My ideal office wouldn’t have a chair. You would do two things there: stand up or lie down. These are the body’s most natural positions.
— Niels Diffrient, design and Fortune 500 consultant

10 interview questions it is illegal to ask. I’m pretty sure I’ve been asked at least 4 of these in the last month. Especially #5. Geez, dudes, get out of my social life.

When I rolled across the first commercial with this young Bill Cosby-ish kid talking about being injured…injured bad, I was basically overwhelmed with radness. I wasn’t aware that there were other commercials in this campaign.

Our little man also does Karate (shown on the left), his compatriot discusses snotty doctors, and two kids ponder the finer point of differentiating spinach from Spanish. It doesn’t hurt that the background music is Apple-esque in its bouncy, friendly simplicity.

One of the things that amazes me about web design culture (if there is such a thing and it is cohesive enough to call it a “culture”) is how out of touch our perception(s) can be versus reality. In truth, we as an industry can have a pretty limited view of the medium we work within.

For example, which social networking sites are growing and attracting visitors right now. I’ve never even heard of IMEEM, I never would have guessed AIM Pages is growing faster than Digg, I can’t believe GeoCities still has more traffic than Flickr, etc.

Add in to the mix that this is just U.S. users and it gets even more bizarre since Google’s Orkut had 24.6 million visitors in September, but only ~500,000 of those were in the U.S. When was the last time you had a conversation about Orkut? Never? Yeah, me too.

I can almost guarantee you that most web designers turn their noses up at these sites because we think they’re not particularly well-designed (at least aesthetically) and yet, that’s where all the people are. The beauty-lover in me desperately wants to believe that MySpace is an anomaly of mass scale and yet, most of the other sites that are growing have just as many flaws and are just as ugly. You know what that means, right? We’re putting a ton of resources into visuals on sites that no one is using.

I don’t know how to create an organic, growing community. The task seems at odds with itself from the starting line. But as an industry, I think we need to start figuring it out more and not relying on the purely visual side of our skillset to get us through.

Thoughts?

All that said, the metrics for TechCrunch’s article are probably a bit silly. It’s only U.S. data, and honestly, a year timeline? On the internet? Things move far too quickly to think that’s an actual representation of reality in the same way it would be for a traditional business. I’d rather see the last 6 months. IMEEM probably shows up on the radar because it’s so new (e.g. it didn’t have much traffic initially.)

He who loves money will not be satisfied with money, nor he who loves wealth with his income…
— Ecclesiastes 5:10a

Dotcomrade Lee Gilmore and I have been working on a post for a few weeks now. I don’t think I’ve ever “worked on a post.” I’m not a drafts and revisions kind of guy. But this nugget of blog goodness will treat you right. I hope we can finish it up in time for the weekend. It involves snakes. And guns. And it is awesome.

In an attempt to make the conversation a bit easier on you, I’ve added an RSS Feed for blog comments in the header. It will keep you in the loop whenever someone contributes.

Ideas that spread, win.
— Seth Godin, marketing guru & agent of change

Lots of great WordPress tips for displaying your content differently from Web Designer Wall. There’s all kinds of category-specific hackery that you can do with WordPress that I’m just starting to discover.

Here’s a fantastic short Creative Review interview with installation/lighting geniuses United Visual Artists.

They’ve done staging work for Massive Attack (shown) and The Chemical Brothers, that swank video for Battles’ latest single Tonto, installations at the Tate Modern, and solo shows as well.

It all adds up to an extremely engaging use of light and technology, as well as being one of those rare moments when something more akin to fine art can be used for commercial purposes (to both financial and artistic success.) I wish staging was always that interesting and innovative.

[This] process of hoping people manually recreate these [social] networks over and over isn’t just an annoyance for really geeky people like me; It also acts as a barrier to people creating new, useful services, because it’s just cruel to ask people to clear this social networking hurdle yet again.
— Anil Dash, Thanks For The Add!

Just in case you weren’t aware (because honestly, it’s not the best user interface idea) you can comment on the quote posts – the big quotation mark is the permalink. Oh, and RSS consumers, stop by and see the new site design, if so inclined.

Updated work and layout from WeWorkForThem, who still have the best studio name ever.

House Industries gives their already-wonderful typeface Neutraface a slight makeover with Neutraface No. 2, a more modern, usable, and practical version of the same idea. It looks beautiful.

Gmail adds IMAP support and thus takes over the email world.

Don’t try to be original, just try to be good.
— Paul Rand, iconic graphic designer

Here’s a lot of knowledge to go get: The Conference on Marketing is happening February 4-6 in Naples, Florida. That’s plenty of time for you (and me) to come up with enough c-notes to spend a few keynotes with Seth Godin, Malcolm Gladwell, Adrinna Huffington, and Keith Ferrazzi, and sessions with the CMOs of Yahoo!, Google, Dunkin’ Donuts, MTV, GQ, and Dow Jones.

Quote, “We are educating people out of their creativity,” says Sir Ken Robinson in this TED Talk about creating an education system that nurtures creativity.

I didn’t fail ten thousand times. I successfully eliminated, ten thousand times, materials and combinations which wouldn’t work.
— Thomas Alva Edison, holder of 1,093 U.S. patents

The upcoming J.J. Abrams-helmed Star Trek prequel has been cast. The mental picture of Karl Urban saying, “Dammit, Jim…” makes me laugh like a little schoolgirl.

As of the writing of this post, Whiskerino 2007 is happening in 9 days and counting. This means that to the joy of the internet, hundreds of otherwise fairly normal, internet-using menfolk will be growing and showing beards from November 1–February 28. It also means that to the good-natured horror of my wife, I will be among them.

2005 was a good time for me, coinciding with my move to Chattanooga, expanding my online empire, getting comfortable calling myself a photographer, and the ensuing hermit-like behavior said move brought out in me. (Being hermit-like is very conducive for extended beard growing, by the way.)

I’m sure this year will be a good time had by all, though I can’t imagine what the participation levels/numbers will be like, as I was shocked by how many bearded hombres were still bearded hombres at the end of the 2005 run.

If you’re of beard-growing gender, age, and ability, consider joining in the follicle-d fun. In the meantime, updates and Whiskerinews can most likely be procured from our lovely and talented curator Mr. Michael Eades at Yewknee. Let’s grow some beards.