March 2011
32 posts
5 tags
“But I’ve realized that the people that I respect the most, the people who are...”
– Wonderful quote from the always delightful Liz Danzico. I can’t help but nod in agreement. Everyone I admire and respect the most are those people who are so intensely passionate about what they are doing that they just cannot stop. I’ve written before about the importance of passion.
...
13 tags
Ideas of March, Essays, and Diving Down the Rabbit...
I guess, overall, the day was pretty significant.
It was election day. George Bush would go on to win his second term as president, and my favorite band released a new album after a bit of a hiatus. I remember I was home from school early. I was a sophomore in high school and had taken two mid-terms that morning. I’m not really sure how it happened. Maybe it was an accident. All I know is...
8 tags
11 tags
Stars, Sharks, and Suffocation
The stars always put things into perspective for me. Sometimes I take walks after the sun goes down. I look up at the stars and I feel so insignificant, so small.
Sometimes I confuse my world with the world. I turn inward, thinking my problems are the biggest, my stresses the most consuming. Sometimes I wonder how I’ll ever get through it all. Then I look at the stars.
Because when I...
7 tags
6 tags
Happy Friday! [Stella By Starlight - Miles Davis]
6 tags
“I read with continuous partial attention and I don’t care that I am frequently...”
– —James Bridle, Stop Lying About What You Do
I thoroughly enjoyed this entire piece.
5 tags
9 tags
6 tags
‘Sparred, Wrestled, and Raged’ Spring Mix
Spring is officially here and I made a mix to welcome it in. It’s called “Sparred, Wrestled, and Raged” and it sounds like flowers blooming, greens sprouting and the overall new life that comes with Spring.
Click here to download “Sparred, Wrestled, and Raged.”
Here’s the tracklist:
Secret of the Golden Flower - Lewis & Clarke
The Wrestle - Frightened Rabbit
I Feel It...
6 tags
How did a British polytechnic graduate become... →
Unsurprisingly, I completely devoured this profile on Apple’s Senior Vice President of Design Jonathan Ive:
Ive is not like other product designers, who too often trade in slick superficialities and press releases. Ive prefers to be engrossed in fundamentals and has very little interest in personal publicity. To him, the way a thing is made is fundamental to its character: his mind...
10 tags
Play
It was the same routine everyday. I’d wake up and head downstairs to the living room. There was a large crate waiting for me that I’d turn on it’s side letting the Legos inside it spill out in the middle of the floor. I couldn’t do anything else until this ritual was finished. After breakfast, I’d return to the living room and play with those with those Legos for...
5 tags
Happy Friday! [Everyday – Buddy Holly]
5 tags
“When you don’t create things, you become defined by your tastes rather than...”
– _why
7 tags
WatchThis is a fascinating audio slideshow on type designer Scott-Martin Kosofsky’s quest to create a new digital typeface based off Hebrew characters, making what would be consider the Garamond or Caslon of Hebrew text. It’s interesting to see the process of designing a non-English typeface.
In these few minutes we get a wonderful glimpse of the evolution of not just a typeface but of...
8 tags
Grit →
Jonah Lehrer on talent:
Talent is about practice. Talent takes effort. Talent requires a good coach. But these answers only raise more questions. What, for instance, allows someone to practice for so long? Why are some people so much better at deliberate practice? If talent is about hard work, then what factors influence how hard we can work?
I have mixed feelings about the whole talent is...
5 tags
“The word “passion” comes from the Latin passio, which implied suffering and the...”
– —James Shelley on Passion Over Pleasure. He goes on:
There can be no passion without the experience of personal loss: until one suffers, one’s passion is not exposed. your passion is not what makes you feel comfortable — the things you are passionate about will probably make your life less...
8 tags
The Design School Dilemma
Steven Heller, reporting on the influx of students entering the design field upon graduation:
Is there a glut of students graduating from graphic design programs in the United States today? A 2004 National Association of Schools of Art and Design (NASAD) survey indicates that out of 18,000 graphic design majors in 152 four-year programs conferring B.A. and B.F.A. degrees 3,500 are graduated...
4 tags
Hello, Mannequin →
So I started a proper Tumblr blog where I can post all the stuff that doesn’t really fit with the overall themes of this blog. I’m calling it Hello, Mannequin and it will be filled with audio and visual fragments I find in my daily web browsing—essentially a curated stream of inspiration. Right now there is a lot of Woody Allen, jazz, and basketball. It should serve as a nice...
5 tags
9 tags
“If the work is good, what you say about it is usually irrelevant.”
– Stanley Kubrick from this fantastic interview with Rolling Stone in 1987 to promote Full Metal Jacket.
6 tags
“Don’t forget who you’re doing this for” →
Frank Chimero on the don’ts of design:
Wow, I had to contort that sentence to make it work. Ugly writing. Regardless, it’s not you. It’s not the client. It’s the audience.
It’s easy to get fooled into thinking that you’re serving the client. It may seem so because they sign the checks, but really great clients have the same needs as the audience. It’s good business to give people...
7 tags
“I haven’t originated anything. I’m always looking around to see if I can combine...”
– —Andy Spade of Jack Spade, Kate Spade, and Partners & Spade from this interview with Interview Magazine
This man is a serious hero. Seriously. Everything he does. Semi-related quote from Steve Jobs:
When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they...
7 tags
“If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange apples, then you and I...”
– —George Bernard Shaw
(via Design and Truth by Robert Grudin)
7 tags
“When you’re forced to be simple, you’re forced to face the real...”
– —Paul Graham, Taste for Makers
To me, this article on good design is up there with Dieter Rams’ Ten Principles for Good Design as a solid framework for approaching design.
6 tags
5 tags
8 tags
9 tags
Why David Fincher is the best design thinker in... →
John Pavlus for Fast Company Design Blog:
Calling a director a “designer” is almost a tautology: indeed, anyone making creative choices about what to leave in or leave out, in any medium, is designing. But Fincher’s coolly intelligent eye, laserlike attention to detail, and (in his best work) apparent fascination with storytelling as problem-solving, all set him apart from...
12 tags
A Web Designed for Reading →
Mandy Brown on a web designed for reading from the Readabilty blog.
[P]eople do read online. They read more than they ever did. They even read long articles, and straight to the end. They read one article after the other. They crave reading in the quiet moments of the day—waiting in line for coffee, riding the bus, enjoying a glass of wine before their date arrives at the bar. They read while...
8 tags
6 tags
