journal entry from Lieutenant Colonel Mervin Willett Gonin, one of the first British soldiers to enter the just-liberated Bergen-Belsen death camp.
I can give no adequate description of the Horror Camp in which my...
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Buying Apple stock versus buying an Apple product →
If you bought Apple stock in 1997 instead of $5700 Powerbook, you’d have a nice $330,563 now.
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“Get rid of the crappy stuff” →
Steve Jobs’s advice to Mark Palmer after he become CEO of Nike.
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WatchPuma recently stopped using the traditional shoebox in favor of their brand new “Clever Little Bag.” The bag uses 65% less cardboard and is made from completely recyclable materials.
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As Lost Ends, Creators Explain How They Did It,... →
Wired magazine has a great piece recapping LOST with some interesting behind-the-scenes tidbits and interviews with Damon Lindlelof and Carlton Cuse. Though I’m sad the show is coming to a close, I’m anxiously awaiting the series finale on May 23 and think no matter what, it will go down as the greatest drama in the history of television. Because it was definitely the most ambitious.
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The New Business Week →
Mark Porter details the brand new redesign of Business Week, now fully under the Bloomberg empire. The redesign was lead by former Guardian art director Richard Turley and features Haas Helvetica, a Helvetica variation designed by Christian Schwartz.
The spreads show are absolutely gorgeous and remind me a lot of The Guardian aesthetic. I’ve always been fascinated by editorial design and it...
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“Art is only art when it is synonymous with living.”
– Alexander Girard
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WatchFantastic television spot for Sherwin-Williams from Buck.tv. I love the concept and it’s executed perfectly.
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Happy Friday! I may be late to the game, but...
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Stop Chasing Followers →
Jeffrey Zeldman:
Following doesn’t mean paying attention. You don’t want numbers on Twitter, not really. What you want is to follow and be followed by human beings who care about issues you care about.
This thing we make together. This thing is about hearts and minds, not eyeballs. Especially not eyeballs that aren’t even watching. Eyeballs is so 90s. And it was never the right metric.
Amen,...
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John Gruber and Andy Ihnatko on The Conversation →
The Conversation has a special episode on the Gizmodo/iPhone scandal (I’ve taken to calling this situation a scandal, it feels fitting). These two guys have continually published the best and most thoughtful responses to the situation and it’s great to hear them further discuss it.
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“You ever think about how in, like, a Tom Hanks movie, everyone lives in a...”
– —Dan Wineman
This completely blew my mind. I’ve never thought of this before. Kottke is right, sounds like a plot for a Charlie Kaufman film.
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Embracing The Digital Book →
Craig Mod on the problem with ebooks and what we can do to make them better:
I realize, although I’ve had this substantial object of glass and metal for a few weeks, I haven’t managed more than ten pages of anything.
What, then, is the problem?
It’s not the screen — I’ve happily read several novels on my iPhone.
It’s not the weight — it feels fine when resting on a...
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Put This On Episode 2 →
Episode 2 of the web series about dressing like a grown up is now online and all about shoes. Another great episode!
Liz Danzico on The Pipeline →
The Pipeline is quickly becoming one of my favorite podcasts consistently providing top notch, quality interviews so I was especially excited to listen to one of my favorite internet writers Liz Danzico being interviewed. I love the way Ms. Danzico thinks and she always gets me thinking about things just a little bit differently.
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Trailer for ‘Great Directors’ →
A new documentary on ten successful filmmakers:
Angela Ismailos’ Great Directors is a celebration of films and filmmaking starring ten of the worlds most acclaimed, provocative, and individualistic living directors. The documentary, which had its world premiere at the 2009 Venice Film Festival, is a deeply personal and intimate look at the art of cinema and the artists who create it, and features...
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Home Libraries Educational Edge →
A recent study has shown that homes with more books produce children who go farther in their educational career and have countless advantages in school:
“Home library size has a very substantial effect on educational attainment, even adjusting for parents’ education, father’s occupational status and other family background characteristics,” reports the study, recently published in the journal...
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‘Up There’ →
A short documentary on the dying art of hand-painted billboards. Completely fascinating.
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Thoughts on Gizmodo’s story on finding the ‘new’...
Gizmodo has posted the aforementioned story about how the purported new iPhone was lost and how they got a hold of it.
You can read it here.
After reading it, I’m completely disgusted with Gizmodo’s handling of this situation. It is now clear they are just trying to gain page views and looking for a quick story (why write the entire thing like a movie plot).
A few thoughts:
The...
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Andy Ihnatko on Gizmodo’s iPhone Story →
I’ve been trying to keep from posting about Gizmodo’s recent story that they have a hold of the new iPhone releasing this Summer, but Andy Ihnatko’s thoughts on the journalistic side of it all is a great read:
I’d be gravely concerned about how I’d come into possession of this phone. Gizmodo’s story is very, very fishy and they need to be far more open about the provenance of...
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“Your best work is your expression of yourself. You may not be the greatest at...”
– —Frank Gehry
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Time, Attention, and Simplification
I’ve been thinking a lot about time lately. As I quickly approach finals week for this semester, the workload is piling up and I find myself wondering how I’ll get it all done; how I’ll have the time to put in the care and detail and attention I think each project deserves. How often do we find ourselves saying we are too busy? That we just don’t have enough time. If only there were more hours in...
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WatchThe great Massimo Vignelli discussing why their are really only about twelve good typefaces. Though Vignelli is probably my favorite designer, I’m not sure I can get behind the idea of only using the same twelve faces. I do agree that most typefaces are poor and I usually resort to my select few, but to say definitively that these twelve are the only twelve you should use is a bit too...
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Taste for Makers →
Paul Graham on matters of ‘taste’ and ‘beauty:’
For those of us who design things, these are not just theoretical questions. If there is such a thing as beauty, we need to be able to recognize it. We need good taste to make good things. Instead of treating beauty as an airy abstraction, to be either blathered about or avoided depending on how one feels about airy abstractions, let’s try...
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Happy Friday! I’ve basically been listening...
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Make Something Cool Every Day
Over the past few years, I’ve become extremely passionate about the creative process, studying about inspiration, workflow, and the habits of “successful” creatives. If I had to boil down everything I’ve learned into two ideas they would be:
Creative work is still work. It takes time, effort, struggle, experimenting, failing to get better at your craft. If you want to...
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