Adobe XD

Japanese Samurai Flashers

Mariko Nishimura — 09:00 pm 11/05/09

We Japanese are well-known for being experts in creating great products, and the same is true of Japanese Flash developers. But the language barrier and Japanese tradition of modesty has kept them from being as widely known as they should be.

In recent years, we've seen amazing work from individual Flash creator-developers as Grant Skinner, Colin Moock, and Mario Klingemann. Geoff Stearns, meanwhile, created SWFObject, a set of libraries that's now used around the world.

Are Japanese Flashers doing the same quality work? Yes! But they need help getting the word out, and sharing their creations with the world – the incredible content presentations, applications, libraries, and frameworks they've built.

In Japan, we tend to follow the rule "the more capable one is, the more modest one tends to be" – but to let the world know about the great Flash work being done here, we had to get beyond this habit. And fortunately, that's beginning to happen. More on that in my next post.

What is the experience of reading a newspaper?

Andrew Day — 05:04 pm 11/05/09

This question, which newspaper publishers face every day, as they try to figure out what to cut and what not, is, it seems to me, fundamentally an experience design question. In deciding what content to give their readers, in what form, editors and publishers work from a notion of what their readers want - that is, what experience those customers will pay for, and how stripped-down or changed that experience can get, before those customers will stop paying. If we make a certain set of changes to our product, they also ask, might it provide an experience that would appeal to people who don't buy what we currently offer, but would then start doing so? And so forth.

Or at least that's how they should think. Too often, they think in a different way, as they shape and reshape their products. They work from a traditional notion of what a newspaper is, and thus, in their mind, should always be.

Even the New York Times, the most forward-thinking and innovative of traditional publishers, can fall victim to this sort of thinking. Consider the way NYT editor Bill Keller thinks about the future of the paper's sports section, as recounted in this piece on shoring up the company's finances, by NYT editor Clark Hoyt:

"Radical moves, like dropping the sports section, have been rejected because they would undermine the quality of The Times or would not save much money, Keller said."

Would cutting sports really not save much money? And would it really undermine the paper's quality? As economist Tyler Cowen points out, stating, what to sports fans, is the obvious, "the NYT sports section isn't even as good as USA Today."

Certainly there are institutional and social factors at work here - Keller would feel awful telling Harvey Araton he was out of a job. But what I suspect is more important is that Keller can't imagine a newspaper without a sports section - after all, in his memory, every daily newspaper has always had a sports section. Yet the NYT sports section, if it's being mentioned in the context of Hoyt's column, must be a big money loser. And for the millions of NYT readers who now read it primarily online, or using Times Reader, having a "newspaper" that contains a "sports section" is an archaic notion. They read the Post's sports if they're from New York, and, for no doubt the overwhelming majority of them, if the NYT stopped covering sports, their Times-reading experience would not change a whit, and might well improve, if the company devoted the savings to delivering more of the content they want.

Inspire(d) by…

Ralph Hauwert — 09:14 pm 11/03/09

After two days of me jabbering on about the way I look at the design-development workflow, and about my personal journey through the tools we use in our craft, in my final post, I would like to share more about what has inspired my work over the last years.

Of course, at first, it was coming into contact with the awesome Flash community that inspired me to do Flash. In 2000 and 2001, this happened when I visited Flash Forward London and Flash Forward New York. For me, back then, this conference was the pinnacle of all things Flash, and I still treasure the memories of those meetings, as well as the friends I made there. And in 2000, FF was also the place where I decided I really wanted to focus on Flash.

Most of the speakers from those conference are still active, and many are industry leaders. In my more recent work, I find that I've come closer to what this community is doing, and many of these highly inspirational people have become my close friends. The more I get to hang out with this amazing group of people, the more I'm awed by both their amazing diversity, and their talent. Getting together with them at conferences is one of the biggest influences on my current work.

One very vivid memory is when Amit Pitaru and James Paterson took the stage at Flash Forward and Amit started off by playing jazz on the stage piano. Initially confused, I learned how music tied in with his and James's work. Since music has been the red thread through my life, this was a highly inspiring session to me as an aspiring Flash developer.

These days, I'm even working with James and Amit, on Rhonda Forever, a renewed iteration of the Rhonda project, which they founded. This 3D drawing tool is simple in concept: draw and sketch like you'd normally do, but now in 3D. Yes, it's more complex then that, but this is what I think Rhonda's charm comes down to.

Of course, I'm only a small piece of the Rhonda Project. With people like Zach Lieberman and Zach Gage working alongside James and Amit, this is a well executed project, which I'm proud to be part of. Please take a look at the Rhonda Forever site, and sign up for the beta!

Over the years, I find I've changed my way of looking at other people's work. Instead of trying to decompose things from source code, I find that I more and more read research papers as inspiration for my work. Paul Devebec's research has been particularly interesting. When I started out working with Papervision3D, and while building the 2.0 version, particularly the shaders, Devebec's work in environment mapping and obtaining them was more then invaluable. Also great is his work on reflection mapping

Debevec's work also influenced me through this stunning demo of HDRI lighting, which it inspired. Back in 2003/2004 when I first saw that technology demo, it blew me away and it has inspired me to try and aim for the same in Flash ever since. Actually, I still think that demo's visual quality is mindblowing.

Another huge inspiration in the field of 3D has been the combined work of Michael Abrash and John Carmack, of iD software fame. If that doesn't ring a bell, Wolfenstein, Doom and Quake should. At the beginning of this year I was working on The Anne Frank virtual house project, for which had been commissioned to build a 3D engine. There's a video of the making of the house available now; the full digital version of the house will be online in 2010. Large chunks of what I learned from both Michael and John found their way into this project. Particularly important was Abrash's book "The Graphics Programming Blackbook," which is not only full of technical tips, but also written in a personal style that makes it very inspiring.

Finally, one huge inspiration for my work, and the reason I've always loved "visual programming," has been the demo-scene. It's very hard to quickly describe what it is, so I'll defer to Wikipedia: "The demoscene is a computer art subculture that specializes in producing demos, which are non-interactive audio-visual presentations that run in real-time on a computer. The main goal of a demo is to show off programming, artistic, and musical skills."

As a young kid, I saw these early demos and intros as the top in computer programming. I watched them on the trusty old Commodore 64, and when I finally acquired my Commodore Amiga 1200, my main goal was to run demos and to figure out how these "sceners" did all that stuff. This inspired me to learn programming, and learn how computers actually work.

I've never been much part of the actual scene, but have followed it for a long, long time. Currently, one of the most inspiring members of that community is Inigo Quilez. His work "Elevated," a 4-kilobyte (as in 4096 bytes) intro can be seen on YouTube, but as with any demo, can only be fully appreciated by running it as an executable.

As I've now spent around 3 kilobytes purely on the text of this article, I'd like to thank you for taking the time to read it. And I hope that my three guest posts on Adobe XD's blog did what the title of the blog suggests: Inspire.

Mastering the tools

Ralph Hauwert — 02:02 pm 11/02/09

One of my earlier inspirations in life was a big book of Maurits Cornelis Escher works that my parents had on the bookshelf. This Dutch artist had a very exact graphic style, and combined with a good dose of math, he created such iconic masterpieces as "Up and Down." In this piece, an optical illusion of stairs is created, where it looks like the men walking on the stairs can walk up into infinity. Looking at his work, the combination of seemingly effortless use of the tools available to him and the mind-boggling graphics effects he achieved, this was an amazing feat for me as a young kid. Later on in life I learned that Escher's effortless use of the tools wasn't that effortless at all. He had studied using his techniques for graphics for many years, and it wasn't until later in life the more steady stream of masterpieces started to come from the tips of his fingers.

In his later work, math started to play an increasingly big role, and he once said, "By keenly confronting the enigmas that surround us, and by considering and analysing the observations that I have made, I ended up in the domain of mathematics. Although I am absolutely without training in the exact sciences, I often seem to have more in common with mathematicians than with my fellow artists." I think he was on the forefront of a field which didn't even exist as a real field back in the day, which also explains his uniqueness as an artist in those days.

Being quite fond of math myself but also not having any formal training in higher-level math, that quote has also always been something I could relate too. But as math plays a big role in my current work, I'm "forced" to make this tool one of my own. It took me a while to figure out that math was just another brush in the box of tools we can utilize. Although I can't say I feel like I understand the math I need for my work to the extent I would like, I've become more and more capable at using this tool in a practical way. More importantly, I'm now able to play and experiment with it. The great thing about this particular field is that whenever I feel I understand something better then before, it just unlocks a whole new box of things to be understood. It's wonderful and the learning process and possibilities feel as infinite as the men walking over the stairs in Escher's "Up and Down."

Most of my learning and understanding comes from experimenting with the tools. And just as I play with math, I play with the Flash platform. Every time you learn something new about using it, new possibilities and challenges arise. It's a wonderful world in which we can explore, tinker and experiment. I see this property in many of my fellow developers and friends within the industry. Looking at the mindset of most famous and established Flashers, they all seem to share the desire to experiment and play with the tool. From an outsider's perspective, this tinkering might seem less useful then it actually is. It's fundamentally the same as what Escher did in his earlier years. Experimenting with the tool to master it to an extent where it becomes a practically applicable tool.

I think the one of the truly unique qualities of the Flash community is that we use Flash because we love playing with it. How great is that? I can honestly say my passion became my job. I learned Flash because it felt open to play and experimentation, and during this process, I mastered using it as a tool. I'm now at a point I can see my Flash skills are sufficient to do most of the things I would like to do with it, and this leads me to think what the next step in my journey is. As I mentioned in my previous post, I'm not much of a graphic artist. But with the skill set I've obtained over the years, I'm now getting at a level where I can help building new tools for others, convey some knowledge, and hopefully help allow others to play and tinker, and thus master the new tools.

A week’s worth of cool links

Adobe XD — 01:55 pm 11/02/09

A new high (or perhaps a new low), in publication design, from a most unlikely source.

Infographic genius: one nation, seven deadly sins, from geographers at Kansas State University.

LA, 1932.

Laika lives, as a typeface.

Web experience design no-nos, a laundry list.

The horror of pollution in China.

The horror of Microsoft TV ads.

"How can an X chromosome be nearly as big as the head of the sperm cell?"

Believe the HYPE

Adobe XD — 04:03 pm 10/30/09

Joshua Davis and Automata's Branden Hall are superstars in the Flash world, and HYPE, their new collaborative creation, shows why. If you haven't heard of it, here's the word, from the HYPE website:

"HYPE is a creative coding framework built on top of ActionScript 3. A major goal of HYPE is to allow newcomers to Flash and ActionScript to creatively play and express themselves while they are learning how to program.

To get started, the user needs only the most basic knowledge of programming – variables, conditionals, loops, and functions, for example.

As the user learns more about programming they can extend HYPE and thus grow their skills, while at the same time inspiring the next generation.

Now, that's not to say HYPE is just for people who are new to programming. Instead, HYPE is for anyone, regardless of skill, who wants to play with code. Fundamentally, the point of HYPE is to make Flash fun again. We made HYPE to help bring back the playfulness that once defined our community.

HYPE - come out and play!"

Can matchbook design bring rural India into the modern world?

Adobe XD — 04:07 pm 10/29/09

At The Next Billion blog, Richard Woolbridge notes that matches are the most widely distributed product in India, reaching 97% of the country's population. The least widely distributed? Information. And since matchboxes have the potential to carry information, primarily in textual form, he asks, why shouldn't they be used to do so?

"Imagine the possibilities," he writes, "of spreading new health/educational information or advertising to 97% of rural families on a monthly basis. Simple pictorial designs would pique interest and accommodate India's vast differences in literacy rates and languages. Awareness of important topics such as the installation of chimneys to reduce smoke inhalation or cleaning and covering water containers to prevent stomach ailments could be spread to households across India, and potentially save lives."

Of course there are questions about how many of the recipients of these texts could read them, and how receptive they would be, but this is a fascinating idea - and a great challenge for designers to tackle.

Capturing beauty in Technology and Design using Flash

Ralph Hauwert — 03:39 pm 10/28/09

This year marks my 10th year working with the Flash Platform. A long and great ride, and after 10 years I'm still not done exploring the capabilities of creating beautiful experiences with the platform. A lot has changed in that time. In my early days of being involved in the platform, I carried the title "Flash Programmer". AS2 wasn't even on the horizon and "programming" meant using those tedious add and subtract buttons to add and remove code to your Flash 4 MovieClips. It was a common misconception that I was the go-to guy for your skip-intro animation. It took some time for the platform to evolve, and for clients to get to the point where they understood that a Flash programmer wasn't the same as an animator / designer for the same platform.

I'm not much of a visual designer anyway. I'm colorblind and couldn't draw a straight line or any type of line with a regular drawing tool if I wanted too. But I do love visual beauty. As such, my current self-given job title is "visual programmer". An odd title to explain, since a common pitfall in this industry seems to be to stereotype our functions to the description. It's overly comfortable to exclusively classify someone in the bucket of design or technology. Sometimes this idea comes from the job title we carry or maybe even from the tools we use. When your title overlaps both qualities, it's hard to clearly define where the border of the 2 disciplines lies in your specific case. If your tool is a text based code editor, it's hard to explain you are building technology for visual beauty. And how do you define that towards your peers?

The peers within Flash community are easily one of the strongest points of the platform; it supports a lot of different disciplines and this reflects in the community being made up out of Artists, designers, programmers and experimentalists. The beautiful reality is that we do not find symbiosis in the tools or platform, but by working together. The platform and it's distinct properties merely brings us together by giving us the opportunity to do so. It's the same type of cooperation you find in other fields of the creative industry, such as music; the cooperation between the engineer, producer and the musician. I've frequently talked about Pink Floyd as being one of the core inspirations to the way I like to work. The band got assigned Alan Parsons as their recording engineer and worked with him to record one of the albums I'd personally put up in the top 3 of best albums ever, "The Dark Side of the Moon". Together, while taking the technical limitations of a recording studio back in those days in considerations, they not only put down a master piece of true aural beauty, but also managed to create something which was way ahead of it's time, by creatively exploiting the studio equipment and using the technology to create something additive. I think this is a big distinction from using technology only to capture a performance. It's in this distinct area of work where I find that true beauty in technology and design is also being created.

As great as it is that I don't get called upon anymore to just animate a corporate logo, like back in the days, I hope that the boundary condition between being a developer and a designer will remain to have it's diffuse overlap. See, the reason I loved the Flash Platform from the beginning was this exact symbiosis of design and technology. Back in the day there were few who could do both, and with the evolving of the toolset in very distinct directions it's even fewer now. It's a natural progression as the platform becomes more complex and developers and designers a-like can specialize more into using the toolset most suited for their own discipline. But taking the analogy of the recording studio, it seems a natural progression, where the specialization of the disciplines can be a true additive to the experience. I, myself, strive to learn and evolve into one of the Alan Parsons of the Flash Platform, to the best of my engineering capabilities. A high goal to try and capture, but what is life without goals ? As always goals come in small steps, so mine now is capturing beauty through technical symbiosis with the visual artists. Hopefully, one day, I will be part of creating the digital equivalent of "The Dark side of the Moon".

It’s complicated

Andrew Day — 02:57 pm 10/26/09

I became interested in Russia in part because of the stark, direct beauty of Soviet propaganda art. I was in college, and while the Soviet Union was still a going concern, Gorbachev was smoothing down the rough edges, so one day as I walked across campus, and happened on a guy selling reproductions of 60s Soviet space-program posters, I didn't have any great moral dilemma about buying a couple, and then putting them up in my dorm room. Later, when I first went to Russia, as a grad student in Russian history, I bought several books featuring posters of the late 'teens, 20s, and 30s - horrific years, nearly all of them, across the Soviet Union - and it was only after having pored over these books dozens of times that I began to feel odd about my love for this art. For these posters didn't communicate the sly calls of advertisers, begging people to spend a few bucks on a pack of cigarettes or a movie ticket. Rather, they delivered the orders of a brutal dictatorship. Civil War-era "Peace and Land!" posters made a great promise to beaten-down poor peasants - but made clear as well, to anyone who saw them at the time, that there would be no peace for those who wanted to keep title to their own land, when the Red Terror came to take it away. Even the poster shown here - "Strengthen the friendship of youth of socialist countries!" - is at best a clumsy reminder that the Soviet state wouldn't put up with kids spending their free time doing something else, much less, say, forging their own friendships, with kids from the non-socialist world.

I put the posters in storage and over the course of my years living in Russia, I came to share the views of my Russian friends - all of them children of Party members - that this sort of art was at best impressive kitsch, its skillful execution undercut by its fundamental political wrong-ness.

And yet... Looking at this poster, and the others featured on this page - thanks for the link, Dan Walsh! - it's hard not to appreciate their beauty. And they are beautiful. Is it time, I wonder, for me to look past their purpose, and appreciate them as great design, and indeed, as great art - the same way I can appreciate, say, Kalatozov's film Yo Soy Cuba, or Fadeev's novel The Rout? I'm not sure... but in the meantime, I'll keep paging through the posters on Grain Edit, and try not to think about the past.

A week’s worth of cool links

Adobe XD — 03:30 pm 10/23/09

Inside the design of the world's most expensive SUV.

Porn that's safe for work.

Redesigning a room for $10.

Destructive and non-destructive ways to convert photos to B+W in Photoshop.

Designers, what's your story?

Drawing beautifully, and realistically, by drawing crudely.

The Web is mostly words - why don't Web designers design for words?

What Americans looked like, to a 1950s European.

Did design really "make a difference" in transforming Medellin? Hmm....

Against "against branding."

Super 8, 1974 (Thanks, Leah!)

Designing the future of publishing

Andrew Day — 06:27 am 10/21/09

In his video conversation with XD VP Michael Gough, O'Reilly Media founder Tim O'Reilly argues that now more than ever, publishers need to focus on "curation" - carefully choosing what content to produce for which users, and presenting it in forms that suit those users' needs. He calls curation the essence of publishing, and indeed, publishers have always succeeded or failed based on how well they do it.

But the e-publishing revolution has made curation much more complex. Customers have many more ways to spend their time and money, and so have become much more demanding, and traditional publishers have seen their markets both shrink and fragment. O'Reilly has done a better job than most of coping with these changes. In large part, this is because, unlike many of its peers, it hasn't stuck to publishing in one format - in its case, physical books - just because that's what it knows how to do. Rather, it puts out most content items in multiple media and formats, choosing each medium-format combination to suit the "job" the content will do, for a particular group of users - the jobs being educating, entertaining, or serving as reference material. Following this strategy hasn't led O'Reilly to abandon books. But now it's also a leading publisher of videos, websites, blogs, and e-books. And it's been highly successful in getting content to users via a broad array of conferences and seminars.

Signal vs. noise

O'Reilly's success suggests that other traditional print publishers will need not just to move into e-publishing, but also give their customers content in a variety of electronic formats. And as they do so, their designers will face an array of challenges and opportunities.

Design has always been a critical component of print publishing. Print designers package and present content in ways that make it easy and pleasant to read and to have. This will continue to be design's role as print publishers expand their digital offerings - and indeed, that role will be more important than ever. The next few years will no doubt be a period of experimentation in this space – the creation and deployment of all manner of e-reading apps and devices, and e-publication formats for content that's traditionally been published in printed form. Designers' contributions will go a long way toward determining which succeed and which fail. And in this, they will play an important part in shaping the future of publishing, both as an activity, and as an industry.

Tim O'Reilly notes that "picking signal from the noise" is an apt analogy for publishing's curatorial function. Publishing designers do this too, in crafting presentations - most notably, periodical layouts - that feature certain content, with other content smaller and harder to find. The size and prominence of each item can be seen to depend, roughly, on the designer's estimate of how many users will consider it to be noise rather than signal. Print designers focus too, of course, on ensuring clarity of signal - choosing the most readable, attractive fonts for text, the right margins, the best reproduction formats for visuals, and so on.

To see how this works, look at any publication, electronic or print - consider, for example, the array of type sizes and fonts, and the layout, on the homescreen of the New York Times Reader.

Periodical publishers have already begun to tackle the signal vs. noise problems involved in redesigning their content presentations for electronic media. But book publishers have, in the main, not yet done so. They’re used to designing not just for print, but for a presentation medium – books – that generally contain nothing that couldn’t be construed as signal.

For them, the biggest design challenge, in moving to digital, will be one their industry already faces: dealing not just with noise, but with an exponentially expanding amount of it. With so many available media choices, users are increasingly picky about what content they'll accept as "signal," and what they'll treat as "noise." For an industry producing products whose use requires a significant time investment, this is a serious problem. This will be even more true as it moves to make those products available via devices that provide users with an array of appealing, easily accessible other means of spending both their time and their money.

Again, book houses will need to follow O'Reilly's lead, and begin publishing in multiple formats. This could mean converting some of titles to hybrid text-video format, breaking others down into buy-by-the-chapter pieces, and with others, trying out different repackaging and reformatting strategies. But what about titles in those genres - novels, serious non-fiction narrative works, and the like - that still need to be published in text-heavy, book-length packages, meant to be consumed as integral, standalone products? After all, sales of these titles are this industry’s lifeblood. How can design make them palatable, to enough consumers, to enable that industry to transition successfully to the digital age?

The e-reader of the future?

This is more a device-design problem than a software or presentation-design problem. A huge block of text is just that, and other than picking the right text size and font, and providing easy navigation, and such features as bookmarking and commenting, there isn't much to the basic problem of designing a text e-book, or the software to read it.

Which brings us to the problem of crafting a next-gen e-reading device - a topic about which plenty of people have been spilling plenty of ink, and e-ink, for some years now. Can a device designer, by solving the "signal vs. noise" problem, create an ideal e-reader, and thereby save the book industry?

Our designer would no doubt start by targeting serious readers. These users would want a fairly big screen with clear text reproduction, and those input controls they'd need to load and make their way through e-books, e-magazines, and other text content. Since sustained reading, for this type of user, is the rule rather than the exception, our designer might well go with a black-and-white screen and a minimally functional processor, to make the battery last as long as possible. The resulting device would no doubt look a lot like Amazon's Kindle - which, for serious readers who don't mind reading onscreen, delivers a fairly clear signal, and a great signal-to-noise ratio.

Of course, our device would be optimized to suit only one type of reading – of novels, historical biographies, and other content that contains only text, and requires sustained, intense focus.

Moreover, designing a device for readers doesn't necessarily mean designing it for only the act of reading. After all, serious readers talk with others about what they've read, and share books, magazines, links to articles and blogposts. Many are also writers, and like to share what they’ve written, either informally, with friends, or by publishing it.

To meet their needs, our device designer might well go a different route. The result would be a device with a more powerful processor and input controls, to support it doing more than the Kindle. The display screen might be just as big, to support displaying, in addition to the content viewer, controls for publishing and sharing, windows to display metadata, messages from other users, and so forth.

Or the screen might be smaller, on the assumption that even the most serious readers don't just sit on a couch for hours and read Tolstoy. They also read shorter works, in all sorts of places, and at least some of them would likely value a highly portable device over one with a big screen. And if our designer’s boss insists that most people don't want to carry multiple portable devices, she'll also build in a phone and camera, and make sure her processor can run not only an e-reading application, but plenty of other software too.

This device sounds pretty powerful – and at this point, it's not really an "e-reader," but an extremely portable computer. In one version, it could be an iPhone or Blackberry, with a larger screen, not to mention longer battery life and more power.

Congratulations to our designer - and to the engineers who've managed to build her device. Their product certainly seems to be a dream e-reader, satisfying the needs of everyone who'll want or need to read on a device that's as portable as a book or a magazine.

But in fact, it isn't our ideal e-reader, at least not for everyone. To make it "broadly appealing," our designer introduced what, for our first group of readers, will be little more than sources of noise, interfering with the signal of text on the screen. Consider too that for these readers - without whom traditional publishers wouldn't survive - reading is, in many ways, about the pleasure they get from freeing themselves from the noise of life, and immersing themselves in the intense experience of engaging with a text.

Could this sort of reading really be done, comfortably and enjoyably, on a device that affords easy access to computing and communication functionality? No. Distractions become distractions because they're annoying, tempting, or both - and such a device would be rotten with the tempting sort.

Let a thousand e-readers bloom. And a thousand presentation formats, and a thousand publishers, and…

What does this mean for the future of the e-reader space? Will we see a bifurcated market, with our first group buying gussied-up descendants of the Kindle, and the second preferring tablet-style computers? It's hard to imagine that this won't happen. Designers, and device and software makers, can’t create a product that simultaneously includes all the features that keep social and casual readers happy, while at the same time leaving those same features out, to give serious readers the serenity they crave.

What about presentations formats? Will the dominance of physical books be replaced by the dominance of e-books? Not likely. More than likely, book house that transition successfully to digital will follow O’Reilly’s lead, by turning many or even most of their “book” titles into all manner of content items, many of which require the user to invest much less money and time to buy and consume. Yes, novels and so forth will remain integral, and be available in standalone digital form – perhaps with many coming out in print as well. But it seems likely that there will be a myriad of digital presentation formats for text-heavy content, and, at least during a near-term period of experimentation, none of them will be as dominant as books once were.

Finally, the publishing industry's ongoing fragmentation shows us that there will be no dominant company in this space either. No doubt we've seen the last of "publishing" residing in a several square-mile chunk of Manhattan, and it’s hard to imagine that it will suddenly re-coalesce in some other spot. Indeed, with blogs, Twitter, and the like enabling millions to become content producers and distributors, the notion of a "publishing industry" may come to seem almost quaint.

Many publishing traditionalists look at all these changes and see chaos, and worry about what will happen to the endeavor to which they’ve dedicated their careers. But there’s another view of what’s going on in publishing, one that Tim O’Reilly shares. One that focuses on the next few years as a time of great excitement, with opportunities abounding for creative "book" publishers, writers and other content creators - and the designers who'll shape the way their works are packaged and consumed. While it’s difficult, if not impossible, to say now what their work will lead to, we can say for sure that it will play an enormously important, perhaps foundational, role, in creating a new sort of publishing, for the digital age.

Questions for Shawn Pucknell, Part 3

Shawn Pucknell — 06:40 pm 10/19/09

Questions for Shawn Pucknell, the Director and Founder of FITC (Formerly known as Flashinthecan), and Chris Heimbuch, the Senior Design Manager, Creative Development, at Adobe XD. Part One can be found here and Part Two here.

Chris: Where do you see FITC in the future?

Shawn: Well, geographically we are constantly researching new cities and countries to hold FITC events. Groups and individuals contact us constantly to bring FITC to them, and we consider them all. I'm currently looking into how to bring FITC to South America, and a few other interesting locations. Some places that I personally am trying for are Tel-Aviv, Dubai, Singapore and China. All of these are being looked at, among others. FITC does have a big announcement coming shortly, as we have confirmed our most exotic location yet for 2010, but i can't share the location yet.

Chris: What about content and programming for FITC events. Do you see that changing?

Shawn: I expect it to change. But i don't necessarily know what that will look like. And thats ok. Its exciting. The industry is changing rapidly, and as much as i consider myself in-tune with it, i don't pretend to know the future. I think as long as we are booking presenters that are interesting, relevant and engaging, we are on the right path. The biggest complaint I hear at our events is 'There are two things that i want to see, happening at the same time! How do i decide?'. As much as we try very hard to create a balanced schedule for everyone, this does happen. To a certain degree, its our goal...to create an overwhelming amount of content at our events that our attendees want to see. On the flipside, I've been to events where the opposite is true...I've looked at the schedule and have seen 5 tracks of presentations happening at once, and i've not seen anything that I'm interested in seeing. So i'd much rather have what we have now, than to have that. But back to the question; i think we will continue to see new and exciting combinations of art and technology. This includes new ways of interaction, be it physical or screen based, as well as new tools and techniques for creating content. But it also includes more traditional mediums being more integrated into our industry, such as 3D, motion graphics and audio. They all have their own industries, and they are a part of our industry, but i expect to see them play a bigger part of our industry in the future.

Chris: You launched FITC Mobile recently in Toronto, and FITC produced a motion graphics event called 'Pause:ideas in motion' in 2008. Do you have plans on other events like this?

Shawn: Definitely. FITC Mobile was a great success. One of the reasons i loved it was that it was technology and platform neutral, which allowed for a very diverse program. And Pause was a lot of fun, and i'd like to do another one in the future, city and timing TBA. In addition, we have just recently confirmed that FITC will be working with 360 conferences, the producers of 360Flex and 360iDev, which is exciting for us. And in addition to that, we are currently in talks with a few other organizations, as well as some of our own ideas, for future events.

Questions for Shawn Pucknell, Part 2

Shawn Pucknell — 06:27 pm 10/19/09

Questions for Shawn Pucknell, the Director and Founder of FITC (Formerly known as Flashinthecan), and Chris Heimbuch, the Senior Design Manager, Creative Development, at Adobe XD. Part One can be found here.

Chris: Lets talk about Technology and Art: What most fascinates you, can you talk about works that impresses you?

Shawn: We recently had a show at my art gallery in Toronto, Function13 (function13.ca), featuring one of my favorite designers, Erik Natzke (Natzke.com). Erik produces complex yet organic feeling masterpieces, using programs that he creates in Flash. I overheard someone at the gallery launch saying 'I don't want the painting, i want the software that created this. Give me the file. Give me the program." I chuckled inside and thought they don't get it, this is art. It’s an original piece. Joshua Davis, another well-known artist in the same genre, illustrates this unique process when he talks about it in his lectures "I sit there and tap the space bar until i see the one i want. Sometimes it takes hours." For those unfamiliar with the process, this may sound easy and simple, even silly. This is creating art? Hitting a space bar? Who couldn't sit there and hit a space bar?

These artists not only create the brushes themselves (through code or digital art), they program the creation itself. The world in-which it lives; how long each brush stroke takes, where it starts, how long it takes, what the color palette is. Everything is created and then controlled by the artist, and then run, until the artist selects a shot, not unlike a photographer selecting from a contact sheet. I would argue that the curation of selecting the piece to print is part of the creation, and should be done by the artist. Or is it?

What about creating and selling living works of art? A computer program that runs constantly, randomly, and forever. Can Erik Natzke or Joshua Davis or one of the other talented artists in this field package their art as software, to run on a screen somewhere, a living, organic thing? Is that art? Is there an audience or market for that yet? Does it belong at home on the wall, in an art gallery, in an office lobby? Is it upgradable? When do i get version 2.0? Does a new piece download next month? So many interesting questions, and it would seem that we are heading in this direction.

But lets go back to printing for a second. I found myself questioning my initial reaction about the comment I overheard in the gallery. Initially dismissive of the idea, I found myself asking why not? Sell the program, and allow a user to print a frame from it. Is that art? How does the artist feel about that? It’s now outside of their curatorial control. Is this Interactive digital art, where the user is involved, or is it immersive art, with the user a part of the art itself? Or is it artistic blasphemy? I’m guessing that decision is up to the artist. But it's a fascinating question for me.

Then we have artists such as Theo Watson, Zachary Lieberman, Golan Levin, and Evan Roth, who are creating tools that are completely user driven. Not just as an option…it's actually a key component of their creations. They build the tools, and put them out for people to use, to create art, in very immersive ways. Without the audience, there is nothing to see. It’s very interesting stuff, and we are seeing more and more of it. They are using infrared and regular cameras, laser pointers, multi touch screens or walls, Wii remotes, heat sensors, microphones; the list continues to grow. I find this very exciting, very engaging, and I look forward to seeing how this will evolve and continue to change the way we think about art, and technology.

A million downloads of Photoshop.com for Mobile

Adobe XD — 04:50 pm 10/19/09

Photoshop.com has been the most popular free application in Apple's App Store for more than ten days running, and the other day, was downloaded for the millionth time. Great news for Adobe, and a big win for the XD team that designed the app, led by Shikhiu Ing, with help from Matt Snow, Dave Zuverink, Ty Lettau, and Josh Ulm.

Tim O’Reilly and Michael Gough on the future of publishing

Adobe XD — 07:27 am 10/19/09

O'Reilly Media founder and CEO Tim O'Reilly joins Michael Gough, Adobe VP for Product Experience, for an in-depth discussion of the rise of electronic content distribution, and its impact on the traditional publishing industry. (30:21)

Can UX thinking save the book?

David Womack — 06:27 am 10/13/09

Is the problem with books actually a problem with the traditional publishing model? In the midst of a collapsing publishing industry, information architect Louis Rosenfeld has launched a new publishing house, Rosenfeld Media, with the goal of creating high-quality books on user experience. In the process, he’s proving that UX methods can give new life to an old format.

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David Womack: How does Rosenfeld Media differ from a traditional publishing house?

Louis Rosenfeld: We’re focused on building a nimble, useful publishing infrastructure that sits in the sweet spot between two existing extremes: the almost industrial approach that traditional publishing houses use, and the do-it-yourself self-publishing approach that many authors ultimately find to be way more trouble than they'd expected. We're trying to provide just enough infrastructure to help authors concentrate on their Big Ideas while not getting dragged down by "it's the way we've always done it" thinking.

DW: Can you describe how you bring UX thinking into the process of making books?

LR: We started with "show-and-tell" sessions where we invited UX practitioners to bring the books they use for their work, and describe what aspects they loved best and hated most. It was very eye-opening, and hugely influenced the design direction we took. When we began planning our books' interior design, we avoided focus groups - a technique that we UX folks disdain because when every possible feature sounds good, you end up with Microsoft Office. Instead, once we'd developed layouts for both printed and digital formats, we performed usability tests on each. We even created functional prototypes for the printed versions using Lulu, a print-on-demand service. Doing it this way cleared out a variety of problems before we committed to our first (expensive) print run.

DW: Does UX thinking change the way you think about the relationship between you as a publisher and your readers?

LR: We've tried to engage with all sorts of people - readers, but also influencers and subject matter experts in our field - more deeply. This isn't so much about UX as design more broadly; I believe that our primary goal as designers is to create experiences that are engaging. I've found it useful to look at traditional relationships that publishers have with different kinds of people and ask the question: how can we better engage with them?

It may sound obvious, but when you actually ask this question, you'll uncover all sorts of new ideas for how to better engage with traditional constituents. You'll also uncover new people to get involved. The result for us is that we have many, many people owning a "stake" in each of our books, ranging from the UX gurus who vet author proposals, to the specialists who provide case-study material, to the people who comment on the book sites' blogs.

DW: What got you interested in the book business?

LR: In a past career, I was a librarian, so it shouldn't be at all surprising. We reputedly like books.

But Rosenfeld Media isn't just producing books on paper. Our digital publishing strategy - a moving target if there ever was - now calls for three digital formats. Each format - print included - has its time and place. You don't have to apply expensive user research methods to learn that; just talking with our target audience on a regular basis does wonders to learn about contexts for using our books.

So we know that our customers rely on the paperback to read and orient themselves with the material initially, and they use digital copies for quick look-ups and other kinds of reference applications. The jury's out regarding handheld devices, but we do see some demand for the EPUB format, an open standard supported by such devices as the iPhone, Sony Reader, and eventually, I'm guessing, the Kindle.

DW: What's the relative popularity between print and digital versions?

LR: It depends on the title, but I'd hazard that we sell about 75% of our books in either a paperback or paperback/PDF combination. The rest are digital only.

DW: Do readers respond differently to the different formats?

LR: Absolutely - packaging information in a printed book certainly lends it more respect than if it was printed on 8.5"x11". I don't know if that's fair or right - as an author and a publisher, I can tell you that I'm skeptical about the value that many publishers add to the actual content - but it's certainly true. Adding an ISBN and a bar code to the cover has the same effect, but what do those say about the book's content?

Respect aside, many printed books are simply lovely and engaging as objects to unwrap, hold, thumb through, and ultimately read and use. I don't see that changing any time soon.

DW: I’ve seen your books sitting on a lot of different desks, which is something that wouldn’t happen with a digital edition.

LR: Books have a certain “thingness” that manifests particularly when the book is new and still mysterious. People really do judge books by their covers, which is why we've hired a fantastic design firm, The Heads of State, to create ours. That thing's first impression is crucial. And if the material is evergreen--a criterion that heavily prejudices our acquisition decisions--the thing should also last a long time, so we invest in very high quality bindings and paper stock. These physical qualities aren't lost on our readers, all of who are involved in some aspect of design.

DW: I'm always a little surprised when I hear UX practitioners talk about wanting to write a book. What do you think the attraction of dead tree technology is for those of us who work in digital?

LR: Well, who hasn't fantasized about being listed as an author at some point? When my daughter was four, she was already "writing books."

But I think that people in our industry are especially excited about authoring a "real" book. Aside from the fact that we tend to be highly literate, we also recognize that the advent of digital formats doesn't mean the death of print. We're savvy enough to know that television didn't kill radio; why expect a zero sum game with book formats?

DW: Do you think other publisher’s should adopt UX practices?

LR: Really, if traditional publishers applied UX methods to their development and design processes, they'd produce much better books and save a lot of money. I can't claim to have achieved some sort of publishing nirvana, but with some pocket change and a few chips to call in, I've been able to publish books that compare quite respectably with Rosenfeld Media's competitors in terms of quality and, yes, sales.

It costs very little to learn something about which contexts your books will be used in, and what design features will benefit users most. It costs very little to involve industry experts in your decisions on which proposals to accept and how to improve upon them. It costs very little to engage your potential readers and others in a book's development. And it costs next to nothing to sit down, talk with, and learn from your customers on a regular basis; in fact, I'm not sure how it wouldn't be a requirement for a publisher. But I doubt that many publishers do it, which is a pity.

Maybe they should buy my books? After all, they're all about user experience research.

DW: So are you enjoying your new role as a publishing mogul?

LR: Yes, and the best part is working with really smart people to create wonderful packages of knowledge that most people like, and some really love. It's an incredible feeling; publishing a book is even more fun than writing one.

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Interested to check out Rosenfeld's selection? The coupon code ADOBEXD is good for a 15% discoun on all products available from the Rosenfeld Media site.

MAX, Pearl Jam, and the Design Revolution

Matt Snow — 01:41 pm 10/12/09

Earlier this week I was asked to write about MAX, as were the rest of the attending XD team members. This year's MAX was top notch. There were many notable topics I could have written about, but when challenged, I couldn't think of anything to write. I really didn't want to give a play-by-play of the conference, and I didn't want to turn the article into my own personal reviews of the sessions. I was at a loss for words.

MAX ended before I could think of anything that compelled me to write an article. Forgetting about my responsibility, I attended a Pearl Jam show that evening with my boss and a couple of his old college friends.

Ben Harper opened the show with an amazing set. The roadies break down the stage, set up for Pearl Jam, and the lights start to flicker, signaling the start of the main show. Eddie Vedder ran out on stage, and the audience went wild. Crazy wild. If you've ever seen Pearl Jam live, then you know just how good they are in concert.

A few songs into the set, I took the time to look around at the audience. Everyone was on their feet, moving and grooving to the music. People were holding up cell phones and cameras, either capturing memories or sharing their thoughts in real time.

It was an incredibly moving experience.

As I was looking around at everyone fixated on the band, my first thought was that collective, shared experiences can be incredibly powerful. When everyone is of the same mindset, on that same wavelength, it can it can create an energy that ripples and surges through the crowd. Of course, this isn't just applicable to rock concerts, as is evident with political rallies, prayer sessions, football games, etc.

This type of experience is almost impossible to duplicate in digital design. Most devices lack some of the sensory inputs that would be needed for an attempt (smell-o-vision, anyone?). But there are shared experiences in what we do that are meaningful, and do create that connectedness that bonds us as a society. Conferences, for instance.

We are a group that has devoted much of our lives to something we feel passionate about, and to be in a closed space with other like-minded individuals validates who we are, and why we do what we do. That electricity I felt at the Pearl Jam concert? Yeah, I felt a little of that during the Day 1 Keynote and the MAX awards. It's exciting, it's recharging, and it's for this very reason that I like to attend MAX.

The other thought I had while looking around crowd was in regards to my own self-worth. I'm sure that I'm not the only one who has a hard time in sometimes finding value in what they do. Although I've designed quite a bit of work that has made people happy (or unhappy), digital design can be very temporary and non-tangible. In fact, after the dot-bomb down here in San Francisco, many of my designer friends turned to landscape architecture, photography, or other hands-on work that produces something you can actually quantify.

Looking around at all of the cameras and cell phones pointed at the stage, something occured to me. I'm part of the Digital Revolution. I'm part of the Information Age. When I learned about the Industrial Revolution back in school, I wondered how cool it would be to be part of that movement, and embedded in that ideology. Years and years from now, students will be thinking the same about us. "People attended conferences in person? They took portable phones to concerts?"

We are establishing the Digital Revolution, paving the way for future generations. Adobe makes some of the best software that allows each of us to express our creativity in the medium that we love, and to contribute to this revolution in the best way we can. In between our work, we attend conferences to share our love for each other and what we do.

Questioning your own worth is valuable. While there is value in this question, it's nice to sometimes have an answer.

Matt Snow is an Experience Design Manager at Adobe XD. He leads the designers responsible for helping real-world customers create inspired experiences with a focus on Adobe's platform products. For the past two years, Matt led the XD Mobile & Devices team, where he focused on delivering multi-screen experiences. Prior to that, Matt was an art director for the Adobe multimedia team, and the interactive art director for Macromedia.com.

Using Code to Prototype Design

Remon Tijssen — 12:00 pm 10/12/09

XD Senior Experience Designer Remon Tijssen shows how designers can use simple coding techniques to bring their designs quickly to life. (approximately 1 hr.)

In his talk, Remon refers to several sets of files being available for download. Here they are:

https://xd.adobe.com/downloads/remontijssen/as3_code_snippets_remon_tijssen.pdf

https://xd.adobe.com/downloads/remontijssen/BiggerSmaller.zip

https://xd.adobe.com/downloads/remontijssen/ButTestDrive.zip

https://xd.adobe.com/downloads/remontijssen/Play.zip

https://xd.adobe.com/downloads/remontijssen/Flipbook.zip

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Check out more from MAX, on the new Adobe TV site.

Multitouch: Code, Hardware, Patterns

Tim Kukulski — 12:00 pm 10/12/09

XD Senior Experience Developer Tim Kukulski and Flash Platform Evangelist Daniel Dura show what you can do with multi-touch and the Flash Platform. Learn how you can build your own multi-touch table for a fraction of the cost of commercial products. We'll also discuss an approach to building multi-touch applications for the Flash Platform on these tables that will open up an entire new world of possibilities not only for experimentation, but for your customers and clients as well. (approximately 1 hr.)

In their talk, Tim and Daniel refer to code samples being available for download. Here they are:
https://xd.adobe.com/downloads/kukulski_max_code.zip

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Check out more from MAX, on the new Adobe TV site.

Flash for the Digital Home: Flash on TV!

Matt Snow — 12:00 pm 10/12/09

XD Experience Design Manager Matt Snow shows you how to optimize implementation of the Flash runtime to enable the delivery of HD video and rich applications to Internet connected TVs, set-top boxes, Blu-ray players, and other devices that are connected to the television. (approximately 1 hr.)

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Check out more from MAX, on the new Adobe TV site.

Designing Contextually Aware Solutions

Ali Ivmark — 11:00 am 10/12/09

XD Experience Design Manager Ali Ivmark and Punchcut's Christian Robertson demonstrate a newly emerging approach to experience design taking into account consumer demand for connected experiences across devices. (approximately 1 hr.)

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Check out more from MAX, on the new Adobe TV site.

The Future of Publishing: Delivering News through Adobe AIR

Jeremy Clark — 11:00 am 10/12/09

Publishers and journalists are facing many challenges as they confront content delivery in the digital age. XD Senior Experience Design Manager Jeremy Clark, Senior Experience Developer Daniel Wabyick, and Experience Developer Bob Walton show how their team has leveraged Adobe AIR, Flex and the Text Layout Framework to help the New York Times and others reach new and existing customers with a desktop news reader application.

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Check out more from MAX, on the new Adobe TV site.

Sketching Interactivity using Flash Catalyst

Guillermo Torres Troconis — 11:00 am 10/12/09

Adobe XD Senior Experience Designer Guillermo Torres Troconis shows how Flash Catalyst can be used to make your design process much faster and better, and to discover you how to create some very cool and custom interfaces using Flash Catalyst and Flex 4. (approximately 1 hr.)

Download a Flash Catalyst project file that will help you get started.

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Check out more from MAX, on the new Adobe TV site.

Adobe Postcards

Proximity Lab — 11:00 am 10/12/09

Get an inside look at the design and development of a scrappy little photo scrapbooking tool for kids. Evan Karatzas and Ken Dunnington of the PhotoScrap development team will dig deep into challenges AIR developers face, including building a visually rich and animated application; saving, editing and sharing documents online; and targeting youth demographics with engaging features and tools. (approximately 1 hr.)

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Check out more from MAX, on the new Adobe TV site.

“Sexy buttons” on Google?

Andrew Day — 07:38 pm 10/08/09

Indeed, as of this week, per TechCrunch. I hadn't noticed them in Firefox... but that's because they only show up in Webkit-compliant browsers, i.e. Chrome and Safari. No big deal, in some sense - but as TC's Nik Cubrilovic points out, this is one more piece of evidence that the Web standards effort is broken, and, increasingly, those standards will be set - or broken, or ignored - by browser makers going alone.