Our world is full with symmetries. Check out this wonderful video by the folks at Everynone, in collaboration with WNYC | Radiolab. This video was inspired by an epsisode on Radiolab called Desperately Seeking Symmetry.
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via Denis
Marius Roosendaal is a designer and art director from Amersfoort, the Netherlands.
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Robick — an audio player for your iPhone.
Listening to the right music while you work on your designs can have an great influence. It affects your mood, it impacts your concentration and pace.
One of my favorite songs I listen to while I work is Flickermood by Forss.
Robick is an app for the iPhone that lets you “deep listen” to your music. It allows you to on the fly change the properties of your track such as tempo, pitch and key. You can listen to your favorite track, differently every time. And for the designers it has a clean interface and will look great on your iPhone.
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image via lovely stuff
When you design a product, like it or not it but takes a personality with it’s users. We are relational beings and we create emotional connections to the products we use regularly. This means we feel certain ways about our phone, our email app, our car and the bank we use.
Like humans, products can make a good or a bad first impression. A product can come accross as interesting or boring, respectful or rude, it can inspire trust or confusion.
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via Michel
Attention to detailed awesomely being displayed by Apple. Original post on Gold3n Ratio.
Permanent linkPaul Rand in Graphis, 1981
Design is a way of life, a point of view. It involves the whole complex of visual communications: talent, creative ability, manual skill, and technical knowledge. Aesthetics and economics, technology and psychology are intrinsically related to the process.
Paul Rand said this in 1981. These words didn’t just stand the test of time, but are more true today than they were thirty years ago.
You can’t just be an illustrator anymore. You have to know also how to digitize your work, how to present it to the client and sell it. If you can’t do one of these you really shouldn’t call yourself a designer.
via Imprint
Permanent linkHuggable is a term we use to describe the type of design work we aim to produce at Hug™.
A hug is an intimate way of expressing emotions and indicates familiarity, love, affection and friendship. A huggable design is one that goes an extra mile to put a smile on your face.
Our goal at Hug™ is to help our clients improve the experience on their apps and websites. We do it by focusing on the emotional side of the design, with colors, illustrations and strategies meant to give your product a human personality.
We will be accepting work in a few months.
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via Interuserface
Visual identity takes many forms, from the most superficial of trademarks to the most integrated of design signatures. Shapes are part of its language. At their most basic, shapes are universal, untetherable to any name, product, or brand. But in context, in their intersections and in the synthesis of forms, they are powerful.
Great point.
Permanent linkvia MailChimp. Sorry mobile users, if you can’t see it, watch it here.
A Book Apart publishes brief books for people who make websites. Their latest book currently is Responsive Web Design by Ethan Marcotte
Permanent linkPaul Boag asked web designers a good question on Twitter:
Do you disable outline in CSS? Which is more important aesthetics or keyboard navigation?
I go for the 90/90 rule which Apple uses to make design decisions with their products. The word on the street is that Apple focuses on the things 90% of their users do 90% of the time. With some exceptions.
For most websites less than 1% of the visitors use their keyboards to navigate.
In a perfect world, it would be the browser taking care of link outlines in a more useful and estetically pleasing way. But this is not a perfect world, it is rather a world with Internet Explorer 6 still in the wild.
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gorgeous illustrations by Jessica Hische
If you wanted to write a web application you could outsource all the work to India. You’d look for a company that can deliver your application in reasonable time for the cheapest price. After you narrow your search down to less than a dozen companies that give you a good deal, you would probably go with the one that has the nicest phone operator.
Now let’s compare this to the following scenario. You are Wired Magazine, and you need an illustration for an article. How do you choose an illustrator? Can you do it cheaper in India? Is cheaper even a factor when choosing? Can you use stock images?
A commodity is a product or service that is provided with no qualitative differentiation across a market (Wikipedia). The first example is a commodity, the second is not.
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