For Bruce Levingston's upcoming album design, Patrick and I were interested in exploring visual representations of musical form. In researching for it, I came across this project: The Shape of Song. They've built a program which diagrams out the connection of notes in arches of varying size - they also have an extensive library of songs... in glorious MIDI.
I'm working on a project for Scholastic Books and get to check out new picture books and illustrators. I want a picture of Jeremy Tankard's Grumpy Bird to show up automatically on my computer screen when I'm having a grumpy morning too.
As we pass the 1-year anniversary of the iPhone launch, the flood of so-called "wannabe" iPhones is coming in. And of course the press compares them all to Apple's device: mentioning how the new offering is feature-packed and great, but falls short. (Of note: In Mossberg's WSJ review of the Instinct, the iPhone is mentioned 29 times, the Instinct itself only 16.) Why? Across the board it is the design. It's the ease-of-use and polish of Apple's User Interface that still trumps even products with much better specs.
I hate the Toto dual flush toilets that seem to be everywhere now. Literally yesterday Patrick clued me in to how they work. They have 2 flush "settings." I thought maybe they had some sensor that told them what level flush to use, since there aren't 2 buttons for high and low flush, (those ones, like this picture, are much more intuitive). No, you have to push the flush twice rapidly to get the higher power flush. I suspect Donald Norman is not pleased by them any more than I am. One of his principles is that products like doors should not need even one word instruction manuals. So if your door must say "Push" or "Pull" in order for an average person to know how to use it, it's over-designed and impractical.
My friend Miriam Tell did a blog post about children's books with errors a while back, and this was my addition to her roster of mistakes: Leo Lionni's A Color of His Own contains the line "Goldfish are red." with a picture of an orange goldfish. And of course, the point that goldfish by definition, should probably be gold when making a book as simple as possible. Annoyed parent's design tip for children's book illustrations: You may invent your own world. However, your invented world should be consistent between words and illustrations.
