This Is Locomotion - Design, Code, and News

Via: A Continuous Lean

This week I traveled to London to take in one of the oldest and most historic cities in Europe. Already I feel as though London has significantly broadened my design sensibilities through the visual appreciation of both art and architecture. Seeing good design on such a scale has changed my perception on how design can be applied to every day life and sadly, in North America is often missed. Later this week I plan to investigate the Design Museum which, has a fabulous exhibit titled Less is More — The Design Ethos of Dieter Rams.

As lead designer at Braun, the German consumer electronics manufacturer, Dieter Rams emerged as one of the most influential industrial designers of the late 20th century by defining an elegant, legible, yet rigorous visual language for its products. During his tenure at Braun he defined design principles that have become their mantra and have been appreciated by designers around the world in every medium.

Dieter Rams’ Ten Principles of good design:
Good design is innovative.
Good design makes a product useful.
Good design is aesthetic.
Good design makes a product understandable.
Good design is unobtrusive.
Good design is honest.
Good design is long-lasting.
Good design is thorough down to the last detail.
Good design is environmentally friendly.
Good design is as little design as possible.

The following is a excerpt from a conversation between Deyan Sudjic, Director of the Design Museum in London and Dieter Rams.

Dieter Rams in conversation with Deyan Sudjic.

love this drop-cap from Jessica Hische who recently started a blog that features a different drop cap every day. While I can’t say I would use every single one of them I do have my favorites and the letter “I” is certainly one of them. Her decorative style of typography and illustration is very refreshing and I can’t wait to see the entire series in full.

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.

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!

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?