It has now been almost exactly a full month since my last blog post and the truth of the matter is simply that the gears have been majorly turning at Simple Station. We have been preparing a new open source product that is now nearing the final stages of completion and we have been buried in preparing the marketing, documentation, legalese, and branding for the product. The good news is that the project is scheduled (finally) for completion around the middle of November, but has experience delays because… well… we have never launched an open source project this big and we want to make sure we’ve crossed all our T’s and dotter our I’s.

The process of getting a project ready for prime time and an open-source launch has been an interesting one as there are so many factors involved in an initial release I just had not considered. Take for example the question of licensing. When you are considering to launch an open source product you have to choose a license, but the question is which one to choose. Do you choose the GPL, the LGPL, MIT, or BSD license? Or perhaps do you try to do something where you might retain a little more control? Reading through everything and getting a thorough grasp of what the terms of each license would mean for a project is a fairly major task as it has long reaching implications. Outside of licensing there is of course developer documentation (which is HUGE), installation instructions, screencasts, marketing copy, branding & design, public promotion, search engine optimization, creating community support forums, setting up public GIT repositories, and project hosting to name but a few. Through this process I have gained so much respect and admiration for open-source projects like Wordpress or Drupal as it certainly takes a huge amount of dedicated effort on behalf of the maintainers to even get to lift-off… let alone maintain and guide a community.

19 or so more days till launch…

Novel typography for a children’s book where every beastie is crafted in type. Fantastic!

This weekend I sat down with a good friend to watch Signatures by Sweetgrass Productions which has just been released this week. The film features a beautiful series of tantalizing visuals of skiing and snowboarding in remote regions of Japan that just left me in awe of Japan’s natural beauty. While viewing this cinematic original I discovered noboarding and snow surfing which are two sports that were previously unknown to me. What got me excited about both of these sports was just how much they likened themselves to surfing and took the experience of snow sports back to its more rustic roots by freeing the artist (the snowboarder) to be more in harmony with the medium (the snow) by doing away with the bindings that normally keep the experience constrained. Also, by shaping the board to carve the way a surfboard does the athlete is then left to rely supremely on balance and positioning which, inevitably bring him closer to Mother Nature.

Any surfer recognizes the value in a well carved board and although beginners may start on boards that are designed at factories most surfers worth their salt turn to hand crafted boards as they recognize the value in having a board perfectly customized for their height, weight and style. From a design perspective I’ve become completely ecstatic whenever I see a move in any industry away from mass produced design and towards a more handcrafted approach. Watching the artisans at work in this movie as they perfect the lines of their boards is as evocative as watching the snowboarders they equip aesthetically carve powder on the wintery slopes of Japan.

I just came across one of the best critiques I’ve ever read on how visual design, messaging and focus affect website usability. The article takes an in depth look at the usability issues surrounding Apple’s and Microsoft’s websites and highlights the importance of focusing a company in one direction especially when there are many departments contributing to content, marketing and product development. A great read cover to cover.

Thom Yorke, “Harrowdown Hill” from Bent Image Lab.

Dubbed Smallgantics, the technique in the video above takes footage of large objects (rivers, factories, city skylines) and makes them appear as though they are actually miniatures. In “Harrowdown Hill,” the videographer used aerial footage from the pacific north west to be miniaturized using Smallgantics.

The process involves splitting the footage up into several vertical planes that move back over the perceived z-axis, or into the image along its perceived depth. These planes are then affected with varying degrees of blur to simulate a shallow depth of field. If done right, the amount of blur increases smoothly as it moves along the planes of the image. Next, these levels of blur are animated to simulate a change in focus or to compensate for the forward movement of the camera.

Today I saw that Scott Thomas (@simplescott) design director for the Obama Campaign is now looking to publish a book titled Designing Obama. The book is a chronicle of the art from the campaign and provides a unique perspective on how design was used by the campaign and how it was supported by Americans everywhere in a grassroots fashion.

The 360-page book is full-color and hardbound, highly crafted with a stylish embossed sleeve. Having seen Scott Thomas present at An Event Apart in Seattle this year I simply can’t wait for the book to come out. Pre-order yours now as they have to raise $64,000 by mid-November or the book will not be published. We just ordered our copy!

Kuroshio Sea – 2nd largest aquarium tank in the world. From Jon Rawlinson.

Sit back, full screen and enjoy the view. I wish I had something like this in our office. Of course we would have to buy a small neighborhood to house it all but hey, why not.

The latest version of iTunes may sport a few new improvements but one thing that is certainly not improved is the user interface. Perhaps with Steve Jobs reportedly working solely on the new Apple netbook nobody has applied a critical eye to the latest iTunes release. After getting the upgrade via software update I opened iTunes up and immediately felt a few things were off. Firstly they increased the opacity of the white drop shadows underneath the play, forward, and rewind buttons; while this is a little detail the problem is that it makes the buttons no longer feel like they are inset into the interface. They did the same thing to the volume bar, the coverflow icons, the search box and every other button in the whole interface. Compare the new screenshot above to the old iTunes 8 screenshot and it’s pretty easy to see how they have ruined the subtlety of the buttons. Design is in the details.

Taking a deeper look you can also see how they have ruined the album art preview page by looking at the old album art page and then look at the new album art page. The whole interface is now set on white instead of a solid gray, a hideous black box now outlines each album, the drop shadows are a little too strong and they lost the tabs and the ability to control how big or small the artwork displays.

Oh Apple what are you doing? Did you just hire UI designers from Microsoft?

Really liked this type design by remcovandermeer. The crinkled paper and 3d lettering is just exquisite.