Inspirative #007: Digital Design thoughts from R/GA Sydney’s ECD

This morning I stumbled upon a talk that resonated super well with me. In partular at around 13:15, where Gavin, from R/GA Sydney, talks a bit about unicorns.

It hit me super hard and I think it did so because I have a mixed engineering and design background. That puts me in a position where I have a lot of interdisciplinary knowledge, an engineering way of thinking and approaching problems along with an understanding that in order to solve a problem in a proper way, you need to get to the bottom of the problem and truly understand what it is you need to solve.

A complicated solution is often solving symptoms of a problem. An obvious and simple solution, is often solving its core. Therefore it is key to define the core. — Me

It is also interesting that he mentions that those can be hard to work with. Because I often feel a bit frustrated with what is going and how things are going on, and perhaps parts of that frustration are coming from my own quirks and ways of doing things and opinions on how things should be done?

I’m also massively happy that we sees the brilliance of what Frank Chimero is writing and appreciates his thinking around the web and digital design. I urge everyone within web and app design to read his article What Screens Want.

Happy weekends.

Inspirative #006: Insights on front-end architecture

This somewhat dry inspirative post is hopefully still inspiring to those associated with front-end development of some sort. It is, from what I have heard, a bit of a classic on structuring CSS.

http://nicolasgallagher.com/about-html-semantics-front-end-architecture/

The aim of a component/template/object-oriented architecture is to be able to develop a limited number of reusable components that can contain a range of different content types.

If you’re left feeling keen on more check out this excquisite piece on More Transparent UI Code with Namespaces that also introduces the BEM methodology in a digestable manner. Guaranteed to help you write better CSS. Or at least think about doing so.

So go re-write all your CSS—nownownow!

Inspirative #5: Joe Rich, founder of Terrible One

Inspiring video with Joe Rich, speaking of creative endeavours and not doing things to please others but to please one self.

Created by Thibaut Grevet, founder of thediggest.com and designer at Desillusion Magazine. He is a super inspiring creative as well, if you’re into personal and reflective short’s—check out his archive on Vimeo.

Inspirative #4: Amir Kassaei on creating relevance in advertising.

I was recommended this talk from this years Cannes Lions. It struck home with me. People develop a sense of psychological ad-block on the subway due to the fact that it is rarely relevant to them. Let’s make it relevant.

My friend and I enjoy watching Hulu just because of the incredibly silly advertising that mostly runs on there.

It doesn’t have to be that way.

Inspirative #3: “Wearable reading on–the–go”

This is the last of the Media Lab gems I’ve stumbled upon. What intrigues me are the many applications this technology could have, such as translation on the go, especially when travelling to countries where you can’t even type the letters used in their language. Or for digitizing documents. And who knows what else.

Could it potentially be used to translate the written words to braille sensations in the tip of the users fingers, enabling blind people to read a regular book?

http://fluid.media.mit.edu/projects/fingerreader

How to fix kerning pairs that look wierd after changing letter-spacing.

The other day I learned that changing the letter-spacing in CSS will disable the built in kerning. This results in certain kerning pairs looking off. So what can you do when you have to work with letter-spacing?

I found that one way to mitigate this issue is specifying the text-rendering value.

text-rendering: optimizeLegibility;

The browser emphasizes legibility over rendering speed and geometric precision. This enables kerning and optional ligatures.

This solves issues with kerning pairs looking off and helps render the font with an at least seemingly even tracking.

If you have any other solutions, feel free to let me know.

I just put together an overview of a font I have been working on, detailing parts of the process and the inspiration behind it. It was an interesting project seeing as I have never made a typeface or a font previously. Making a font has been on my mind for quite some time so it feels good to explore this process and actually creating one.

Feedback is much appreciated.

Remarkable readability despite being a pretty «crazy» idea.

Inspirative #2: “Ambilinds – Sunlight-driven Solar-powered Automated Window Blinds”

Ermal Dreshaj at the MIT Media Lab is the inventor of these inspiring window blinds. He claims it promotes quality of life by regulating your exposure to sunlight.

To put it in his own words:

“I do a subscribe to the idea that comfort and productivity are optimally achieved only after a primal hierarchy of needs is met.  That is to say that to achieve mental flow, it is important for one to have his or her basic needs met, and one such need is to regulate your circadian rhythm by controlling exposure to sunlight. — Ermal Dreshaj

Are agencies and consultancies converging?

This idea was recently brought to life after reading about Deloitte’s purchase of Mobiento and McKinsey’s of Lunar Design. Thus following the foot steps of Accenture with their purchase of Fjord.

Is this marriage of industries perhaps a signal that the two are converging?

In this post I’ll share some experiences that led me to believe that Yes, they are converging, and have been so for a while.

When I was an engineering student six years ago, I was looking for an opportunity to apply my new-found knowledge on real-world problems. So during my second year I joined a student consultancy. While working there I got involved in numerous web development projects and early on noticed that our deliveries were not as refined designwise, as I thought they ought to be. This was because, at the time, we did not sell design. I cannot even recall design ever being on the table. Why was that? I believe a significant reason was that the staff had a different focus. We were engineering students, not design students. Despite that I was convinced that design would be valuable to integrate into our work. To introduce the organization to design and branding, I became the Marketing Director. As an MD I hired two branding and design specialists to introduce us to the importance of branding and design. This became the starting point of a re-design of our own website, with more time and focus set aside for design.

When reflecting back on this now, I believe the real issue was that design problems were less revered than engineering problems—thus de-prioritized. With these experiences in mind, I wonder how the relationship between consultancies and design looks today. Because as of now I believe that consultancies would benefit from expanding their business into design—And I cannot help but see a correlation there with regard to the acquirings mentioned earlier by Deloitte, McKinsey and Accenture—because by doing so they gain the opportunity to not only streamline an organization in a way that enables good design, they get to deliver it.

But how are agencies converging?

While working on a service design project two years ago I experienced first hand that good design does not always win, because even though our ideas were received well, the underlying organization had conflicting interests that crippled our solution conceptually and delayed it many months—only to eventually halt it altogether. The problems we faced were on a management level, typically something that a conventional consultancy would deal with. Internally we recognized that if we were to deliver good design, we would need to solve those problems first. Instead of letting another firm tackle those problems, we introduced the possibility of helping them with that as well. This allowed us to work with them strategically in an way that we previously could not. That in its turn helped us define a digital strategy that enables good design.

But how could we do this? By being a so called full–service agency. We had the staff with the necessary experience to resolve those organizational knots. When looking back, I realize that that project showed me the value and opportunities that a full–service offering creates.

So how does a full–service agency differ from a consultancy.. once they have converged? Well I can only speculate, but I have this idea that it could be as simple as this: Defining one self as an agency is an implicit way of saying »we can consult you, and we treat it like a design problem«. Whereas a consultancy would define themselves by a different approach.

Working with the entire problem has an apparent appeal.

To conclude this rant I wanna say that there seem to be an apparent appeal in working with the entire problem (no shock there…), rather than a symptom of it. That is why full–service agencies exist, and that is why consultancies purchase design agencies. They all want the entire cake, because inherently it gives them an opportunity to, hopefully, understand the problem better and create better solutions.

So my answer to the title question is, again, Yes, they are converging. Both have discovered the synnergy in dealing with and solving management, strategy and design problems together.

Thanks.

“Knowing more than your own field is really helpful.”

This great tweet from Bret Victor is about how a diverse breadth of knowledge helps you approach problems.

I have a hunch that people with a mixed, non–straightforward, background or career, will relate strongly to this message. Do you? Personally I have noticed that my engineering background helps shape my approach and relationship to the design problems I deal with on a daily basis.

”Mobile isn’t killing desktop internet”

The Wall Street Journal wrote this the 26th of May and I found the statement interesting mainly because design oriented media tend toward the opposite.

As always I am skeptical towards all such bold claims. I suspect that as long as tablets and phones remain more of a consuming device rather than a creative one (creation beyond the sense of sharing and editing photos and videos in simple manors.), desktop will maintain its place. The following claim supports that in the sense that the overall pie is growing, meaning that mobile can grow without necessarily withdrawing its growth from desktop.

“In other words: mobile’s share of traffic is growing, but the overall pie is growing too.”

— Jack Marshall, Mobile Isn’t Killing the Desktop Internet

But what is the conclusion one is supposed to draw from this article? Well, I don’t really see any other conclusion than ‘Yes, cater to your audiences where they find you.’, and there’s nothing new there. Besides, if you support mobile users, the step to supporting desktop ones is not very long..

Inspirative #1: Andante, dancing piano visualizations.

While browsing for inspiration for a Make day at work, I remembered a lecture we had at Hyper Island where Anthony DeVincenzi talked about his journey to, at and from the MIT Media Lab. Since then the MIT Media Lab has been a go–to place for me when it comes to discovering progressive and futuristic use of technology today.

If you dig this project and yearn for details, I’m sure there white paper is worth a read, you’ll find it at the Andante team page.

For more cutting–edge work visit the Tangible Media group at MIT here.

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Introduction to the Inspirative series

As an effort to keep myself up to date with technology and become a more proficient blogger I will try to regularly share findings on the theme digital creativity. I’m in no way defining what this may be yet, though it will focus on things that inspire new thoughts working creatively within the digital realm.

Been waiting for this one! Mind boggling story and incredibly well-written.

Quite an intriguing read detailing the creation and rise of the Silk Road. Part 2 is out tomorrow, the 14th of May.

A font I am working on at the moment. My first one ever, and of course it is more difficult than anticipated..

/the_optimist_88

A long but recommended read on Form, Pattern & Texture in the Typographic Image for anyone working with typography in some way.

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“In contemporary advertising typography, the unstable, restless patterns of tight letterspacing are preferred. The busy, frenetic effect of so-called "sexy" spacing, in which the letters tend to rub up against each other, are common in the typography of mass market persuasion, where arresting, staccato patterns draw the reader's attention to texts that might otherwise be ignored.”

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“Size variation is a mainstay of typographic design. Without it, the modern book would be dull, and the modern newspaper impossible.”

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“At its largest perceptual size, the letterform is isolated. Extracted from the context of the alphabetic system, the iso­lated letter becomes an object of contemplation, not mean­ing. It is pure form, its semiological role vacated because alone the letter has no significance. It is an abstraction.”