The Shape of Design
I alluded to a design theory about two years ago. Rather than allowing it to collect more cerebral dust as my take on what’s important to design becomes aged with each passing day, I thought I’d share parts of it now.
In truth, it’s more of a construct than a theory, and it’s not at [...]
Visual Affect in 50 milliseconds
Over at A List Apart, Patrick Lynch nicely summarizes the essence of one of my favorite books by Don Norman, Emotional Design and applies it to neuro-activity within our brain.
In psychology, emotional reactions to stimuli are called affective responses. Affective responses happen very fast, and are governed in an automatic, unconscious way by the lower [...]
Google and the Iceberg Principle of Design
A lot has already been said about Douglas Bowman’s decision to leave Google. From what I understand, he was the company’s first visual designer. I don’t know the man, but I think we can take his perspective, at least, at face value.
In his goodbye post, he offers a glimpse of the design culture [...]
Thinking Outside the Bottle
Somebody recently shared with me an article from Fast Company magazine about a winery that’s replaced their traditional glass bottles with more forward-thinking recyclable carton packages. The resultant environmental affect claims to produce a carbon footprint ten times smaller than traditional glass bottles once the savings for weight, shipping, and disposal are all tallied [...]
Usable Taco Shell Design
The patent for this invention takes 65 paragraphs to explain a design that’s utterly, if not painfully, obvious in hindsight–the square taco.
The self-standing taco shell makes it easier to prepare multiple tacos at the same time. This advantage is especially desirable in fast food, cafeteria and party environments where multiple tacos are being prepared at [...]
