“The food was so cheap and available that it is thought that most Pompeians simply didn’t bother including a kitchen in their homes.” When a product is readily available, and readily affordable, consumers will learn to rely on nothing else.

Image Credit

I’m sort of in love with all Jorinde Voigt’s drawings. ( via )

“Block off the first hour of every Monday to organize your todo list. Turn off instant messenger, close e-mail and silence your phone. You need absolute silence so you can focus.” – Ryan Carson, Think Vitamin.

Maybe the whole thing will feel hokey to people who expect their $500 gadget to feel more Minority Report than Gutenberg. – Neven Mrgan

It’s a big maybe, -but a really valid point. Web and app developers are always going to struggle with this. Pixels have no physical characteristics, or culture to embrace, -they can be anything. I get the feeling that the iPad is Apple’s effort to appeal to the older crowd in a way that they never have. Simpler, bigger, and more like the real world. All of the apps matching their real world counterpart will probably help users who spent the first 30+ years of their life without a computer adapt more easily.

Find 10 minutes today to write an email to one of those people who influence you most. The web is a huge anonymous place, and many of us work isolated from others. You just might make someone’s day.

Here’s my email by the way: Keep Reading

I have absolutely nothing to say about truncated RSS feeds. I could care less.

However I do want to see more of this online:
http://www.kungfugrippe.com/post/416273227/feed-me-atlantic

And this:
http://www.marco.org/438103070

and even this:
http://www.kungfugrippe.com/post/439434786/entitled-to-care
(Although I do wish the tone sounded less aggressive)

But what I really like is this:



(This is Marco, who Merlin’s article is written in derogatory response to, saying he like it via Tumblr.)

I really look forward to a time when the internet is filled with thoughtful public responses and passionate dialog. We all win when it’s like this.

Things like this Flickr set make me feel pressure to have gorgeous creative notebooks. I feel like if I don’t, then I’ve somehow failed, or I’m not doing it right.

A while back though, I gave myself permission to use my notebooks for “junk.” Not for finished art. Not to frame. Not to brag about. But to really quickly get ideas out of my head, and thought through in a visual way.

My notebooks aren’t going to be in a museum 500 years from now like DaVinci, and that’s ok. My brain kicks out lots of ideas and 90% of them are bad. I use notebooks to record and sort those ideas, most of which aren’t worth the paper they’re written on.

Giving myself permission to treat a notebook like a tool, not something precious, has been a good thing in my life. Do you have self conscious thoughts like this that keep you from being more productive?

“The value of presence is sometimes in its absence.”

Just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean it’s not there, and isn’t vital. It might not seem important to everyone, but background information is the core of every single project we work on. I found this out recently when I was trying to be articulate during a project… it turns out it didn’t matter how eloquent I was; I didn’t 100% grasp what we were doing. I could have said the same thing eight different ways and it still wouldn’t have made sense. The biggest communication barrier was that I didn’t even know I was missing information. But then someone connected those dots, filled me in.

It was my missing link.

Suddenly I was able to put the pieces together, and it made all the difference. So next time you find yourself in that situation- either you or with a co-worker- it might help to take a second and make sure everyone’s on the same page… and essentially working toward the same goal.

We used to call ourselves “motion designers.” People who flirted with a new type of design where things moved, videos played, and content was immersive.

I’m ashamed to say I wasted a lot of my formative years learning Actionscript, keyframe animating, and some BS catchphrase called R.I.A. design.

I bought the Macromedia pitch pretty wholeheartedly. While Zeldman was preaching standards, I was still obsessed with the idea that the internet would turn into something like an interactive television.

I still think it might, eventually, but we’re further away from that now than ever. I’m glad the industry caught its breath, and a dose of sanity about interface design, but I miss “motion design.” Keep Reading