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Quote of the Week:

Design versus Style

I recent column over at A List Apart nailed it regarding the difference between "design" and "style".

"Wha?", you say?

Well, think about it for a moment. For something to be well-designed, it must meet the functional needs and expectations of the user. For it to be styled well, it must live up to the aesthetic needs and expectations of the user. An important difference. Often, design and style influence each other, and good style often is just as important to a successful marketing effort, or branding effort, or architectural effort, as design. But a fun style doesn't always lead to a beneficial experience, at least in the funcitonal sense.

In his article "The Bathing Ape Has No Clothes (and other notes on the distinction between style and design)", Adam Greenfield discusses why modernism is often seen in well-designed books, websites, architecture, and even fashion; and why some really interesting Japanese movements in "design" that end up influencing young upstart designers worldwide aren't necessarily leading to a design expression, but rather to a stylistic one.

His key point opposes The Bathing Ape (said Japanese design concern) with the design philosophy and studies behind British Rail. Everything from signage to rialway maps to the angle of armrests in railcars is influenced by the all-encompassing function-driven understanding that the BritRail folks undertook. And not only does it fulfill the main mission of moving people around Brittania efficiently, but it also ends up looking pretty damn cool at the same time. Style serves design. Or rather style and design both serve function.

That's all I'll say here. Go read the article, whether you're a designer or just someone looking for one. You'll get a lot out of the discussion.

posted at 6:20 PM Leave your comments here: 0 comments

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1.24.2006

1099 me, baby!

..or not?

It's that time of year again, when my desk gets covered with all of the paid invoices and all of the expense receipts from the previous year as I try and categorize all my spending and income for Notchcode in order to make my CPA happy. The most interesting facet of this is who I receive 1099s from. Some organizations send me a 1099, treating Notchcode's services as a contract employee. Others don't send anything, treating me like a copier repairman, or the company that cleans their drapes in the office (a firm that provides a service, but one that is written off as an expense, not as labor). I can see an arguement for both sides, but I wonder what a real professional, like a CPA or employment lawyer, would say? Any other designers out there have a good answer for which way is the "right" way?

Incidentally, it doesn't matter whether or not I sign an Independent Contractor or Work For Hire agreement (I never do the latter, by the way), and it also doesn't matter if I sign away unlimited use, or just specific use...some people who have limited use rights send 1099s, and others who made me sign an independent contractor agreement and get unlimited use (but not transfer of copyright, thank you very much) do not send me 1099s. So what is the criteria?

In any case, I am an Honest Bloke running an Honest Company, and I account for every penny of fees and expenses that come my way from clients, so the IRS doesn't have to take me to task about it later on; so getting a 1099 really doesn't make much of a difference to me. But I am curious as to what the rationale behind sending/not sending one to Notchcode is.

Got any ideers? Post 'em here.

posted at 12:28 PM Leave your comments here: 0 comments

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1.20.2006

All-nighter

Remember the days back in art school when you spent all night on that miderm studio project? Drank a case of Jolt Cola, turned up Love and Rockets (well, for me it was Neil Diamond), and just hammered away at it?

It's so good to be reminded that I can experience the very same feeling in real life. Only this time, it's a client presentation I am tweaking to be just-so; I'm drinking English Breakfast tea (hey, at least it's a step up from the decaf espresso I usually drink these days), and it's Zero 7 coming through iTunes.

I don't want to wake the kids.

So is this me getting old? I am, after all, just passing away from the prized 18-34 demographic, heading into my late 30s, and it makes me wonder how relevant my design sensibilities are. But I have to remember Paul Rand did some of his best work later in life, as did scores of other uber-designers; even Neil Diamond just recorded a gritty new album with Rick Rubin that the kids like (or so I hear). So I won't bemoan my age, rather, I will ignore it. I'm not old enough to revel in it (short man with hat in Buick going 20MPH muttering "whatevah, whateveh, I do what I want!"), so I will just be AGELESS.

God, you can tell I am running on fumes. Note to self: just like drunk dialing, never engage in midnight blogging. Back to the task at hand, and then, blissfully, bed.

posted at 12:44 AM Leave your comments here: 0 comments

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1.16.2006

the 50-millisecond impression

If you think you can cram a bunch of info on a website because it's what you think your customers might want to see, think again.

Researchers writing in Behaviour and Information Technology have found that visitors to a website can form a favorable--or unfavorable--impression of your website within 50 milliseconds. Milliseconds? Yep. Gitte Lindgaard of Carleton University in Ottawa did the study, and for those of us in the User Interface biz, it's worth reading the whole thing. There's a short synopsis of it at nature.com, too.

Lindgaard's observations of people's reactions to 50-millisecond showings matched their perceptions after much longer pageviews, as well; this tells us that the basic stay or go decision is made very quickly. What keeps people looking at a webpage? Simple design, oddly enough. Minimal graphics, good information design, and adhering to some basic web design conventions can make it more likely that people will stay longer than, say, 50 milliseconds.

Of course, many of us have been designing to these principles of simple, clean, easy-to-grok interfaces for years, but it's always nice to be validated by a little science.

posted at 12:19 PM Leave your comments here: 0 comments

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1.15.2006

del.icio.us: not just for breakfast

If you haven't started using del.icio.us, i's time to give it a try. Think of it as an easy way to get your bookmarks off your computer and onto a site where you can get at them wherever you happen to be. There are some lifehack-realted postings on the deliciousness of del.icio.us, so I won't bore you with it here, but for me, it was a nice surprise to see how useful this is as a tool.

You can check out my del.icio.us list here.

posted at 10:23 PM Leave your comments here: 0 comments

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1.12.2006

They couldn't pay me enough...

...to work in the Capitol basement, making large scale graphics for Senatorial Committee Meetings, like the Alito Confirmation Hearing currently going on in DC. It's not often that designers and production artists are mentioned in a national news network's blog, so I gotta give up the props to the lads and ladies who serve our elected folks with large charts that show, say, the trending of whale blubber oil sale exports over the last three years or whatnot.

They are truly the unsung heroes of congressional debate, these compositors of the large graphic. Working for federal pay scale, unrecognized by most on the Hill, and serving our country. But I want to propose a law mandating paid workshops for all of them, just to make sure chartjunk is minimized in this arena of public service.

posted at 12:03 PM Leave your comments here: 0 comments

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1.07.2006

Notes on the Digital Legacy

I was pursuing Sarah Pullman's blog this evening, in between watching the Great Escape and baking cookies, and read her thought-provoking article on the legacy of digital imagery. Go read it, if you can. Her thesis questions the future availability of the digital images we make today; will our great-grandchildren be able to see them? And if they can, they will see how intimately our lives were documented, and won't that impact or skew their actual memories of us? All good points. As a comment, I posted the note you see below. It is one of the more relatively lucid things I've written on a topic I've thought about a lot in the last two years or so, ever since I got my digital camera, and have been making about 100 times as many digital images as I have been exposing sheets of film.

Here it is:

As an old-school photographer (big, wooden camera, huge sheets of film, anachronistic dark cloth wrapped around me), who also made over 1200 digital snaps of my new twin girls this year, I can sympathize. I don't expect many of my digital images to survive more than a generation--except those that actually get printed out. The human eye is the ultimate hardware you have to match your technology to, when speaking of visual literacy, so if you want it remembered, print it out. On archival paper. And store it in a dry, dark place.

I would equate all my digital files to the boxes of negatives I keep around. The negatives are only one step removed from the experience that created them. Prints made from these negatives are the carrier wave for the aesthetic, symbolic, and historic meaning that I want to impart. Can you put your hands on your parents' photos' negatives? What about the photographs made by your grandparent, or great-grandparents? I bet, however, that you have at least one image from each of those generations close at hand (or at least a phone call away).

So, here's my advice: Don't worry about the digital legacy that might embarrass your future progeny, because (while it may be hidden on the wayback machine or somewhere else on teh internets) it probably won't get too much exposure in 50 years. Buy a sturdy photo album, print out the photos that really mean something to you, and put them in there. And if you really want to make your great-great-grandkids wonder about you, write some really misleading captions underneath them!

The act of looking at a physical artifact is still one of the most powerful experiences a person can have.

posted at 9:53 PM Leave your comments here: 0 comments

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1.03.2006

Thank goodness for archives

Today's "thank you!" goes to my Archives.

Working on a brochure update for a project from 12 months ago, and it's a complex one: about 50 imagefiles, including many multi-layered photoshop files, and a lot of product information. All tucked away on 2 CDs (one in the office, another offsite).

posted at 9:17 PM Leave your comments here: 0 comments

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