Posts
Relative readability
Why go so big on type? There's a short answer and a long answer.
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Excuses, excuses
Some people might suggest it's not worth redesigning a site I only post to twice a year. They're missing the point. Read
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The Optimizer
Every designer is wired differently. Some people are idea people, some people are artists. I'm an optimizer. Read
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Indistinguishable from magic
I love video games. I'm terrible at most of them. But I'm a sucker for a game with a good story. Read
Ephemera
Listen
Volume One /
She & Him
As if Zooey Deschanel could get any more charming, she also happens to sing like a particular brand of female vocalists that nobody pays to record anymore — sort of Carole King by way of Julie London. Add M. Ward and a couple of vintage romantic covers and this is an album I like more every time I put it on.
Read
The Road /
I’ve never been affected by a book the way I was by this one. The themes are about the biggest we can get our heads around, and the closest in. The prose is as stark and unsparing as the world it inhabits. I tried reading it in pieces, but I couldn’t sleep between, so I had to finish it in one go. I cried like a baby for the last ten pages and for a long time afterward. It’s the best fiction I’ve ever read, but it’s bigger than fiction. It really is something else.
Watch
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford /
Andrew Dominik
I couldn’t wait to see this movie, and I wasn’t disappointed. Such a perfect balance between all the elements that make a great movie: amazing cinematography, impeccable pacing, fascinating performances, pitch-perfect writing.
Links
- Sword and Sorcery This upcoming iPhone game shown at GDC looks fantastic. Sort of a King’s Quest vibe with an arty 8-bit style.
- Philip K. Dick: Letter regarding Blade Runner “I can only say that I did not know that a work of mine or a set of ideas of mine could be escalated into such stunning dimensions. My life and creative work are justified and completed by Blade Runner.”
- We’re the Stupid Ones “When folks need an elevator, we should give them an elevator, not an airplane. We’ve been giving them airplanes for 30 years, and then laughing at them for being too stupid to fly them right.”
- Information Resolution on the Windows Phone 7 Series This is one of the things that bugs me about the UI shown so far. It looks like a print layout crammed onto a screen. The iPhone looks and behaves like an interface to content, not content itself.
- Panelfly Pretty great-looking comic book reader for iPad.
- Free advice: show up early “Lateness is part of the order of things, and grownup professionals plan for it.”
- Realism in UI Design Really nice insight on the uncanny valley of UI design.
- Video Game Feminist of the Decade: or, when “You” is a girl Jenn Frank eloquently makes the case that the greatest feminist gaming icon is Chell, the player avatar in Portal.
- Joseph Ducreux / Archaic Rap Know Your Meme provides an unmeasurable value to the world by its very existence on the Internet.
- The making of the NYT’s Netflix graphic Behind the scenes of the making of an awesome infographic. I missed the print version, it’s very pretty.