Piloting an ocean exploration ship or Martian research shuttle is serious business. Let’s hope the control panel is up to scratch. Two studs wide and angled at 45°, the ubiquitous “2x2 decorated slope” is a LEGO minifigure’s interface to the world.
These iconic, low-resolution designs are the perfect tool to learn the basics of physical interface design. Armed with 52 different bricks, let’s see what they can teach us about the design, layout and organisation of complex interfaces.
Wednesday, 07 February 2024
Earl Phillips, now retired, has been painting shop signs on Cleveland for over 60 years. He painted his signs by hand, no stencils involved, and still producing beautiful flawless typography.
— Braun: Designed to Keep. Design historian Klaus Kemp tells the story of Braun and its iconic product design. Of course Dieter Rams is a central figure in this book, but Kemp also gives deserved credit to many lesser known designers behind Braun’s most well-known products.
Design icon Dieter Rams points at products he doesn’t like. (via)
Monday, 13 November 2023
— Wilco Loft Sans. Type designer Dan Cederholm teamed up with alternative rock band Wilco to create a font based on signage from their studio.
Friday, 20 October 2023
Dieter Rams inspired colour palettes. “Colours taken from Dieter Rams legendary product collection for Braun.” Bookmarking these for the next redesign of the site. (via)
— After linking to a list of East-German football logos, I went to find the crest of the club I played for in the late 1980s as an eight year old. Of course I found it; thank you, internet.
Many East-German football logos have a similar visual language. Vibrant, contrasting colours, hand-lettering, minimalist designs. The predominant visual style of the 1950s and 1960s.
A theory why this style is so common: After the end of World War II and the founding of the GDR, all existing sports clubs were dissolved and re-established. Teams were assigned to a state-owned industrial factory or workshop to bring them under the control of the new socialist regime and to rid them of fascist thinking. And so these new clubs needed new logos. Since the clubs were established around the same time, the new crests were too, in the 1950s and 1960s. Today they represent the zeitgeist of a specific time.
And just like these beautiful crests appeared at the same time, they all disappeared in the early nineties after Germany’s reunification, when the club’s names and associations changed again to rid them of any communist influence.
— Reactions to Twitter’s new branding. “Sounds like a porn site and the logo looks like the emblem to a bad Call of Duty gamebattles team from 2008,” and “This new one looks like the logo of a seedy suburban strip club.”
— I have moments when I think I want to learn about design and I pick up a random book from my very long bucket list of unreads. I did so with The Shape of Design, which I didn’t finish.
It isn’t a bad book. It explores what it means to be a designer and what it means to produce good design. It’s probably more relevant and relatable if you’ve worked as a design for a couple of years, unlike me who just want to make sure his websites not look rubbish.
Monday, 03 July 2023
— The Zentrum Paul Klee made available online 3,900 pages of Klee’s notebooks that he used for his teachings at the Bauhaus. The books are “the most complete presentation of the principles of design ever made by a modern artist – it constitutes the Principia Aesthetica of a new era of art, in which Klee occupies a position comparable to Newton’s in the realm of physics.”
If we want more people to enjoy what we believe are the benefits of something like Mastodon, it’s on us to make it delicious and convenient and multi-textured and fun instead of trying to shame people into eating their soysage and unsalted soup.
I hope all of that is actually possible for Mastodon, because a lot of great people very much want it to become a more welcoming place. But the longer Mastodon stays in Linux-on-the-desktop mode, the more likely those people are to take their energy somewhere where it’s valued.
— Here’s another example of amateur design critique: Elizabeth Lopatto raises questions to the Google Docs design team about the recent redesign. It’s the same knee-jerk reaction we see on Twitter and elsewhere whenever a popular product changes its appearance. In this case: Someone hates the round corners on some buttons, and look here, these buttons are square. It’s supposed to be satire, but satire only works if it’s aimed at something.
Google Docs’ functionality has stayed the same. It just looks a little different. If you think for a second, if you engage and look at which buttons are round and which are square, you’ll see there’s a system, as one comment sums up nicely:
CTA-buttons (typically “submit” buttons in forms) are rounded squares to differentiate them from smaller actions which can easily be changed, those actions are squared (Input fields, smaller actions like font size, bold etc.)
The toolbar placed in a rounded section is to make it clear that these actions are similar (a normal gestalt-principle). It follows the Material You-style that Google is using across their apps. It’s shape is a bit unusual, which can be a bit off putting at first - but it is a clear brand/marketing strategy - any screenshot of Google docs is clearly identified as a Google-product.
And Twitter, going to great lengths to live up to its reputation, reacted:
“Graphic designer be like: 8k” — a TV Host/Sports reporter
“Beyond the questionable design, the wording also doesn’t make sense. Who is ‘we’?” — A technology writer.
“It looks like a senior school project from Pratt. There’s nothing aesthetically correct about it.” — a screenplay writer.
“Hopefully we didn’t pay more than $100 for this” — a literary agent and occasional poet.
“Beyond stupid?” — a Writer, Skewerer, Digital Therapist.
“If my 12-year old slapped this together for a school assignment, I would take away her phone for a week so it’s a no for me.” — a rural-mothers podcast host.
“Is this a joke” — the founder of a calendar start-up
“Hmm. A third grader could do better 🥴” — the founder of an obscure social-media startup.
“Is this mess real? It looks like it was done by someone who opened Photoshop for the first time.” — someone who hosts a show on Youtube.
As you can see, none of the comments I picked is from people working in a field adjacent to graphic design; I bet few have the knowledge to assess whether the designer selected an appropriate font, whether the balance is right, or whether the design delivers what the pitch promised. It’s a marketing design, for god’s sake; marketing is always 80% bullshit. I won’t affect anyone’s life. Yet people comment like some politician said they would introduce SUV-free roads when elected.
I love how everyone on the Internet has an opinion about everything all the time.
Wednesday, 08 February 2023
— Shift Happens, a beautifully curated and designed, 1,216-page, two-volume book about the history of keyboards, is now available to support and pre-order on Kickstarter. It’s not cheap, but it looks like the US$150 are worth every penny. (Via: pretty much everyone)
— An extensive piece by Digby Warde-Aldam looks at the history of the British chain Pizza Express and how the design of their shops helped to build a national franchise. I never ate at a Pizza Express—why would I? I’m too pretentious. Still, I’ve always been intrigued by their old-fashioned art-nouveau identity and how outdated their shops looked.
Wednesday, 25 January 2023
Ellen Lupton talks us through the history of the Bauhaus and various typographic works from the collections of the Letterform Archive and Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum.
Tuesday, 10 January 2023
— A 900-page tome specifies the look and positioning of road signs, markings, and traffic control devices in the US: The Manual on Uniform Traffic Control.
