Learn From the Past

A great designer once told me, if we continuously learn from history, we will realize that we can pretty much predict the future. That said, remember when this was the internet?

Intro to Google Wave

Chicago

Simple, Not Plain - Nike Dunk AutoClave

Dear IKEA,

Don't be silly.

Changing your brand typeface from (a modified, hence more ownable) Futura to the screen font Verdana is like me hanging your IKEA frames with the fake photo inside. There's no personality, no relevance and it looks generic.

I understand if you're thinking ubiquitous, simple, accessible design for all is perfectly articulated by using a ubiquitous, simple font which is accessible by all. However, this is your brand we're talking about. You're now at a crossroads between being known for good design, or just having cheap furniture.

Verdana was designed for the screen, use it all you want on your website, but in print you should exert more control. Just because your tabletops can be used as headboards doesn't mean your web font can be equally re-purposed.

Hoping for the best,

Clinton

ps. If you really wanted to change something, it should have been those meatballs. Bleh.

Paul Sahre, AIGA NY

Beautiful Imagery of London Underground

BK Graphic Design ~ Fashion Sense

In Honor of My First 80's Party

Upon reaching a certain age, you will encounter a theme party at which people will wear costumed interpretations of outfits they once wore when they were younger. Nostalgic and silly at the same time. I decided to skew more nostalgic and purchased these oldschool kicks, similar to a pair a cousin of mine had in the mid 80's, but with an '09 flair. Great memories.

Digital Health Records

Writing While Driving

The Difference

Design is not always about visual prowess and technical know-how. Much more importantly, it's about understanding the concept and developing solutions which take the big idea and exemplify it.

Kevin Kallaugher, Illustrator for the Economist

Banksy, is that you?

The Difference Between Your Taste and Work

Thanks to Nicholas Felton for this one.

Words from the Doctor:

Design is applied art, not applied science.


- CLIFF HUMPHREYS, 2009

Brendan Dawes is Playing Around

Thom Browne Runway Performance

© Thom Browne

The Goal

Visual Design is the quickest way to learn how something works and what it means.

Swine Flu Overview by GOOD

Design Coding by the SEO Rapper

UX + BX

User Experience and Brand Experience are like siblings. They both need your love and attention. One is not more important than the other, even though every parent secretly has their favorite.

Flickr Photos via Cooliris

Pull it, grab it, slide it, zoom in and out. Nice stuff.

Web Concept as an Ad Concept

Sprint has decided to use the concept of data visualization as the advertising concept to promote the new Palm Pre (available exclusively through Sprint). Interesting in a meta kind of way. The site actually seems a bit gimmicky, whereas most data visualization / aggregation can be used as a real tool, this site feeds random, seemingly useless facts because it can. Or even worse, because it's cool. Is Sprint really leading the technology charge right now? Is Palm really an innovative device, or another iPhone derivative?

Logo Shortcuts

It is believed that an organization's logo is a shortcut to identifying their brand. It's how you know you're getting the official version, the real thing. And as brands become online and networked experiences, avatars have become shortcuts to logos.

I have noticed that many visual executions use the most recognizable portion of the logo to use as an avatar. In the case of the NY Times examples above, they understand people know them as "The Times", so they consequently use the chrasmatic "T" from the logo type as their avatar for Twitter, iTunes apps, and YouTube (respectively).

Blessed are the companies with short names like IBM and Netflix or logos which include symbols like Mercedes Benz or Apple, who can easily turn already recognizable elements of their marks into iconic avatars. As time moves on, the necessity of avatars and favicons will ultimately begin to shape logo design the way the ability to reproduce small size on newsprint used to.

Kutiman - I'm New

Absolutely astonishing work by Kutiman from his ThruYou project. Well worth checking out.

Design Matters

Apparently the new, minimal Tropicana packaging done by the Arnell Group was not a hit with consumers. They had more of an emotional attachment to the previous straw and orange visuals than research showed.
Read the New York Times article.

UX + Branding

User Experience without Brand Experience is like an unseasoned steak. In theory it's edible, but not very tasty.

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised

It will be streamed on the net

The efforts of the current administration to make policy and procedures more transparent than in the past will definitely prove to be the dawn of a new day that no future administration can turn away from. I wonder if it's possible for the internet to become even more ubiquitous than it is now. I wonder how this effort will affect state and local government. I wonder how it will affect the current president's actions and hold him accountable indefinitely for specific measures and methods that will lead to future outcomes. Now everyone will be able point fingers or lay praise more accurately, with no guessing involved.

Right After the Beginning

It's interesting to see the turning point, when creativity starts to become commercialized.

All I Know...

is that Facebook is the quicksand that pulls me away from what I probably should be doing instead. (Like making tasty new posts) Every friend you have, group you belong to, or event you are attending may be considered a grain of sand.

Brand Loyalty

This comment was posted under a Fortune article about Tim Cook running Apple. The other comments are equally as amusing. Strange what that company does to people.

Really?

They have finally made the online equivalent of junk mail.
Someone left a comment saying they "just loved this video". I guess they also just love getting those envelopes in mail that say "You may have already won..."

Branding + Interactive

CNN.com has won a spot in the AIGA 365, but under brand and identity systems design.

This is interesting. In the latest AIGA 365, the cnn.com website has won a spot not under an interactive grouping, but under brand and identity systems design. Surprisingly, there is no interactive design grouping for the competition. Web experiences have been categorized and regarded by their type of experience as opposed to the form of their delivery. This may be the way going forward, whereas website design is finally regarded as a kind of visual systems design, a framework to hold brand content, and the experience the user has with the site and the content as a whole is regarded as a brand experience.

It's All True

Doing What You Do

Kareem Black is a very talented photographer worth checking out.

Challenging Your Creativity

Stellar type

Classic Type

From Band of Outsiders
directed by Jean-Luc Goddard, 1964

French New Wave cinema was a beautiful revolution against the myths of traditional film-making. This film is a beautiful example of such.

The New Technology

Losing Control

from Control (2007) directed by Anton Corbijn

Joy Division performance (1978)

Great movie about Ian Curtis.
It is a testament to how creativity and your perception of your own work can absolutely consume you.

This is how I spend a lot of my time now

Sketching Your Own Look & Feel

This idea of sketching can extend well beyond visual design, even as far as the look and feel of your own personal appearance. When deciding on my Autumn 08 steez, I like to put together some moodboards before making any purchases. This extra 20 min can save hours in trips back to make returns while saving dollars in costly impulse purchases of items that aren't necessary. It's also a great way to see if your personal style really matches your personality. Put it next to your design work to see if "you" are coming across through every piece in your book. Great way to see yourself as others will first see you.

On one of the first interviews I went on (so long ago), I hadn't even realized I wore all dark and light grays, which matched my case, resume and business cards almost perfectly. The Creative Director commented that he could definitely see my sensibilities, which gave him reassurance that he knows what kind of designer he's investing in. I didn't get that position, but I definitely learned a helpful lesson.

Dot Dot Dot, SVA Interaction Design Lecture

This past Thursday, I attended the first in a series of lectures sponsored by the MFA in Interaction Design Program at SVA, entitled Dot Dot Dot. This series is put together by Liz Danzico, the program chair. The theme of this first lecture was "sketching". This makes perfect sense, being that is was the first event, and sketching is typically the first step in solving problems with design. (Those designers are always thinking.) Speakers included Tom Bodkin, design director, New York Times; Jake Barton, founder and principal, Local Projects; Andrew Sloat, graphic designer and videomaker; and Christopher Fahey, founding partner, Behavior. It was great to see other designers' process of thought before beginning design.

Everyone had a different way to sketch with different goals in mind for the sketch. Personally, I love to sketch before even giving a second's though to design. As it was stated during the lecture, sketching really helps you think through what you're doing. It allows you to try different scenarios quickly and think about their impact on the user. Sketching also helps you plan the bigger picture of how to design a system and where each piece fits in that system. It gives you an opportunity to make notes that highlight ideas or those problem areas to deal with during design phase. This is my sketch for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation website pages I'm going to show in my portfolio. It's so helpful to see the big picture here. Now I can set a flow of how I want to talk through the site based on page type and where I can elaborate about interface specifics.

The Items We Carry

Great Flickr group.

The Items I Carry

bag contents
Originally uploaded by clintonproduced

Decided to join in and post the contents of my bag as well. There is a great Flickr group for this. There's always some degree of fascination in learning something personal about other people. The "what's in your bag" images are like quick little introductions to people you don't know. There's something both mysterious for the viewer and rewarding for the bag's owner.

This Day

Elegant Web Typography

Passion in Creativity

Janelle Monae Live at the Summerstage in Central Park
August 3, 2008


She reminds us to be passionate about our craft. Any creative professional needs that magic moment when you invent, innovate or become inspired. She clearly believes in what she is doing (2:57) and you should too.

The $700B Bailout

Do you remember the movie The Green Mile, when John Coffey sucked up all the cancer out of the warden's wife and held onto it, hoping it wouldn't kill him, then unloaded it into that jack-ass Percy?

Well in our version the cast is a little different:
John Coffey: The Government / Taxpayers
Paul Edgecomb: Hank Paulson
Brutus Howell: Ben Bernanke
The Warden: America
Warden's Wife: Wall Street
Percy: Any jack-ass will do.

image © Warner Bros.

Just came back from Montauk

Wonderful experience. Check out the Flickr set.

The New Technology

The new technology is about very big ideas that have huge, unseen potential, and very simple visual executions. This lends itself to the ideology of making technology invisible, whereas it just becomes part of your life. But when does the visual nature of these technologies becomes less than simple and end up just being plain? Does this take the wind out of the sails?

The new technology is also concerned more with the content at the expense of concept and execution. The concept becomes the ability to access this previously unavailable content, and furthermore, at your own control. But what happens when the novelty of access becomes a standard, price of entry rather than an advantage?

clintonproduced wordle

This is a Wordle of my design blog. Visualization of data can be very revealing.

The Story of Stuff

Find out more about The Story of Stuff

Green Pathway out of Poverty

Universal Everything

The Cusp of Branding

The new Wolff Olins site is amazing. They are truly on the cusp of what's happening in branding, both in their message and in their approach to the design and functionality of their site. How many branding firms have you seen allow comments directly on their homepage? How many branding firms show their work in a simple blog post style?

They realize that a brand is no longer about the company, it's about the consumer and what they are being enabled to do.

Yes We Can...Use Photoshop?

The following are suggestions I submitted about
Barack Obama's website:

I am completely and irreversibly a firm believer in Barack
Obama, the ideas and ideals he stands for, and the new
direction he wants to take this country in.

However, his website troubles me.

Upon visiting the site I was expecting to see "Change We
Can Believe In" and all the powerful messages I see and
hear in the coverage of the campaign.

It seems that a visual aesthetic of "hope" with beaming
rays of light is overshadowing the messaging and ideas
of the man. This site looks more like it's for a movie than
for a presidential candidate.

When your opposition is resting their argument on the
idea that Senator Obama is too inexperienced and naive
to become president, you shouldn't have a website that
looks like a fantasy.

It's a bit too slick to believe in.

While the content is absolutely spot on, the reality of
Change does not come through in this look and feel.
This site physically looks like a dream.

The symbolism and power of the original Obama '08 logo,
what was a bright new day for America, has been reduced
to a political button on the homepage, overshadowed by
whimsical beams of religious light. He's not a televangelist.
He's our next potential president.

Where are the messages? Where is "Yes We Can"?
Where is "Change We Can Believe In"?
Buried in the downloads section?

What does John McCain or Hillary Clinton stand for?
Who knows? But Barack Obama stands for CHANGE.
It is his brand, his big idea that can be applied to any
issue. It should be the first thing I see on this website.

There should be a message about Change, then how
to achieve that change (which would be a link to the
"Blueprint for Change" document).

BarackObama.com should be about the message,
the ideas and ideals, not about the web designer's
artistry and skill in Photoshop.

Yes We Can

Hope. Act. Change.

The Wild, Wild, Web

Modularity on the Web
I was having a conversation with a web developer recently regarding the idea of modularity and the loss of control on the web. Here is a perfect example of that loss and the other side of modularity and dynamic content. The irony of the ad against the article is amazing. I wonder if anyone ever noticed.