
Brand New on the Läkerol redesign. I do love salmiakki.
Brand New on the Läkerol redesign. I do love salmiakki.
Highlighted as part of a brand identity review on Brand New, the Fife Arms Hotel hides each room’s key inside a custom-designed hardcover book.
“When companies become design-led, he believes, designers are saying “get out of the way, I’m the boss.” The forceful “I’m the boss” mentality combines with design’s tendency to become what he calls a “microworld of aesthetic high-fives”: in which designers have an invisible language about what good design looks like based on a history and experience that they tend to privilege, and this understanding that designers together at the exclusion of others. Maeda thinks these two elements end up alienating other disciplines when everyone should be working together.”
John Maeda: “In reality, design is not that important” – Fast Company
This, 100%. He’s gonna get ripped for putting this on the table, but what he describes matches with my experience. And, as the article states, this doesn’t just apply to design and designers. I’ve seen it with engineering, hardware and software, too. Hubris.
Meada is “head of inclusion and computational design” at Automattic, the maker of WordPress. It seems he is taking the broadest possible view of inclusion, not just to consider traditional identity categories, but different perspectives and professional roles. It will be interesting to see if this gauntlet generates insightful discussion and change in the design community, or just pushback.
EDIT: Here it comes. And of course, it immediately goes for the “no true Scotsman” argument.
First Round 1-day conference looks pretty damn interesting. May 31, San Francisco.
“A one-day showcase of original presentations made to clients showing initial design explorations for logo, identity, and branding projects.”
“User research is hard — not because recruiting participants and conducting interviews are difficult, the logistics have never been easier or less expensive. True user research is hard to take because it forces you to consider the true behaviors of real people who aren’t like you and quickly reveals wishful thinking.”
“Focus Groups Are Worthless” – Erika Hall
Advice from Brian Collins, CCO of branding consultancy COLLINS, and Lelan Mashmeyer, CCO of yogurt maker Chobani. Both are co-founders of COLLINS.
…no algorithm can replicate human creativity. In fact, creativity is antithetical to the way artificial intelligence works. We develop machine learning by feeding in data about the way people react in certain situations. The point of algorithms is to predict what most people will do and execute that expected action.
“How to thwart the robots: unabashed creativity” – Fast Company
I worry that statements like these misunderstand AI, fetishize human creativity, and underestimate the drive to substitute every human labor with capital.
Human Terrain, 3D maps of the world’s population.
One of my absolutely favorite blogs is The Casual Optimist. Written by publicity and marketing guy Dan Wagstaff, it focuses on book design. Here’s his 2018 roundup.
Before we get started, there is an important detail we must clear up. Our hero’s name is not, as you might think, WALL-E. Moreover, it definitely isn’t WALL•E. His name is WALL·E, and that dot is an interpunct, not a hyphen or a bullet.
Typeset in the future
“A populist right-wing leader. A persecuted minority race. Fear invading the households of every family on the wrong side of the fence. Meanwhile the rest of America carries on, oblivious to the ugly changes within.
“Sound familiar?”
Fixture, a 72-weight (!!!) san serif family from Sudtipos.
Illustrator hacks.