Matt Donovan on Automating the In-Between
Chances are, there’s at least one step in your process that users shouldn’t have to do themselves. Why?
Quote, “I hate automatic paper towel dispensers. Waving may hand back and forth in front of that thing is only slightly less annoying than turning a crank…Since most public faucets are automatic, why not tie the dispenser sensor in with the faucet sensor? If I put my hands under the faucet, I’m going to need a towel, right? The dispenser could anticipate that and feed out a towel when the water turns on.” — Matt Donovan, excerpted from his post Automate This!
I love this kind of solutions-oriented thinking that doesn’t start with what currently exists and work from there, but seriously takes things to their most basic level and asks, “wait, why is THAT there?” with the goal to make the path from initial touchpoint to end result that much quicker. This works for design, environments, signage, check-in processes and so much more.
Find the step that doesn’t need to be a step and make it automatic.
Quote, “Single-copy sales [of Rolling Stone] have fallen from 189,000 in 1999, to 132,000 last year” so in order to stand out, we’re going to give up a main differentiator (our size) and look like everyone else. Brilliant! (Seriously though, RS has always been a bit unwieldy to try and read.)
Five simple steps to designing grid systems from Mark Boulton. A nice part 1 and introduction.
OK, NewSpring Church — Let’s Do This
Have you ever worked on a longterm project? As in putting months of days of (long) hours and thought into making something? It’s a surreal process, and it makes things very difficult to look at objectively.
I started working on new identity concepts for NewSpring Church before I even officially accepted the job, so in reality, I’ve been working on this rebranding for close to nine months. Acts of God and/or appeasement of Godzilla aside, we’re launching the rebrand this coming Sunday, July 13th. We’re also launching a new campus in Greenville, a new message series answering some pointed topical questions and, fingers crossed, the foundation for our new website (with some major 2nd, 3rd and 4th phases after the launch.)
All that to say, posting might be sparse this week, along with sleep, sanity, coherence, the ability to process information and form complete sentences, etc. Of course post-July 13th I’ll actually have some work to show off. A lot of work.
Decent trade-off?
Henry Ford practiced an early form of upcycling when he had Model A trucks shipped in crates that became the vehicle’s floorboards when it reached its destination. — William McDonough and Michael Braungart, Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things
Travis and crew at Blackpulp not only have nice design work, they have the best telephone number ever.
The yearly AIGA/Aquent Survey of Design Salaries is out. I work for a church, which probably skews salary data, but man, the South is lagging 30-35% behind the rest of the country. Sad, but it shows in the general lack of design culture around the Southern states.
Five Designers I Wish I Could Work With Daily Again (or for the First Time)
In no particular order:
1. M.A. Turner
2. Derek Nelson
3. Matthew Wahl
4. Josh Boston
5. Aaron Martin
I’m loving the bubbly, engaging UI on the SAT Achieve More website from my friends at ArmChair Media.
Now THAT is a bad Photoshop job.
“We Are Curious about design, communications, people, storytelling, art, music, sensory experiences, delicious meals, customer service, craftspersonship, the internet, & everything in-between. We will join you on the internet soon.”
Plainview Fullscreen Browser for Presentations
Dotcomrades at The Barbarian Group have released a fullscreen, borderless browser for client presentations called Plainview.
Straight from the Barbarian’s mouth: “We Barbarians give a lot of presentations. A lot of speeches. A lot of Dog and Pony shows. People want to see our work. And the work we do is on the Internet. And, until now, we really had two options for showing our Internet work: we could capture it all to Quicktime, and throw it into Powerpoint or Keynote, so we could present in a nice full-screen mode that looked professional, or we could try to show it in the browser, and have all that ugly chrome distracting people from our beautiful sites.”
Plainview has a few options (hotkeys, bookmarks, presentation mode for collecting sites into groups, multiple windows, etc.) but mostly it just gets out of the way and shows off your work in a completely functional, distraction-free browser environment. Oh, and it’s completely free.
Love those Barbarians.
It’s awesome to see my friend Matthew Wahl getting some well-deserved attention for all the understated, typography-based graphic design work he’s been quietly cranking out for Sovereign Grace and New Attitude for the past few years.
Everything you need to know about the design sense of the Hillary Clinton campaign is summed up with this.
Josh Boston is working on new seven wonders of the imaginary world.
I’m devouring this case study on wayfinding signage from Lance Wyman, an incredible graphic designer responsible for intricate, symbol-heavy corporate identity systems like the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City.
I have this site called So Serious. I started it as A Collection of Serious Thoughts on Work, Faith, People, & Creativity, a sort of place for a niche of longer article-style posts that didn’t fit into the blog here. I apparently haven’t had much to say on those subjects lately. Today I did.
Five Portfolios That Caused My Jaw to Drop While Browsing Recently
1. Pascal Blanchet
2. Curtis Jinkins
3. Oliver Munday
4. Mike Krol
5. Jesse Kaczmarek
Awesome collection of all the U.S. presidential election logos from 1960-2008 including some gems like McCarthy ‘76, Hughes ‘72, and Goldwater-Miller ‘62.
A Lorem Ipsum Pop Quiz for all you designer types.
Ballet Shoes Sound Like a Design Problem to Me
Your classic pair [of traditional ballet pointe shoes] can last anywhere from a couple of weeks to a couple of days…The American Ballet Theatre in New York City sets aside $350,000 for pointe shoes per season, about $7,500 per ballerina…Most of the shoes purchased for Ballet Tucson come from Freed of London, an established British pointe shoe maker since 1929.
— excerpted from the article En Pointe Takes Toll on Shoes
Your classic pair [of traditional ballet pointe shoes] can last anywhere from a couple of weeks to a couple of days…The American Ballet Theatre in New York City sets aside $350,000 for pointe shoes per season, about $7,500 per ballerina…Most of the shoes purchased for Ballet Tucson come from Freed of London, an established British pointe shoe maker since 1929.
— excerpted from the article En Pointe Takes Toll on Shoes
I don’t mean to sound ridiculously naive here, but if good ballet shoes cost $50-100, and professional ballerinas completely destroy a pair in less than a week, and most of these shoes are being made by (ostensibly) a handful of companies who have been making the shoes since the early 20th century (ostensibly) in the same fashion, doesn’t it stand to reason that someone needs to design a better ballet shoe?