CategoryInspiration

October 18, 2014 — I can’t imagine any other industry in which so much change happens so quickly. If you stop paying attention for a week, it can feel like you’ve not been listening for a year. There’s so much to learn. Falling behind is easy, too. We might be in the middle of a major project, so we put off learning about this newfangled thing called Sass or Node.js or even quickly experimenting with the new Bootstrap or Foundation that everyone is raving about. Before we know it, we have these elephants of missing knowledge wandering around our minds, reminding us of what we should know and do but haven’t found the time for. Even just looking at beautiful work and seeing what new technique we could use ourselves can seem like too big a task when we’re swamped with projects. So, we tell ourselves we’ll come back to it later. But later never shows up. The guilt definitely does, but not that elusive deadline of later. Read more…

October 10, 2014 — More and more designers and developers in our industry are making the leap into becoming entrepreneurs by starting their very own products. One of these aspiring designers is Cat Noone, co-founder of Liberio. Cat is a young and talented designer and entrepreneur from Brooklyn, New York, now living and working in Berlin. She worked in the field of special education before jumping into a career that she really loves and makes her happy. Read more…

October 3, 2014 — Apple launched the Macintosh personal computer in 1984. It was more user-friendly than other PCs at that time — and, with its desktop publishing software, graphical user interface and mouse (all novel at the time), the Mac was uniquely geared to designers. Compared to what we can create on the computer today, the original Macintosh, with only 128 KB of memory, had limited capabilities. At the time, though, it opened up so many new possibilities. Read more…

September 26, 2014 — Take any new interface design or display technology, and chances are that someone somewhere has already compared it to Minority Report. The 2002 dystopian film, with its see-through screens and gesture-driven interfaces, is remembered more for its futuristic tech than for the insidiousness of the technology — pre-crime prediction — that was its actual focus. It continues to be the standard by which we judge new interfaces. Read more…

September 22, 2014 — Contrast and similarity have different functions. They are used in varying degree and in combination. You’ll always see some of both because neither exists without the other. Changing one means also changing the other. Read more…

August 29, 2014 — To badge or not to badge? That is the question. Because badges — and a lot of stuff designed for conferences — often look the same. But if you have a little, different conference, you need different kinds of things. Badges included. It all started in 2013 with the first Kerning conference. I was asked to design the official notebook: we ended up with a really typographic design for the cover and a funny pattern on the back. And an Easter egg on the cover — more on that later. It was a really funny project, so when my dear friend Cristiano Rastelli, a member of Kerning’s organizing committee, asked me to design the notebook and some printed materials for Kerning 2014 I immediately said “Yes, let’s start!” Read more…

August 15, 2014 — Our industry is a great one. It’s filled with a lot of awesome people building a lot of inspiring things and constantly seeking out ways to express just how much they love doing so. We’ve had blogs and podcasts, and right now hosting conferences is the big thing. Ever more people are organizing conferences, arranging meetups and creating memorable experiences. It’s fantastic to see. Read more…

August 8, 2014 — Many companies and design agencies tend to look at the design and creativity stage from a narrow perspective. Usually, the design team is locked inside the ideas room with no contact with the rest of the world until it delivers the idea that gets approved by the client or project manager. Read more…

June 2, 2014 — Handwritten text shows a personal side of its author, a side that is not easy to put into words and that contrasts with the standardized look of digital communication. This contrast and “aura” is perhaps what makes handwriting fonts so popular. Read more…

May 16, 2014 — If you see graphic design as a process of arranging shapes on a canvas, then you’re only seeing half of what you work with. The negative space of the canvas is just as important as the positive elements that we place on the canvas. Read more…