Tag Archives: Design

Friday Links: Popular video games turned into horror movies

• Check out Line 25′s Sites of the Week. We heartily approve.
• Popular video games transformed into short horror films.
• The Apple-fication of everything, about design standards and a beautiful thermostat. And if you’re still in the mood for some Apple design talk, take a look at Apple’s aesthetic dichotomy (which has a really good point).
• Google kills its other plus, and how to get it back.
• Settlers of Catan, the novel coming to a bookstore near you.
• Pictures from Hallomeme. Some of it’s pretty funny.
• Richard Stallman’s tour rider.
• Beer at work: A case for drinking on the job.
• Forrester urges IT to support the Mac.

Is too much information strangling creativity?

Are we all so sick of hearing about, talking about and/or complaining about Facebook and the new changes and the new Timeline that we could puke? Good. So you’re probably in the mood to read something else. Something that might get your thoughts flowing. I’d like to submit this article from Good for your perusal: The Top 5 Things that Bother Me About this Headline. A great piece about how information and the quest for audience hampers creativity. My favorite line: ” I wonder if I’m still a writer, or if I’m a content creator.” Ouch.

Also there’s this:

Ostensibly, having this data at our fingertips would mean that we’re producing better ideas. The more you know about what your audience wants, the better you can create stories and infographics and art for them. If writing a certain headline or choosing a certain color for a button means that the most people will get access, shouldn’t you do it? It’s an interesting question.

And if you’re super sick of anything to do with the internet, go read The Atlantic’s compulsively readable History of Meatloaf (the foodstuffs and not the singer).

Friday Links: The future is here

• The Nike Mag from Back to the Future II as seen above. It’s okay to want a pair. 150 pairs were made and being auctioned off on eBay to benefit The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research.
• Americans and their cell phones, a study from the Pew Research Center.
• The Master Palindromist
• Another day, another drop shadow.
• Imperial Forces Wallpaper.
• How Tumblr created a design culture without a design team.

Friday Links: Let the summer begin!

• Literally Unbelievable, a tumblr devoted to people who don’t understand the satirical nature of The Onion.
• Worst PPT Slide Contest Winners.
• There’s still seven days for you to take part in Sevnthsin’s Summer of Exploration weather balloon space exploration project.
• Oprah fans accidentally email Opera, the browser.
• Has mobile techonology altered our perception of rudeness?
• The Pitch: a board game for designers, by designers.
• What the Tweetdeck acquisition mens for marketers.
• 6 killer StarWars beds.

Friday Links: You’re stealing it wrong

• Why the revolution will not be tweeted, a thought-provoking piece by Malcolm Gladwell in The New Yorker.
• Can experience be designed.
• George Lucas stole Chewbacca, but that’s okay.
• Doc Searls says let’s kill interruptive ads. Yes, let’s do that, shall we?
• 8-bit wood, I’m pretty sure The Nerdery needs these woodcraft Mario characters.
• How to detect a Photoshopped image.
• 10 best jobs of the future.
• How advertising reinforces Mommy and Daddy roles.
• You’re stealing it wrong, 30 years of inter-pirate battles.

Redesigning banana packaging

I can’t tell if the design a sticker campaign> for Chiquita bananas, as reported by the The New York Times, is awesome or a sign of the apocalypse.

Whenever I see words like this in quotes, which in newspapers means someone actually said those words, I get a little scared:

“Ciafardini says Chiquita is particularly interested in communicating to the under-25 crowd that the company offers the “convenient healthy snacking platforms that people are looking for these days.”

Healthy snacking platforms? Sounds kind of like a cracker to me. But anyway, the story is pretty interesting tale of branding and packaging, when your product is a banana.

Adaptive Path’s “Beyond I Hate Green” is today’s must read

Anyone who has to participate in a creative review (design, content, or otherwise) should head right on over to Adaptive Path’s blog and read Beyond “I hate green:” Managing Productive Visual Design Reviews. There you’ll find nine strategies for handling the feedback clients give from how to make sure you validate their opinions (no matter how misguided those opinions might be) to driving the conversation in a more helpful direction. It really is a must read.

Friday Links: The Friday before a long weekend edition

• Ad spending up for the first time since 2008.
• Envisioning your future in 2020. Kinda awesome and kinda creepy all at the same time.
• Truth on brands.
• 138 Years Of Quirky Inventions From The Pages Of PopSci.
• The periodic table of imaginary elements.
• Great logo redesigns of 2009 & 2010.
• Adorable homemade robots.
• 10 clever Commodore 64 t-shirts.

Friday Links: More iPhone 4 drama, social media crack, and some stuff about typewriters

• Meet Brian J. Hogan, the dude who stole the iPhone 4 and sold it Gizmodo.
• Also, a handy flow chart of the whole Gizmodo iPhone 4 drama.
• And, finally, because I have to: Steve Jobs’ kiss off letter to Flash.
• Much like crack, students go through withdrawal when they can’t access social media.
• An interview with Threadless’ VP of Marketing on the eve of their 10th Anniversary.
• The worst of sci-fi/fantasy book covers. The best of the worst? I Sing the Body Electric.
• Time’s 100 Most Influential People in the world for 2010. Once again they forgot me. (and Yahoo collects the five people from the list you’ve never heard of).
• Website teaches kids not to get suckered by ads. This reminds me of the girls I nannied for while I was in college. They begged for some Chips Ahoy cookies of some sort because there was supposed to be a party in each bite. “Uh, there’s no party in my mouth,” one of them said upon tasting the regular old cookie. She was crushed.
• Rock it old school: stickers to make your mac look like a typewriter. I wonder if they can make it so you get that delicious clicking sound and a ding when you reach the end of a line.
• Related to the last: beautiful, beautiful advertisements for Olivetti typewriters.
• Leslie Buck, designer of the iconic NY Greek coffee cup, died.
• The saga of forgotten brands and their logos.

Winter Olympic posters since 1924

Now that the games of the winter Pentathanerd are over, the world’s attention have turned to the Olympics over in Vancouver. Good times, those winter Olympics. Watching TV where at any moment someone is going to trip in fall, is the ultimate form of entertainment, isn’t it? Falling is funny, nobody can deny it. Especially when it’s someone else falling.

To get you in the mood for tonight’s games (figure skating, snowboarding, and skiing, lots of fall opportunities), take a look at this collection for all the Winter Olympic posters from 1924 through today. Collections like this are fun to look at because you can almost guess the year (or at least get pretty close) just by looking at the design. Great fun for everyone!

Here’s my favorite from the 1948 St. Mortiz games. I like the way it appears the sun is shooting out snowflakes.