Running a Successful Web Design Business -
I have recently reworked the slide set and feel they are now worth sharing.
Nothing mindblowing, but good summary of things to keep in mind.
Dieter Rams: Design by Vitsœ -
Dieter Rams, on a 1976 speech:
You cannot understand good design if you do not understand people; design is made for people. It must be ergonomically correct, meaning it must harmonise with a human being’s strengths, dimensions, senses and understanding.
This is the prequel to his ten principles for good design, which should be every creators mantra.
Ikea's Biggest Product Launch In Years: A TV, Sound System, And Blu-ray Player -
Mark Wilson, on Co.Design:
Whereas most electronics bathe themselves in blinding LEDs, Uppleva opts for clean lines and plenty of white space. It’s even less technical and more furniture-like than Dieter Rams’s classic, appliance-like electronics from the ’60s—you know, minus the unignorable 40-inch television staring you right in the face.
Francis Cayouette, lead designer of Uppleva:
The feedback we got is that people consider their TV as a piece of furniture. Why does it need to look like a spaceship then? It just doesn’t fit in most people’s home!
And here is where he sold me:
Ikea uses a lot of pictograms on their packaging. I wanted to bring this here and create a very clean and simple interface.
Still have to wait and see what Apple has up its sleeve in the TV department, but if this is available when I have to buy my next TV, Uppleva will be it.
[video]
Kathryn Schulz, on NYMag:
The truth is, I love the dark arts, or anyway, the arts in the dark. I love the quiet and the solitude; love, especially, nighttime’s strange combination of adventure and calm.
Minimalist Clock Screensaver for Mac .
Nice clean screensaver by Robert Padbury.
BTW, I’m back.
How wonderful! Enjoy! Enjoy!
My grandma said this on Saturday when she heard I was going on a trip. She passed away in her sleep yesterday.
Anita Baldini was born in NYC. I could give a year, but she wouldn’t like that.
As the daughter of a General Motors man, she grew up in Brazil, Panama, and Venezuela (among other places).
Her older —and only— brother died in the Pacific during WII, he flew a TBF Avenger. He wrote “give all my love to Anita” in all the letters I’ve read.
My grandma wasn’t crazy about flying. This didn’t stop her for boarding everything from the Concorde to my Dad’s Islander to go on a trip. She loved trips.
She met Freddy Mateu, my Grandfather, on a ship from the US to Venezuela. They married in Cuba. “There’s no prof of that” he would say, and she’d puff her lips and shake her head.
She would speak to him in english and he’d reply in spanish. Their three children would use whatever language got them out of trouble.
Anita was the eternal American expat. People would commend her spanish thinking she had just arrived, ”I couldn’t tell them I had been in Caracas 30 years by then”.
She once told my uncle she was forgetting some of her english, he replied ”then you should at least learn sign language, because you don’t know spanish yet”. She had no problem with laughing at herself.
She never let truth get in the way of politeness. A disaster of a situation could be ”marvelous” if surrounded by good intentions. However, she had no issues arguing with a bartender if he hadn’t served the right whiskey.
Food and fashion were her passions. Both enjoyed in quality and not quantity. Well, this may not be entirely accurate with regards to sweets.
For us 6 grandchildren she was Aba.
As a kid, I remember Aba giving the most amazing presents (1st Nintendo, custom Powell Peralta skateboard) and always having delicious lunches.
As an adult, her fierce independence, incredibly peculiar sense of humor and attitude, are things I admired.
She also told real stories. Her stories didn’t have a problem mentioning that Abu (grandpa) was being difficult, or somebody was an ass —”don’t tell you father I used that word”— or of hard times.
They were never sad stories, in most cases her sincerity was laugh-out-loud funny, but I still learned that attitude was a lens that helped shape your view of the world.
How wonderful! Enjoy! Enjoy!
To be completely honest, I can’t remember exactly if she said wonderful or marvelous. She said both words so often I can picture her perfectly saying either.
And I think that has to be one best ways in the world to be remembered.