When I think of coal used for energy, I think of China, filthy air, dire situations, under-developed nations, the iron-grip of Communism. Coal is the fuel of Tolstoy and World War I and the Eastern Block, a phantom from the early 20th century, a black spot on our environmental history. Coal is up there with [...]

These are trying times. The economy is in a downturn, the war in Iraq lingers on, gas costs over $4 a gallon, and large businesses in America are losing money. At times like this, I think back to WWII and the efforts of the government and businesses to bolster the economy, how they encouraged thrift, [...]

When I decided I wanted to be a designer, I was going out on a limb. The year was 1997, and I’d just completed my bachelor’s degree in English, had no design experience, and had only created one (very hideous) web site. Back then, Amazon.com was still in its infancy and I wasn’t even sure [...]

In 1999, Emigre reprinted Ken Garland’s 1964 First Things First Manifesto in issue 49. It was a call to arms for designers to stop whoring ourselves and start waking up to the social, environmental, and financial responsibilities we face in our work. Then came First Things First 2000 in issue 51, with a simultaneous printing [...]

Have you ever been asked to explain how your design skills are better than those of a high school kid with some HTML skills and Photoshop? Or maybe you had a client who wasn’t willing to pay you a fair market rate for your expertise because “anyone” can design a web site? How do you [...]

I can’t count the number of times I’ve gotten in to an argument with fellow designers about “design” versus “art” and how they are/aren’t the same thing. My stance is pretty clear: Design is not art. Design can be visually appealing, attractive, interesting, exciting, controversial, but it is not art. The goal of design is [...]

I always wanted to be a teacher. Ok, not always, since I already wrote about wanting to be a ninja. But starting in high school and going in to college, the plan was to be an English teacher. Since turning into a designer, I’ve either wanted to go to graduate school or teach. I only [...]

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 [...]

I’m a firm believer in design process, in taking the right steps to create an interactive experience that is audience and brand appropriate. It’s tough to get clients on the process boat, since they usually want the work done yesterday/cheaper/ASAP. To a lot of clients, or even internal teams, process = s l o w [...]

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 [...]