Sliver of Time

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Miska Knapek creates amazing photos which display a full 24-hours of time in one single photograph.

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Pantone Clock

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I am a design geek, and a fan of unique clocks. This is perfection.

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Stupid Words

This isn’t my first – and not likely to be my last – entry complaining about churches and their horrible presentations. I’ve been involved in both sound and powerpoint at various churches, spanning a period of over seven years. Every pastor and worship leader, while using different methods, have the same rule: you must show the words to the songs they are singing. Here’s the thing... no one looks at them.

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Sure, I know... the second you don’t show the lyrics on screen, you will have half of the congregation bug you about how they were missing. But that’s because they are trained to look for them. It’s like a security blanket. You don’t need it, you want it.

Here is a video of one of the most famous worship bands ever, Hillsong, performing one of the best worship songs I know. You don’t have to watch the whole thing (though you should), but for the first minute or two, watch the people in the audience...


(Optional YouTube link)

There are what appears to be 3,000 people in the audience here. There’s one thing they all have in common. Not one of them has their eyes open.

Another thought along those lines, when you go to see your favorite band, do they display their lyrics up on a big screen?

I was once told, “don’t bring me problems, bringing me solutions.” So I’m going to do just that. This isn’t rocket science, the idea is already being used in conjunction with the stupid words on the screen. Simply print the lyrics on a sheet of paper and toss them in the bulletin. If you want the words, you have them. And they aren’t going to be blocked by a six-foot-five behemoth standing in front of you.

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Martyr Lamp

Another interesting item I wish I could buy here in the states.

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Grandfather Clock

More from the “wish I had thought of it” archives. Available from Spring Design & Art for only 120 bucks.

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Purell Ad

Growing up with comics makes me really appreciate this ad...

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A full size version is also available.

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Schtock

There’s been a lot of blog press about a new site, schtock.com. Practically every design blog out there has made mention of this guy (girl?), and his site only launched September 5th.

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The creator is an amateur designer who works for an unnamed stock art company. Schtock randomly posts new images that come across his desk as well as some designs he puts together from these images. The biggest reason for the attention is the designer’s amazing talent.

Also, let me state that while the site creator self-refers as an amateur designer, they are assuredly neither amateur nor a designer, but a fantastic artist. – What I Learned in Design School

While the comment in their review is meant as a compliment, I feel compelled to point out that “amateur” and “fantastic” are not necessarily synonymous. The only difference between a guy who is really good at design and the professional designer, is usually a paycheck. More often than not, the amateur is a better designer than the pro.

On the flip side, I would argue that Mr. Schtock has really just posted one of the more creative resumés ever. While he mentions that what he is doing could be grounds for termination, and therefore doesn’t list the company he works for, he has no issue with listing his mailing address in the domain’s WHOIS record, or a phone number on the site. Perfect options for being contacted in case you might want to hire this “fantastic artist”.

That’s no criticism, by the way. That’s jealousy.

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Keep It Simple Stupid

Following the KISS principle to a T, Umbrella Today has introduced the “simplest weather report ever”. At first it’s silly. But then you realize it’s brilliant. “Oh, there’s going to be a high pressure zone over the city today? That is so good to know.” No! “Is it going to rain?” That’s all you really want to know.

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Solar Tree

Forget, “Wish I had thought of it...” where do I buy one of these?!

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Translated from the French web site...

Reload your nomads through this plant fitted solar panels without consume energy than other light. The day the electricity produced by photovoltaic cells is stored in a battery that recharge your devices when you connect the evening.

The object is composed of modules which are assembled by a jack, each party can turn on itself and create an infinite shape.

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Special Vision

Maybe I’m just cranky today, but is there some reason that only I can see the problem in this photo? I strongly believe in a design being “pixel perfect”... where every item in the design is precise down to the last pixel. I don’t know how this gets past one’s personal quality assurance filter. This not only went past the designer’s QA, the site went live like this. Ridiculous.

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DHL

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To demonstrate DHL’s inexplicable ability to deliver on time regardless of conditions, this outdoor piece dominated MTR escalators across Hong Kong. The areas either side and between the escalators were covered with giant’s bird’s-eye view of Hong Kong’s highways jam-packed with stationary traffic. The moving handrails then acted as a fast lane with a steady flow of little yellow DHL vans racing past. This totally speaks to the diecast car collector in me.

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Peleg Design

Another “why didn’t I think of this” moment.

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Stone Door-knocker

I’ve always been a fan of door-knockers. This one is awesome.

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Talk

I love the hidden concept in this logo. Not unlike the FedEx “arrow”.

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How to: Slideshows

As I sat through yet another overly lengthy slideshow yesterday morning, it hit me... people do not know how to make good slideshows. Powerful software in the hands of virtually everyone is an awesome thing. So instead of just whining about it, I’m offering a few pointers in how to make your slideshows better.

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This is not some incredible new revelation, I realize, but the hardest thing to do when creating your slideshow is choosing photos. Pictures are sometimes like your kids... you love them all equally. But sadly, like your kids, your photos are not all equal. Some are not as colorful, some are blurry, and sometimes you have too many and you could have left a few home with the babysitter. If the photo quality isn’t perfect... or at the least, very good... then it should sit out.

Once you’ve eliminated the bad photos, you need to filter down some of the “content” photos. Let’s say you’re putting together a slideshow of your 16 person local baseball team. You might want to make sure you have one shot of every player on the team... but you should not have one shot of every player at bat. After four or five pictures of men at bat, they all look the same. Pick the five best batting shots you have, then note who the players were so you don’t use the same five players when your showing off a few fielding shots.

Once you have a good group of photos to work with, it’s time to choose the background music.

Find a song that the length matches closely the event in your program. If you are doing an awards show, you might want to play the slideshow as a group of people come on stage. It won’t take 10 minutes for the group to congregate, so don’t select an overly lengthy track. If the song is too long, you end up with this awkward moment where people are standing around waiting for something to happen.

When thinking of your song/slideshow length, bear in mind that the audience does not feel as passionate about your subject as you do. Even if you think it’s still fun six minutes in, they’ll probably be bored after three.

When choosing the type of song, you want to keep in mind a few factors. First, if the slideshow is for high schoolers, choose a current hit. Even if the majority of the audience is the kid’s parents, don’t choose the song for the adults. Put the adult in the kid’s world.

Do not use live tracks.

Never make your slideshow extend past one song. If you find you have photos left past the first song, then you need to do some more trimming. There is only one instance in which a slideshow goes beyond a single song. If you are displaying photos during a dinner, you might want to span a few songs. In this case, be sure your songs cross fade (or overlap). Also, your timing has to be very precise.

You should selectively choose the timing for each image, don’t let your presentation software do it for you. Most slides can be visible for the same short period of time. However, photos that have a lot more action, or a lot more subjects will required a second or two more display time. You should be cautious of the last few seconds of your song. You do not want to be transitioning into a new photo as the song fades out. And you never want to show slides after the song is over. The last photo should be intentionally long and fade to black with the song fade.

Last but not least, choose professional transitions. Every tool for creating presentations includes 900 transition effects. And of those 900 transitions, two are professional. If you don’t believe me, rent four movies. Watch each movie and pay close attention to the scene transitions. 99% of the time, the director uses a basic fade. If the software you got for free with your PC has a “water drop” effect, it would stand to reason that the professional cinematographers would have it too. But they don’t use it. There’s probably a reason... follow their lead.

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Deteriorating Home

A friend of mine and I were discussing how intriguing it is when a house sits vacant, how quickly it deteriorates. Even if vandals don’t take over – breaking windows and doors – random parts and pieces of the house begin to crumble. It makes sense when you think about it. A leaky pipe never gets fixed, something that would be noticed by the homeowner. The wind might blow up some roofing shingles, which also goes unnoticed and never gets patched. Cracks in the walls, tree roots digging into the drains, and so on. What I’ve noticed is that web sites are much the same way. Similar to a house, if a web site doesn’t have someone to take ownership, it doesn’t take long to degenerate. The trick for a business is to recognize the need for an “owner”.

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I know of a particular organization that once recognized the need. While they didn’t have a full-time developer on staff, they had one on retainer. The site is maintained by various staff members via a custom content management system. But because the developer took ownership, he would make sure the pipes didn’t leak, or the walls didn’t crack.

Recently, however, a new “creative director” was hired on. Lacking in experience for the job, his first motion was to remove the more expensive developer and selected a company that could do updates and site maintenance when needed. From a financial standpoint, it looks okay... though the savings is likely to be less than $100 per month. After all, the content is handled by the staff, you only need the web company when there is a coding change. The problem is, a web company can’t take ownership of a site in the same way. They have dozens, or even hundreds, of other customers. There’s no way they can keep an eye on every single site in the same manner.

Within one week, the site is already showing some decline. The following three images are just the first signs that appear on the home page a week after the change in site ownership.

Over a week after the event, no one has caught on to the fact the current events are not so current.

This is not a hyperlink. Makes it rather difficult for anyone to go to the site.

The following image has a couple of problems...


The top banner was added by the new web company that is “maintaining” the site. For some reason, there is a single pixel break in the outline of the box (left side). I’m not sure why it’s there, but a good designer should have spotted (and fixed) it.

Likewise, even a person with no experience should be bothered by the two banners not lining up correctly (right side).

Not so noticeable in this screenshot, and since the boxes are not lined up, you can’t tell that the top banner is actually one pixel smaller than the lower banner. Good designers strive to be “pixel perfect”. That’s what separates the professional sites from the amateur sites.

Moving off the home page revealed a couple other problems. Not too surprising, because a majority of time a person maintaining 100 sites will likely only monitor the home page. This information box is blank... a major no-no on a professional web site.

Logically, current events are the first things to deteriorate, as demonstrated by their completely blank event calendar...



Web sites are not cheap to build. If you want to keep your investment working for you, you need to select someone to take ownership of the site. Here are a few pointers on choosing your “owner”.

• You can hire a web design/development firm, as this business did. However, make sure they care about the site – and your success – as much as you do.
  
  
• If you have a content management system and don’t need a developer to maintain the site, select a person in the company that is a complete perfectionist. Look at their surroundings... if their desk is spotless, if their notepad has zero doodles in the margin, and if their company memos have every single field filled out, they are probably a good candidate.
  
  
• Be passionate about perfection. If you are the business owner, or in management, you should be looking for these same “pixel imperfections”.
  
  
• Have schedules and reminders for specific parts of the site. For example, you should have an alert to remind you to update your monthly calendar the last week of each month. You should also set reminders for each event to make sure they do not appear on the current events list after the final day has passed. Even if you have a CMS that automatically turns events on and off, the CMS is only as smart as the person who adds the event.
  
  
• Don’t cost your company thousands of dollars to save one hundred. If you are saved small dollars on your monthly maintenance, but your site falls apart and has to be re-built in six months, you would have been better off to hire a part-time person to manage your site.
  

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Transparent Post-its

What could very well be the best idea since 3M started selling Post-it Notes.

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The most interesting thing about this product release, is how a simple blog entry sells the product much better than the official information on 3M’s web site...

blog entry

official release

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New Royal Mint

When I saw the photo of the new designs for the British currency, I didn’t get it...



That is, until I saw them in the proper position...

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Tables vs. CSS

I’ve read numerous comments in which self-righteous web designers mock an old-school “table layout”. I started coding when people were using Windows 3.1 with only 16 colors. I confess I don’t get the hullabaloo of the CSS-only concept. Before embarking on my latest web project, I decided to do some research to find out what makes the CSS model so much better. There are four main arguments against using tables...

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One, mixed presentational data in with your content. This makes the file sizes of your pages unnecessarily large, as users must download this presentational data for each page they visit. Using CSS, the Style sheets that control layout are cached by viewers’ browsers. Reduced file size means faster loads and lower hosting costs.

The argument here is that using an external CSS file to control the layout, the user caches the CSS file instead of needing to download this content for each page. While the user may not have to reload the style sheet every time, they will still need to load the DIV tag declarations for each page. The total file size difference ends up being a savings of 2KB at best. Even if using an old 14.4 dial-up modem, you wouldn’t notice the difference.

Two, makes redesigns of existing sites and content extremely labor intensive (and expensive). To change the layout of the site, all you need to do is change the style sheets; you do not need to edit the pages themselves at all.

This argument is invalid. There are a number of things a designer can do to lower redesign time and cost. Most importantly, using include files means you don’t have to recreate every web page. Only the section that needs modified. Likewise, if your content is being dynamically controlled by a database (like shopping carts, blogs, or message boards), your site may only have three or four actual coded pages.

In addition, trying to build a CSS file that works the same on every browser can be more labor intensive than simply building a table. Recreating the CSS file in hopes to get an all new look is even more painstaking.

Three, makes it extremely hard (and expensive) to maintain visual consistency throughout a site. Since pages use the same CSS document for their layout, they are all formatted the same.

Only an inept designer would make a statement like this. As stated above, using include files completely eliminates this argument.

Four, table-based pages are also much less accessible to users with disabilities and viewers using cell phones and PDAs to access the Web. Visitors using screen readers (as well as those with slow connections) do not have to wade through countless table cells and spacers to get at the actual content of our pages. In other words, separating content from the way it is presented makes your content device-independent.

This argument is invalid if you design your web site properly. A properly designed web site will display correctly on any device regardless of the method you use to build it.

A better method than a straight CSS only design is a hybrid. If you really want your design to be labor intensive (expensive), then remove all tables entirely. There’s nothing wrong with using both methods in conjunction on a design. Simply put, tables can do some things better than CSS... CSS can do some things better than tables. Why not take advantage of both methods?

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Meet the World

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We started to research relevant, global, and current facts and, thus, came up with the idea to put new meanings to the colours of the flags. We used real data taken from the websites of Amnesty International and the UNO.

The campaign has been running in Portugal since January 2005. There are eight flags that portray very current topics like the division of opinions about the war in Iraq in the United States, the violence against women in Africa, the social inequality in Brazil, the drug trafficking in Columbia, Aids and malaria in Angola, etc. – Meet the World

Angola


Brazil


Burkina


China


Colombia


European Union


Somalia

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Automoblox

Quite possible the coolest toy since American Bricks. Each Automoblox vehicle comes with four body parts that can be interchanged with other vehicles. They currently offer 10 models (and four limited editions), which are around seven inches in length. They also offer three “minis”, which are a scaled down version (roughly four inches) of the larger models. The minis are much more affordable at only 8 bucks a piece. Hard to wrong with as a gift for any kid (3+).

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American Bricks Booklet

From the booklet that came in a container of American Bricks, which is my favorite toy of all time. More here.

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The Shopping Cart

The first shopping cart was introduced in 1937, by the owner of the Piggly-Wiggly supermarket chain in Oklahoma City. Supposedly, people didn’t like them at first. Men found them to be effeminate (which is the polite way of saying it made them look gay). However, over 70 years later, no one has managed to come up with anything better. Virtually every invention is later topped by someone who has a better method. But apparently the shopping cart was so well designed, that there is no way to do it better.

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Web Designs for Large Monitors

Why has the idea of designing for the lowest common denominator falling to the way side? The argument can be made that larger flatscreens have become so inexpensive, 17“ monitors are considered small. People with 800x600 resolutions are going to be pretty scarce. But assuming everyone has a large display, and uses the display the same way the designer does, means the designer is not paying attention to his/her audience.

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One of the benefits of the windowed interface, such as the first Mac OS (and then later, Windows), was the ability for the users to view more than one application at a time. Prior to this, users couldn’t view information in other applications while working in the current one. Having a large screen has allowed people to finally be able to do an effective job of multitasking.

As a designer, you have no idea how much screen real estate is being devoted to the user’s browser. And you should never make a site design based on any assumptions.

Lower technology costs also brought on more affordable laptops, specifically ultra-portable laptops. A majority of these laptops offer a 15“ screen. However, the ultra-portables, such as the Sony VAIO TZ, can have displays as small as 10 or 11”. Now a web site that worked well on your massive display, is hard to navigate and use.

Old rules regarding dimensions may be expired, but for the benefit of the end-user it is more important than ever before to make sure your designs are small window compatible.

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30 Second Design

Through years of scientific training and data we have concluded that “the world’s best design ever” will be created in 30 seconds. It will be a design so intense that a young designer’s mind will instantly blow up when he/she sees it. – Scott Thares, Wink

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Good Taste: Essential for Great Design

We can’t only blame the clients for unsuccessful design. Remember, design is a team effort, so if the designer cannot communicate with the client or is only interested in satisfying his tastes the project is likely to be unsuccessful. – Josh Pyles, Pixelmatrix Design

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Overboard: Best. Strip. Ever.

Now for something a little less heavy...

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I can probably get in trouble for posting this image on my site, but I’ll just drop this entry it if I get yelled at.

This strip by Chip Dunham, if you don’t know, follows some not-so-swift pirates. Dunham was making pirates cool before pirates were cool. Dunham’s artwork is unconventional, but that is part of what makes it so great. And his comedic timing is impeccable.

If you followed the strip very long, perhaps you can tell me when Raymond became part of the crew. He used to belong to the enemy green ship. The enemy green ship, by the way, no longer seems to be in the picture.

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Stanislav Katz

If it weren’t for Jonas, I would have to have this.

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Alastair Heseltine

File this under “Wish I had thought of it.”

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