July 31, 2010
Your Magazine's Social: Flipboard

There's been a lot of talk about a new social media app for the iPad over the last few weeks. It's great little app called Flipboard. The aim of the app is to take feeds from various news-related sites and your personal Twitter and Facebook feeds to create a print magazine-like presentation for the topics that you care most about. Since Flipboard made it's public debut on July 21, it's been exceptionally swamped by iPad users that want to get a glimpse of the slick presentation that Flipboard gives you. I admit, I've been waiting for my email address to be given the green light to add my Facebook and Twitter feeds to the setup before I wrote up a review. I got my notification today, so I've been doing some poking around to see how things work.
I have to say that the app is really beautifully designed. The app launches with a nice pictorial view of a variety of possible "stories" from people that are in your feeds and from places that are pre-populated by Flipboard. Once on the Contents page, you can customize your screen to follow a variety of different topics and writers from pre-populated sources or you can search Twitter or Facebook for your favorite people.
It allows you to create a personal social magazine. You can flip through a magazine-style presentation of the things that your friends are posting to Facebook and Twitter, or you can add your favorite Twitter users and lists. You're able to leave comments and share anything you read in the app. When your click on an article in the page view, you get a box with that specific article. On the article screen, you can also see any tweets that link to the article or post. If you just want to move on to the next article, you can just keep swiping and the next item will come up. Want to go back to your page view, just click on the little "x" in the top corner.
The only nitpick I have so far is that there are some connection problems occasionally with the Twitter and Facebook feeds. You'll launch the app and you'll get a "No Content" error on one or both of the boxes there. A lot of times that will go away if you close the app and relaunch, but it's just a minor frustration. I suspect that it's just a small connection problem with all the people out there trying to get this working.
The only other thing that I can see that could be a potential problem for Flipboard is the question of "Is Flipboard legal?" There have been a few place around the web that have tackled the topic, like Gizmodo and Wired, and I can understand both sides of the argument. Flipboard is using technology like the Reader function in Apple's Safari browser to cache the content to Flipboard's servers. Based on comments from Flipboard's Co-founder Evan Doll, they are trying to be careful to not pull whole articles into Flipboard. Stories that come into the viewer are just little snippets of things and you can click on the "Read on Web" and get the full article. Tech pundits are wondering if the "content scraping" of non-affiliated sites is going to lead Flipboard to a copyright issue. How that will play out, we'll have to just watch and see how that ends.
All that aside, Flipboard is a very slick app. It's nice to see some out-of-the-box thinking with an app. If you have an iPad and your in to social media, Flipboard is a great app to have. The Flipboard App is available for free at www.flipboard.com or from the App Store on the iPad. Check it out!
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July 30, 2010
NPZ: Bowtie.

July 28, 2010
Fresh on the Press: MiceSigns
Just got finished with the first 14mph publication. I spent a good amount of time last week taking photos for a new photo book, looking at the signs around the Disneyland Resort in Anaheim, CA. This first book, MiceSigns, looks at a variety of signs from all over the Magic Kingdom. I took this as an opportunity to test the camera on the HTC Incredible and it did a really good job. There are 103 photos in the book and 88 were taken with the Incredible. I think the photos turned out rather well. We're publishing this through the fine folks at Blurb. I've got first copy being printed as we speak. You can find Blurb and all sorts of other great books online at http://www.blurb.com/. Take a look!
July 21, 2010
NPZ: Disneyland.com

July 16, 2010
Ridiculous and Absurd: The Downfall of Newsweek Tech

July 15, 2010
The Creative Decline?

July 14, 2010
NPZ: Fully Illustrated

July 13, 2010
To Yield or Not to Yield

I have several pet peeves. One of them involves a small triangular sign that appears on roadsides periodically. Some of you may have seen it.

Now, for those that don't know, that's called a Yield Sign.
According to the U.S. Federal Highway Administration's Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices, a YIELD sign may be warranted:
- On the approaches to a through street or highway where conditions are such that a stop is not always required.
- At the second crossroad of a divided highway, where the median width at the intersection is 9 m or greater. In this case, a STOP or YIELD sign may be installed at the entrance to the first roadway of a divided highway, and a YIELD sign may be installed at the entrance to the second roadway.
- On a channelized turn lane that is separated from the adjacent travel lanes by an island, even if the adjacent lanes at the intersection are controlled by a highway traffic control signal or by a STOP sign.
- At an intersection where a special problem exists and where engineering judgment indicates the problem to be susceptible to correction by the use of the YIELD sign.
- Facing the entering roadway for a merge-type movement if engineering judgment indicates that control is needed because acceleration geometry and/or sight distance is not adequate for merging traffic operation.
That's a a lot of technical gobbledygook, but the long and the short of a yield sign means that a vehicle driver must slow down and prepare to stop if necessary -- usually while merging into traffic on another road -- but doesn't need to stop if there is no reason to do so.
"No reason to do so" means if there are NO CARS traveling down the street you're yielding for.
I tend to find that few people actually know what a yield sign means. Let's do some math.

Yes, contrary to belief, YIELD does NOT equal MERGE. It's become a rather big annoyance this week, since I've been in at least 4 situations where stupid things could have happened because other drivers think YIELD = MERGE or they just plain ignore the fact that the Yield sign is there. Since I happen to like my car and like even more to be able to drive myself to work and school every day, silly people ignoring the real meaning of a Yield sign can lead to some bad situations.
But all that pet peeve stuff aside, this is a design and art blog. What does this have to do with design? Well, most people don't think about it, but the traffic signs that we see every day had to be designed by someone.
In the case of the Yield sign, the original concept and design was created by Capt. Clinton Riggs, a police officer in Tulsa, Oklahoma. According to the Tulsa Police Department's official blog, "The first 'yield right of way' signs were installed on a test basis in 1950 at First Street and Columbia Avenue, the most dangerous intersection in Tulsa at that time." The original design was a yellow keystone shape with black lettering (left). Over time, that evolved into triangular yellow signs that simply stated "yield" in black type to the red and white "Yield" signs that are part of the U.S. Department of Transportation's official spec books for traffic signs that we typically see in the U.S. today.
I find it interesing to see where the designs of ordinary, everyday things like this come from. We tend to take some things, like traffic signs, for granted and never think that someone had to think up the designs for these things. Just a little useless fact there to help us remember that there's design all around us. Even when we don't think it's there.
July 12, 2010
Design and Usability

As a designer and programmer, design and usability is always a touchy subject when you're dealing with the Web. There are a lot of so-called "experts" out there that will tell you one thing and then another will come along and contradict it. When looking through any site dealing with design and usability, please keep in mind that 99% of the time, whatever is said amounts to the author's opinion. As with anything creative, "beauty is in the eye of the beholder." What may be look good and is very usable to you may not be for someone else. I've found the key to making sure that your site is all you hope it can be is to make sure that the site is designed so that your main audience is very comfortable using the site. If your intended audience can't use the site, then all the time and effort end up being an exercise in futility.
Do a bit of research on who your audience is. Run some tests. Find out some of the places on the web that they like to use. Then use those common themes to help guide your design. You'll thank yourself in the long run for it.
In order to help you on that road, here's a list of some links that tend to fall in that 1% range of people that actually know what they're talking about. Granted, take anything here with a grain of salt. It all comes down to personal preference with what people like.
General Reference
Web Usablity
Web Reference
- Internet.com's Developer Channel
- HTML Help by The Web Design Group
- The CGI Resource Index
- WebDeveloper.com
- WebReference.com
- KillerSites.com
- PageTutor.com
- W3Schools Online Web Tutorials
- Victor Engel's The Browser Safe Palette
- Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) Tutorial
- Complete CSS Guide: Contents
- HTML Goodies - Home Page
Design Sites
Programs
Learn More
June 2, 2009
The Reason People Hate Designers

There are times where it can be embarrassing to be a designer. People in the industry that think they know something can make the lot of the good designers look really bad. This is one of those times. Why? Well, I came across an article today on Fast Company. It's about a "designer," Dustin Curtis and his reaction to the current website for American Airlines.
He gives three (exceptionally arrogant) suggestions:
Treat this as a serious emergency across your entire company. Your shortfalls in customer experience do not stop at the website. Your company is losing money every day because customers hate the way you treat them. And it appears that you are doing nothing to fix this.
Fire your entire design team, if you have one. Hire an outside design firm ... as quickly as possible. Your in-house team is obviously incapable of building a good experience. Get outside help.
Follow the lead of new, young, and innovative airlines like JetBlue and Virgin America. They know how to harness repeat business through excellent customer experience.
For No. 1, I think he tends to forget what industry he's complaining at. This is the airline industry. Overall, the airline industry is stuck with what they have. Costs are going up and income is going down. Arguments like "Your company is losing money every day because customers hate the way you treat them. And it appears that you are doing nothing to fix this." is a sad outlook at the way the world works. Mr. Curtis thinks that customer service is only a one way street. I'm sure consumers don't treat the airlines any better. Not that that is an excuse, but trying to make like these big companies aren't doing anything to make customer experiences better is silly at best and downright ignorant at worst. And then there's a little thing called "competition". Companies lose money everyday because there are others out there that do the same things for cheaper.
2. Fire your entire design team and hire who? Someone like Mr. Curtis here who apparently doesn't know how the business side of the design world works? The arrogance of someone like Mr. Curtis is EXACTLY one big reason why "normal" people hate "designers". (Heck, people like Mr. Curtis make real designers hate "designers".) As a design professional, I'm appalled and disappointed at people who throw around idiotic blabber like this and then go around claiming that they're a "designer". That kind of talk is the kind of garbage that you hear from all these new, trendy "designers" that claim to have gone to "design school" and have all the answers.
And #3, well, I think we're missing how the airline industry works today. Back in the 60s, or 70s, heck, even the 80s, people were loyal to one airline. In my day, United was my airline of choice. Today? There IS no loyalty cause it's all about getting the cheapest flight available. That's why places like Orbitz, Priceline and Travelocity came into being. It's not about sticking with who you're loyal to. It's how much can I get for as little as possible. Today, we take whatever flight from whatever company is the cheapest and throw loyalty out the window. JetBlue and Virgin, while nice, aren't anything that you can compare to the BIG airlines. Once JetBlue and Virgin get to the same size as United, American and the like, their " excellent customer experience" will turn the same direction. It's just the nature of the corporate world. Hate to burst your bubble there, Mr, Curtis.
Ultimately, what poor Mr. Curtis doesn't seem to understand is that there are some lines between design and functionality. Sure, the world would be an excellent place if all design was pretty and everything everywhere looked as good as designers wanted them to. But that's not the world we live in. In the case of American Airlines, I understand where they're coming from. Having done webwork for both the "mom and pop" shop and the big, corporate giants, I know EXACTLY how AA.com came into being. In the big, corporate world, things like websites are designed by committee. You have different departments within a big company that have their piece of the website and that's all they really care about. When you take 100 of these different little pieces and have to smash them all together, that's where "pretty" design gets thrown out the window. You have to make sacrifices to please all the parts of the committee. And sacrifices rarely lead to "pretty" design, especially on the web.
The truly tragic thing here is how this was all presented. Yes, there's horrible design out there. There's plenty of it out there. I've dealt with it for almost 20 years. But there's a way to tell someone that their website sucks. Mr. Curtis' method is exactly how NOT to tell someone.
But all this is probably currently beyond his grasp. Someday, hopefully Mr. Curtis will learn all this.
Probably when someone pops his art school, trendy designer bubble and he realizes that he's in the real world, not some ideal design world that he's apparently living in right now.













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