Forester Summit Cards
My business card design for my brother’s new business venture.
Archive for May, 2006
World Cup Icons
I’ve added a trio of World Cup icons to the collection.
Amazing Resource
Distractions from The Wishingline, one hell of a great resource. Oodles of stuff. Elegant design throughout, and a nice use of Neutra.
Coming Soon…MSAir
Microsoft is making their play for the JPEG, why not the air we breathe? *tongue firmly in cheek*
Pop Goes the PR
Jeremy Pepper’s blog is now sporting a new hooded sweat-suit thanks to my design and Josh’s CSS. Jeremy will now be kickin’ it ‘PR school’…can I even say that?
TechCrunch Design Saga
UPDATE
Having seen the response in the crunchnotes article from Mr. Arrington, which I previously missed (due to WP’s hidden next previous links) I have decided to pull my article. The real story here isn’t what Mr. Arrington “did’ but the fervor and the anger that this seems to have brought about. While I didn’t agree with the situation as I saw it, I just don’t think the fans need flamed, not when people are making threats and saying what they are. You can dig for the thread on your own.
So my article is gone and now you see a bit of the darkside of open, social media. There is something to be said for leaving yourself and possibly your business interest so exposed. A discussion had out in the open, for all to see has the power to turn smart people into raging lunatics, to create planets out of molehills. Apparently it also has the power of making my words on this modest blog darken someone’s day, for which I’m sorry.
Face Value - Vintage
I just did a very cursory review of Cork’d and WineLog, just going skin deep. You can see the same page in each side by side, Cork’d certainly wins in the appearance and IA categories. As I play with them more WineLog may have some great feature under that plain, crusty wrapper. However I’m not sure I’ll spend the time when the experience in Cork’d is so much…nicer.
Cork’d - Overview by 1/2 of Cork’d team
Hogwash
If this is how software developers think or are taught to think in school then we know why a majority of software products in the market suck today.
Some nuggets of non-wisdom include:
“You need to get in the mindset that your app is really just a data store and a set of logic modules that do something. That is your application.”
“But never forget that the interface is layered on top of the application. In a perfect world, it can be lifted off and thrown away, leaving a fully-functional API underneath.”
“The interface should be a complete slave to the application. It should end up as nothing more than a pretty way to make API calls.”
Just nonsense, at least for real commercial software.
The author is making a compelling argument for his own particular issues and problems at his work. Somehow they manage to transform their need for APIs in a particular project to wholesale attack on the user interface. I just don’t see it. I agree APIs are important and need to be exposed and well documented. However if I am building a product I should do whatever I can to make it a great product, regardless of the APIs, so if I need to bend something to make it great I’ll bend it.
But in the end the developer is saying that his work of constructing code and pushing data is more important than the task of his user, and that’s the wrong approach. Until developers recognize that the INTERFACE IS THE APP, what the users uses we’ll keep struggling with dozens of clicks, and endless “press 1 for English” loops, and dialog after dialog after dialog. Software must be designed, like a car, like toothpaste, like a TV, like a chair, like any other product. And I don’t know about you, but I have no idea what’s inside my tv, what makes it talk to the tv signals flowing through the cable. All I care about is how sharp and bright my picture is. Developers MUST remember/learn that your users only care about getting their work done and get up every morning either dreading using your products or don’t think about them because they just “work”.