Bespoke: Designing to a High Degree of Fit

In a previous post called Design that fits, I picked up on tailoring as a compelling theme. In that same vein, is the fancy term bespoke, which means custom-made. Bespoke not only applies to tailored clothing but has been adopted by web designers and developers. In a 2000 (yes, that long ago if you align your time to the web’s metaphorical speed) article, Daniel Janal concluded that a site must make a statement: “I am an individual. Not a cookie cutter.” Writer and entrepreneur Ryan Norbauer captures the individualism, the bespoke kind, of his Ruby on Rails consulting firm:



Bespoke is about removing opacity, having no separator between the makers of the product/service and the people who use it; the audience who should not be subjected to a “pre-existing pattern.” What Norbauer believes thoroughly meshes with the Savile Row Bespoke Association tenet: “Modern manufacturing technology may be able to reproduce a standard piece of clothing perfectly a hundred or even a hundred thousand times. Only a great tailor can create something that is both anatomically correct and entirely sui generis, fitting both the mind and body of its wearer perfectly.”

In a related bespoke-esque interview, when asked about his “passionate interest in design and design philosophy,” Norbauer replied, “Simplification, unification, and reduction: these are the values of a great craftsperson, whether she’s a tradesperson in the guild of ideas, words, paintings, or software.” Striving to realize design, whose beauty is in the fit, takes a lot of vigilance of the details—whether it’s interlining or typesetting—to ensure that the end result is a custom design with personal touch both intact and shiny.

When it comes to bespoke, botching a job is indeed crude.

Designer Scott Ballum’s Consume®econnection Project

Image credit: Scott Ballum, Sheepless Co.

I met Olga of Green Printer blog last year, having given some input about Design Activism. Green Printer is “a leading and funky blog on the environment, sustainable printing, and social networking.” She invited me to contribute again—this time a piece about green design topics. Her request coincided with my discovery of The Consume®econnection Project. Find out more about this year-long project and its creator.

Dynamic Fashion Duo: Steve Jobs and Bill Gates

These two technology pioneers appeared together for the first time since 1983 when they both appeared at The Wall Street Journal’s D: All Things Digital conference in 2007. Since then they’ve made another joint appearance, this time in fashion design:



Depending on your OS mood, you can choose Urban Outfitters “Bill Gates Mug Shot Tee” or opt for the timely t-shirt design for Apple’s co-founder and, at the same time, send him well wishes.

Peanuts to Profits: It’s Hammer Time in Designing the User Experience

Before becoming president of NBC Universal Cable, Bonnie Hammer (whose father taught at the Cooper Union) had been president of the U.S. cable channel Sci Fi since 2001 and the USA Network since 2004. During her tenure she helped increase the reception and ratings of both networks: Doubled the former’s audience and made the latter the number one channel on basic cable. Orson Welles is quoted as having said, “I hate television. I hate it as much as peanuts. But I can't stop eating peanuts.” From her experiences in the high-stakes world of television, Hammer offers some “peanuts” for practicing design:

Take risks
For the Sci Fi channel, Hammer didn’t go to the “usual suspects,” she instead selected on-air talent that would help “open up the channel to make people see how it relates to them.” Risks were taken on original programming in order to make it viewer-centered.

Use cohesive branding
For the USA Network, Hammer re-branded with a campaign called “Characters Welcome” which connected diverse programming from Monk to Burn Notice to the W.W.E. Good branding “gives you a business platform so it's really easy to translate your mission and your goals to the ad community and to Wall Street,” said Laura Caraccioli-Davis, Senior Vice President and Director of the media-buying agency Starcom Entertainment, which was instrumental in Hammer’s re-branding of the USA Network. The effort also reinforces the tagline as a compelling anchor. In Hammer’s case, the tagline helped manifest an entire programming framework.

Apply executive decision-making
On the Bravo network’s reality television program Project Runway, on-air mentor Tim Gunn repeatedly orders the designer-contestants to “Make it work.” Hammer digs collaboration among peers but doesn’t hesitate to yield a ruthless editor’s hand. “What we ended up with, instead of in-fighting, was everybody becoming invested in a given show’s time slot and making it work. That’s not to say I’m always going to listen. An executive decision must overrule sometimes.”

Enjoy the ride
On the hard-earned journey of her success, Hammer said, “Frankly, I don't want to be here for our first failure, because I am enjoying the ride of the success!” Success is a sensation but one that must be constantly re-earned. Because success can make people complacent, even stupid.

Find a character
This doesn’t mean any character. In designing programs, Hammer and her colleagues wrestle with determining appealing stories by asking “Is there a central character? Is this character slightly flawed but upbeat?” and not “…just accepting pitches from anyone about anything.”

These platitudes may sound like peanuts, but they can be easily overlooked at any point of a project. Television is described as “furniture” at times. At least Hammer keeps attempting to make the furniture as engaging as possible to the values of accessibility, cohesion, and editing. In other words, it’s furniture worth making and sitting in.

Sources:

• Bonnie Hammer, Small-Screen Mastermind, NPR
• Bonnie Hammer: She is Sci Fi, CNN

Melding Media: The Courtship of Blogs and Newspapers

Image credit: A pleasant surprise by Jeremy Leslie, magCulture

Designers Ben Terrett and Russell Davies of Really Interesting Group published a limited quantity of Things Our Friends Have Written On The Internet 2008. They heightened this select publication’s originality by taking advantage of a newspaper printer’s inherent capacity to only do a short run. The result is a one-of-a-kind tabloid newsprint collection featuring their favorite posts from 23 friends’ blogs. The newspaper is an open format, refreshingly oriented to embrace online content in an off-line manner. Even Tweets are cleverly incorporated. In his blog posting, Ben noted: “The printer requires each page to have a folio so I added a keyline and some of our favourite Tweets from the year.”


Image credit: Ben Terrett, Noisy Decent Graphics

Another winsome detail is the preservation of errors found in the blog postings. Again, from Ben: “We didn’t edit any posts at all. So they’re full of typos and a lot of the columns end in strange places. This is an odd phenomenon. In a real publication, the Sub Editor would shout for a few less (or more) words to make it fit just right. No sub editing here.”

Transferring the raw content, along with its “imperfections” and idiosyncrasies, from its blogging source to the newsprint medium testifies to the publication’s integrity—like the newsprint gesture of “;)” in this New York Times transcript of Abraham Lincoln’s speech in 1862. Whether it’s scrutinized as a mistake or a harbinger of an emoticon, the transcript transcends in print:


Image credit: Is That an Emoticon in 1862? by Jennifer 8. Lee, The New York Times

Ben’s and Russell’s experiment proves a successful meld of “new media” meeting “old media” or vice versa, where there’s no eclipse of one medium over another. The endurance of paper and the newspaper mode are highlighted as mainstays of the reading experience.

With respect to the writing experience and its relationship to the newspaper format, entrepreneur Joshua Karp founded and funded The Printed Blog. Karp’s startup is launching a twice-daily free print newspaper in cities across the country, aggregating localized blog posts. “User-generated content” is given another iteration in Joshua’s off-screen effort.

Blogs are making newspapers less obsolete, while newspapers are making blogs more versatile. Understanding Comics author Scott McCloud said, “Media provides us with a window to go back into our world.” If media is pictured as a big sandbox, blogs and newspapers are windows to each other, reflecting each other’s best interests and multiplying their reach with mutable content.

The New York Earth Room and Its Caretaker

While in New York City over the Martin Luther King, Jr. Day weekend, I planned a trip to the New York Earth Room, after viewing a short video about it. Since no cameras are allowed, the New York Earth Room is intentionally (and intelligently) left out of the video’s footage, thus heightening the mystique of the “interior earth sculpture.” This leaves anticipation and interpretation wide open. And while mine weren’t met, the Earth Room still satisfied my curiosity: it is a literal composition loaded with meaning. Adjacent to the New York Earth Room sits Bill Dillworth, who receives attendees after buzzing them in and, importantly, tending to the 280,000 pounds of earth enclosed in a white-walled space. Bill chuckles, and even refutes, the title of “curator.” I pegged him as the constant gardener but caretaker will suffice, in my (and possibly his) estimation. While chatting with him, I mentioned that the sculpture is ambiguous. I couldn’t tell if something was being buried or growing. Bill, in his contemplative delivery, simply said that “it has potential.”

It was immediate that Bill’s relationship with the New York Earth Room is one of deep familiarity—but the kind that doesn’t go stale. He’s been sustaining, not merely maintaining, Walter de Maria’s sculpture for 19 years. The sculpture was installed in 1977. To most, this may feel truly long; but to Bill, I believe that he would deem it as is, nothing more, nothing less. Bill emphasized that he’s “at a different pace” than everybody else. City living can be a daily blur. But Bill keeps steadfast in his place within the space-time continuum, urban and otherwise, much like the Earth Room that he keeps watch over.

One formality that intrigued me was Bill’s notation of attendance for the New York Earth Room. Rather than simply marking down the number of visitors or using tick marks, he created a whimsical set of characters. The sculpture is supported by the Dia Art Foundation, so I couldn’t but help dub Bill’s capture of attendance as Diacritical marks:





Each calligraphic stroke represents one attendee. If a family arrives, a bridge is made between characters (middle figure in above image) like a ligature. The visualization of his vigilance is entered into two separate blank notebooks, one is for weekdays and the other is for weekends:



While flipping through one of Bill’s attendance notebooks, there was comic relief in discovering a page of marks with a second color. As it was pointed out, it was done in recognition of Halloween:



These marks can be easily judged as superficial, but they constitute a change made over a long period of time. One can relate a number of products and services whose experiences gain from a slow evolution; a slow form of play. Like his one attendance-mark at a time, Bill keeps the New York Earth Room in a constant state of integrity, day to day, year to year, attendee to attendee, contributing to what a passage of time entails and means. His use of a rake and hose produces “subtle changes” to the New York Earth Room but it remains somehow constant in its enduring state. The micro-composition of the New York Earth Room, with Bill’s attention, keeps its quiet and pious way, while its surroundings agitate in their composition at an unsettled velocity. Some, if not many, may describe the Earth Room as simply a room of dirt. To Bill, in his own dictated pace, the room takes something commonplace and makes it extraordinary. One is reminded of the good earth.

The coupling of the New York Earth Room and its caretaker call to mind the profound rigor that can be found in cherishing consistency and its heir apparent, simplicity. Following and finding sanctuary, amidst the flow of ordinary time, is both the cue and challenge.

Found Typographic Matter in New York City with a Spotting of then President-Elect, now President Obama

These snapshots were taken during a trip on the weekend leading to Martin Luther King, Jr. Day and proudly toward Inauguration Day:


Varied cursive and printed matter at the Italian American Museum whose historic location was once the Banca Stabile


Early 20th century typewriter technology at the Italian American Museum


Chinatown in lower Manhattan


Serif-lettering and motifs in the Beaux-Arts style spotted at the 110th St. subway


Neutra House Numbers at a Design Within Reach store


Little Italy in lower Manhattan

Related:

• Designers of the World, Unite!
• Inauguration Day interactive graphic by The New York Times (Discovered via Design Observer)
• Inaugural preparations by The Boston Globe (Discovered via Coudal Partners’ Fresh Signals)
• Polling Place Photo Project film by Andrew Sloat
• Posters Designed to the Charge of Change
• The Visual Repertoire of Obama’s Run for the White House (Discovered via Design Observer)

Writing to be edited

In my Write to be read entry, I expressed my need for a good editor with the writing of this blog. Graphic design author Steven Heller shares the sentiment in an Émigré Magazine interview (1994): “I also rely on good editors to make me look good; to clean up my messes, as it were.” It’s a good rush to hand a piece of writing over to one who can make it better in composition. There is the more polished effect that results from the editing process, but what’s ultimately enhanced is the voice—contributing to it without losing it. A good editor helps you to sound more like yourself.

My need for a good editor doesn’t mean it’s a requirement. It could also be construed that I lack confidence in my writing, but in fact the opposite is true: A good editor motivates and marinates good writing and vice versa, one entry at a time.

[Nifty Idea] Visual Storytelling of Broken Arm Casts and Holsters

Here’s an infotaining way to show cause and effect. Andre Montejorge of Bem Legaus helps the patient-visitor relationship. Thanks to The Sub-Studio Design Blog and KickStyle teams for identifying the designer.



If you’re into revisionist storytelling, you’ll want to step right up to the Interactive Sharpie Billboard. Pick a color and write your message, without a mark of vandalizing:



Discovered via NFG! and PICDIT

Healthcare Reform and Designing the User Experience

In 1993, healthcare reform became a hot topic and has been actively pursued—with greater and lesser results—ever since. NPR’s story How Obama Can Heed Clinton Health Reform Failure delivers sound-bytes that the design community can apply to its practices:

Sound-byte 1: Follow Up by Following Up
According to Sheila Burke, the former top aide to Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole, “The Clintons had made this issue a critical one in the course of the campaign, talking about health reform. … But then [they] essentially let a year go by while their task force pulled things together. … You lost the attention of the American public, and you also allowed the opponents to essentially mount a campaign.”

Post-rationalization: When you’re stating intent to take action, especially if it’s a tall order, be accountable in a timely way. Compounding words with action is a no-duh tenet for designers to practice with their colleagues and clients, but it can be easily overlooked (and forgotten).

Sound-byte 2: Getting Lost in Translation is Easy
According to Chris Jennings, former White House Senior Health Policy adviser during the Clinton years, “People aren’t happy with their current health care system. They certainly aren't happy with the costs, but they aren’t willing to trade up or down for anything until they know exactly what it is.”

Post-rationalization: Helping people understand is not only beholden to information or user-experience designers, but to all design disciplines. This is another instance in which the classic Tuftian line, “Make the complex clear” proves sage advice for all involved. With this accomplished, “Beauty will take care of itself” as typeface designer Eric Gill put it.

Sound-byte 3: Make Consuming Information Comfortable
Chris Jennings says of President-Elect Obama’s focused campaign for healthcare reform, “You don’t hear about price controls or premium caps; you don’t talk about new government agencies.”

Post-rationalization: Craft straightforward content and messages. This is crucial not only for the products and services created, but also the way in which they are communicated. Keeping “on topic” is one concern, and selecting both the appropriate quantity and quality of words is another. President Woodrow Wilson hit the messaging nail on the head when he said, “No one who has read official documents needs to be told how easy it is to conceal the essential truth under the apparently candid and all-disclosing phrases of a voluminous and particularizing report….” Reflecting back, it wasn’t easy to present the daunting 1,300-page bill. Communicating a complex concept in a digestible and compelling way, without the “needless parts,” is (always) the design opportunity.

Sound-byte Summary
Besides Keep it simple to keep it “trusted”, the other inherent lesson in these sound-bytes is to put politics aside. It would be no surprise if you heard this before.

Design and Metals: Coca Cola’s Aluminum Chic, David Byrne’s Bike Racks and the Humble Paper Clip

Last month, I began writing about the intersection of design and metals. Taking a cue from Eric Baker’s sequences of found images that he regularly posts on the blog Design Observer, here’s an array of clickable images from recent stories concerning metal as a design medium:

Designed for Quiet: Architect Andrew Berman’s Writing Studio

Private Library from A Space In Time on Vimeo

In an upcoming Designer’s Quest(ionnaire), graphic designer Shawn Hazen states that his most desirable tool for designing is “Quiet time, to sit and think.” When it comes to the noise of life and work, silence is most welcomed and can prove golden. New York architect Andrew Berman’s design of a writing studio and library for a historian looks and sounds like a space where silence is a beautiful option.

Discovered via Alissa Walker

Posters Designed to the Charge of Change

While perusing poster designs in the Artists for Obama gallery, which formed last summer, I recalled this poster design by type designer Jonathan Hoefler, who was commissioned by the Obama campaign to make a contribution:



Another statement of change was this brilliant poster design, set in the Gotham typeface, and also with gradient, by Shawn Hazen for the Manifest Change competition, sponsored by MoveOn.org and Obey Giant. It was one of only five posters from 1,200 entries and was exhibited in for the Democratic National Convention held in Denver. It was later auctioned off to benefit Obama’s campaign:



Hazen’s poster was one of two pieces. The second was a similar typographic installation. Both pieces make for a grand, simply designed, statement about the domestic political mood. A unit of change, unified that is.

Designer and Power-Blogger David Armano is Reaching Out for Your Help

Earlier this week, David Armano posted a plea to help Daniela, a mother of three who left a physically abusive marriage and lost her home. David has not only galvanized social media for a noble cause, his effort amplifies good design as a force of goodwill. Read more about his effort and please contribute to Daniela and her family’s survival.

[Design Fetish] Grids

Graphic design Wim Crouwel said, “A design should have some tension and some expression in itself. I like to compare it with the lines on a football field. It is a strict grid. In this grid you play a game and these can be nice games or very boring games.” Whether you view grids as a tool of liberation or a prison, grid-inspired works marked 2008:

Controlling interest and other grid-influenced artwork by Daniel Lefcourt (via swissmiss):



Graphic designer and typographer Antonio Carusone created The Grid System, an “ever-growing resource about grid systems, the golden ratio and baseline grids”:



Paul Armstrong of Wiseacre Design created web.without.words, a weekly showcase where he takes a popular website and strips it down to an arrangement of blocks:



By doing so, he practices his “core belief that hierarchy, grid systems and uniformity ultimately lead to a more natural user experience. By showing the overall structure of any website, by stripping naked all the distractions of text and ads and images and showing a site for what the eye unconsciously perceives.” Armstrong’s project reminds me of Internet Soul Portraits (I.S.P.) by Mark Callahan, an Artistic Director of Ideas for Creative Exploration (ICE) at the University of Georgia.

Beginning last November, Sol LeWitt: A Wall Drawing Retrospective was fully installed and opened to the public at MASS MoCA (Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art) and will be available to be experienced for the next 25 years. Reminiscent of the work by the geometric abstract art of Kazimir Malevich and the grid-based paintings of Piet Mondrian, LeWitt’s fascination with geometry connects with grids like his composition of rectangles and squares in Wall Drawing 792:


Photo: Hallie Scott

Described as “non-representational,” the work of Lewitt and his predecessors does represent something that’s kept alive the form-making communion with the world. Grids are getting back to basics and, at the same time, are vehicles that agitate the threshold between simplicity and complexity.

What is emphasized in these creations is an underlying structure that helps bring clarity to the overall form (Massimo Vignelli would agree in his downloadable Canon). Grids are usually associated with order, and a sense of order can be comforting, or, per Crouwel’s stand on grids, dull. In either case, they’re a way to makes sense of phenomenon, visual or otherwise.

Branding Fatigue

I noticed this response to an article on National Public Radio. It’s understandable that a media organization would make well-intended efforts to editorially chunk a diverse and every-growing body of content—especially one that’s on so many minds today. It just makes sense. But the approach can also be excessive, which is the opinion of listener “Juan Ensalada.” What’s more, it proves the point that taxonomies can be taxing.

Since establishing this blog, I’ve been hooked on, and perhaps even zealous about, branding pieces according to what I envision as foreseeable series, such as Connecting Bits, Nifty Idea and Design Portfolio Spotting. I try to consistently stick to the topical arc for each editorial umbrella, but Juan’s comment comes as a reminder: Don’t go overboard with batch-labeling, lest you find yourself with an over-engineered collection of content. Not to mention an audience that grows confused by, if not downright skeptical of, your brand-trigger happy tactics. This echoes an aspect of graphic designer Adrian Shaughnessy’s essay on the Obsessive Branding Disorder a book by business writer Lucas Conley. Shaughnessy observes that the book’s author “nails the problem: ‘ … branding, when it’s consistent, provides us with clarity and simplicity in a progressively hectic world. But branding has become unhinged from its initial principles, and its aims have become increasingly exaggerated and warped.’”

Branding fatigue may be a close relative to trade/service-mark fatigue. Striving for honesty, helped by consistency, should curb the perceptual wormhole-effect that branding may induce.

[Blog Entry Echo] Selected Pieces from September through December 2008

If you’re a newcomer to this blog or an occasional visitor, here are some selected past entries that span this blog’s categories: Bits, Connecting Bits, and Nifty Idea:

• The Simple and Straightforward Design of Photo Essays Online
• The Cyclical Life of Helvetica: Revive, Resist, Rinse, Repeat
• Designers of the World, Unite!
• Blogger’s Quest(ionnaire): Dave Cuzner, grain edit
• The Designer’s Film Sense
• Open Design Critiques and Work Travelogs

But wait, there’s more, read the diverse perspectives of designers who responded to the Designer’s Quest(ionnaire).

Design Feast Highlights for 2008

This year has been another rich demonstration of imagination. At Creativity Online, folks like Paula Scher of Pentagram and Helvetica filmmaker Gary Hustwitt gave their Design Highlights for 2008 (subscription required). It compelled me to compile my own personal list. Here it goes:

Everyone
Aligned to the urban educator and writer Jane Jacobs’ statement “Design is People,” my first acknowledgement goes to those who are surviving the sharp edge of this economy by improving how they live and work, thinking of ways to better collaborate, and ultimately extending empathy beyond the workplace into the home.

From small- and large-business owners to freelancers and in-house practitioners, this first highlight of People justifies a list on its own. My constant search to uncover interesting content for design webliography Design Feast brought these design highlights to my attention (listed in no particular sequence):

Webapp Creators
The web’s means and languages have unleashed a creation-rush of web-based software and services. I wrote about the debut of my friend’s MetalMiner IndX(SM) webapp, which helps those in the metals industry. Transforming a suite of ideas into a suite of online tools must have been a satisfying journey. Equally notable was the launch of Sifter, a “hosted bug and issue tracking application focused on making work less tedious,” as well as the very simple StickyScreen created by Jack Cheng. This micro-sampling of entrants doesn’t negate the diverse range of existing webapps that were re-launched with significant updates by their makers.

Living the Blogging Dream
Achieving a blogging rhythm is no small effort. It’s hard work to sustain the drive to deliver content, particularly design-centric matter, each day, every week, such as acejet 170, AisleOne, analogue, A Daily Dose of Architecture, Design Thinking Digest, grain edit, GraphicHug, The Groundswell Collective, Karrie Jacobs, Logic+Emotion, swissmiss, Thinking for a Living, and The Curated Object, among a great many others. The design blogosphere is thick, even murky, but the authors behind these efforts are role models for those who aspire to start a blog—or Wiki, Tumblr, etc.—of their own (one rigorous posting at a time), and not let it become too idle.

Self-Publishers
Design studio Brighten the Corners wrote, illustrated, designed and published a children’s book Victor & Susie. Designer Duane King of the educational site Thinking for a Living published a self-titled booklet dedicated to open source design education. Designer Mark Boulton wrote A Practical Guide to Designing for the Web which will be released early next year. Whether finding a partner in a colleague, printer, distributor or utilizing a service like Lulu and Blurb, the urge to make and publish a book is within reach, and requires no one’s permission.

Photo Essayists
The coupling of images and words is enjoying a big wave of engagement in the form of online narratives. Notable examples include the Photo Essays of Jan Sochor, Chaplin: A Life, The World’s Photostream of Public Radio International (PRI), and Erik Gauger’s travel writing in Notes from the Road. Pangea Day is indeed every day.

Regarding singular picks, these left a strong first impression that still lingers (again, in no particular sequence):

A Working Library
I’ve found myself visiting this library more frequently than physical ones—a pity I know. Reader, writer, and designer Mandy Brown’s thoughts about the connectivity of books and the reading experience motivate me to truly reflect on the visible word and its handling. A Working Library defies the misconception that a blog can’t be both intimate and insightful at the same time.

CollabFinder
With all its languages, the web is a canvas for designers and developers alike. Sahadeva Hammari and Ian Van Ness of Boy Girl Talk help both find and realize collaboration for big ideas online. The synergies sparked from designers to developers and vice versa are well served by this resource.

Gary Vaynerchuk’s Favicon
This icon design probably didn’t debut this year, but it was a new discovery for me at the personal site of the creator of Wine Library TV. At 16 by 16 pixels, the Favicon bears an accurate resemblance to its subject. The attention paid to the smallest personal branding details commands respect.

How do you design? A Compendium of Models
Hugh Dubberly’s organic gathering and cataloging of 100-plus-and-counting design processes is a ginormous effort aimed at offering a useful loupe or circus mirror to the “How” of design. I anticipate the educational reception of Hugh’s curating of design-thinking-and-doing.

Opening of the Summer Games in Beijing
As described in an earlier posting, the prelude to this past Summer Olympics was an impressive demonstration of site-specific installation art and gave unique expression to milestones of Chinese invention and history. Filmmaker Zhang Yimou’s orchestration, done on a massive and ultra-coordinated scale, was moving in a multitude of ways.

President-Elect Barack Obama’s Campaign (but not its identity design)
Much well-deserved coverage has gone to the design and utilization of the typeface and logo in Obama’s Presidential campaign. But a nod should also be given to other inspired initiatives that connect design and the U.S. government: Design anthropologist Dori Turnstall galvanized the U.S. National Design Policy Summit, Designer William Drenttel wrote an open letter about A Design-Oriented National Endowment for the Arts, BusinessWeek contributing editor Bruce Nussbaum wrote an open letter about an Innovation Dream Team. These are aligned to the spirit of other programs, such as the planned Artist Corps and Kiff Gallagher’s formation of MusicianCorps.

Sean Tevis’s Comic-Strip Run for the Office of Kansas State Representative
Though he lost his election bid, information architect Sean Tevis won in his unique approach to campaigning. He tapped into his skills in web design and technology to create a visual storyboard, presenting his positions on issues with a sprinkle of humor and fresh references to popular culture. See the interview about Sean’s approach which helped make the race a close one. Let there be a sequel.

T-Mobile G1
This is a biased pick due to my documentation about its use. Nevertheless, it’s my first “smart device” and the G1, with its Android software, has made my steps into mobile virgin territory smoother and more connected.

Typography for Lawyers
Typographer-turned-Attorney Matthew Butterick has done a good deed in making a guide of typography tailor-made for legal practitioners. Having worked in the litigation field, I appreciate Matthew’s effort to educate his colleagues. Why is typography important? Butterick answers with a resource that’s smartly put together and, in a way, cements good typography as the law in and out of the courtroom—for lawyers and jurors alike.

Arriving at this list was a little easier than I thought, as it consists of design works that have been particularly memorable to me. Whether they be a few or a group of one, what are your Design Highlights of 2008?

As you ponder the answer: Thanks for visiting and reading, and here’s to an excellent new year of designing!

Year-End Design Lists 2008

The end of the year prompts reflection and especially collection of the who’s who and what’s what that made 2008 a notable one for design and designing:

• New York Magazine’s The Top Ten Designs
• Architecture critic Paul Goldberger’s Ten Best of 2008
• The Observer’s Hail the New Modesty
• Web-zine Yanko Design’s Best of 2008
• Gizmodo’s The Best, Weirdest, and Most Wonderful Gadget Designs of 2008
• Design Cubicle’s blogger Brian Hoff curated 50 Brilliant Design Articles of 2008 in 23 Categories + 40 Reader Submitted Posts

Amidst global-economy fatigue, the design output of 2008 is a beacon for what can be accomplished in 2009.

2008’s Photographic Memory

One year in 40 seconds from Eirik Solheim on Vimeo

The allure and power of photography is evident in The Boston Globe’s The year 2008 in photographs in three parts, Time magazine’s 2008–The year in pictures in full screen, and photographer Erik Solheim’s approach to photographing One year in 40 seconds (discovered via Coudal Partners’s Fresh Signals).

A related story, reported by NPR, is A Year Of Photographs, Taken At The ‘Sametime’ which featured SAMETIME 7:15, whose name explains the project, which connects six participants and their six respective locations. Whether you consider such an activity a worthwhile pursuit or merely a vacuum, it remains an original exploration into photographic and online media.

Miguex of the blog Accent Feed curated 10 Most Innovative Concert Visuals ’08 (discovered via Quipsologies).

Enjoy these captures of 2008’s events as a new year unfolds.

Designer’s Quest(ionnaire): Designer and Educator Josh Owen

The Designer’s Quest(ionnaire) is a Design Feast initiative embracing the perspective of a designer in a succinct format. Josh Owen is President of Josh Owen LLC and Craig R. Benson Chair for Innovation and Associate Professor of Industrial Design at Philadelphia University. Read about his insightful take on design and designing.