October 1999

Down with HTML! cries Balthaser Studios. Would we all be better off in a Shockwave/Flash web? I’m sure Macromedia would.

It’d be neat to combine eMatter and epinions into one site, allowing you to provide smaller scale works for free on the chance you could be compensated but also charge for larger scale works to reflect the investment in the work.

Yiipppeee! Writings of Brenda Laurel. I especially like Technological Humanism and Values-Driven Design which ties into the whole Bill Hill/soul/spirit thread below.

Seduction in the Interface. Funny premise, solid advice, good lecture. I especially like this part: One of the most common definitions for seduction–and one of the most important aspects, is the creation of a special space between two people: that moment in space and time when everyone else in the room disappears and the noise…

Words I need to know to communicate with design-geeks: Didactic designed or intended to teach Reductionism a procedure or theory that reduces complex data or phenomena to simple terms; especially : oversimplification. This course in Neurophilosophy says “‘reduction’ has come to have a bewildering range of uses in the scientific literature and thus no longer…

Swiss Army Knives or Utensils? That was one of the threads running through the seminars at AC4D’s Living Surfaces Conference. Swiss army knives combine many functions (e.g. mobile phone, games, calculator, web browser…) and utensils specialize on one (calculator). Someone pointed out that we don’t eat at home with a Swiss Army knife, and instead…

Erik Spiekermann on information design and other goodies from MetaDesign.

Re-reading the below post about Bill Hill causes me to think of several examples of new media that express soul and spirit, but then I think, “Are those art or design?” I think of art as pure expression, whereas design is intended for use by others. Trying to create something functional that appeals to our…

Nettkirken. I think that’s Norwegian for “Net Church” (most of the site is not in English and I don’t speak Norwegian). I thought of this site this weekend while listening to Bill Hill of MetaDesign San Francisco. He spoke about our lack of design that appeals to the soul and the spirit. He mapped new…

It’s amazing all the things that go on in our world without us knowing about them, like this software for staking utility posts. I just assumed someone went out there with a really long tape measure and a drilling rig :-) Found via Kestrel’s Nest

Nissan’s recent losses and huge layoffs has sorta woken them up to the importance of good design. They’ve created a sexy Maxima and are advertising the hell out of it. Sadly, I wonder if they equate sexiness with design (the majority of their cars lack that same appeal and lack the advertising attention). Other manufacturers…

Our need to expose ourselves comes out through tatoos, piercing, and the daytime talk shows, says Jamer Hunt of the University of the Arts. It also comes out through weblogs.

I saw Abraham Lincoln today in Lincoln Park in Chicago. The statue is bigger than life and mounted on an eight foot high pedestal. He’s staring down with his face shrouded in darkness. It was difficult at first to look at him, I felt almost ashamed of who I am. Lincoln said to me, “You…

The fashion industry is no fun! I’ve finally distilled my beef with it into that statement. Whether shopping, buying, wearing, or experiencing clothes, they impart no sense of joy or humor. You may perceive these qualities, but they’re not inherent in the industry or the products, Joe Boxer being the one mass market exception that…

evhead and pb confirm that I can have multiple blogs that are smooshed together via server-side includes into one happy home page. The end goal is the ability to update any section of this page (navigation in addition to the scrolling list of ideas you’re reading now) using the oh-so-tasty Blogger. Handy when you don’t…