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84 posts tagged design
Not Another Bill brings you pleasant surprises via snail mail.
Would you splurge to get this package of random goodies every month?
“Focusing is about saying no. You’ve got to say no, no, no. The result of that focus is going to be some really great products where the total is much greater than the sum of the parts.” —Steve Jobs
This crazy-looking thing is a new kind of wind turbine —which happens to produce 600 times more power than a conventional windmill.
Cool!
There’s an untapped opportunity to design software environments that are beautiful, thoughtful, and humane.
But building business software people love is no small feat. At Asana, they’ve learned the hard way that getting it right requires overcoming four core design tensions.
1. Power AND Simplicity.
2. Efficiency AND Emotion.
3. Power Users AND Casual Logins
4. Unobtrusiveness AND Beauty.
Back To The Future: Why Retro-Innovation Is The Next Big Thing
Against an accelerating backdrop of datafication, a “retro-innovation” trend is emerging. New products and services are designed to connect us with the past in ways that are both nostalgic and interactive.
An idea for New York: a net-zero park within a three-block-long stretch of central median running down Allen Street on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Each block of that (prototype) linear park would be designed to test—via its amenities—a particular resilience strategy: waste disposal and biomass generation; solar/renewable energy; or storm water retention.
Imagine: In Washington, D.C., more people-focused spaces and opportunities to gather and breathe as they cross the Potomac River and move among the city’s key sights.
Many design firms buy the new Adobe Creative Suite whenever it comes out. After all, the software is a mainstay for anyone who creates on computers. But today, Adobe has announced that there will be no Creative Suite 7. That’s because the Creative Suite is giving way to the Creative Cloud—a subscription-based model in which you pay for access to Adobe’s software monthly. And as it appears, their famous individual products that traditionally make up Creative Suite, like Illustrator, Photoshop, and InDesign won’t be available for individual purchase, either.
“The ugly truth about sustainable design is that much of it is ugly.”
In The Shape of Green, architect Lance Hosey argues that the way toward green design is through aesthetics rooted in nature. Read more…
Nebula One allows low-level IT departments to bring in stock computers from Dell or HP, then assemble these systems into a cloud all their own, instead of hiring Amazon to handle an app’s backend processing.
Nebula hired Astro Studios, best known for their work on the Nike+ Fuelband, to rethink and rebrand the black box server. And what Astro created is a glowing, geometric wet dream for geeks (Patrick Stewart himself even narrates the video). To do so, they actually had to dig deep within the psychological appeal of science fiction.
Only four days left to enter our INNOVATION BY DESIGN contest. Winners will be featured in the October design issue!
“We want to give innovators and businesses a record of the year’s most intriguing design ideas—and a catalogue of designers to hire. And we want to celebrate those designers whose influence rarely goes appreciated on a large, mainstream platform.”
If you have friends who are designers, spread the word! Here’s how to enter.
A new app called Moves could be the simplest fitness app ever.
- It lives in your iPhone and tracks your activity in the background, so there’s no separate device to learn how to use or remember to carry (you already have your phone on you at all times).
- There’s no setup: You install it, turn it on, and that’s it.
- And there’s no management, syncing, or any other “interactive” bullshit to forget to do or get bored of and stop doing altogether. You don’t even have to launch it—Moves will simply ding a little summary of your physical activity into your Notifications Center every day, where you’ll end up seeing it regardless of what you’re doing with your phone.
![Irony: Just As 3-D Interfaces Are Getting Good, Apple’s UI Is Going Flat
The original Mac OS is almost the perfect flat interface. There are no cheesy extrusions or faux plastic glare coating the icons, no faux leather bulging around skeuomorphic stitching. Instead, each element seems to celebrate its two-dimensionality. But there are moments when UI artists clearly couldn’t help themselves. Even Steve Jobs’s fabled calculator sticks out, literally: Its buttons protrude from the screen with a heavy drop shadow.
And for the next few decades, powered by more pixels and more powerful graphics chips, designers couldn’t seem to stop themselves from building more and more 3-D effects into user interfaces—until the trend stopped dead in its tracks.
Windows 8 went 100% flat with Metro. And it sounds like iOS 7 will follow. Flat has even taken over branding—have you see what Facebook has done to their logo?
But here’s the irony: just as interface flattens to its flattest, we have our first wave of legitimate 3-D controllers like Leap Motion and immersive 3-D displays like Oculus Rift making their way to market.
We’re at a technological fork: Just as engineers have figured out 3-D, designers have grown sick the the aesthetic. Where do we go from here?
Fast Company’s Mark Wilson gives you the scoop here.
[IMAGE: Classic OS via Wikipedia, Calculator via Low End Mac]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/69567342720933a0a63348275fbc8b2d/tumblr_mm4jeq4qk21r2idzvo1_1280.jpg)
Irony: Just As 3-D Interfaces Are Getting Good, Apple’s UI Is Going Flat
The original Mac OS is almost the perfect flat interface. There are no cheesy extrusions or faux plastic glare coating the icons, no faux leather bulging around skeuomorphic stitching. Instead, each element seems to celebrate its two-dimensionality. But there are moments when UI artists clearly couldn’t help themselves. Even Steve Jobs’s fabled calculator sticks out, literally: Its buttons protrude from the screen with a heavy drop shadow.
And for the next few decades, powered by more pixels and more powerful graphics chips, designers couldn’t seem to stop themselves from building more and more 3-D effects into user interfaces—until the trend stopped dead in its tracks.
Windows 8 went 100% flat with Metro. And it sounds like iOS 7 will follow. Flat has even taken over branding—have you see what Facebook has done to their logo?
But here’s the irony: just as interface flattens to its flattest, we have our first wave of legitimate 3-D controllers like Leap Motion and immersive 3-D displays like Oculus Rift making their way to market.
We’re at a technological fork: Just as engineers have figured out 3-D, designers have grown sick the the aesthetic. Where do we go from here?
Fast Company’s Mark Wilson gives you the scoop here.
[IMAGE: Classic OS via Wikipedia, Calculator via Low End Mac]
Ever get lost in a cookbook’s long narrative of instructions? Us, too. A new cookbook boiled down 50 recipes to simple, lovely sketches.
Don’t forget! The Deadline For Our Design Awards Is May 6th!
Last year, Co.Design and Fast Company inaugurated the Innovation By Design Awards, a celebration of the year’s most inspiring design work. And now, I’m happy to tell you, it’s back!
You can enter right now, by clicking here. We’ll be accepting entries until May 6.
Just like last year, we’ll be announcing the finalists in our annual design issue—our 10th anniversary design issue, as a matter of fact. Then, we’ll be announcing the winners at a party to be held in New York, on October 10, 2013. (One difference this year: That party will coincide with a one-day design conference. More on that soon.)
