Logo Redesign

so, i got some design tips from an unlikely source this week as i checked into Homestarrunner for my bi-, tri-, uh, semi-weekly fix of Strongbad email.

Once again, strongbad dips into my core competancies with a quick and slick redesign, of the famed "no loafing" sign.

squish it, skew it and flip it all around !

i actually like the colors that the cheat winds up with.

Modernist Springs

OK, blogging is hard. every day i bookmark stuff that i want to do a post about, and yet no posts appear.

it's bad magic.

but the internet is goodness. And so is the dream of Modernism. And so is my girlfriend, who suggested a beautiful getaway for us some time when we are on the West Coast.


Palm Springs was at the center of the Modernist movement in the US and so has an usually large amount of fantastic modernist buildings.

You can visit there by taking advantage of some very foresighted folks that deserve a mention in Wallpaper for sure.

the Orbit In is a small boutique hotel and spa lovingly restored to splendor.

One of the buildings in the hotel - well, actually more of an annex - is by one the area's more famous and prolific architects, Donald Wexler. I am not sure when I will be able to organize a group to rent that puppy, but when i do, i will require vintage clothes and cars for everyone, and we can party down in the desert of modernism's twilight with all sorts of tiki drinks and groovin tunes.

in the meantime, visit this vista if you can, and perhaps contribute to the societies that are trying to save this classic buildings from today's short sighted wrecking ball.

my favorite widgets

So i finally upgraded the old iBook to OS X 10.4. in doing so, i am now able to sample (and comment on) the great widgets that are up on the apple site. before the upgrade i was also dabbling in using Yahoo's widgets, but they were only semi-satisfactory, and you have admit the who "expose" thing rules: finally a reason to click the scroll wheel.

i am going to archive this post in the links nav, and simply add to it as i discover new and exciting widgets.

and so, without further delay, a sampling of the best in dashboard functionality:

go-go redball









this little toy uses some kind of simple collison detection and gravity simulation to create a virtual superball you can throw around your screen with your mouse and relive that childhood feeling of anticpation as you try to predict where the thrown ball will end up. luckily there is no OS X sewer grate.


NoteZar
this item is brilliant and tres useful, and only has a couple small drawbacks. basically, this widget is a multi-page notepad - it takes all the text detritus you would normally keep in Stickies and puts it into one single, indexable widget. big deal, eh. well, this is where the bigness comes in - the text is saved not on your computer, but on the developers website. that means rather than having one set of stickies at home, and another at work, and another on your laptop, you have but one single set, synced automatically when ever you post. there is also an option to share Notezar with your friends, so they can see all your notes.
Neat.
The widget itself is a little ugly - the default display is dull grey with white text and green and purple headlines - i hope the guy doesn't fancy himself too much of a designer. You should be able to choose note and text colors in some sort of preferences. The other visual problem is the clunky clip-art-looking icons. if only he knew some great interface designer...
The biggest drawback to this widget is there is no local version of your notes - say in some sort of cookie or cache. if you are not online you can't see your notes, period. bummer. There are also probably some security issues with keeping sensitive info online - i dont know what sort of protections are set up for that. Also, the responsiveness when you click the icons is a little slow - all in all, minor complaints, but the concept is so great i just want the rest of the widget to live up it.

DashFlix
this is another very simple idea that is useful in a "i am too lazy even to bookmark" way - it displays your currently viewing and "in que" films from your netflix account.
it is one of the few widgets that is "two sided" - the 'front' displays your "viewing" films, and the 'back' lists the next 26 or so films in your que.
nice branded skin, also.

game physics

enigmo 2 is the first video game i have been interested in since snood (motto: forget life, play snood), and even so i can only play for a few minutes.

the rube goldberg concept and the 3D is so neat and the play is so subtle - kudos.

the enya soundtrack is a little hard to take however - mute it and just run your itunes.

interestingly, there was a toy back in the 70's that was basically a real life version of this game... see a vintage TV spot about it here.

also, the whole rube goldberg concept is being played out in virtual reality through video game hacks that allow "players" to manipulate the game environments, constrained somewhat by the local physics of the video game

e-design

where the 'e' is for 'environmental'

an amazing toy car from Horizon lets you run your own alternative energy power plant.

i would be HIGHLY interested if they could upscale this thing into running a Go-Ped.

back in black

what can i say. i am a sucker for Sith laptops. As soon as Adobe releases the intel-native version [warning-PDF] of CS.

cross posting

as i suppose a blog is just shameless self-promotion masquerading as shameless self-involvement, i might as well mention when i post new things on my website.

i just put up comps from a little bit of online application design i did over the winter for Stein Rogan + Partners

The project is an online e-commerce application that allows users to download quicktimes of 15, 30 and 60 second ads recently broadcast on television. It is marketed mostly towards competing ad agencies so they can keep up with the Jones with out all the time and hassle of watching TV

This one of those gigs where you walk in and they say, "we need you to redesign this application, but you cant change the colors or fonts or placement of elements"

this happens more often than you would think

however, there somehow is leeway within those constraints to improve upon the early sketches, and i think this interface came out all right, if a little heavy-handed

click the first icon on the right on this page to see the final result - the client logos are edited out

great minds think alike?

there are few things more frustrating then coming up with a great idea for functionality implemented with a hot new technology and seeing someone else be first to market

on the other hand, the same thing re-enforces the marketability of the idea

the last couple months i have been working at a high-end interactive shop, concepting and designing a new shopping portal for a major Fortune 500.

last monday, yahoo launched a new geek gadget portal using several fancy-pants ajax intereractive elements i had been building into our prototype

tech.yahoo.com has several great concepts going for it - most notably is the add to compare tray ajax widget. i love it, and in fact i thought of it two months ago, after discovering a certain functionality that was being shown off on the demo site of a software suite that builds plug and play Ajax modules

my Information Architect said he would defend me in 6 months when our site launches and everyone says i got the idea from yahoo. thanks, charlie

they're handing out Geek Makeovers, however, so that's a tough act to follow

now that's a toaster

i have been reading a book about one of the 20th century's industrial design icons, Brooks Stevens.

his designs and ideas shaped a great deal of american industrial design of the past 60 years or so, and is stuff affected basically every item in american households of that era. his shop is still in business, run by his son Kipp. they are even hiring.

for a few days i harbored fantasies of snagging a job there in their web and graphics department and spending the summer driving a 1955 Gaylord Grand Prix around the Wisconsin Dells, eating cheese curds and parking on the lake to make out.

speaking of cougars

here are a couple i love...

they are on ebay, so these links maybe come dated:

68 Cougar in that wonderful green gold - the same color as my thunderbird

and the interior of this 71 Cougar is just kick ass.

i really like the 67 - 72 Cougars - they were like a Mustang with a Thunderbird interior - the best of both worlds's for the Ford Motor company those years.

the Cougar eventually moved over to the Thunderbird platform completely, and then had that weird 90's re-invention as a Mistubishi Eclipse knock off.

ajax widgets

a collection of browser based widgets... boy, this space is getting crowded.

i am not sold on the usefulness of the browser based "desktop" - but then, not everyone has Tiger

here is a sample page i tried with ProtoPage - more to check the Ajax interactivity than anything else.

i am on an ecommerce project right now that we want to use a decent amount of ajax for, and i am trying to get a feel for the possible.

yes sir, taking the blog out for a test drive

seemed appropriate, and retrofuturist

obligitory link post:

might want to turn the headphones down