Interesting and/or cool stuff I've come across from art, design, technology, photography, movies I've watched and liked and, occasionally, my thoughts.
VWFNDR Keirin. I find this concept camera interesting on a few levels. On one, it’s part of what seems to be a resurgence of niche but fun-looking devices with cool design and an attitude like the Playdate game console with its single colour screen and fun crank arm, or the Rabbit R1 (not the best-reviewed, putting it mildly) – intentionally limit the funcionality and tech and force yourself to come up with novel ideas to get around these giving the device tons of personality in the process. Design loves constraints. On the other, it leverages the relative freedom a large touchscreen gives to play with new interface design ideas. I was immediately reminded of the soviet Horizon panoramic camera that utilised a unique swiveling lens to take awesome panoramic photos on regular 35mm film stock. I’m rooting for Keirin to graduate from a concept to a product.
“Let’s make the indie web easier” by Giles Turnbull on making it easier for people to make and run their own sites rather than installing WordPress or simply giving up. I was so put off by the “it’s easy, just (insert tech acronym salad here)” when I tried to see if some modern web tech would make building and publishing a site like mine easier.
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And, found via Gilest, here’s Good Enough. I always like when a small team is making fun stuff.
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Legendary car designer Marcello Gandini has passed. He was the designer behind for the iconic Lamborghini Countach, an even more shard-like Lancia Stratos Zero concept car and played a part in shaping one of the most beautiful automobiles, the Lamborghini Miura.
via Wallpaper
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“The job is not to invent, but to curate” says Josh Clark from Big Medium in “The Most Exciting Design Systems Are Boring”. Design systems should take the boring, the mundane off your (and your colleagues) hands so you can solve some new problems instead.
Chris Coyer shares his thoughts on what’s going on with CSS Tricks post selling it to Digital Ocean. I learned so much from CSS Tricks and the tone of the site was so friendly and approachable, what a bummer.
Collected bits and pieces I’ve noticed this month.
Like many other platforms, Letterboxd posted their 2023 Year in Review.
Maybe I’m not using as many services anymore that can compile personalised a wrapped-style look back at a year, but I feel like I’m seeing fewer of them each year, which is a bit sad.
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Speaking of movies, here’s an over-analytical analysis of the styles (authors words) of two batman movies – The Dark Knight and The Batman – by P.J. Onori.
via Sidebar
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What I’m seeing more of than before is lists of 52 things (one for each week) someone has learned over the past year. Last year I found a list by Kent Hendricks, most probably via Jason Kottke who this time published his own, via which I discovered Tom Whitwell's.
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For even more lists, here’s The Atlantic’s 81 Things That Blew Our Minds and a of The Best Articles We Didn’t Publish jealousy list by Rest of World.
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I was watching the 25th Anniversary of Half Life documentary and found Gabe Newell’s “Late is just for a little while. Suck is forever.” version of a quote often attributed to Shigeru Miyamoto – “A delayed game is eventually good, a rushed game is bad forever.” – funny and no less educational.
~ Lightbeam by Anton Repponen is a beautiful photo essay.
via Readymag
What if I fumble and tap the "End ride" button when locking the doors? Will I lose the car to the next customer with the radar feature on? I get a bit anxious every time even though I know there's a confirmation dialogue preventing that from happening.
Making the "End ride" action require a slide gesture would lessen the worries of accidentally triggering it.
That being said, this is a concept design and I'm sure designers at Bolt have considered this and have their reasons for not using this interaction pattern here. Because a slide gesture is required to unlock the doors when starting a ride and this would run the risk of muddying things too much – slide to unlock or tap to cancel at the start, tap to unlock or slide to end during a ride.
Collected bits and pieces I’ve noticed this month.
In “Improving The Double Diamond Design Process” Andy Budd writes about how the “Double Diamond” design process is an ideal that does not match how design actually happens in many (most?) organisations and how it could be improved to be more usable and useful in reality.
Once you come to the realization/acceptance that no one – not even the interested, motivated, and committed – has the kind of focused attention available for your thing that you assume they have, you will have a much better chance of capturing and sustaining any of it at all.
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In “Why note-taking apps don’t make us smarter”, which is well worth a read if you care about thinking and note-taking and note-taking for better thinking, Casey Newton links to researcher Andy Matuschak’s site on note taking. Wow. I got lost in there, in a good way, for quite some time and still keep it open in a tab.
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On a related note, ahem, I love how Readwise is approaching highlights and sidenotes in their Readwise Reader reading app.
This is a mockup of an idea I had. It is for a UI interaction for recording video on your phone while editing it in a way.
To start recording, you tap and hold the “Record” button.
Move your finger off the button to pause and back on to resume recording. To stop, lift your finger, and the video is saved to the camera roll.
The button is circular for a good balance between surface area and the distance required in every direction to move your finger off it. It also grows larger when tapped, so you don’t accidentally pause when you move your finger a little.
Whether a kind of fluid blob of a button that “sticks” to your finger a little before letting go and pausing would be a neat way to indicate the threshold between recording and pause or be a flaw instead could be discovered with an actual prototype. But I have a hunch there might be a sweet middle ground somewhere.
Today I learned that in 1993 Coca-Cola created OK Soda in an effort to lure Generation X. A bold swing marketing and design wise, but a flop product wise. More on Messy Nessy Chic and Two Designers Walk Into a Bar.
via Cabel Sasser
Image courtesy Two Designers Walk Into a Bar
I’ve long been inspired by the punk band Wire’s rules of negative self-definition: “No solos; no decoration; when the words run out, it stops; we don’t chorus out; no rocking out; keep it to the point; no Americanisms.”
I think it’s often best to start by deciding what you won’t do and set up boundaries and constraints and guardrails.
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Stephanie Smith writes on the Wise Design Medium… um… blog, about making better colour choices that are accessible and also on brand: “Accessible but never boring (Part 1)”
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“I make things because I enjoy making them. I share them when I have a sense that those things are exactly the sort that would inspire me had I not made them myself. This is not the way to build a large audience, to achieve fame, or to amass wealth. But it is the way to be seen (a very different thing from being validated) that also creates a way for someone else.
The best thing that could happen when I share something online is for someone else to experience it and think, “If he can do that, then I can __.””
When we buy a physical product, we accept that it won’t change in its lifetime. We’ll use it until it wears off, and we replace it. We can rely on that product not evolving; the gas pedal in my car will always be in the same place.
I’d argue that the great thing about software is precisely that it’s never finished, that it can be changed for the better without throwing it out and buying a new one.
But I see where this is coming from – software changing for the worse, from being tired of constant feature creep and ever more bloated software we often have no choice but to use.
To borrow Gilgado’s analogy: stop moving the gas pedal around.
