A collection of feature graphics from President Obama’s campaign website.
From Designing Obama by Scott Thomas, which is available to read online for free (as well as on iPad and in print). (via Kottke)
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Wordnik, the dictionary that I really should be using*, just launched a side-by-side word comparison feature to help you distinguish between similar words while browsing their thesaurus. It takes the window arranging, tab switching, or (god forbid) page flipping out of the equation.
* I typically just use Apple’s built in Cmd+Ctrl+D shortcut, which changed my life.
“The question was not how to further automate the teller, but rather how to humanize the machine.” writes IDEO, on redesigning the ATM for Spanish bank BBVA.
A picture of this redesigned ATM blew through my feeds earlier this week and I wasn’t impressed because it just looked so stylish, but after watching the video I’m blown away by the machine’s subtle logic. The killer innovation for me is the cash dispensing animation that bridges the virtual and physical. The effect is unreal.
See also: Take the Money and Stand Still by Khoi Vinh
ATM designers should abandon their strategy of intimidating customers through technologically imposing yet incomprehensible forms. Instead, they should focus on simple constructions, fewer planes, fewer parts, and a healthy dose of visual logic. New ATMs should be intuitive in the way that appliances and common tools are; the best designed of these forms communicate what they do at first glance and without ambiguity.
Should they be beautiful? It’s perhaps too much to ask banks to strive for aesthetic beauty in this endeavor because nearly everything they’ve ever produced in the past few decades has been blindingly ugly. The bar for success can be somewhat lower though: a new ATM design need only be simple and succinct enough in its form that it becomes difficult for a thief to attach something as flagrantly malicious as an ATM skimmer to it. It’s not much to ask, but it would be enough.
Fun and Nourishing by Frank Chimero
Related sad news (via Phoebe): Morrie Yohai, “the man behind Cheez Doodles,” has passed away at 90.
Stamps of Disapproval by Heather K. Phillips
Gone are the days of tearing work from the wall. These days, disapproval often takes the form of ambiguous encouragements. Put the language of critique in your hands with this series of 12 rubber stamps. Each stamp bears of fragment of abridged feedback associated with critique.
(via @robgiampietro)
Brent Simmons, Flexibility and PowerFlexibility is the ability to change how software works; power is the ability to do more with less effort.
There’s a complicated relationship between the two things. Sometimes flexibility may add to power — if I could just make these things green, my eye could pick them out more easily, and I’d get my work done more quickly.
But flexibility detracts from power just as often — or more often. Flexibility is an invitation. It says, “Hey, futz with this. And this. And this. You’re not getting anything done, but at least you kind of have the illusion of doing something.”
What if to discourage smoking, Cigarette Cartons were designed to be less convenient? Design to Annoy by Erik Askin
(via draplin)
The Americans with Disabilities Act is famous for being the inspiration behind curb cuts, the accessible ramps we see on every sidewalk at every street corner. But curb cuts didn’t just enable those who were in wheelchairs to get around more easily. They’re also a major reason why a market exists today for Bugaboo or McLaren strollers. They’re the reason that Samsonite suitcases 20 years ago didn’t have wheels on them, but you’d be hard-pressed to find a piece of luggage today that doesn’t have wheels. I’m not saying the highest purpose of the ADA was to enable people to buy thousand-dollar baby buggies, but making things accessible for all has the side benefit of yielding tremendous benefits (and, not incidentally, opening huge new markets for business) for everyone regardless of ability.Anil Dash, Ability Maps, #deaf Mayors and $1000 Strollers
Great design does not come from great processes; it comes from great designers.
Fred Brooks, in an interview with Wired
That being said, Brooks offers one piece of universal advice:
The critical thing about the design process is to identify your scarcest resource. Despite what you may think, that very often is not money. For example, in a NASA moon shot, money is abundant but lightness is scarce; every ounce of weight requires tons of material below. On the design of a beach vacation home, the limitation may be your ocean-front footage. You have to make sure your whole team understands what scarce resource you’re optimizing.
(via David)
The book was always fundamental to me. One of the things I really liked was that the original logo for Criterion, which we designed in 1984, was a book turning into a disc. It was central. When I was writing the paper for Britannica, I felt like I had to relate the idea of interactive media to books, and I was really wrestling with the question “What is a book?” What’s essential about a book? What happens when you move that essence into some other medium? And I just woke up one day and realized that if I thought about a book not in terms of its physical properties—ink on paper—but in terms of the way it’s used, that a book was the one medium where the user was in control of the sequence and the pace at which they accessed the material. I started calling books “user-driven media,” in contrast to movies, television, and radio, which were producer-driven. You were in control of a book, but with these other media you weren’t; you just sat in a chair and they happened to you. I realized that once microprocessors got into the mix, what we considered producer-driven was going to be transformed into something user-driven. And that, of course, is what you have today, whether it’s TiVo or the DVD.
Bob Stein, founder of the Criterion Collection and The Institute for the Future of the Book
(via Snarkmarket)