According to this Gizmodo post, Dieter Rams’ (a designer for Braun in the 50’s and 60’s) work can be seen influencing the designs of one of the most currently prominent industrial designers, Apple’s Jonathan Ive.
Ever since I got my hands on the new iPod touch, I have been in love with multi-touch technology. If you are like me and enjoy touch screen technology, and have an extra $100k in your pocket (unlike me), you can pick one of these babies up at Neiman Marcus.
As if I have not already been to mini.com enough, configuring and reconfiguring Mini Cooper’s; Mini gives me yet another reason to check out their fabulous website. They sent out an email blast with “Secret Codes” that you can type into the search box, on the Mini website, that allow you to play with the site’s hidden features. Pretty cool. Give them a try.
Once you type in the code (case sensitive), look to the bottom left of the main window for instructions on how to use the hidden feature.
The Secret Codes (shhh!):
Reverse
Take It For a Spin
Under The Hood
MINImize
Great Flash work and another piece of Mini’s masterful marketing.
I have been a long-time user (in Internet time that equates to somewhere between one week and a few years…) of TinyURL.com to shorten long, ugly URLs into something a bit more manageable (and copy & paste-able). The service is quick and easy and does what it promises, but it is U G L Y. Almost to the extent that I don’t want to use it.
If you feel the same way and are looking for a similar service that is easier on the eyes, check out RubyURL.com
As for other URL shortening site designs, does this URLtea.com background make anyone else’s eyes go crossed?
From a company often praised for it’s intuitive graphical user interfaces (or “guituitivity“) comes a good example of a bad user interface. The iTunes “Clean” and “Explicit” tabs are backwards and inconsistent with the rest of the GUI (and the metaphor of Tabbed documents).
To me, the tabs above show that we are currently on the Explicit version, not the Clean. Why would the darker inset “Clean” image apply to the light colored pane we are currently viewing? I have been tripped up by this several times.
From Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines:
Take advantage of people’s knowledge of the world by using metaphors to convey concepts and features of your application. Metaphors are the building blocks in the user’s mental model of a task. Use metaphors that represent concrete, familiar ideas, and make the metaphors obvious, so that users can apply a set of expectations to the computer environment.
Tabs, in the real world, are visually linked to the document you are viewing.
Although, The iTunes design team seemed to get it right on the front page:
Here the lighter tab is connected to the lighter pane below, as it should be. The darker tabs, when clicked, pull other pane’s to the front.
Pownce is a way to send messages, files, links, and events to your friends. You’ll create a network of the people you know and then you can share stuff with all of them, just a few of them, or even just one other person really fast.
Pownce is the newest creation by Megatechtronium, a company that includes Digg.com founder Kevin Rose, among others.
Excited to see what Pownce had to offer I started the pleasurable and quick account creation process. In addition to a great site design, Pownce uses well-designed tooltips that guide you through the registration process:
The copy/wording is great as well. Not trying to hard, but just humorous enough to make the process fun (and more applicable for some):
Okay, all signed up, now what does this service actually do? Well, you can message your friends, send them links and files. But, it is necessary to actually have “friends” in order to do this… Since not one of my friends, that I know of, is a Pownce member yet, I am out of luck. So, I opted to publicly post a link and a message to test the service. Easy enough, but since this is now being used as a micro-blog, you must tell people about it in order for it to be of any use. Why not just use a service like tumblr, which seems to better fit the micro-bloggers simple needs?
In the sidebar I noticed an “Pro” version that you can purchase for $20 annually.
The Pro version removes the ads and allows you to send files up to 100 MB to other registered users. Once again, must have “friends”. Would it be better to use senduit, my favorite file transfer site? Senduit allows you to send anyone files up to 100 MB for free, by creating a unique, expiring URL for the file download. Seems better to me.
But, since I am a firm believer that web convergence is the future, maybe Kevin and crew are on to something by combining these services - only the future will tell. For now, it seems to be just another service that people need to sign up for and will only reap the benefits when Metcalfe’s Law kicks in and the network (and your friend list) grows.
Note: Only mentioned senduit and tumblr because they are great products. It just so happens that they are from the same company, New York-based Davidville. Hmmm…maybe they should combine them and give Pownce a run for it’s money.
This video was just “made popular” on Digg, so you may have seen it there or elsewhere. But, I really do agree that this is a creative way of doing the titles of a movie and I love the retro cigarette pack designs.
In 1988, I wore fluorescent green snow pants, a black and hot pink jacket, and matching neon Zinc Oxide on my nose. Without a doubt, I was stylin’ on the ski slopes.
All of these bright memories came racing back when I saw the logo for the 2012 London Olympics, which was unveiled today in London.
My iPod Shuffle This logo not only comes in pink, but also shades of orange, green and blue.
The new design, which cost £400,000, has received a mixed response, but Lord Coe was adamant it put across the image and message that he wanted the London Games to deliver to the world.
“It’s not a logo, it’s a brand that will take us forward for the next five years,” he told BBC Five Live.
“It won’t be to be everybody’s taste immediately but it’s a brand that we genuinely believe can be a hard working brand which builds on pretty much everything we said in Singapore about reaching out and engaging young people, which is where our challenge is over the next five years.
All this being said, styles do repeat themselves eventually in some shape or form. Maybe I am just not forward thinking enough, or maybe this design trend was one I was hoping would be left in the 80’s; but this is the British equivalent of $793,216 US dollars ill spent.
[UPDATE] Expert says, 2012 Olympics logo is not fit for TV and may cause epileptic seizures. Good thing the Olympics are never televised…oops.
