Lunarboy / Roger Wong // Musings of a Designer

Imagining the Future

2011-11-17T02:19:50+00:00

I’ve been slowly getting through Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs. One tidbit I was struck by: …he pulled out a device that was about the size of a desk diary. “Do you want to see something neat?” When he flipped it open, it turned out to be a mock-up of a computer that could fit on your lap, with a keyboard and screen hinged together like a notebook. “This is my dream of what we will be making in the mid- to late eighties,” he said. They were building a company that would invent the future. That was Steve Jobs in September 1982 at a retreat with the Macintosh team. He had imagined the laptop one-and-a-half years before shipping the first Mac, and seven years before the Macintosh Portable saw the light of day.

Putting a Dent in the Universe

2011-10-06T05:30:44+00:00

I have been a Mac user since 1985, when I was in the seventh grade. For months I lusted after the Mac on display at Computerland on Van Ness Avenue in San Francisco. I’d go there after school just to play with MacPaint. It simply captured my imagination. Finally, after many weeks of begging, I got my dad to buy me a 512K Mac. Thus began my love affair with Apple. Imagine how lucky I felt when I actually began working on the brand and on Pixar in 2001-2002. It was such a privilege to be so close to the magic and to Steve Jobs himself. The Steve Jobs I knew was human. Not a god. Not someone who could distort reality. Just a man. But he was sharp and always focused with his opinions and observations. He demanded perfection. Always. I was a lowly pixel pusher when I worked directly with him. In addition to Pixar.com, I also designed some pitch slides for him. His feedback was always direct and always right. Yes it was surreal to have him call me on the phone and for me to load slides on his Mac. Near the end of my tenure at Pixar, I wanted to do more. I was hoping to build a little design department there. But Steve didn’t think I was ready, and he told me so—directly. Even though I was crushed at the time, it was probably one of the best pushes I ever got to do better, to stay hungry, and to stay foolish. Thank you, Steve. You changed me—and more importantly, the world—for the better.

Introducing the RE:DESIGN Conference

2011-09-15T02:00:57+00:00

I’ve been working behind the scenes on a little thing called the RE:DESIGN Conference. It is a whole series of events around Design and the format really encourages intimate conversations led by session leaders. The first event is themed around Creative Directors and I’ve had the privilege of trying to get many designers whose work I’ve long admired and many friends, colleagues and mentors to come speak at the conference. Here is a quick rundown of those I know, and how I know them, arranged in autobiographical order: Lawrence Azerrad was in my class at California College of Arts & Crafts (CCAC, now California College of the Arts (CCA)). I am envious that he has the pleasure of working with my favorite contemporary band Wilco. Mark Fox was my one of my teachers at CCAC and I interned for him. A lot of what I know about logos and symbols I learned from him. Neal Zimmermann was one of my bosses in my first full-time design job. Always funny, he would push us junior designers to kern five-letter words for a week, earning him the nickname of “The Kernel.” I worked with both Angie Wang and Eric Heiman at Zimmermann Crowe Design (ZCD) and they have both since become inspirational educators and design practitioners. Colleen Stokes was my boss at USWeb/CKS (which became marchFIRST). Her designs were always impeccable and she eventually moved to New York to work for a number of style and fashion brands. Adam Connelly and I met at marchFIRST (formerly USWeb/CKS, formerly CKS) while working on the Sega account. We would cross paths again at Apple and Razorfish. His wealth of indie music knowledge is amazing. Shawn Hazen and I worked at Apple together. Although we were in different groups within Graphic Design, we were both part of the growing team of highly-skilled designers cranking out layouts with Apple Myriad on white. I met both Cinthia Wen and Christopher Simmons while working on a side AIGA/SF project dubbed “The Pub Project.” Both are CCA alumni and both are brilliant. Dan Buczaczer is the likely outcast of the bunch. He is not a designer, but he and his company are incredibly creative when it comes to innovative ways to get one’s message out. He is also my neighbor in Oakland. Dave McClain and I are counterparts at LEVEL Studios. We also both previously worked for Razorfish (formerly Avenue A | Razorfish, formerly SBI.Razorfish, formerly SBI and Company, formerly marchFIRST). Don’t remind him that the Oakland Raiders beat the Denver Broncos at Denver, in their 2011 season opener. I cannot wait to see all these people in Palm Springs in November. I think it will prove to be a very fun, interesting and inspiring time. More info at the RE:DESIGN website.

Making Natural Scrolling More Natural

2011-09-08T14:39:58+00:00

I’ve been using Mac OS X 10.7 Lion for a few days now. I won’t go through all the new stuff; you can read John Siracusa’s epic 27,000-word review instead. But I do want to talk about one thing: natural scrolling. Apple calls “Natural Scrolling” the reverse of what we have all been accustomed to for the past 15+ years since Microsoft’s IntelliMouse made the scroll wheel popular. And despite my tweet to the contrary, it is definitely taking some time to get used to it completely so that it’s muscle-memory. But I need to break current muscle-memory that’s been a decade-and-a-half in the making. Natural scrolling actually does make sense for a complete computer newbie. On a trackpad, the user is pushing the page up with her fingers, just like on a touch device such as an iPhone or iPad. This works fine on the Magic Mouse too. But there still is cognitive dissonance. As the user pushes up on the trackpad the scroll bar moves down and the cursor stays put. Yes on iOS the scroll bar moves down as well, but the user’s actual finger is directly pushing the content up. Whereas the finger gesture on the trackpad or mouse is physically dislocated from the screen, there’s a another layer of abstraction that’s happening (at least in my head). And then I thought about how that gap might be closed. What if that stationary cursor turned into a grabber hand and moved with the scroll gesture? Here’s an experiment. As soon as the gesture starts, the cursor changes into a grabber hand that will move with the gesture. When the gesture is finished, the grabber returns to its original position and changes back to the normal cursor.

Thank you, Steve

2011-08-26T07:06:12+00:00

With everyone sharing their sweet Steve moments, I have to share mine. I was working at Apple in the motion graphics group within the Graphic Design department. I was assigned to work on the intro animation for the Mac OS X 10.3 Panther setup assistant. We went through the normal design process with our stakeholders (people in charge of “MacBuddy”) and got to an animation that was essentially swarms of dots that formed each of the different translations of “Welcome” on the screen. And then we showed this nearly-final animation to someone higher at the top—forgive me, I’ve forgotten who this was—and he killed it because the dots looked too much like sperm. OK, they kinda did. (Think about swirling points of light but with motion trails. We tried increasing the motion blur, but it was no use.) It was back to the drawing board and I presented more ideas. Eventually Steve got involved and started looking at the animations. Each week my boss would show Steve a new revision of it, and each time we got a little closer. Then on Round 14, the week my boss was on vacation, I had to go present it to Steve Jobs. He was eager to see this new revision. No pleasantries. No introductions (actually he knew me from Pixar). Just got right down to business. But he did say this to me, “Wow. We spend more time on MacBuddy than Microsoft does on all of its UI.” And then he chuckled. The presentation was quick and he only had a couple of pretty minor notes. I think I had one more revision and it was finally done. What my time at Apple and working with Steve taught me was this: Keep going until it’s right. Don’t settle. Thank you, Steve.

One Day For Design

2011-04-13T15:00:58+00:00

The AIGA is sponsoring a 24-hour online conversation about Design (with an uppercase D). This is all happening on Twitter, moderated by some pretty big names like Alex Bogusky, Erik Spiekermann, Armin Vit and others. I’m happy to see the AIGA doing this online and using social media. And I’m happy there are moderators that represent a couple of generations of designers. Link: onedayfordesign.org

1,673 Frames

2011-04-04T07:51:43+00:00

I creative directed a client photoshoot last Friday. We shot over 1,600 frames for six people over the course of a day. That’s a lot of pixels. The photos were taken by Cass Redstone.

Using the iPad to Reshape Content

2011-02-28T16:52:27+00:00

This post was originally published on Bow & Arrow from PJA (my employer) on February 3, 2011. The New York Times recently published an article about how apps and web services are enabling consumers to customize how they read their online content. From apps like Flipboard and Pulse to services like Readability and Instapaper, users are increasingly demanding to consume content whenever, wherever and however they want. When Apple introduced the iPad a year ago, many print publishers saw it as a panacea for their dwindling readership. By creating digital editions, they hoped to recapture some of the eyeballs lost to aggregators and RSS feeds. One of the pioneering publication apps was the WIRED Magazine iPad app. Because of its novelty, its debut issue sold 73,000 digital copies in nine days, almost as much as on newsstands. There is a clear desire from users to read magazines on their tablets. What that first generation of attempts miss though, is they are trying to replicate 20th century print experience on a 21st century device. The magazine apps feel very one way. But the iPad is an Internet-connected device and users on the Internet demand more interactive experiences. They want to copy and paste passages to put on their blogs. They want to share articles via Facebook and Twitter. Using Adobe’s Digital Magazine Solution, Condé Nast is starting to address some of these issues. Meanwhile apps such as Flipboard are aggregating content and repackaging it for their users. Flipboard presents news items according to a user’s social graph, creating a personalized and highly relevant news stream. Additionally, the app presents this content in a unique way: as a paper magazine. The visual is striking, yet it still holds familiarity with users since it loosely mimics the experience of reading a real-world magazine, with the benefits of interactivity. And so far it has been a hit with users, even earning an App of the Year award from Apple. Different kinds of content demand different kinds of packages. For example as a designer, I—along with most designers and art directors—flip through magazines such as Communication Arts and Print, and peruse blogs and websites like LovelyPackage.com and SmashingMagazine.com. Seeing something cool usually sparks an idea for whatever we’re currently working on. To get through the hundreds of design-related sites out there, I use RSS feeds to aggregate this content for myself in Google Reader. Unfortunately, because I am so busy, I am not able to keep up with all my feeds. I may manage to check it only every few days. And I dread seeing that “1000+” number next to my unread items. So last year, when the iPad was introduced, I decided to find a solution as an independent side project. I knew that an app on this large dedicated canvas could be created to serve this need of efficiently consuming visual inspiration. I teamed up with a developer friend and we started work on DesignScene. We set out to create something that designers would enjoy using and become part of their daily ritual. We had two primary objectives: The UI must serve the content and the audience. It has to be beautiful and show off visuals well. The content must be relevant. There's a glut of design-related websites and blogs on the Internet. Let's help designers navigate through them. The UI we designed is sparse—a simple grid that takes advantage of the screen real estate afforded by the tablet. Users flick through the various grid cells to see an assortment of images. They can enlarge the images to fill the screen or read the accompanying text from the original source via the built-in web browser. DesignScene surfaces up the latest inspirational images of not only design, but also architecture, photography, art and so on. The content is a curated list of sources and—as a whole—has an editorial point of view to enhance discovery. It’s been two weeks since DesignScene launched. [This was originally posted three weeks ago on the PJA blog.] So far we’ve had great response from users and media. We built social sharing into the app and we can already see hundreds of discoveries being shared on Twitter. Our users are interacting with content in a way that was not possible just a year ago.

Leading a Horse to Water

2011-02-11T15:49:13+00:00

“but in giving their clients exactly what they asked for… that was their downfall.” — “Creators of Beloved Peacock Logo on NBC's New Look: Yuck!” by Stephanie Orma As a practicing professional designer and creative director having created work for clients huge (Microsoft) and tiny (Bimbo’s 365 Club) throughout my career, I find that above quote to be idealistic and naive. It comes from a Co.Design article about Chermayeff & Geismar’s reaction to Wolff Olins’s recent redesign of the NBC Universal logo. In the real world, our job as designers is to put forward our best recommendations based on the client’s objectives. Of course we try to come up with solutions that are strategic and well-crafted and that will resonate with our client’s intended audiences. These days, to present the one and only solution as Chermayeff & Geismar did with the updated NBC logo in the 1980s or what Paul Rand did with the NeXT logo is a near impossibility, especially with large corporations who are likely paying six figures or more for a comprehensive redesign. The design process is ultimately a collaboration between the client and the designer or design firm. Ideally trust is built between the two entities. Designers must trust that the client knows their business intimately. And clients must trust that the designer is an expert in branding (or whatever the area of the assignment is). I have found that the final product is often better when that trust is there. Sometimes for whatever reason that trust isn’t developed and there is only so much convincing we designers can try to do. In the end—to be practical businesspeople—we must know when to stop pushing the client since they are the one signing the check. As the old saying goes, “You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink.”

Dot Collaboration

2011-02-02T17:34:27+00:00

I discovered this project on Flickr via DesignScene. The artists in this collection were given a single dot as a template for their image. There will eventually be 100 in total. Link: Dot Collaboration

Make the Future

2011-02-01T22:32:20+00:00

I’m not one to remember quotes, but this one from Frank Chimero just struck a chord with me yesterday: “Because the future isn’t a thing you win. Or wait for... The future is something you MAKE.” That is from a video he made to sell his The Shape of Design Kickstarter project, which was amazingly funded in just one day.

Introducing DesignScene App for iPad

2011-01-18T15:59:20+00:00

I’m really proud to announce that DesignScene for iPad has shipped today. From idea to release, it’s been about a year in the making. Here’s a little trailer I made in case you missed it: I’ll be frank and say that this app was really made for me. Like many designers I spend a lot of my time going from website to website looking at stuff and reading up on trends. I eventually started using RSS feeds but even my feeds got unwieldy. I dreaded opening up Google Reader and seeing “1000+” unread items. When Apple announced the iPad 12 months ago it struck me that this device was the perfect thing to visually browse through all of my design-related feeds. It didn’t take me too long to sketch and comp up something. Of course I am just a designer and had zero Objective-C skills whatsoever. I can do simple HTML, CSS and even PHP, but real programming languages elude me. I knew I had to find a development partner. Problem is that there are tons of people like me with an idea, while developers are in high demand. I asked my network of friends and contacts, posted on Craigslist and BuildItWithMe but didn’t really find anyone. I had a couple of meetings with friends of friends who were iPhone developers but they had their own objectives. Finally I got in touch with an old friend who was working on his first iPhone app. I presented my idea to David and he liked it. We decided to go to iPad Dev Camp which took place a week after the iPad shipped and just a couple of weeks after David and I initially talked. We built the prototype for DesignScene at the camp (and received an Honorable Mention). We were off to a great start. The reality of day jobs and personal lives slowed progress down as we got into the spring and summer of 2010. But in the fall as chatter of curated content emerged we kicked ourselves into high gear. David worked on functionality (there’s a lot of backend processing that actually happens so that the app is as fast as it can be) and I worked on reaching out to sources to get official permission. Fast-forward to today, and DesignScene is now available for purchase on the App Store. We’ve worked incredibly hard on this, sweated all the details (there’s actually a maintenance upgrade that we released hours after 1.0.0 went on sale), and are really proud of what we’ve accomplished. Of course we could not have done this without the immense and loving support from our families. A million thanks to our wives and kids for putting up with our late night hackathons. We are going to keep working on to improve DesignScene (we have some neat features we’ve been thinking about) but we’re also going to think about other apps. Stay tuned and wish us luck! iTunes Link to DesignScene app for iPad David's side of the story

The Need to Breathe

2010-04-02T07:59:46+00:00

“1000+” should be a familiar number for Google Reader users. My RSS feeds have been neglected in past months. Emails from AdAge.com, Creativity-Online, and links from friends go unread and unclicked. I’ve just been running 100 miles per hour at work. This is not to slam my current employer (because I truly like working here), but more of an observation. If we creatives are always so busy with projects, and never take the time to look up, take off our headphones and find inspiration, our work will suffer. Our work will stagnate. Our work will suck. So this is a reminder to myself (and to other creatives) to take a bit of time each day to remain inspired. Surf the web. Watch TV. See a movie in a theater. Listen to new music. Read a magazine or a book. Go to a bookstore. Go to a museum. Go hiking. Eric Baker spends 30 minutes every day scouring the web for inspirational images. He shares them regularly on Design Observer. And I’ve started to try to gather images and links that delight me in a couple of Tumblr blogs (ELT and ___ is awesome.) This is also a reminder to managers of creatives: you must let them play. You have to structure your organization and processes to allow creative folks time to recharge and get inspired. Google’s 20% time is a great example of how structuring some R&D/inspiration time can yield results. The Scotch Tape and Post-it Notes were invented by engineers at 3M during their 15% time. Or taken to the extreme, Stefan Sagmeister closes his studio every seven years for a yearlong sabbatical to get inspired again. Now how can I get someone to pay me for a sabbatical?

The State of the Internet (in 5 minutes)

2010-03-24T18:47:43+00:00

JESS3 created this video for an AIGA Baltimore lecture. I found the content very fascinating. Two nits in an otherwise excellent piece: 1) the pacing could be better with more interesting transitions between the different subject matter, 2) use correct apostrophes!

Macworld San Francisco: My Picks

2010-02-14T06:41:40+00:00

I went to the first post-Apple era Macworld on Friday and spent a couple of hours in the exhibit hall. This year it was only in the North Hall, much smaller than it has been in past years. A lot of the big names—besides Apple—that were anchors in previous Macworld Expos were not there: Adobe, Filemaker, Canon, EPSON. Microsoft, HP and others had smaller, toned down booths. The floor was packed with a lot of the smaller players and had a substantial area dedicated to iPhone apps. I found that I had to pay attention to the small exhibitors. In terms of my show picks, here they are. TypeDNA: This is a series of plug-ins for Adobe CS4 that helps you preview and make decisions about your typeface choices. The innovation is that it analyzes 62 characteristics of every one of your own fonts to build a local database. From that database, it will allow you to search by styles, classifications and even find pairs of typefaces that go together. All this is based on scanning the letterforms, not checking the font name. Pretty incredible. It’s not out yet, but should be shipping in the next month or two. Topaz Labs Filters: This was the first demo that caught my eye. The speed and accuracy in which the ReMask plug-in works is incredible. Much easier to use than Photoshop’s native Extract tool or onOne Software’s Mask Pro. Inklet + Pogo Sketch: I’ve always been a Wacom tablet user. I just find that for Photoshop work, it’s invaluable. Inklet is software that allows you to use your MacBook Pro’s multi-touch trackpad as a tablet. Combined with the Pogo Sketch stylus, it’s like a mini-tablet built right in! Anti-Glare Screen Protector from Green Onions Supply: I’ve never liked the glossy screen on my MacBook Pro. So when I saw this on the show floor, and how it just cuts the glare, I had to pick one up.

Charting the Beatles

2010-01-21T17:14:47+00:00

My Beatles fanaticism has been re-ignited recently with the remastered box set. I've been going through the albums in the order of their release and am just floored by the clarity of the sound. It's definitely like hearing all these songs for the first time again. Because of the remasters, I'm sure the Beatles have enjoyed a renewed interest from audiences old and new. Which brings me to the "Hey Jude" flowchart and this infographic gem: Charting the Beatles. There are four great charts at that link. Apparently it is the start of an open collaboration project and includes a Flickr pool. Link: Charting the Beatles

Re-Typesetting the Star Wars Crawl

2009-12-10T23:15:44+00:00

Recently Guillermo Esteves did a fantastic experiment with HTML5 and CSS3 by recreating the opening crawl to Star Wars. Although it only currently works in Safari 4, it’s a good preview of how to create something dynamic using web standards and web fonts once the other browsers come along. But Guillermo’s experiment also reminded me of how awful the typography was of those opening crawls. The original Star Wars opening crawl uses two different typefaces (three if you count “A long time ago…”), is justified without hyphenation, and thus creates obvious rivers and awkward tracking. Opening crawl from A New Hope as grabbed from the DVD. As the subsequent movies came out, the typography was all over the place. The Empire Strikes Back dispenses with letter-spacing altogether. Return of the Jedi overcompensates for the failure of the previous two crawls by using too much letter-spacing. Opening crawl from The Empire Strikes Back. What happened here? I can drive many trucks through those spaces. Opening crawl from Return of the Jedi. Standbackafewfeetandtrytoreadthatlastparagraph. The absolute worst though was when ILM matched the style for the Star Wars prequels. At least there was more tracking in the original 1977 version. The 1999 version of the crawl that appeared in The Phantom Menace lacked any letter spacing whatsoever and created huge holes between the words that made the crawl barely readable. (No offense to special effects god and Photoshop co-creator John Knoll. He’s great with FX but he’s not necessarily a designer nor typographer.) Opening crawl from The Phantom Menace. Shit in = shit out. It’s a tragedy that they used Empire as the model. I set out to do a quick experiment—to see if I could redo the crawl any better. The first thing I did was to standardize on one typeface. The “A long time ago…,” title and body copy are all Franklin Gothic. Then I tried a version where I kept the justified alignment but decreased the type size. The copy becomes much more readable, but feels too small and loses that epic quality George Lucas was probably after. Then I simply tried centering it and I think it works. I am able to keep the type size large without creating large gaps between words or letters. Although the very straight sides are lost, I think the intended dramatic effect is still there. And of course I had to whip it up in After Effects to really test the design. Yeah, file this under geekery.

The Benefits of Having One Agency

2009-11-13T19:38:28+00:00

There’s been a lot of chatter in recent weeks about how so-called “digital” agencies are or are not ready to be the lead for a campaign. But I think the question is a little off. Instead the question should be “Why are clients splitting up campaign work based on tactic?” Despite the maturing of digital agencies such as Razorfish (for whom I work), R/GA and AKQA, today’s clients are still sending digital work to digital agencies and traditional work to traditional agencies. And equally bad is having a third company plan and buy their media (sometimes there’s a traditional media agency and a digital one). Why is this bad? OK, the end-zone is down that way 50 yards! Make sure you talk to each other along the way. Now go! [View larger | Download PDF] I’ve seen it time and time again: if you want an integrated marketing campaign, how could you possibly brief all the companies and hope they work together and come back with something good and cohesive? The agencies will pay lip-service and say they’re collaborating, but there’s only so much collaboration that can happen in reality. Each agency is moving fast and really has no time to talk to the others. Plus there is always unspoken political jockeying for protecting the work each agency does have and trying to steal more business from the others. I strongly believe that this model is inefficient (money and time), makes agency people insane, and creates less-than-stellar campaigns. What should instead happen is the client needs to brief one agency who will create a singular idea and execute on that idea across different tactics and mediums. Therefore the messaging, art direction and strategy for the campaign are cohesive. Let the one Agency bring in specialists as needed to serve the idea. [View larger | Download PDF] Agencies should not be labeled “digital,” for digital is only a tactic. I’d say the same with “traditional.” What clients should ask for is strong strategic work that drives results. Let the agency—regardless of its label—decide on who to sub-contract to if necessary. When we see clients trust their agency and its vision, we witness great work all around: TBWAChiatDay + Apple Crispin Porter + Bogusky + Burger King Goodby, Silverstein Partners + Sprint Oh wait. There isn’t a “digital” agency on that list. But there soon will be. Further reading: Why Digital Agencies Aren’t Ready to Lead Why Digital Agencies Are Indeed Ready to Lead What if we held a controversy and nobody cared? Digital must be anchored at the heart of agencies Please feel free to use the above diagrams which I’m making available through a Creative Commons license.

Designing FEED 2009

2009-11-09T17:22:46+00:00

FEED 2009 has now been released and I feel privileged to have been a part of this one. If you haven’t already checked it out, please do so. The report and findings are very compelling and eye-opening. [Download PDF] I wanted to share a little bit about the process we went through in designing the new report. When my friend and colleague Garrick Schmitt first approached me, he already had an editorial direction in mind. He realized the data was so profound that the usual packaging of articles around the report would actually take away from it. So he wanted a smaller format with less content. He referenced books by Marty Neumeier: simple layout, large type, lots of infographics. The theme for the book came down to “customer engagement.” The data shows that when brands engage with customers in an experience of some kind (like an event, contest, etc.), ninety-six percent (96%) of their customers are more likely to consider, buy from or recommend that brand. Ninety-six percent. You never see a number like that in a survey. (To get that number, add up the sometimes/usually/always percentages for the consider, purchase and recommend results.) So the answer was obvious in my mind. The design had to be simple (and elegant) but it really had to have an organic touch; it’s about the customer after all. I started thinking about Darwin’s journal and his observations and drawings of animals. I toyed with having the whole book typeset in a font I could make from Garrick’s handwriting, accompanied by scientific drawings of consumers. As soon as I thought about looking at illustrators who had a realistic style, someone immediately came to mind. Earlier in the summer I worked with a freelance copywriter named David Fullarton who was also a talented illustrator/artist. His work combines collage with portraiture and witty copy. His style would be the foil to the business-speak and myriad bar graphs and pie charts. He was perfect. When I briefed David, I gave him a draft of the report and some loose direction. What he came back with was sheer genius. Because of his copy in conjunction with his art, the illustrations became another layer of commentary about the state of our industry and even our hyperconnected society. Yelpers are not only reviewing restaurants, but also doctors and schools. It doesn’t seem far off that they might be reviewing police officers in the future. Meanwhile, I took another look at the nameplate for FEED. Last year’s design element of the small rectangular bars was inspired by the holes in computer punchcards. This year, I took the idea a little further by incorporating the actual shape of the punchcard and making the name a part of that. Garrick and I also talked a lot about the format of the physical book. He liked the idea of putting it up on Blurb for anyone to order their own copy. The small 7x7 size felt right for the amount of content we had. In addition to Blurb, we have also offset-printed 2,000 copies of the book. For this I chose a natural white cover stock for the interior pages which alludes to Moleskine sketchbooks and fits well with David’s illustration style. And we even made temporary tattoos of the back cover illustration. At Razorfish most of my days are filled with high-level, large-scale strategizing or pushing tiny colored squares around on a screen. It’s always nice to work on a small project and make something that can be felt, picked up and even smelled. I hope you enjoy looking at it as much as I have enjoyed making it.

Flowcharting the Beatles

2009-10-30T04:58:55+00:00

Being a Beatles fanatic, I cannot tell you how much I love this. Link: Love All This: Inspired by jeannr, I flowcharted the Beatles classic, ‘Hey Jude.’ (via Kate McCagg)