Periodical

A Dozen Questions for Ms Roth Eisenberg

Tina Roth Eisenberg, perhaps better known by her swissmiss moniker, is a ‘Swiss Designer Gone NYC’, entrepreneur and all-round creative whirlwind, with an eye for beautifully designed products which she curates and shares with the world daily via her much-visited swissmiss blog. She lives and works in NYC.

In addition to the daily inspiration she posts via swissmiss, which has gathered a not inconsiderable international following, she is also the founder of CreativeMornings, TeuxDeux and Tattly. As if that weren’t achievement enough, she is also the founder of Brooklyn based studio Studiomates, a hive of creative activity that’s quite literally home to a Who’s Who of creative talent.

We asked Ms Roth Eisenberg a dozen questions.

Where did you learn your craft?

I grew up in the Swiss Alps, surrounded by a minimal Swiss design aesthetic, and was taught the ins and outs of graphic design in Geneva, at the Ecole Des Arts Décoratifs and at the Fachhoschule Munich, Germany.

Who inspires you?

My studiomates. Daily.

What are your influences?

My Studiomates. The blogs I read. New York City. CreativeMornings Talks. Masters like Charles and Ray Eames, Milton Glaser and Dieter Rams.

You’ve been curating swissmiss for six years now, during which time you’ve gathered a not insignificant following. How much of a full time job is writing for the blog, and how has it changed over the years?

I started swissmiss in 2005 as a personal visual archive. Fast forward seven years and it’s anything but personal. The fact that I have over one million monthly uniques makes my head spin. You have to understand my context, I grew up in a town with a population of 3,000 people in the Swiss country side, cows in front of my door, and all that.

I spend about two to three hours a day on my blog. Sometimes more, sometimes less. Usually, when I blog a lot I have other deadlines that I keep pushing out. Blogging is my way of procrastinating.

I would love to spend more time on the blog, and there were times when I spent a good four to five hours a day writing and researching, but I have since put on more hats and I need to divide my time between swissmiss, CreativeMornings and Tattly.

It takes time to build a personal brand, but - as Gary Vaynerchuk put it in his recent TED talk [Do What You Love (No Excuses!) ¹ - it’s entirely possible in our new-fangled internet age. At a conservative estimate, how long did it take, and what sustained you, while you grew the swissmiss brand?

I am not sure that’s the right way to talk about ‘swissmiss’. Sure, some people say I built a brand, but I just simply believe I created a work environment and life that is 100% true to what I believe in, and that makes me happy. People are fascinated by others that follow their heart and take risks. Now people say I created a ‘brand’. I say, I created an ideal life. The word ‘brand’ makes it sound too calculated and planned. There was no strategy behind anything I did. I simply followed my gut.

Luckily I picked a catchy name for my blog, which helps the ‘brand’ feel. So, in that regard, what sustained me is the fact that I just did what felt right and made me happy. Nothing fuels you more than being ‘in the flow’ and feeling that you’re doing what you’re supposed to do and what fulfils you. I don’t want to get all spiritual, but I deeply believe that when you’re on the right track, things fall into place. When you’re trying to force something and it’s just not happening, maybe it’s just not meant to be, and you need to steer left or right. I am just lucky I found my path.

You created Teux Deux with Fictive Kin. What problems with existing to-do applications were you trying to solve?

I just wanted a simple, straight-forward app, without any bells and whistles. A simple list app that allows me to check things off and see the week in overview. No scheduling, no alerts, no repeat tasks. Just a basic list. We built TeuxDeux for ourselves and we use it every day.

In Communication Crisis you wrote about the irony of hyper-efficient communication leading to a world of under-efficient communication (being overwhelmed with messages). When email becomes your, “primary source of guilt,” what other channels would you suggest?

Messenger Pigeons? OK, just kidding. Yes, the guilt-inducing-email-problem is keeping me up at night. I get an unhealthy amount of emails every day. Add to that Tweets, DMs, Text Messages and regular mail. It’s a full-time job in itself to respond to everyone, and people get upset when I don’t reply and it kills me.

For a while I had an auto-responder that basically said, “I will try to get back to you as soon as I can, but it might take a while. I just want to set expectations right!” For some people that worked and they were understanding, others were downright offended by it. I will find a solution, I am determined. I will let you know when I find it. For now, I try to stick to five.sentenc.es.

As well as practicing as a designer you teach at Parsons The New School for Design. How does your teaching influence your design practice?

I’ve stopped teaching at Parsons, but will start teaching at the new SVA MFA Program called Products of Design next year. Teaching definitely shows you the power of experience. We tend to forget just how much work experience teaches us, until you are standing in front of a group of complete beginners that ask the same basic questions you did, when you started out. But, you also realize how hard it is to explain things, that after years of working in the industry, come intuitively. For me, teaching is forcing me to put into words what I just instinctively do, every day.

What do you like better? Chocolate or cuckoo-clocks?

Cheese!

What’s your favourite typeface?

Trade Gothic Condensed. And no, it’s not Helvetica.

What’s your favourite plain text editor?

Notational Velocity It’s a barebones note taking app. It doesn’t get any more straightforward. I love that it syncs with the Simple Note iPhone app, so I have all my notes on the go.

What’s your favourite tea?

Jasmine Tea.

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What's the harm…?

AIGA have long fought the good fight against crowdsourcing, clearly articulating the very real issues that plague the ‘winner takes all’ (‘and the losers don’t get paid’) approach to sourcing design by subcontracting it to the masses, whereby countless hours of needless, generic work are wasted.

Richard Grefe’s recent article for the Institute, What’s the harm in crowdsourcing?, continues this theme and it’s well worth reading (if only to awaken yourself to the fact that government agencies the world over – in many cases the very same agencies that promise the creative industries will save us – have unsurprisingly opted, in the face of relentless economic constraint, to pitch for the lowest common design denominator).

Grefe states:

The U.S. Department of the Interior’s use of crowdsourcing to design a logo … is simply the most recent highly visible example of a practice that we can expect to see more and more often. While those against crowdsourcing believe it undermines the value designers can provide a client through a thoughtful engagement, those who embrace it consider it an effective new marketplace.

Grefe’s analysis is a worryingly accurate assessment and one can almost hear the enthusiastic chorus of agency commissioners: “This, truly, is an effective new marketplace!”

Few would doubt Grefe’s conclusion that the crowdsourcing phenomenon is one we can expect to see more and more often as we embark down a road of long term road of economic uncertainty.

The challenge we face as designers is to articulate the value of a meaningful exchange between the client, expressing their needs, and the designer, understanding those needs and – critically – interpreting those needs (and, occasionally, identifying alternative, better-informed needs the client may never have even considered).

This exchange – one that is intensely personal and one that is fundamentally based upon a close working relationship between the client and designer – is critical, if the design process is to deliver more than simply an end product, devoid of strategic thinking.

Identifying design outcomes can, more often than not, stem from relationships developed between client and designer, where a designer grows from a position of understanding to deliver a campaign that reflects the clients’, often vaguely defined, needs.

The result? Both client and designer are happy.

The journey, when embarked upon with an open mind (on both sides), can often deliver far more than the initial brief dictated. The designer grows, but equally, the client grows. The result is often a team. A commisioner and realiser who, when working together and growing a partnership, can achieve a great deal. Much more than the simple, short-term, lowest common denominator form of transaction that crowdwsourcing suggests.

Where great design works the client and designer form a close bond, with a clear understanding and mutual respect emerging. As Grefe adeptly summarises:

For the designer, crowdsourcing demonstrates a lack of respect for the value of design’s full potential and places the lowest, rather than the highest, value on design services. However, it is important for designers to understand that it is not the practice of design that is being treated as a commodity but the design artifact, because most of those utilising crowdsourcing have no idea about the process of design or its potential contribution to positioning and strategy.

The emphasis on process is critical if we are to persuade clients – who let’s face it, are pressed in economically challenging times – to understand the real benefits of design.

When a partnership between client and designer works it’s about much more that simply, “I need X designed.” It often involves the designer offering strategic direction and giving guidance, based upon their accumulated experience and specialist knowledge.

The problem with crowdsourcing - and it’s a problem we need to articulate as designers - is that it reduces what is, in reality a complex relationship, to one that is fundamentally simplistic and focused only on the outcome. The reality is that design is much more complex and is less easily compartmentalised. When a partnership between client and designer works, its boundaries are often blurred, with the designer delivering much, much more than what was initially asked for.

At its most valuable, design is a process, not an end result. Where crowdsourcing is fundamentally flawed is in the perception it conjures that the design is an end product only. As designers, with much, much more to offer when working with clients, it’s our responsibility to articulate this clearly.

Focusing on telling that story will, in all likelihood, go some way towards dispelling the myth that crowdsourcing is the low cost panacea it’s often portrayed as being.

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Kind of Sued

In 2009, Andy Baio - a writer and entrepreneur who helped build Kickstarter - ate his own dog food and launched a Kickstarter project called Kind of Bloop. The idea was elegant, and one we immediately fell in love with. As Mr Baio put it:

What would the pioneers of jazz sound like on a Nintendo Entertainment System? Coltrane on a C-64? Mingus on Amiga? For years, I’ve wondered what ‘chiptune jazz’ would sound like, but there are only a tiny handful of jazz covers ever made.

To satisfy my curiosity – and commemorate the 50th anniversary of Miles Davis’s ‘Kind of Blue’ – I’ve asked five brilliant chiptune musicians to collaborate and reinvent the entire album in the 8-bit sound.

The resulting album - which we backed at the time - was worth every penny cent. Baio commissioned five chiptune musicians to collaborate and reinvent the entire album in 8-Bit sound, resulting in an oddly perfect blend of the old and the new, fifties melodies meets eighties sound cards.

Needless to say, this fine ensemble, needed to be packaged in an appropriate manner, and - attentive to detail as ever - Baio commissioned some wonderful cover art, crafted pixel-by-painstaking-pixel by pixel- and rough-taco lover SnackAdmiral. Every step of the way, Baio worked hard to ensure everything was above board and legal, as he puts it:

I went out of my way to make sure the entire project was above board, licensing all the cover songs from Miles Davis’s publisher and giving the total profits from the Kickstarter fundraiser to the five musicians that participated.

However, the one thing that Baio overlooked, which he never thought would be an issue, was the cover art… Fast forward to 2010, Baio was threatened with a lawsuit over the pixel art cover.

In February 2010, Baio was contacted by lawyers representing Jay Maisel, the noted New York photographer who took the original photograph ¹ that inspired SnackAdmiral’s pixel art version ². In their demand letter, they alleged that Baio had infringed Maisel’s copyright.

As compensation they sought: “Either statutory damages up to $150,000 for each infringement at the jury’s discretion and reasonable attorneys fees; or actual damages and all profits attributed to the unlicensed use of his photograph, and $25,000 for Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) violations.”

Ouch.

Seven, doubtless nerve-wracking, months later, Baio chose to settle out of court. A creative project, for which he had raised just $8,647 (considerably above his Kickstarter goal of $2,000) in the end cost him $32,500 of his family’s hard-earned savings.

Despite his firm belief that he was in the right - which he articulates at length in a reasoned piece titled Kind of Screwed - he was forced to reach an out of court settlement to draw the proceedings (and, no doubt, a great deal of heartache and uncertainty) to a close. As he puts it: “This ordeal was very nerve-wracking for me and my family, and I’ve had trouble writing about it publicly until now.”

Baio is at pains to point out that his settlement is not an admission of guilt, stating: “The fact that I settled is not an admission of guilt. My lawyers and I firmly believe that the pixel art is ‘fair use’ and Maisel and his counsel firmly disagree. I settled for one reason: this was the least expensive option available.”

It’s a disappointing outcome to what – at the start – was a labour of love. One wonders what Maisel, who has been hounded so much since Baio published his piece that he has been forced to take down his Facebook page, thinks of the matter.

There’s no doubt the original image he took is iconic. As the cover of the word’s best-selling jazz album of all time it has doubtless been seen by millions. However, Maisel remains at heart a creative. An artist. This action - whether prompted by Maisel or his lawyers - sends a chilling shockwave through the creative community and one wonders how he might have felt, much earlier in his creative career, had he been threatened in an equivalent manner.

Baio states:

It breaks my heart that a project I did for fun, on the side, and out of pure love and dedication to the source material ended up costing me so much – emotionally and financially. For me, the chilling effect is palpably real. I’ve felt irrationally skittish about publishing almost anything since this happened. But the right to discuss the case publicly was one concession I demanded, and I felt obligated to use it. I wish more people did the same – maybe we wouldn’t all feel so alone.

Surely this isn’t what copyright law is about? To be used as a blunt stick to stifle creativity. One wonders why a hugely respected photographer, who lives in a 72-Room New York Dream House valued at $35 million would feel the need to stifle a younger artist’s creativity in such a manner. Not least given the fact that Maisel’s biography celebrates his ‘giving’ nature, stating: “Since he stopped taking on commercial work in the late 90s, Maisel has focused on his personal work and developed a reputation as a giving and inspiring teacher….”

Giving. Taking.

We live in a remix culture. The web - in some of its finest moments - celebrates the re-imagining of the old in new ways. This culture, which lies aggressively at the heart of how we see ourselves in society today, should be encouraged, not stifled.

When Andy Baio embarked on his ‘Kind of Bloop’ project, it was to celebrate the music of one of the undisputed giants of twentieth century jazz, to bring his music to a wider audience and to celebrate creativity. It seems a pity that this celebration of creativity couldn’t extend equally towards the visual aspects of the project.

At the end of the day, the fact remains, Mr Baio has a $32,500 bill to pay. We can all do our part to preserve the realm of creative endeavour by supporting him. ‘Kind of Bloop’ is still available, albeit minus the cover art, and at just $5 it’s a steal. A mere 6,500 people who value culture and are prepared to pay a little to support it, will wipe the slate clean. We’d urge you to support Mr Baio by picking up a copy, you won’t regret it.

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First Impressions Count

As the old saying goes, “You only get one chance to make a first impression.”

Launched amid much fanfare late last week ^{1, 2, 3…}, Color is, apparently, “a miraculous application,” and one of the first of many, new life-changing applications for the ‘Post-PC World’ in which we now live. It’s also guilty of a not insubstantial degree of hyperbole, leading to a product launch that was ill-handled, at best, and - as Mike Rundle astutely puts it - has blown it, at worst.

There’s no doubt that the team behind the company is hugely talented - comprising Bill Nguyen, formerly CEO of Lala (bought by Apple in late 2009); Peter Pham, who previously founded BillShrink; and DJ Patil, who was previously LinkedIn’s Chief Scientist – and Color might, just might, be a groundbreaking new application. If there’s one thing we can learn from the Color launch fandango, however, it’s that it’s critical to get the message right before you swiftly pull back the curtains on your skunkworks project and loudly proclaim, “Ta da!”

Color’s press page promises, “a miraculous, free application,” however, its grandiose copywriting and obscure home page proved no substitute for a good, old-fashioned simple story. The result? A world of confusion and, far from the hoped for result, thought leaders that - for the most part - were left wholly unconvinced.

If the early adopters don’t get it…

When the thought leaders - the innovators and the early adopters - don’t get it, you have a problem on your hands.

As Seth Godin points out in his excellent book Purple Cow, the best way to get a product to mass market is to be remarkable and spark conversations or, to coin a phrase we’ve been using with our students, become ‘talkaboutable’.

When a product is talkaboutable, it spreads, becoming what Godin calls an ideavirus. Conversations spread, the word gets around, and if all goes according to plan, you have a hit on your hands. In today’s world of social and conversational media the word spreads faster than ever before thanks to the FOAFOAF (friend of a friend of a friend) phenomenon, powered by Twitter, amongst other tools.

However, if the message isn’t clear, that message can quickly become one you’d prefer not to spread. Innovators and early adopters wield huge amounts of influence and, as such, should be cultivated and handled with great care. If you don’t get the message right for this market, you’ve already lost half the battle.

One such influencer is Daring Fireball’s John Gruber. A positive nod from Mr Gruber can turn a product or idea into an overnight success, equally a negative nod can have the opposite effect. Writing on the day of Color’s launch, in Color: Breathlessly Overhyped Piece of Crap, Gruber summarised his first impressions of the app as follows:

Color is a new location-based social photo-sharing app for the iPhone and Android. Or something. I installed it and couldn’t make heads or tails out of it, and even if I could figure out the app, I can’t see why I’d ever want to use such a service.

Days later, reflecting on an interview - in which Color CEO, Bill Nguyen, tried to exercise some hasty, post-launch damage limitation - Gruber (now having seen the light) stated:

So it’s a data mining trojan horse. Well, that changes everything. Who wouldn’t love that? And it’s a good thing personal photos have no “personally identifiable information” – you know, other than images of you, your friends, and your family.

Oh dear. Not quite the response one imagines Color’s founders were looking for and, sadly for them, Gruber was far from a lone voice. When it all goes hopelessly wrong, however, the one place you can counter these kinds of responses - over and above undertaking the endless media round Nguyen subsequently embarked upon - is at home, or to put it more precisely, your home page.

It All Starts at Home

In our increasingly connected culture, everything inevitably returns to the web. Confused? Check the company’s web site, surely that’s where the answers lie?

Sadly, not so in Color’s case. Despite the ongoing criticism of the app and the confusion that surrounds it, the company’s web site remains just as it was the day it launched. Vague and, one imagines, intentionally obscure; it’s a case study in how not to write clear and unambiguous copy. Witness the following:

Think fast!

Find someone. Take pictures together. Party. Play date. Lunch? … Just look around.

This copy is far too clever for it’s own good and, in the wake of an endless stream of questions and confusion, leads the typically confused user nowhere. “Just look around.” At what, precisely?

Worse, the web site leads nowhere, other than an equally confusing press page that surely wins the prize for most excessive claims. It’s home to the ‘Post-PC World’ claim (of which Steve Jobs would doubtless be proud ⁴).

The bottom line? It doesn’t matter how great you think your app is, it’s what people think that counts. Witness the slew of one star reviews the app has garnered at the App Store.

Five Star Criticism

The result of Color’s poorly managed product launch is not just criticism, but - now - outright satire. Nestled amongst the one star reviews, is a solitary, beautifully crafted five star review, titled ‘Join the Adventure!’ that has garnered links from all over the web, including: Boing Boing, Mr Gruber, and a host of others.

The copy, by the mysteriously named ‘Ghostmouth’, is brilliant and perfectly parodies the confusing nature of the app that many have criticised:

Color is a ground-breaking new entry in the new genre of MMPRLMG (Massive Multi-Player Real-Live Marketing Games).

Imagine yourself emerging from the dense forest of the App Store(™). In a clearing ahead you see a shiny new icon, a multicolor wheel. Its name is ‘Color’. In the distance you hear the marketing dogs yelping buzz. “Social!” “Find someone!” “Party!” Your press Install, and your adventure begins!

The ensuing copy, which has clearly been carefully crafted, encapsulates the Color conundrum perfectly and reflects the many comments made by reviewers upon launching the app and being confusingly confronted with what 37signals describe as The Blank Slate.

As Mike Rundle puts it, “The app has a terrible first run experience and [it’s] getting decimated in the App Store with one star reviews.” Ouch.

The $41 Million Question

Will Color succeed? Who knows. The bottom line? When you’ve secured $41 Million in venture capital investment, your first responsibility is to tell a compelling product story: lead on the product, not the funding round. It’s perhaps the fact that the majority of the stories about Color’s launch led on the latter that led to so much confusion.

$41 Million is no guarantee of success; a good idea, wrapped up in a beautifully designed package and told via a compelling - and easy to understand - story is.

Rather than do the rounds of tech and finance blogs, Color would do better to focus on the fundamentals. Before you launch, put some thought into it. Test. Test. Test. Then test some more. Make sure your launch story focuses on the product, not the finance.

As Mike Rundle puts it, “Human attention is a scarce commodity in this flashy, New Thing Comes Out Every Day™ world we live in.” You only get one chance to make a first impression, let’s hope Color’s second impression improves.

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Disaster != Fame

Following the not insignificant outpouring of designer responses to the crisis currently facing Japan, johnson banks earlier this week, posed the question Disaster = Poster? in their ongoing, thought-provoking series of articles ‘Thought for the Week’.

The thoughts expressed by johnson banks are echoed in a recent article published on the Eye Magazine blog, titled Poster initiatives mean well, but what are designers raising awareness of? Both articles, at heart, pose the same question: Who is the real beneficiary of what’s been swiftly designated ‘disaster porn’ and what motivates those who create these graphic responses?

The implication in both articles is that many of the designers creating posters (or other ‘designer ephemera’ to support various charity’s efforts in Japan) are motivated more by a desire for self-promotion than by genuine concern. That’s an easy assertion to make, and as some point out in the comments ¹, might cynically be interpreted as a means of driving web site traffic to those making the assertion.

The reality, as always, is complicated and the graphic outpourings we witnessed in the wake of the tragedy in Japan were probably motivated by a variety of reasons.

Weiden + Kennedy’s elegantly minimal Red Cross poster quickly set the tone, with others swiftly following, including Signalnoise’s subtle and refined Help Japan poster. Suddenly the floodgates were opened with all manner of, “Stuff you can buy – that helps Japan,” collected helpfully by PA¥ FOR JAPAN, amongst others, (broadening the range of products on offer beyond the humble poster).

Returning to the posters that sparked this debate, however, the question boils down to this: Is making a poster an appropriate response to the tragedies in Japan? (Or, indeed, to tragedies anywhere?)

When Disaster Strikes

When disaster on a large scale strikes, a natural human emotion is to consider anything that you can do – even on a small scale – to alleviate the suffering of those affected. This is an admirable instinct, and no-one in their right mind would question that ethos. However, the question raised is: What good comes from the making of a poster?

The posters sparked by the situation in Japan are by no means the first such responses to tragedy. Other examples include The Haiti Poster Project, prompted by the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, which was, in turn, inspired by The Hurricane Poster Project, a response to Hurricane Katrina.

The reality is that posters have long been employed as a means of raising awareness and their use stretches back through history, and it’s worth reflecting on this rich visual and cultural history before hastily arriving at hurried opinions.

HOPE

Traditionally, the poster has been used to raise awareness and to unite people around a common cause. One of the most recent examples of this to have seared itself into the public consciousness, is Shepard Fairey’s ubiquitous HOPE poster, which widely became became synonymous with the 2008 Obama presidential campaign. This, however, is just one in a long line of images that capture the public imagination, most notably with the propaganda posters created throughout the second world war ^{2, 3}.

It could be argued that Weiden + Kennedy and Signalnoise’s efforts are doing the same, helping to raise awareness about the situation in Japan. However, thanks to the extensive media coverage the tsunami and its aftermath has had in Japan, raising awareness is not really an issue.

Unlike the beginning of the twentieth century, in the age of the internet, awareness travels fast, not least in a world where one can watch the horrifying events unfold half a world away streamed live via the web.

Marian Bantjes’ comment on the much-commented Eye article, suggests that the first instinct – applying your craft to help – is well-meaning, but misdirected. Bantjes states:

If you really feel a desire to express yourself in a poster, I would suggest choosing your charity, and applying your kick-ass graphics to creating a free poster or project that requests donations directly to that charity.

It’s a point well put and it’s one that’s hard to argue with. Further unpicking the thinking, Bantjes goes on to state:

I would further suggest that those who are so compelled to make posters, should take a broader look at the world, decide what under-reported areas still need help, choose an NGO that does good work in that area, and make something that communicates that need and directs people’s attention to that NGO or charity.

This sentiment chimes neatly with the principles embodied in the First Things First manifesto, first published by Ken Garland in 1964 and republished by Eye in 2000, a call to arms for designers to put their skills to uses other than the promotion of mindless consumerism.

First Things First

Updated and rewritten for the twenty-first century, the First Things First 2000 manifesto was reprinted with new signatories in Eye Issue 33. The manifesto stated:

Designers apply their skill and imagination to sell dog biscuits, designer coffee, diamonds, detergents … and heavy-duty recreational vehicles. Commercial work has always paid the bills, but many graphic designers have now let it become, in large measure, what graphic designers do. This, in turn, is how the world perceives design. The profession’s time and energy is used up manufacturing demand for things that are inessential at best.

The manifesto went on to suggest:

There are pursuits more worthy of our problem-solving skills. Unprecedented environmental, social and cultural crises demand our attention.

Perhaps it’s here that we might draw inspiration, putting our valuable time and effort into the creation of, as Bantjes’ puts it, “kick-ass graphics,” for those charities and NGOs that exist a little further from the spotlight.

Garland’s intention when he first published his manifesto was to stimulate discussion, to question and challenge the changing relationship between design and culture. As Eye neatly summarised it: “To highlight the values, ideals and sense of responsibility that once shaped the growth and practice of design [and] to re-assert these considerations as fundamental to any sensitive interpretation of graphic design’s role and potential.” No small challenge indeed.

When All Is Said and Done

The bottom line? Whilst it’s good to see representatives of an industry that is often labelled superficial and, for the most part, concerned solely with surface, doing what they can to help; the underlying question that this debate has raised has implications beyond the immediate discussion: To what uses might designers skills be put? How might we use our abilities as visual communicators and storytellers to do more for the world than add to the visual noise?

We, as designers, should be encouraged to participate and add to the cultural debate, to raise awareness, to point out injustices. But when we do so, we have a responsibility. That responsibility includes both offering insight and acting selflessly.

When an artist writes a poem or composes a protest song, the purpose is to show the situation in a different light to the one offered by traditional media, to provoke you to look at the situation from a different viewpoint. We too, have to answer to that brief. We also - if we truly want to help - should resist the urge to blow our own trumpets, and demand no glory.

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Ideas of March

Writing yesterday, on the Ides of March, in a much-discussed article titled Ideas of March, Chris Shiflett - co-founder of Analog and Brooklyn Beta (and an all-round gentleman) - made a heart felt plea: “We need a blog revival.”

Noting that, over the last few years, a great deal of our online conversation has shifted from blogs to Twitter, Mr Shiflett urged a re-think, or - at the very least - a reappraisal of the balance between shortform and longform writing. We agree wholeheartedly with Shiflett’s analysis: When you only have 140 characters at your disposal, in-depth analysis, debates and well-considered thoughts are much harder to forge than the typically cursory, topical repartee Twitter engenders.

There’s nothing wrong with Twitter, and it certainly has its uses, however, working longform allows you to clarify your thinking; sharpens the mind; and maps into other areas of practice.

We need to encourage a rich and varied landscape of the written word, one that encourages content across a range of platforms, content that is both shortform and longform. Shortform delivered via Twitter (or, should you feel strongly, given last week’s announcement, Identi.ca); longform via blogs or journals.

As Drew McLellan puts it: “There’s room for both - for quick headline thoughts and for more reasoned posts. I think it would be a shame to have only the former and none of the latter.”

Shiflett’s plea is simple: “If we all blog a little more than we normally would this month, maybe we can be reminded of all of the reasons blogs are great.” His reasons are hard to dispute, with longer form writing: posts aren’t immediately lost in a sea of updates, can be easily found later, and tend to be more meaningful; the conversation that surrounds a post is easier to find; and, critically, the writer doesn’t have to use truncated language to encapsulate a complete thought.

What we need, in short, is a better mix: content that is both shortform and longform; content that is both shallow and deep.

Shallow or Deep

As Shiflett points out, Twitter is extremely useful for tuning in to what’s happening. It’s a great discovery tool and, with a well-maintained and carefully curated timeline, can prove worth its weight in gold, for ensuring a consistently intelligent and challenging stream of influences and provocations.

As an inherently shortform channel, however, Twitter can tend towards the superficial and the fragmented. A discussion that unfolds over Twitter often requires a considerable degree of reverse-engineering, piecing the threads back together as voices collide and multiple, often contradictory, opinions interweave; the central message buffeted by the eddies and tides of an often cacophonous commentary.

A journal or blog, however, offers the opportunity to create well-structured thoughts, to craft words, to shape an argument, to drive home a point.

The act of writing, goes much further, however. The ability to write impacts upon the design process, helping to structure thoughts which, in turn, feeds into the ability to articulate your thinking critically, an essential part of the design process and a skill that lies at the heart of strategic thinking.

The problem with Twitter and lifestreaming lies in its transient nature. A sense of grazing the surface of life, ephemeral, but lacking the depth of a well considered post, with a clearly thought through series of ideas.

A well-rounded content mix can take many forms and needn’t involve days and nights chained to the keyboard. With a strategic approach that encompasses shortform commentary, mediumform curated content and longform, in depth, content, you can create an indispensable and invaluable resource that others’ will cherish and return to often.

Curation and Creation

Blogs aren’t one-size-all and can be used in many ways, usually falling within either the classification of curation or creation. The former, gathering and curating, sifting the vast ocean of the web for meaning; the latter, adding value, new thinking and original content. Both have their place (and occasionally combine to great effect).

The act of curation - of collecting and cataloguing existing content - can prove hugely valuable, gathering related and at times eclectic streams of inspiration. Swiss Miss springs to mind, her encyclopaedic tastes invariably make us smile. Closer to home Belfast based designer Dave Smith (who formerly curated the GrafikCache for Grafik Magazine) is always on the money with his design-focused labour of love, Collate.

The act of creation - of expressing new ideas and developing new content - is equally valuable, adding original thinking to the infinite ocean of the web. It’s here that we identify with Mr Shiflett most strongly. As educators, it’s no surprise to discover that we admire and champion writers that contribute original thinking to the canon of knowledge. Craig Mod, writing on the future of books and storytelling, is blazing a thought-trail on the myriad ways in which publishing is evolving and changing, his writing is thought-provoking and gripping in its articulation. Michael Lopp’s writing at Rands in Repose is equally captivating (and who couldn’t admire a writer that covers Management, Tech Life and… Vegas?).

Both curation and creation have their place, but it’s worth noting that without the act of creation, there exists nothing new to curate; the curated blog alone only adds to the landscape of surveyed content, adding nothing new, other than commentary.

Creating content is hard, but as with anything that takes a degree of effort, the rewards that can be reaped by publishing original content can be that much greater. Original content rewards not only the reader, but equally, the writer. Writing helps you focus your thoughts, and allows you to articulate sentiments that might otherwise only merit a cursory moment of contemplation. A good writer is a good thinker.

Back to the Task at Hand

But, like all writers, we’ve intentionally digressed….

Returning to Mr Shiflett and the task at hand. We’re delighted to participate in the Ideas of March, it’s got us thinking. It might just be the call to arms that shifts our priorities slightly, focusing just a little more on the longer, more considered pieces; posts that are more rewarding to write, hopefully more rewarding to read, and conceivably more likely to be curated.

We hope Mr Shiflett’s call to arms will get more people writing, and one great by-product of that is that it may result in more people reading.

A good sign, if we ever saw one, is that within hours of his plea, a number of others had joined the fray. We’d urge you to set aside some time, fetch a pot of a tea (you’ll need a full pot), and settle down with a welcome collection of Ideas of March from, amongst others: Jon Tan, on the fact that tyrants never last and that the real banquets are blog posts; Drew McLellan, on joining the online conversation and the importance of opinions; and Sean Coates, on the great conversations that helped build our community.

Once you’ve worked your way through those, the #ideasofmarch hashtag has you covered for the remainder of the month and, hopefully, for some time to come. We fully intend to answer Mr Shiflett’s call, watch this space for further, longform posts.

1300295700 · Web Standardistas · Follow Us on Twitter

The Day the Music Died

In the time-honoured tradition of releasing controversial news late on a Friday ¹, Twitter’s Ryan Sarver - Product Manager for the Platform/API team - announced on Twitter’s development mailing list on Friday evening that the Twitter API goalposts would, from here on in, be shifting.

Writing on Consistency and Ecosystem Opportunities, Sarver announced an update to the Terms of Service for the use of the Twitter API, outlining a future where the Twitter experience would be one fully owned by Twitter. Citing the need for ‘A Consistent User Experience’, Sarver outlined the new landcape for developers as follows:

Twitter will provide the primary mainstream consumer client experience on phones, computers, and other devices by which millions of people access Twitter content (tweets, trends, profiles, etc.), and send tweets. If there are too many ways to use Twitter that are inconsistent with one another, we risk diffusing the user experience.

As The Guardian put it in its article Twitter Angers Third-Party Developers With ‘No More Timelines’ Urging:

That opening phrase - “Twitter will provide the primary mainstream consumer client experience…” - is the one that hits like an icicle in developers’ hearts. It implies that Twitter itself is going to make it harder for third-party apps to provide the same experience that it does; notably, that it may outlaw the addition of ads in prominent places (which are used to pay for apps which people can use for free, such as Echofon).

The changes outlined by Sarver not only call into question the future of alternative Twitter clients, but clearly signal that existing clients - Twitterific, Echofon, et al - are now living in a state of grace (on borrowed time…?) and that their continued existence will only be granted as long as they followed Twitter’s new, zero tolerance guidelines.

Needless to say, reaction to this change has been swift and resoundingly negative, with Eric Mill writing in the comments of Sarver’s original post:

All third party Twitter developers, no matter what they make, are now walking on eggshells, constantly at risk of offending Twitter’s ideas of how users should interact with Twitter.

If you were cynical - and judging by the reactions on Twitter and elsewhere, it would appear many are - this announcement might translate to mean: “What if you don’t see the same ‘Promoted Trend’ as in the official Twitter client, i.e. the one that someone paid good money for?”

Interestingly, in the same piece, Sarver states that only about 10% of Twitter’s users use unofficial Twitter clients, so the company’s ‘But what about the users?’ argument seems somewhat dogmatic, prompting the question: Why?

Show me the money!

So why would Twitter make this change? And why now?

One answer might be that age-old motivator: Money. Twitter have been under intense pressure to develop revenue models for some time now and, as the service has grown exponentially, the pressure to monetize it has grown exponentially.

As the number of eyeballs has increased, so the opportunities to monetize those eyeballs has increased. This, coupled with the fact that the company now serves over 140 million tweets a day, has held out the prospect of a lucrative revenue model. The real question, however, has been finding this revenue model. Queue: The Dickbar (or, as Twitter would prefer we call it, ‘The Quick Bar’).

The problem with The Dickbar - and the reason it generated such a vocal #dickbar backlash - lay in its perceived lack of honesty. In third party Twitter clients where ads exist, they clearly look like ads (and can in most cases be removed through a paid upgrade). Twitter’s Quick Bar on the other hand, purports to display trending topics, yet also displays ‘Promoted Trends’, begging the question: How can a trend be a trend if it’s being paid for and promoted?

The conspiracy theorists would have us believe that herein lies the problem: Twitter introduces The Quick Bar, quickly christened The Dickbar; a small, but vocal group of early adopters and thought leaders call out Twitter, suggesting an exodus to third party apps; Twitter severely restricts those third party apps and kills the prospect of new ones.

As David Heinemeier Hansson of 37signals, in this sardonic tweet, puts it:

If nothing else, they’re speedily responding to criticism. The #dickbar was met with calls to switch to third party apps. Solution: Kill choice.

A more pragmatic way of putting it? How do we make sure all eyes are on the ads? By owning all the channels.

The truth is that the above scenario is a probably a little too simplistic, but the fact of the decree remains: third party Twitter client development would appear to be dead in the water.

On abandoning your partners when the tipping point is reached…

Whatever way you choose to interpret it, with this announcement, Twitter are disenfranchising two important groups of people: their early adopters (who may not mean too much to Twitter, though Twitter means a lot to them); and, more importantly, developers - the very people who helped to create and shape the diverse and flourishing ecosystem that is Twitter today.

As Ryan Paul, writing for Ars Techica, puts it:

What seems to surprise third-party developers more than the new restrictions and changes to the terms of service is the brazenly dismissive tone that Twitter has assumed towards a group of developers who were once the service’s strongest supporters.

It’s this dismissive tone, that so many have objected to, with one developer cited in the article stating:

Twitter started as a very developer friendly service, but as supporting those developers interfered with the ends of their investors – making money – they have become less and less welcoming. They are, of course, well within their rights to do all this, but it’s disappointing all the same, especially to those of us who were there in the beginning.

The effect of this change remains to be seen. Regardless of the reaction, however, it seems clear that Twitter has reached a tipping point, where the mainstream user matters more than the loyal groups that helped Twitter reach the point it’s reached today. Herein lies hubris, neatly summarised in the words of Jon Tan:

Hubris is… @twitter’s attitude to client apps when they’ve helped make it successful, and when Twitter’s own UX is often not as good.

Twitter, as Charles Miller puts it in Dear Twitter…, “has always grown on the back of outside innovation,” and this change looks set to threaten the very ecosystem that drove that innovation, the developers and the ideas they conjured from the underlying service. As Drew McLellan puts it:

One of the things I really admired about Twitter was that it was built as a true web service. Twitter isn’t a website, it’s a service into which you can place tweets and out of which you can retrieve tweets.

Now it has become clear that Twitter wishes to own the entire user experience by having everyone using an official client, in a move akin to CompuServe requiring customers to use their official email client. (Remember them?) Or a website only working in Internet Explorer. (Remember those, also?)

It’s hard to argue with that.

The worst implication for Twitter would be stagnation, due to the suppression of one of their greatest and most valuable assets of all: their outside developers, who have not only catered for niche markets, but have brought imagination and innovation to the service that on more than one occasion has been folded into the official distribution channel.

Where to from here?

Who knows? Perhaps the influencers - the early adopters and developers - will realise that now is the time to start looking at a different model, one where our timeline isn’t owned and controlled by the whims of a single company. A company who, and we often forget this, is a business and not a charitable foundation.

Relationships come and go and need work. Nothing - certainly nothing on the web - can be taken for granted. Maybe this move by Twitter will be the call that brings a substantial number of thought leaders to look at a more distributed model, such as identi.ca. Imagine just a few disheartened iPhone developers creating beautifully crafted apps for identi.ca… how might that change the landscape?

Instead of sending irritable tweets about issues like Twitter wrapping all of your links in measurable and sellable t.co links, or introducing a compulsory trending topics #dickbar, perhaps it’s time to look at an alternative where the control is more distributed, federated and open.

Just think how that might look.

1300147380 · Web Standardistas · Follow Us on Twitter

On Open Letters to Apple

Richard Ziade, creator of - the very lovely - Readability, has written An Open Letter to Apple, outlining a number of concerns his company has about Apple’s recently announced 30% In App Purchase API model, hot on the heels of Apple’s recently announced and fiercely debated, new subscription model.

Mr Ziade’s feeling’s are expressed briefly, and from the heart, and have won widespread support. (As Mr Zeldman puts it, amongst many others: “Right on.”)

Ziade states:

Dear Apple,

It’s your friends from Readability. Remember us? You put our technology into your Safari browser last year. ¹ We’re writing this open letter because – well – we’re a little upset right now.

We’re obviously disappointed by [your decision to reject our Readability iOS application], and surprised by the broad language [in your guidelines]. Readability’s model is unique in that 70% of our service fees go directly to writers and publishers. If we implemented In App Purchasing, your 30% cut drastically undermines a key premise of how Readability works.

Before we cool down and come to our senses, we might as well share how we’re feeling right now: we believe that your new policy smacks of greed.

“Smacks of greed.” Ouch.

Ziade’s letter is well worth reading in its entirety (and we’d urge you to read it all). It’s a balanced piece of writing that hammers home a few choice points, not least this astute observation about one of the reasons Apple’s App Store has grown quite so spectacularly:

You’ve achieved much of your success in hardware sales by cultivating an incredibly impressive app ecosystem. Every iPad or iPhone TV ad puts the apps developed by companies like ours front and centre. It was a healthy and mutually beneficial dynamic: apps like ours get exposure and you get to show the world how these apps make your hardware shine.

Herein lies the irony. The phenomenal growth of the App Store has, in many ways, been driven by a symbiotic relationship. Apple provides beautifully designed hardware and a customer-friendly, seamless purchasing environment; Apple’s developer partners have created an impressively wide range of apps, beautifully designed, for this very system. (And, as Ziade points out, Apple isn’t afraid to leverage its developers’ efforts - “Showing the world how these apps make your hardware shine.” - when it celebrates the hardware/software symbiosis that lies at the very heart of the iOS platform’s success.)

The bottom line? This growth has been about partnership. It’s been about give and take. Now Apple has, quite significantly, shifted the goal posts.

Ziade’s Open Letter, along with so many other publicly voiced concerns, are beginning to posit an alternative approach to Apple’s walled garden model. As Ziade puts it:

As far as Readability is concerned, our response is fairly straight-forward: go the other way… towards the web.

This reaction, of embracing the web and perhaps signalling an aggressive move away from iOS devices is hardly isolated, all stemming back to Apple’s all-encompassing 30% tax (or ‘tithe’ as Gizmodo pointedly puts it). Of greater concern for those bought in to the iOS experience is how this might play out with other established players.

Though Apple’s policy is barely a week old, the visceral reaction towards it is growing and, one wonders, how it might unfold as it moves the goal posts for established, and approved apps, like Amazon’s Kindle app which, as of June 30, will be forced into a choice: slash margins, raise prices or abandon the iOS platform altogether.

As Mac Observer put it, again in an article on the problems Readability is facing:

The reality is that Apple’s new stance is likely to be a massively disruptive force in its own ecosystem, and not disruptive in a good way. From Dropbox to Pandora to Kindle to Readability to a host of other online services, these app and service [combinations] add a lot of value to Apple’s iOS ecosystem. In the case of Dropbox and others, they fill a significant hole that Apple left open in its mobile platform.

Furthermore, in businesses like Amazon’s Kindle or any of the various music streaming services, there simply isn’t any room for Apple to take 30% from a pie that’s already stretched thin by publishers, labels, IP holders, and the needs of the third party services that actually offer the service.

In fact, it’s likely that if Apple doesn’t change this policy, all of the music services and ebook competitors won’t be able to do business on Apple’s platform due to simple economics.

Simple economics. Enough said.

The Register, in an article titled ‘Apple ‘Greed’ Tax Spreads Beyond Music, Movie, Magazines’, which reflects on the situation facing Readability, put it this way:

Readability’s slogan puts it: “Enjoy Reading, Support Writing.”

This should be amended, in Apple’s view, to read: “Enjoy Reading, Support Writing, Send a Buck-Fifty to Cupertino Each Month.”

It’s precisely this kind of commentary and bluntly worded opprobrium that poses a very real threat to Apple’s iOS platform as it moves forward. When the creators of applications like Readability, which place a premium on supporting content providers (to the tune of a generous 70% slice of the revenue generated), face this kind of choice and choose to abandon iOS, one wonders how more aggressively profit-focused organisations will follow.

The economics of content have already faced a beating as the web and a ‘culture of free’ has taken hold. Perhaps the stance Ziade and, increasingly, others are adopting will force Apple to reconsider its pricing model.

We leave the last word with Ziade, who reflecting on Readability’s iOS application rejection, states:

We’re always looking to give [our] readers the best possible reading experience and a native iOS client would help us do that. We hope you’ll change your mind [Apple]. If you do, we’d be happy to resubmit the Readability iOS app.

One wonders what Apple’s response to this widespread pressure might be, not least in the face of now becoming charged by many as a company that has abandoned its core values and, worse, for a company with such hard-earned brand loyalty is, on a daily basis it seems, accused of growing levels of arrogance. Watch this space, it seems the debate has just begun.

1298352420 · Web Standardistas · Follow Us on Twitter

A Dozen Questions for Mr Suda

Brian Suda is an informatician, speaker and author with a passion for data. He lives and works in Reykjavik.

His book Designing with Data was the third to be published on noted independent publisher Five Simple Steps. “A journey through the basics [of] producing beautiful looking, accurate representations of data,” it is well worth investing in for its comprehensive overview of data visualisations and its words of wisdom on designing with data to tell meaningful and captivating stories.

Mr Suda is also a behind-the-scenes force to be reckoned with at 24 Ways where he occupies the role of co-editor with Drew McLellan and, most recently, assisted with the production of the The 24 Ways Annual.

Drawing from his study in informatics his interests are varied, encompassing cartography, chromatics and community (to name, but three). All are drawn from the ‘good portion of each day’ he spends connected to the internet. He writes in longform about these varied interests at (optional.is), a site which we’d wholeheartedly encourage you to bookmark.

We asked Mr Suda a dozen questions.

Where did you learn your craft?

Honestly, I’m not really sure what my craft is any more. I am a classically trained computer scientist.

I pursued undergraduate studies at Parks College of Aviation, Saint Louis University. At the time we were still learning to program in C and were taught all about waterfall and just in time methodologies. On graduating, I went to the University of Edinburgh and undertook a Masters in Informatics. There we did everything in Java and my thesis was about SOAP web-services.

Needless to say, what I do on a daily basis I didn’t learn in school. School was a great foundation for learning to organise your life and how to learn, so I am glad for my experiences, but the vast majority of what I do on a daily basis comes from the plenty of times I did it wrong!

Who inspires you?

Hmmm… Maybe less about who specifically and more about what. Right now I am very much interested in the concept of ‘Idleness’. I’m reading Bertrand Russell’s book In Praise of Idleness and the ancient Japanese book Essays in Idleness. I think in the next year, more of my work will revolve less around real-time, instant-gratification and instead a more relaxed, idle approach.

What are your influences?

Pretty much everything. I try to take it all in and filter it as needed. I peruse FFFFOUND! frequently for inspiration. I have hundreds of RSS feeds, but only 50% or so are technology-focused, the rest are interesting sites here and there.

My biggest influence at the moment is probably The Long Now Foundation. They’re thinking in the very long term, something that few in the technology industry seem to be doing - maybe because they’re chasing the money or because bits are relatively cheap. How many devices have you binned in the last ten years because the next version got shinier? (Cf. Last Year’s Model.) Designing a device that will last for 10,000 years makes you think about so many aspects you didn’t before, the technology, the materials, governments, political turmoil… it runs the full gamut.

You describe yourself as an informatician. This may be a new term to some, what does an informatician do?

My studies were in informatics, it’s a blend of several different disciplines which study how natural and engineered computational systems interact and behave. When your degree is in informatics, you need an equivalent job title. The study of mathematics creates mathematicians, ergo informatics begets informaticians.

Informatics has roots in computer science, cognitive science and artificial intelligence, but has spread to more disciplines including biology, psychology and mathematics. The concept now acts as a bridge bringing more cross-disciplinary interaction in science, but try putting that on your business cards! Having a single word for this concept created a Whorfianism that allows people to talk about a much more abstract concept in a single word. We saw something similar with the term AJAX.

As recently reported in The Guardian, Tim Berners-Lee believes analysing data is the future for journalism. How do we equip a future generation - of both journalists and beyond - with these skills?

A strong understanding of statistics and storytelling are key. A good journalist already knows what angle they want to write about, they’re great at teasing out facts and information. The next generation of data journalists will need the liberal arts skills to tell the story, but will need to extend their skill set to learn how to extract ‘loose’, unstructured data.

An investigative journalist already knows how to file Freedom of Information Requests, how and where to dig-up leads, facts and information from analogue sources. They will need to extend those skills into the digital realm and learn about things like regular expressions, cleaning and scrubbing data, and be familiar with off-the-shelf tools to visualise large data sets to see the ‘shape’ of the story.

We’ve noticed you format your dates, as follows: Monday, December 13th, 02010 at 13:31 UTC. Why the leading zero on the year? Enlighten us.

The long now organisation is building a clock that will take 10,000 years to make one revolution. To help promote the idea they are prefixing all their dates with a leading zero. It reminds us that it isn’t the 11th year in 2000, it is the 2011th year in 10,000! I think it’s a great idea.

We all worried about Y2K and the 2 to 4 digit roll-over issues with ‘99 becoming 0 rather than 2000. Well, we’re going to have the same problem in the year 9999 to 0 instead of 10,000. By prefixing things with a leading zero it forces you to think to yourself, “that’s weird,” then think about things in a longer term manner.

You’ve written: “Maps are historically one of the most important and politically charged objects mankind has created.” ¹ Considering your interest in cartography, what’s your favourite map, and why?

Maps are still one of the many items that are confiscated when travelling between some countries. Google is serving different maps in different regions where lands are still contested. Maps are powerful political tools.

My favourite map at the moment is an old Chinese map, Along the River During the Qingming Festival (above), a panoramic painting generally attributed to the Song Dynasty artist Zhang Zeduan (1085–1145).

It’s my current favourite because of the distortion. It isn’t a geograpghically correct map, I’m sure the river is winding back and forth all over the countryside, but here it is stretched out into a long linear format. Which is perfect, because if you are on the boat you don’t have much of a choice as to which way to travel, you only care about what points of interest you pass, how far there is between them and on which bank they will appear. It is perfectly executed for the task at hand.

There is a great deal of discussion about the importance of information design as an integral part of the design process. Given this emphasis, why do we still suffer carbuncles like, for example, ill-considered boarding passes?

I wish I knew the answer, then we could fix it.

My guess is that one of two extremes occurs: The bigger the company the more people need to sign-off, it goes through committee and gets so poorly watered down, or people are afraid to take risks, that you end-up with the lowest common denominator. (Like the old adage, “No one ever got fired for buying IBM,” no one gets fired for making Excel charts). Or conversely: Companies are so big that no one cares and really important activities and decisions fall through the cracks because over-worked people don’t feel it’s important or it isn’t their discipline or area of expertise in the first place. They are too worried about their job today that they aren’t thinking end-user experience of tomorrow.

Data visualisation is in essence storytelling. Is it possible, or even desirable, to maintain a semblance of objectivity when engaged in this endeavour?

In my younger days I thought facts were facts, how could they not be neutral, but the more I work with data I realise that it’s probably impossible to not be biased.

You can try as hard as you might to present the information in a neutral way, but you always have your own personal biases such as age, gender, race, upbringing, which bleed into your opinions. This doesn’t even get to the issues of the information you don’t show. Sure, the line graph might be full of facts, but you’re conveniently omitting other facts which can change the opinion.

What is missing is almost more important than what is present.

What’s your favourite typeface?

I enjoy Futura at the moment, but my allegiances are fickle.

What’s your favourite plain text editor?

For code, I’m using TextMate, but for more focused writing I’m using OmmWriter - very Zen.

What’s your favourite tea?

I’m not picky. I am more a fan of tea flavoured milk.

1297695600 · Web Standardistas · Follow Us on Twitter

Ask Santa 2010

With Christmas around the corner it’s time to get that letter to Santa written (assuming you haven’t sent it already).

In an effort to ensure the festive spirit unwraps in an ordered manner for you this year, we’ve rounded up a list of links for you to share with your loved ones or significant others to ensure they’re on the right track when they’re stuffing your stocking.

Though we’re never partial to posts that focus on lists, we’ve made an exception to pull together 30 gift ideas from a top ten of different vendors. We suggest you open the links below in tabs, fetch a pen and paper and write a – long, long – list to Santa (you’ve earned it after all, and you’ll thank us for it come Christmas Day).

So, without further ado, here are our choices.

House Industries

A perennial favourite, House Industries offer much, much more than finely crafted fonts. With a growing range of Objects, which include accessories, books and prints, they’re guaranteed to have something that will fit your fancy. (You won’t be surprised to discover that they have a lot that fits our fancy.)

Our favourites? Top of the list is the Cast Iron Ampersand, at a mere $250 we ask for a couple every year (and though we’ve yet to receive any, you can’t blame us for trying). We urge you: buy one for your loved one, it will seal the deal. No. 2? If $250 is beyond the budget, why not avail of the $75 Agent Provocateur Logo Book and Knickers. In their own words:

Agent Provocateur started accosting … then House Industries entered.

The deal. Sealed.

If tie-side knickers aren’t your cup of tea, our No. 3 is an Eames Three Serigraph, an elephantine Eames’ ‘3’ that will afford you endless conversational fodder. Enough said.

Swiss Legacy Holiday Gift Guide

Courtesy of Xavier Encinas, Swiss Legacy focuses on typography, graphic design and, as Mr Encinas puts it, “inspirational matters.”

Rounding up, “objects that Encinas has had his eye on throughout 2010,” the Swiss Legacy Holiday Gift Guide is international in style and contains a cornucopia of temptations. Our favourites include: Unit Edition’s ThreeSix (U:D/R 03), designed and written by Hamish Muir and Paul McNeil; The Entente’s Aperçu Specimen, a two colour catalogue that offers an overview of the Aperçu family; and the Mash Creative 2011 Calendar, a limited edition print of 100 calendars printed with glow in the dark ink (for the inner child amongst you).

Core77’s 77 for < $77

Considering the small things in life, industrial design magazine Core77 has collected 77 items that range from bottle openers to bubble wrap, all weighing in under $77.

Its Ultimate Holiday Gift Guide features a number of gems, not least: the Make-Your-Own Mechanical Music Box, going for a song at $15; the Sharpie of Sharpies, a steel chassis that’s a snap at just $7.29; and the Muji Envelope Template, which not only supports sustainability, but is - curiously - priced in pounds sterling (that’s £2.95 to you Guv’nor).

Kare Prints

Anyone we’ve taught will be well aware of our appreciation of the paradigm-shaping work of Susan Kare. Her icons for the original Macintosh computer have truly stood the test of time, establishing themselves as design classics, distilled down to their essence and making their mark on many a Macintosh user, not to mention culture in a wider sense.

As Kare puts it, “They are more like road signs than illustrations, easily comprehensible … not cluttered with extraneous detail.”

Kare states, quite astutely: “Just because millions of colours are available, every one need not be used in every icon.” Wise words indeed, that are taken to heart in her Kare Prints. Printed as Giclee Prints, our favourites are, no surprise: the Bomb; the Dog Cow; and the ever present Trash.

Design Museum Christmas Gift Ideas

Every year we make at least one pilgrimage to the Design Museum in London with our students. It’s no exaggeration to state that we collectively spend a fortune in its shop. This Christmas nothing looks set to change with museum’s helpfully compiled Christmas Gift Ideas. As you spend your hard-earned money, you’re entitled to feel philanthropic, as all proceeds help support the museum.

Regular readers won’t be surprised to see a Moustache Badge in our list, this one designed by Macon and Lequoy ensures – male or female - you have no excuse not to sport a little facial hair. Next up, from our friends at Plumen, ditch the shade and witness a beautifully designed, low energy Plumen Light Bulb, wear it completely naked. Finally, should you have little ones (or just use the excuse of little ones visiting), the Rosa Rocking Horse designed by Wolfgang Sirch and Christoph Bitzer is a beautifully minimal and sculptural addition to any home.

Rapha

Even if you’re not a cyclist, Rapha have a tempting range of Winter Gifts on offer to entice you. Helpfully grouped by price, there’s something to suit every wallet (or purse).

In ‘Gifts Up to £25’, our vote goes to the Bonk Bag, contrary to what you might be thinking a ‘bonk’ is, in fact, a ‘a sudden loss of energy’. In ‘Gifts Up to £100’, our vote goes to the Merino Boxers 3-Pack, wooly and warm. Finally, should you be feeling generous, in ‘Gifts Over £200’, our vote goes to the Tweed Softshell; sartorial tweed, need we say more?

Bag of Bees Ts

A collaboration between the fine folks at Paperjam Design and Magic Marker Design, both based in our fine city of Belfast, Bag of Bees is a one-stop-shop for, as they put it, “lovely tees with nice stuff printed on them.”

The scribblers at Bag of Bees have some lovely tees lined up for the festive season. Our favourites include: the Sid James & the Jazz Spasms, a shirt imagined up for a non-existent, early 60s garage band from Kilburn; the Literally, a well-thumbed little rascal; and the Libre… Hola 8-Bit señor!

Jez Burrows Is Selling You Things

The talented Mr Burrows finely wrought all of this year’s branding collateral for Build 2010 and lovely indeed it was. Should you have missed the event ¹, Mr Burrows’ has a shop to sell you things Get your skates on though, orders need to be placed by 10 December to guarantee Christmas delivery.

We’d certainly welcome any of the following finely crafted prints under the tree: Lost Town, an image originally created for Kitsune Noir’s Desktop Wallpaper Project ²; Celestial Feats (Redux), an inky blue fragment of the heavens; and Arms II, a fine piece of contemporary heraldry.

Reward Your Hard Graft

Our penultimate choice, from purveyors of fine lifestyle accessories hard graft, covers all the bases. Carefully selected from The Full Range, we recommend: the Shoulder MacBook Sleeve; the XII iPad Case; and the XI iPhone Case.

Should you have been well-behaved all year, why not encourage your your loved one to buy you all three? They make a fine matching set.

The Standardistas’ Choice

We round up our selection with three idiosyncratic choices that we’d very much appreciate finding stuffed in our stockings come Christmas morning.

First up, who wouldn’t want a Revo Heritage digital radio? Beautifully designed, it combines classic looks with a cornucopia of contemporary features. If that doesn’t float your boat, why not consider a Cyril R Salter Pure Badger Shaving Brush for the gentleman in your life (or if you have no gentlemen, feel free to send a couple to Standardistas’ HQ). Last, and by no means least…

Our final stocking suggestion is that you pick up a copy of The 24 Ways Annual 2010. Featuring contributions from, amongst others, Dan Mall, Simon Collison, Richard Rutter and Yours Truly, it looks set to be a classic. With all proceeds from sales going to UNICEF, you’d also be doing a spot of good too, nothing could be more appropriate during the season of goodwill.

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The Periodical

The most recent entries in the Periodical and Reviews sections:

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HTML and CSS Web Standards Solutions

Learn how to build hand-crafted web pages using well-structured XHTML and lean and efficient CSS. By embracing a web standards approach, HTML and CSS Web Standards Solutions enables you to create web sites that not only look great in all modern browsers, but are also accessible to a wide variety of audiences across a range of platforms - from those browsing on everyday computers, to those accessing the web on the latest, emerging mobile devices.

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The Authors

In addition to their role as lecturers in interactive design at the University of Ulster at Belfast, where they have been active in promoting a web standards-based curriculum, Christopher Murphy and Nicklas Persson are practicing designers and digital artists. Their work has featured in a variety of design books and magazines alongside numerous internationally respected designers and they are regular speakers at design conferences and workshops worldwide.

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