Just a quick visual geek post. What a beautiful set of objects. I think it’s so Interesting to see the “uplift” of the back of the 1998 and 2000 models — never noticed that before, but the 2000 one is much less dumpy in profile.
I also think that the 2002 model with its hemispherical base and adjustable screen is an amazing design. What a brilliant concept.
Every one of these has transformed the industry.
Michael Bungay Stanier is a business coach who puts out a tiny daily email that you can read in 30 seconds. It’s called Great Work Provocations. The e-blast starts my day with a challenge or a bit of encouragement, and I really enjoy it when it pops up in my In Box.
Today’s provocation was:
My goal is to serve people with Fierce Love.
Love, in that I want them to succeed thoroughly and utterly.
Fierce in that I won’t let my own fears and cowardice stop me in doing what it takes to help them get there.
How about you?
This concept of “Fierce Love” has been coming up a lot for me lately. As a marketer, as a designer, as a consultant, what do you do when you see a stubborn client heading down a path that you know will undermine their goal? Do you fight, and risk being thought of as a prima donna? Do you comply, and risk the final product not working? Where’s that balance? Should it be balanced at all?
Work is a partnership, and hopefully it’s a loving one, full of shared goals and good intentions. But fear — of internal political pressures, detached decision makers who purposely stay apart from the process, frayed budgets, frayed nerves and looming deadlines — can undermine months of hard work and thoughtful problem-solving.
Bringing Fierce Love to the relationship seems to me to be the very best thing you can do for both your business partner and yourself. If the love provides direction, and the fierceness helps you get there, then Great Work is often the result.
Please leave a comment. I’d love to hear what you think.
Just in time for Labor Day Weekend, meet the new AbilityFirst Magazine.
Two years ago we designed the publication as a semi-annual replacement for the Southern California-based non-profit’s annual report, and supplemented it with a second issue mid-year. We primarily targeted donors and corporate sponsors, so the distribution was narrow and the cost per issue was relatively high. It was well-received, but it always felt more like a corporate brochure than a “real” magazine.
A few months ago, AbilityFirst asked us to take another crack at it, to see if it could become more magazine-like and engage a broader audience. We were thrilled. We made the publication larger, suggested they incorporate their sponsors’ advertising, and energized the pages graphically. My colleague Ted Bickford pushed to make it more dynamic. Our wonderful designer Anat Rodan was inspired to make it even more beautiful and lively. And our client AbilityFirst let us run with it, encouraging our efforts and championing the result.
The first issue is about to hit the streets, exposing to a wider and more diverse audience the amazing work AbilityFirst does with developmentally disabled kids and adults.
But guess what? You get a sneak peek at the newly transformed AbilityFirst Magazine right now.
Let me know what you think.
Our business has almost always come through referrals. I’ve done some direct selling, but usually designer/client relationships are built on something else: a seed of trust. When trust exists, people are willing to recommend you. We’ve been lucky to get recommended often.
Knowing that, it’s interesting that I discovered the concept of networking groups only recently. My brother’s wonderful girlfriend who’s an attorney suggested Provisors. Shortly afterward, a truly talented Santa Monica florist, Mark Herrier of Fleurs du Jour, called me up and invited me to Westside Referrals Network. They’re very different groups, but both are intriguing.
So I’d like to know what you think about networking groups — in general or specifically. If you can post a comment, I’d really love to hear about your experiences, get your advice about whether they work and find out which ones you might have tried. I’m sure others would be curious as well.
As John McWade says, “Let’s talk.”
The great site Designboom has a little article on a big idea: student designer Gary Hunt calls them “social mail stamps.” It’s very simple. The stamps feature whimsical drawn heads. The user adds the bodies right on the envelope.
Artists and other creative types have been doing this for years with the typical stamps that feature heads of famous people — statesmen, literary figures, and so on. Folon is one example. but there are many more. The thing is that this version is deliberate, and very nicely done.
Maybe it would turn around some of the troubles the Postal Service is having?
Last night I discovered Mixel for the iPad. It’s a simple concept, brilliantly executed.
About half of social media is photos. But what if you could put those images, or any other images you can find on the web, together to make collages? What if doing it were as intuitive as — and even easier than — pasting clippings together from a magazine?
Former NY Times design director Khoi Vinh has developed an app that does all that and lets you share the result with your friends, or the world. You don’t have to be able to draw. You can just play. And you’ll surprise yourself with your own creativity.
As a medium for personal visual expression, there has never been anything like the tablet computer. And Mixel exploits that beautifully. The natural way you use it makes it easy to open Mixel and start messing with it.
User Jordan Duke took it one step further and created an animated diorama using Mixel screenshots and iMovie. Take a look.
Mixel is free on the iTunes App Store.
As graphic designers, much of what we do is ephemeral. Once in a while, we create a book or an environmental graphic that sticks around. But more often it’s a brochure, poster, package, ad or piece of stationery that gets tossed pretty quickly.
Here’s a project that’s actually designed to be destroyed. Or, better yet, to be eaten.
The Real Cookbook is an edible publication that contains — and gets physically incorporated into — a classic lasagna recipe. The pages are made of stamped pasta, and are layered sheet by sheet with the rest of the ingredients, then baked. Mmmm.
Created by Korefe, the German design studio, it’s a delicious comment on the impermanent nature of the objects we humans craft with such care.
What a lovely idea. Show a 5-year-old a series of logos and see what she thinks about them. Ohio-based designer Adam Ladd video’d his daughter as she gave her impressions of the brand identities we see around us every day. Amazing what creeps into our brains as children.
You can bemoan the level of brand saturation we all live under. Or you can accept it, enjoy it and maybe even use it. One man’s overwhelm is another man’s choice. But no matter how you slice it, we humans are smart about patterns and very good at first impressions. We had to be in order to survive in a prehistoric world where we could instantly become food to dumber but more powerful beasts. (Oooh, maybe corporations aren’t people! They’re….)
So it’s no wonder a kindergartner can so quickly grasp the essence of a symbol, and associate it with something she’s experienced. Want to hear what she has to say? Check out this video.
Michelangelo spoke about releasing his sculptures from the marble. In the case of Brian Dettmer, he’s releasing them from old books.
Like a surgeon working carefully with small instruments, he explores the anatomical peculiarities of dictionaries and other vintage texts. Like an archeologist, as he digs deeper and deeper, he unearths meaning and finds small gems that interact with the elements he’s already uncovered. Like a magician, he forces the viewer to see familiar objects in a surprising new way, and to wonder what else is hiding in them.
I marvel at his craftsmanship and his patience. It’s well worth clicking through to the site to see his other pieces — this is just the tip of the iceberg.
One of our favorite clients is the incredible AbilityFirst. The work they do with developmentally disabled people and their families changes lives for the better, dramatically, every single day.
We just posted the newest edition of their semi-annual magazine on issuu.com. It’s full of moving personal stories like T.J. Mitchell’s, the 10-year-old with Down syndrome featured on the cover. T.J. has made tremendous progress through the loving, supportive programs AbilityFirst provides its participants.
They were also at the center of the effort to pass California Bill SB-309, the legislation that enables support for families with disabled high school students, without which their educational programs would have been cut off.
You can read the current issue of AbilityFirst Magazine online by clicking the image, or this link.
