Learning to See is a fantastic post from iA. It’s tough to pick out any one highlight but I liked this statement:
Beauty in design is not found by adding prettiness to a bold, functional design, it’s adding detail to the essence, so the functional logic becomes more humane, refined, and clear.
Search is an interface for accessing the archive, just as the front page is an interface for accessing the news. The archivist’s task is to build an interface that offers a better experience than search.
Such a great article about archives and their potential for highlighting the ongoing value of writing. I appreciate the emphasis it places on human touch. Someone once told me that, “Great content doesn’t scale. You always need someone to have their hands on it.”
I strongly believe digital books benefit from public endpoints. The current generation of readers (human, not electronic) have formed expectations about sharing text, and if you obstruct their ability to share — to touch — digital text, then your content is as good as non-existent. Or, in the least, it’s less likely to be engaged.
Word. Art Space Tokyo is a gorgeous site and I bet will drive a lot of digital sales, in addition to readers.
Design Tip: Never Use Black. Neat post with some great illustrations of why pure black doesn’t work well for interface elements.
But when Apple announced the Retina MacBook Pro at WWDC, revamping all of my apps and my web site jumped to the top of my list of priorities…
Why? Because HiDPI customers may be a fringe group, but they are a forward-facing fringe. They represent the users of the future, and the more we cater to them now, the more deeply embedded our products and designs will be in their culture. The future culture.
There’s no such thing as an objective filter: Why designing algorithms that tell us the news is hard. An objective filter for news may not be the algorithm we need, but that doesn’t mean the right filter is any less difficult to build.
Sweep the Sleaze. Our sites don’t need 37 pieces of flair.
Tap Left Margin -> Next Page; my favorite feature of the iPad. This means I can comfortably read while drinking tea and not worry about which hand holds my iPad.
The majority of the time I’m reading a book I just want to go forward. It always felt clumsy to swipe with my left thumb. Advancing with just a tap means the device never breaks my flow.
If digital covers as we know them are so ‘dead,’ why do we hold them so gingerly? Treat them like print covers? We can’t hurt them. They’re dead. So let’s start hacking. Pull them apart, cut them into bits and see what we come up with.… Continue reading →