Thoughts & Deeds

Over the years, I’ve heard plenty of coworkers and colleagues complain that the design projects they’re working on aren’t very creative. They want inspiration, they want to cut loose from the corporate brand guidelines and do something wacky, they want to do the kind of work we all see in award shows. Sure, those kinds of projects are really cool, but they aren’t the bread and butter of most agencies. We’re so heavily socialized to want to be rockstar designers who redefine visual communication that we lose track of what it is we are paid to do every day. … more

After going to the annual Web Visions conference here in Portland, I started thinking about the future of interactive design as a discipline. Who are we and what are we doing?

Things have changed so much since I created my first web page in 1996 back when I hand-coded everything using emacs. Now there’s real design on the web. Sure, there’s a lot of “bad” design out there, but it doesn’t hold a candle to the smorgasbord of animated GIFs, blinking text, and ugly background textures that made up the entirety of your web experience a decade ago. … more

Paul Arden is totally right. I picked this book up at SFMOMA last month because it was entertaining and on sale, but it turned out to be an inspiring read. I brought it to work for my art director to read, and over the weekend both he and his wife finished the book. And then another coworker bought himself a copy. … more