Mark Peter Drolet’s photography is incredible. Still lives, people, places – all presented with clarity and no fuss. My favorite sort of work. The photos from Galveston (like above) are particularly close to my heart.
Robin Sloan on RSS
As long as the URL resolves, a feed can still surprise you. RSS is the true web: a loose net of dark filaments. These faint tendrils of connection are almost invisible when quiescent, but then out of nowhere—hello!—they light up again. I am happy to have them.
Why Advertising Awards are for Losers
It’s easy to bag award shows and one doesn’t want to sound too nihilistic and not give praise where due. Award shows can, and certainly did once, inspire great work. But introduce the element of uncontrolled and promiscuous fraud and you can forget the whole enterprise. The delusion becomes all too palpable when scam-ads are excused away as “initiative work”.
Video: Neil Young Finds Bootleg in 1971
Neil Young finds a gem record shopping in 1971 and talks to clerk who has no clue who he is. Thanks, YouTube!
“Neil finds a bootleg recording of a live CSNY show and confronts the store employee who has no idea who he is. At first, Neil is looking for the new Bob Dylan album “Greatest Hits Vol. 2″ but finds a bootleg Dylan album instead. He then discovers a Crosby & Nash and a CSNY bootleg as well.”
aNYthing Tee
Love this tee from aNYthing!
Mobile Only Users
This is a great article and super informative for folks who might still feel like a good mobile experience is too complicated for the return.
Mobile-only users aren’t some strange new breed of customer, signaling their desire for different messages, content, and services through their choice of screen size and form factor. They’re just your customer. You can and should speak to them in same way you address all your other customers. They just want to engage with you on the device that’s most useful and convenient for them.
Meeting the needs of the mobile-only user doesn’t mean agonizing about “the mobile use case,” trying to determine which subset of content would be most useful to users “on-the-go.” Google reports that 77 percent of searches from mobile devices take place at home or work, only 17 percent on the move. Mobile users should get the same content. It’s frustrating and confusing for them if you only give them a little bit of what you offer on your “real” website. If you try to guess which subset of your content the mobile user needs, you’re going to guess wrong. Deliver the same content as your desktop user sees. (If you think some of your content doesn’t deserve to be on mobile, guess what — it doesn’t deserve to be on the desktop either. Get rid of it.)
“…on the device that’s most useful and convenient for them.” Which could be a mobile device, might not. But they deserve the best experience regardless of their choice. In this way, we’re trying to talk about proximate use, not strictly ‘mobile only’ use. I don’t think we’re convincing businesses that mobile is every part of the customer pie so to speak as long as we continue to segment out the users when we talk about the site experience.
All customers deserve great site experiences regardless of device, and many users are choosing their devices based on what’s near them, not by some mysterious code we can’t break. Since many of those users are indeed coming from mobile devices and those numbers are rising, it’s more important than ever to treat them as well as the ‘traditional’ customers you’ve developed desktop site experiences for.
Valerie Hammond
I’m loving the warmth and delicacy of Valerie Hammond’s work, particularly her wax drawings. There’s a ton to look through, go kick off your week with something beautiful!
Simone de Beauvior on Feminism
Being a woman is not a natural fact. It’s the result of a certain history. There is no biological or psychological destiny that defines a woman as such…. Baby girls are manufactured to become women.
Internet Archive from Deepspeed media on Vimeo.
Video: Internet Archive Short Documentary
An incredible look at how the Internet Archive functions.
David Airey on Crowdsourcing Design
Design courses don’t have enough teaching about spec work. I remember when I was in formal education and my class had to work on a project for an outside client. The prize was to have your design used. This seems to be a common scenario, although it’s slightly different from the Obama gig, because all of my classmates’ designs were critiqued by the tutor and by our peers (alas, not the client, which would’ve also been useful). In any case, we learned something. Not as much as we could’ve if the project was handled differently, but it was something. I don’t see how hundreds, perhaps thousands of poster ideas submitted without feedback, compensation, or acknowledgement, is of any value.
Mural.ly
Mural.ly is the ‘Google docs for creative people’: a real time, web-based app that lets creative teams share a virtual mural. The walls are zooomable, can contain all kinds of web content (videos, photos, etc.) and teams can chat as work goes up and moves around. What an amazing tool for creative teams working on projects from different locations. Can’t wait to have an excuse to use it!
Blue Witch Octopus Mug
I don’t care how many coffee mugs I already cram in my cabinets, I need this Octopus Mug from Blue Witch.
