Graphic designers defined

Quote

Graphic designers don’t make things pretty. Graphic designers solve problems. They work with research, they analyze and watch, they test and iterate, they tell stories. They’re not coloring things in. The graphic in graphic designer is not limiting or to be taken literally.

Mark Boulton – “Visual Design is Not a Thing” from The Manual vol. II.

Americhrome

Aside

Americhrome. File this under things that make complete sense but which I had never thought about or realized before. It turns out the federal government has an official color palette for everything they contract out for. Every time I see a road sign I’m going to think of this now.

Pub Rules

Aside

Pub Rules. In a follow-up of sorts to the quote I posted yesterday Brent Simmons writes about what he would do if in charge of a publication. I think it will only be a matter of time before we see someone try this with a large-scale site. I bet that when they do they’ll supplant whatever the main source is for that community. The trick will be sticking to these principles as the site grows and not becoming a bloated mess of “business opportunities.”

News sites as “Angry fruit salad on meth”

Quote

Don’t let your drive for advertising dollars undercut your purpose:

I made the mistake of going to a website today. It’s understandable, of course — everybody does it, from time to time — and I’m sure I’ll forgive myself, eventually.

I don’t mean just any website, of course, I mean a publication. A place where a business publishes interesting things that I like to read.

I couldn’t hit the Reader button in Safari fast enough. In fact, I couldn’t hit it at all, so stunned was I by the flickering colorful circus the page presented. It was like angry fruit salad on meth.

Brent Simmons – The Pummeling Pages.

The Hit List sync

It’s no secret that I love The Hit List. The app serves as my carefully organized digital brain. Sometimes it’s the really little things that make an app fantastic.

This morning I opened it up for the first time since Friday. I had already left my apartment so I was out of WiFi range. To pull data, many other apps, including Mail and Tweetbot, prompt if you’d like to connect to WiFi.

This is a pain because it makes syncing my data a two-step process. The Hit List does it right. It recognizes that I’m on 3G with data and just syncs. No prompting. Let me figure out WiFi later.

I love this because it shows that the developer considered the fastest way to let people get their data synced and get working. When I open an app it’s because I want to do something. The sooner you let me do that the happier I’ll be with your software.