Friday Links: Design Edition
Friday Links: Design Edition
Five links from our ongoing office chat thread on design, as compiled by Chloe Olewitz with snarky edits by Paul Ford.
1/Draplin Design Co., Pretty Much Everything
Link from Matt Quintanilla who notes: “When I saw Aaron Draplin had a book coming out — instant pre-order for me. I mean, how can you deny this man any of less than your full attention? This is a massive compendium of his career as a designer and artist with tons of personal insight, page after page of his gorgeous vectors and inspiration and plenty of that Draplin brand of humor we’ve come to expect.”
2/Apple updates iTunes with a ‘simpler’ design that is bad
Link from Jeremy Mack. The lefthand navigation bar disappeared from iTunes quite some time ago, but it turns out that bringing it back in a design update this week hasn’t really solved any of the big problems plaguing iTunes users. Adding more menus to the admittedly confusing iTunes interface did not simplify the experience.
3/How design is shaping the future at tech giants like Facebook
Link from Darren Hoyt. Companies like Google, Netflix, and Atlassian are, like, totally excited by design these days. (Interesting note: Jon Lax is quoted in the piece, and he was our first speaker at a Postlight session and our first-ever podcast guest, so enjoy his wisdom unironically.) Worth noting that GE (not in the piece) is not just a huge polluter but a genuinely innovative design shop (capitalism remains kinda complicated) and is doing some realllly sweet stuff on this front.
4/Agencies on Canal Street waging post-it note war
Link from Kevin Nguyen. Ad agencies and businesses that face each other on Canal St. in NYC have been making Post-It note art in their windows, and it has elevated to an all-out war, with belligerents including Havas Worldwide, Horizon Media, Cake Group, and Getty Images. The creativity (and procrastination) spilleth over. If this is viral marketing for something we’ll be angry.
Digitizing personal backchannel messages raises some sticky privacy concerns, not to mention questionable professional practices. Link from Paul Ford. When you go into a new office you gain access to group chat. You can search the archives. You can see what they thought of you, what they said. Do you want to know? Can you face the cold assessment—or handle being unmentioned? Are they watching you right now?