Creative and Tactical Optimism in a Sour Economy

I recently visited the site of the AIGA, the professional association for design, and found a feature article by its Executive Director Richard Grefé on How Is AIGA Helping Designers Survive the Recession. Having reviewed a few other professional design organization sites recently, this is notably the only address that I’ve spotted on the site homepage. This piece compelled me to seek other writing that pairs design and the current state of the economy. Here’s what I uncovered:

• Graphic designer David Airey compiled related viewpoints in Designing through a recession.
• Raj Dash offers 17 Tips for Getting Through a Business Downturn at FreelanceSwitch, an online hub of relevant content for freelancers.
• Design critic Alice Rawsthorn of The International Herald Tribune wrote Recessionary design: A boom time for creative energy.
• Case Western Reserve University teacher and lecturer Fred Collopy wrote Can We Afford Design During a Downturn? at FastCompany.com.

Among all the encouragement to improve skills, embrace constraints, and adopt goal-setting during these economically sour times, I especially like Andy Rutlege’s advice to “adopt uncompromising professionalism.” This tenet of honesty and practicing it toward oneself, clients and projects has always been a mainstay of working. It is the best policy in good times and even more crucial in the bad. Rutledge further advises, “Fortune favors the lucky. Luck = preparation + opportunity. Opportunity will likely come knocking. Are you prepared?” Being honest means being ever-prepared for whatever comes your way.

Design Blogging

In the U.S. News & World Report year-end issue, blogging was highlighted as an important part of “personal branding” that can be used to help advance one’s career:

“A rigorously updated blog is also a crucial part of branding. You’re communicating your expertise and acumen in a public forum, where you can network with others interested in, or relevant to, your niche. It’s passion for a topic … that sets successful bloggers apart.”

There are many key words here that are worth examining:

Rigor
Blogging is a fun activity but it’s also hard work. I have touched upon “slow” blogging but as long as the dictating-my-own-pace doesn’t stagnate—and this is where the rigor comes in—the rigor lies in seeking suitable ideas, or being hit with them.

Network
The word “network” speaks to the challenge of building an audience and keeping them interested to the point of being captive—transcending the mere “target audience.”

Niche
Niche speaks to the topic that drives your blog’s core content. The benefit of niche-ing is that it’s not picky. On the contrary, there’s no topic too obscure to be game for blogging. As part of his practice and evangelistic personal branding, Wine Library TV’s Gary Vaynerchuk declared that “Niches can go crazy.”

Passion
If a blog’s motivation comes largely, or even somewhat exclusively, from its creator, the blog exceeds a format. It becomes an investment in one’s subject matter of passion. Blogging can be an integral part of a personal platform of passion (pardon the alliteration).

Graphic designer Brian Holl summarizes the benefits of Rigor, Network, Niche and Passion in blogging this way: “In a quickly changing creative field, it is extremely important to continue growing as a graphic designer and improving your creative skills—blogging is another way to help me to grow on both a personal and professional level.” Brian’s blog posting about the benefits of blogging gives a good tour of design bloggers and why they engage the blogging medium.

I recently noticed that a LinkedIn connection of mine, Kristi Olson, began a blog about user experience design. She relates the encouraging advice from her friend:

“It’s all about getting your name out there—associated with the themes and topics you’re interested in doing work on. There’s lots there. Lots. If I had 1 recommendation, it would be: Start. Doesn’t have to look good out of the gate. Posting is most important.”

Kristi is acting on her friend’s advice. It’s never too late to take blogging for a test drive and gradually find out if it helps deepen your niche and connect you to like-minded and passionate people, and, furthermore, increase your noticing power. So if you’re noodling over doing something on the web and are curious about writing, consider a blog a viable option. It’s never too late to start.

Muji’s Design Mojo

Image by Rod sin cables, MUJI for LIfe & LOve

After reading about Muji in Time magazine’s December 22 issue, I thought of Walden Pond. Somewhere in the Japanese retailer’s headquarters, the executive offices I would imagine, there must be a portrait of Henry David Thoreau, a man who epitomized simple living. Their corporate site’s “What is Muji” section (I read the English-language version) reads like a manifesto for making and living simply. Their current headings of “Selection of materials,” “Streamlining processes,” and “Simplification of packaging” match the substance and beat of Thoreau’s call to “Simplify, Simplify, Simplify.” The Made to Stick fellows may not appreciate this tagline, but Muji has transformed it into roughly 7,000 products. The tagline of Muji’s design team is “The design that is not designed.” As the group’s leader Satoshi Yasui elaborates, “It might sound sarcastic, but it is the ultimate design—anonymous, free of décor, without mark. It is not a monster of functions. It is simple.” The article also relates practices by the design team at Muji that echo two thoughts about design:

Design is redesign
This is the tagline-esque title of an essay by Jan Michl, Professor, Oslo School of Architecture, Norway. The design team at Muji not only invests their energies into the creation of new products, but also into improving existing ones.

Build products that we want to use ourselves
This belief from founder and Apple CEO, Steve Jobs, is aligned to Yasui’s attitude: “We think of what we want and why it doesn’t exist. That’s where we begin.”

Muji’s “undesign” approach has attracted descriptors like “mundanity.” The company’s success, and struggle in churning affordable “no-frills, no-mark” design, has turned mundanity into modernity. Not one to be seen at a Muji store if he were alive in this age, Thoreau may have potentially approved of the company’s take on simplicity, with a wink.

Related:

• Stuff I love: Muji Chronotebook by Jack Cheng
• The Post-Materialist | Muji Obsession by Nick Currie
• Muji: The New Non-Brand at Current TV

Architecture School makes Number 9 on Time magazine’s Top TV Series list

The reality television series documenting “a group of idealistic Tulane students building a modernist house in a poor New Orleans neighborhood devastated by Katrina” appeared in a previous post in the Connecting Bits category. Glad to see its appearance in Time’s Top 10 TV Series list. It was only one of two non-fiction picks; the other being the Presidential election, which was chosen for the third spot.

Guest-Blogging about Design and Metals

Earlier this month, I began as a guest blogger for MetalMiner™ which is focused on issues, trends, strategies, and trade policies dealing with metals and related metals services. You’re probably wondering why I’m contributing to a blog that isn’t directly related to design.

The first part of the answer is personal: the force behind MetalMiner™ is Lisa Reisman, a friend of mine. I wrote about the interface design of her webapp MetalMiner IndX(SM). She provided me with an open invitation to write for her blog, but the condition was that my pieces relate to the subject matter of metals. This leads to the second part of my answer: design and metals make for a special relationship. One aspect of designing is making connections and there’s a lot to report when it comes to design and metals. Here are the first postings:

• Survival of the Fittest, in a Stretched and Twisted Sort of Way
• When A Penny Saved Is Worth More Than A Penny Earned

• Concrete Architect Tadao Ando’s Other Material
• Richard Serra, Man of Steel


In many ways, designing is writing; and writing designing. If a friend or client invites you to write or edit something, you’ll find your mind and hands fully engaged with the visible word.

I’ll let you know of future pointers to postings that explore the bond between design and metals.

[Design Portfolio Spotting] Dialect

In the straightforward, grayscale spirit of Giovanni Jubert’s online portfolio, I spotted the work of web marketing agency Dialect based in Vancouver Island, Canada. Viewing their home screen, I appreciated their upfront honesty in calling themselves a small business. After all, “small” shouldn’t be considered a pejorative term; a business’s success isn’t strictly tied to its size.

Small can mean lean. With this in mind, the success found in Dialect’s Case Studies is described in a succinct and clear way—qualities shared by the interface’s simple two-column grid. The dominance of black text and generous white margins makes for comfortable reading, and accentuates the color of the screen details of their client web work.

For an inspiring approach to making a design portfolio online, check out the simple presentation of Alex Dunae and Nik Szymanis of Dialect.

Women, Web 2.0 Style

There’s much PR about men contributing to the tools and toolkit of the Internet. Let’s not forget about the women who are shaping and making the future of the web, 2.0 and thereafter. Their contributions deal with the design of web-based products and services that foster user interaction with information. Fast Company magazine has a sampling of some of these netpreneurs.

Related: 8 Experts Predict How Web 2.0 Will Evolve In 2009

[Nifty Idea] CollabFinder

At the same time people our pursuing the great novel or screenplay, many are also kicking around an idea for the next great web site or application. Searching for that particular designer or developer who can help bring that dream to life, however, can take a long time. To help ease this type of search, Boy Girl Talk, LLC, created CollabFinder. Let your design collaboration-quest begin!

Memorable Marriage of Words and Images in the film To Kill a Mockingbird

Film still of To Kill a Mockingbird from scott_waterman, Flickr

Robert Mulligan, who directed the film To Kill a Mockingbird, based on Harper Lee’s novel, passed away on December 21. A key part of this film’s staying power is due to its evocative beginning. The opening sequence was designed by Stephen O. Frankfurt, a graphic designer and art director who practiced a “less-is-more approach.” Though decidedly spare, the initial images—objects from a cigar box—fully set the stage. And as the story unfolds, their importance is revealed. With Elmer Bernstein’s equally spare score, the melding of images and music make the opening sequence a beautiful prelude of visual narrative.

See the opening sequence of To Kill a Mockingbird at The Art of the Title Sequence.

Flexing Your Imagination during the Holidays

Graphic designer and illustrator Niki Brown offers a short-and-sweet list of five ways to proactively decompress during the holidays. They’re actually reminders of things to do in all seasons. The first recommendation of “Get off your computer!” is a tough one— especially if it’s a frequently used tool for iterating a concept, whether thin or thick, with pixels, vectors, words, pictures or all of the above. The last recommendation of starting or revisiting a personal project is likewise simultaneously motivating and challenging. In addition to writing a blog post and sketching a typeface, you can:

• Revisit past conference notes
• Indulge in your sketchbooks
• Play with a layout
• Compose thoughts about design
• Make a list
• Capture what’s in your relative’s garage
• Capture what you carry
• Draft a manifesto
• Illustrate with snow

Whatever your personal project-with-potential may be, to echo Brown’s tall order: “Just create.”

[Nifty Idea] Set Your Pace at Blogging

Erik Spiekermann identified himself as a “Typomaniac” in the documentary Helvetica. But he is not a Blogomanic. His blog formerly featured this revelatory notice:



In other words: Stop! My blogging is deliberate in its pace. Setting the frequency of writing and posting to your blog is your speed, not the web’s.

The Simple and Straightforward Design of Photo Essays Online

It wouldn’t surprise me if photographers felt frustrated by the dilemma of how to best present their work online. It can’t be easy transforming their take of the widescreen world to a site that requires viewing at a fixed resolution. How photographers present their work online fascinates me, like the way in which designers, architects or artists use the web as a gallery for their portfolios. The diversity of photography and the approaches taken to share such work online are astounding. Many are spare in layout, letting the images be the centerpieces, and most opt for a white background. I think of the small art galleries, generally painted in a version of white. A white background highlights the color and sharpens the edges of images in an unobtrusive manner. The same can be said about images placed on a black background. While white surroundings suggest a physical art installation, unwound with a rolling pin to spread like a single space, a black background suggests the cool backdrop of a documentary.

The black background of photographer Jan Sochor’s site helps imbue his images with a filmic quality. Designer and author Paul Rand wrote, “Black is the color of death, but by virtue of this very psychological fact it is the color of life it defines, contrasts, and enhances life, light, and color. It is through the artist’s awareness of black as a polar element and consequently of its paradoxical nature that black as a color can be appreciated and effectively used. Nor must he forget that the neutrality of black makes it the common denominator of a multicolored world.”

From the background to the foreground, Jan Sochor’s site—featuring photo essays of images and the words he matches with them—demonstrates how a simply designed presentation can serve the content of a photographer. Sochor’s topics are arranged in a modular layout, like a dresser of mini-drawers. The home screen welcomes you with an arrangement of picture blocks, which are small but meaningfully packed with a lead image and a caption. Not a groundbreaking visual design solution but a sound convention. The lead image by itself would satisfy drawing a deeper look but the caption provides a concise summary to advance the interest. When you click on the picture block, the orientation changes to a horizontal direction and the content is displayed larger, still sustaining the modular format. What’s written fits the format. To contrast with horizontal scrolling, there is a set of controls—Backward, Pause, Forward—to “auto-scroll” the images as a moving strip.

As they pertain to design and designing, beyond web interfaces, Sochor’s photography and its presentation reinforce that simplicity isn’t a safeguard. It’s a decisive means to letting the content get settled as naturally as possible, keeping the surroundings (be they black or white, virtual or physical) in mind.

Richard Serra and Designing the User Experience

Image by looking4poetry, Flickr

Minimalist artist Richard Serra is known for his sheet-metal sculptures. Whether you view them as majestic or even brutalist, all can agree that Serra hones in his audience. And that audience is not homogenous: “The first audience is the people involved in the process. That would be the steel engineers, the steel mill workers, and the riggers. I don't make the sculpture particularly for them, but the riggers are the first audience. The people who put the work together know more about it than anyone else. The second audience is the interpretive audience, whoever happens upon the work… .” In the same interview with Klaus Ottmann of the Journal of Contemporary Art, Serra is sensitive to the physicality of his work, “I’m interested in the clarity of building, in gravity, in the tendency to overturn, in the exactitude of measure, the addition and subtraction of weight, the rotation of weight. I’m interested in mass.” 37signals’s Jason Fried recommended designing webapps as it were physical:

“Next time you design some software, visualize how it would look if it was a real object. Would you be able to figure out what it does by just looking at it? Or picking it up? Or turning it on? Or would you not know where to grab it, or how to pick it up, or how to turn it on? Would you know which way was up? Or which side was the front or back? Would it be too heavy to move even thought it was supposed to be portable? Would it be square when it says it’s round?”

Serra’s transformation of raw material, with its qualities and their discovery by people in mind, can be applied to the sculpture of software and beyond.

Related:

• Richard Serra, Man of Steel at the MetalMiner(TM) blog
• Richard Serra and experience design by Mark Hurst, Creative Good

Rosenfeld Media’s Lean and Supreme Book Cover Design

Last year’s IIT Institute of Design’s Design Research Conference offered one central highlight for me: the presentation by information architecture consultant Louis Rosenfeld, who spoke about his vision of a new publishing model. Rosenfeld Media is growing into a formidable publisher of user-experience design material, focused on practicality for design practitioners. His rigorous authoring process encapsulates best practices across the professional design world.

The Readerville Journal released their Most Coveted Covers. Designed by The Heads of State design studio members Jason Kernevich and Dustin Summers, the direction of Rosenfeld Media’s book covers should have been on their list and the lists of others. Here are the inviting faces of the two first publications:


Image by Jacob Bøtter, Flickr


Image by Tim Van Damme, Flickr

More atypical book cover designs in the Rosenfeld Media vein can be viewed at The Heads of State’s site. Enjoy their typographic restraint!

The Kennedy Family’s Design Connection

When it comes to design-related news, my Father is one of my primary sources. He recently reminded me of Caroline Kennedy’s design connection. As she strategizes her move to the Senate, let’s not forget the role of her husband Edwin Schlossberg, founder and Principal Designer of ESI Design, an “experiential design firm.” From a 2002 article, written by Steven Heller, in Metropolis magazine, Schlossberg was called “a pioneer of experience design long before the Internet made the concept popular. The inspiration hit him in 1965 when, at the age of 19, he attended a series of lectures at the New York YMHA featuring Marshall McLuhan, Merce Cunningham, and Buckminster Fuller. It was Fuller's ideas about ‘Spaceship Earth’—how to make the world work better for more people by doing the most with less—that enthralled him.” Fuller was a former employer of Schlossberg, who also befriended the artist Jasper Johns and composer John Cage. Schlossberg was a salon by himself, and he continues to carry on those encounters in his engagement of interactive media and how people interact with information.

Related:
The Family Man by Jeffrey Hogrefe, New York Magazine

[Found Terms] Designful Mind and Empathetic Research

Designful Mind
Kind of company that is agile, nurtures inventiveness, and has an enterprise-wide appetite for radical ideas. “A designful mind confers the ability to invent the widest range of solutions for the wicked problems now facing your company, your industry, your world.”

Source: The Designful Company by Marty Neumeier, Design Management Review, Spring 2008

Empathetic Research
Attempt to see the world with brand new eyes based on a naive viewpoint of the world. Synonym: Contextual research

Source: Conversations with Thought Leaders: Chris Conley of Gravity Tank, Business POV, May 10, 2007

[Connecting Bits] Rekindled Reading and the Kindle

Ammon Shea’s reading of the Oxford English Dictionary, all 21,730 pages, sounds like one of the ultimate experiences of consuming the visible word in its most intimate and enduring form factor: the printed book. In an NPR story, One Man, One Year, One Mission: Read The OED, Ammon says, “I love the tactile sensation of turning one page to the next and feeling my fingers across them. I love having the weight of the book in my lap; I like the way that books smell—that's a huge part of it.” Another advanced form factor that appeared earlier this year, and one meant to keep the intimate reading experience intact, was Amazon’s e-book reader Kindle. It was quickly judged, but for those who lived with it and have given the device a chance, they have fed its sign as the future of books and reading them. How would Ammon’s palpable reading experience of the OED compare with his digital reading of it?


Image by twoeyes, Flickr. Click on image to see larger version.

On a related note, the Kindle’s packaging design is attractive. A friend of mine thought it didn’t leave much to the imagination and needed color and color images. I was quick to disagree. Packaging design doesn’t always need to be imbued with the convention of color and color images. Type is the color and image in the Kindle’s case. Its minimalism feeds the imagination “in my book.”

The Cyclical Life of Helvetica: Revive, Resist, Rinse, Repeat

Photograph (Creative Commons) by Nick Sherman, from “50 Years of Helvetica”

The sound bytes captured in the documentary “Helvetica” are what make it so engaging and entertaining. Whether you view the typeface as residual bad taste, a reigning demonstration of Gestalt, simple-but-boring or simple-and-ever fresh, it’s safe to say that neutral-design Helvetica ignites far-from-neutral reactions. In fact, the topic generally brings out the best or the worst in people, especially designers. It certainly breeds opinion, which for me was a poignant reminder of the importance of having a point of view.

There were parts of the documentary that gratified me and there were other parts that made me cringe. My point of view was both reflected and refracted. I appreciate Helvetica most for its historical significance, as narrated in the documentary. Its reworking into Neue Helvetica is a frequent font in my menu. Its flexibility of weights and clean stature are what attract me to its usage. Ultimately, it remains a choice—which is one way to define design.

It was particularly entertaining to listen to Jonathan Hoefler and Tobias Frere-Jones, the type designers of Gotham (part of president-elect Obama’s identity and the Freedom Tower cornerstone, among others; it is also known as the “new Helvetica”), express typeface qualities. Typefaces challenge and sometimes even defy description. Consequently, developing a vocabulary to characterize typefaces and promote understanding and interest of their creation and utility is an exercise that would make Wine Library TV’s Gary Vaynerchuk proud. Graphic designer Tom Geismar said Helvetica is “like a good screwdriver; a reliable, efficient, easy-to-use tool. But put it in the wrong hands, and it’s potentially lethal.” On the other hand, Wolfgang Weingart described the typeface as the “Epitome of ugliness.”

Whatever your cup of design tea may be, Helvetica is one of many designs that inspire people to gravitate strongly in one direction or another. In an article (1990), entitled “Can Fine Typography Exist in the ’90s?”, information designer Hugh Dubberly concludes that “The future of type is brighter than ever.” Helvetica, whether praised or detested, is an essential part of design’s persistence as both a body of work and dialog. It is a timeless point of view that begets other points of view, literally.

Other reported sightings of Helvetica:

New iPhone embraces Helvetica (via GraphicDesignBar)

“The (Mostly) True Story of Helvetica and the New York City Subway” by Paul Shaw

“How Helvetica Took Over The Subway” by Jennifer 8. Lee

Helvetica Coffee Mug by Veer

“Helvetica can be nice” by Erik Spiekermann, who appears in documentary “Helvetica”

“The Helvetica Meditations” by Nick Shinn (via kottke.org)

Helvet’Monopoly board game (via kottke.org)

Holiday Gifts 2008 by Design

It’s often hard to choose the right gift, let alone one for a designer. But the web can help eliminate the guess work by sharing specialty lists. In particular, the ones below might inspire you with great gift ideas for the special design-minded colleagues or friends in your life:

• John Hill offers his annual list of Holiday Gift Books: 08 Edition at A Daily Dose of Architecture
• Marketing crew Zeus Jones has a Holiday Gift Guide
• Design Magazine and Resource Core77 compiled 77 Design Gifts Under $7
• Web designer Samantha Warren offers her list of Gifts for Designers ’08 Edition at her Bad Ass Ideas blog
• E-tailer Design Public has their Holiday Gift Guide
  

Looking for something more unexpected? Among the many unique objects for gift-giving, potential gift-giving ideas can be found in these collections:

• Tina Roth Eisenberg highlights the Coolest Typographic Holiday Gift of 2008
• Joseph Sullivan compiled his list of Favorite Book Covers of 2008 at The Book Design Review

Happy design holiday-gift hunting! Remember to choose wisely.

Designer’s Quest(ionnaire): Chris Ro of ADearFriend™ and GraphicHug™

The Designer’s Quest(ionnaire) is a Design Feast initiative embracing the perspective of a designer in a succinct format. Chris Ro is a graphic designer at ADearFriend™ and is also a contributor for the collective blog GraphicHug™. Read about Chris’s insightful take on design and designing.

[G1 Report] Latest Interaction Design Discoveries, From Trackball to Security Pattern

In my first G1 Report, I wasn’t sure about the usability of the device’s trackball. After a few weeks, I’ve become convinced of the trackball’s worth. It’s a good physical feature. I found myself using it more, for navigating and selecting, than the touch screen itself. But I’ve since graduated to toggling between using the trackball to touching the screen. The trackball is particularly effective for placing a cursor in Messaging. Better to place a cursor with the trackball than your finger, to be painfully obvious.


Image by Josh Russell, Flickr

Besides frequently using the trackball and the Menu and Home screen buttons, I like the physical keyboard that All Things Digital’s Walt Mossberg cited as the “biggest differentiator.” While there is only one keyboard, no virtual keyboard is fine by me. Some, including Mossberg, may find it a pain to open the physical QWERTY keyboard each time input is required, but this is not a big issue to me. One, and only one, keyboard. This is keeping it simple. This is the reason iterated by the few random people that I’ve asked about their mobile devices who don’t like virtual keyboards. It comes down to a matter of learning and adapting. And while virtual keyboards will improve, physical keys per letter remain appealing and accurate. As I’ve pointed out to a friend who uses an iPhone, I can type and spell on the G1.


Image by spdorsey, Flickr

The physical keyboard proves handy, pun intended, in using Gmail and Messaging, the two apps that I most frequently use.

The “Screen unlock pattern” is also a nifty and fun feature, which can be activated via Settings. One of my former mobile interaction-design colleagues assumed that I didn’t find it because it wasn’t “discoverable.” Sounds like this assumption lacked faith in both the mobile software and its user. Contrary to what my former colleague thought, finding the “Screen unlock pattern” feature was easy.

So far I’ve downloaded one app, a Note Pad, from the Android Market. Access to the Market was easy, and its interface to search and locate a specific app is simply organized. As yet another former mobile interaction-design colleague said (and I’m paraphrasing here), “Having the user download whatever they want in terms of apps is the value of mobile devices.” I plan to download more, play, and repeat.

More than a month has passed since letting go of my Nokia 6133 flip-phone and I’m really enjoying my upgrade to the G1. It’s a likable mobile device. I’ve been rationalizing my sticking to T-Mobile as the main reason I didn’t want to get an iPhone, but the truth is that the decision goes beyond carrier convenience. Getting a G1 has something to with Google or the Android mobile platform or having a touch-screen mobile device that’s not by Apple. Or all of the above.