FABULOUS

[link]

the proof

Marty Neumeier. We even rode the same elevator!!

issuu

I've been playing there now. Go see it big.

i think i've just been described by jay-z

Be fluid. Treat each project differently. Be water, man. The best style is no style. Because styles can be figured out. And when you have no style they can’t figure you out.

I think if you're starting early in the process by talking about your ideas for solutions, you're already not listening. I think you need to enter into any design project with that zen learner's mind of 'I don't know what I don't know'.

Kim Goodwin, General Manager and VP of Design at Cooper

a personal jesus

I'm meeting him on Monday. In person.

indie is dead. and it won.

"Indie doesn’t mean anything anymore. It’s dead. Which is OK, because it won. Open source, Twitter. Indie won. Etsy. The irresistible decline of major labels and network TV and corporate publishing. Indie won. We won, but at the cost to many folks personally of suddenly becoming unnecessary. This was most visible in the last few years in the magazines like Punk Planet, Kitchen Sink, Clamor. But it’ll come for us all.

You see, to the extent that indie meant anything, it was as its root word, independent. It was about seizing the means of production. Independently produced. Aesthetics can be imitated, ethics faked, attitudes mimicked, but large bureaucracies could not possibly replicate the indie production process – how could they seize the means of production? They already had it! And now the means of production has devolved yet farther down, past the indie publishers and indie record labels and pirate radio stations of yore.

This is not to say we’ve entered Nirvana. Just because we’d seized the means of production in the 1990’s didn’t mean that poverty had been eradicated, racism ended, and the intellectual property land grab thwarted. We all have to use the tools we’ve been given, find value in, rather than discard, the tools of the past, hold feet to the fire, undermine monopoly, and so on. All things we tried to do with the means of production we seized in the 90’s, we have to continue do with the means of production that technology has handed to us in the 21st century. Moore’s Law is value-neutral, apolitical, amoral, just like Gutenberg’s press. Its how we use it."

[link]

e.e. cummings

i carry your heart with me (i carry it in
my heart) i am never without it (anywhere
i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)

i fear no fate (for you are my fate, my sweet) i want
no world (for beautiful you are my world, my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)

one art

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

--Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.


by Elizabeth Bishop

and here is a piece of my day on MSN

Abi might be coming to visit me in Brazil soon. Yay!

abi says: find me a cute guy. or just one of your throw always.
anabarroso: i will!
abi says: i want a tall one tho. is that easy to find?
anabarroso says: yeah, they come in all sizes. all ugly.
abi says: and no big noses. yuke.
anabarroso says: ok, anything else?
abi says: i like good big parts below, but you don't have to check that if you don't want to.
anabarroso says: i'd rather not. unless he's cute. then i'll check.
anabarroso says: i'll tell u this: the average brazilian penis is smaller than the average american penis. fact.
abi says: oh no! damn!
abi says: so i'll need to go with afro-brazilian then?
anabarroso says: yup
anabarroso says: and they are not circumcised, which is gross.
abi says: that is gross
anabarroso says: just being honest.
anabarroso says: I'm putting this conversation on my blog.
abi says: oh no!
anabarroso says: the world needs to see this.

you leave those smudges there so people will understand your pain

jake and grandma talking about his new therapist

From Two and a Half Men:



Grandma Evelyn:
... and then I tried Freudian analysis but with them, you know, it's just sex, sex, sex...

Jake:
My doctor has a cow puppet.

Grandma Evelyn:
Oh, really? ... ... ... M.D or /PhD?

Jake:
C-O-W.

the epitome of design thinking

"Aravind started in 1976 as an 11-bed eye clinic in an old temple-city. Today it is the largest and most productive eye care facility in the world. Taking its compassionate services to the doorstep of rural India, Aravind's stunningly effective strategies vaulted barriers of distance, poverty and ignorance to create a self-sustaining system that now treats over 1.7 million patients each year, two-thirds of them, for free."

1981

I was 3 months old, NYC subway trains were still covered in graffiti and she was more beautiful than ever. From LIFE magazine photo archive on Google images.

[via]

pretty sure they work with advertising

outside the box from joseph Pelling on Vimeo.

[via]

white box

by Makoto Yabuki

[via]

seeing type differently / type factory

Absolutely stunning branding project work done by University College Falmouth student, Huda Abdul Aziz. Type Factory is a fictional typographic museum in South Kensington, London.

"The concept revolves around the theme of deconstruction. The brand values of the Type Factory identity are informative, engaging and dynamic. The brand promise is about seeing type differently. The design solution includes the logo, a booklet to promote the venue, advertising and applications within the museum."

go forth

Just came across these absolutely amazing spots created by Wieden+Kennedy for Levi's. The audio of both of them are actual recordings of Walt Whitman's "O Pioneers!" and "America". It portrays America in a way I hadn't seen any brand do before. It's classic, rebel, young, old, diverse and blue eyed, all at once. Beautifully done.

"Come my tan-faced children,
Follow well in order, get your weapons ready,
Have you your pistol? have you your sharp-edged axes?
Pioneers! O pioneers!

For we cannot tarry here,
We must march my darlings, we must bear the brunt of danger, We the youthful sinewy races, all the rest on us depend,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

O you youths, Western youths,
So impatient, full of action, full of manly pride and friendship, Plain I see you Western youths, see you tramping with the foremost, Pioneers! O pioneers!

We debouch upon a newer mightier world, varied world,
Fresh and strong the world we seize, Pioneers! O pioneers"

"America
Centre of equal daughters, equal sons,
All, all alike endear'd, grown, ungrown, young or old,
Strong, ample, fair, enduring, capable, rich,
Perennial with the Earth, with Freedom, Law and Love..."

tools vs. behaviors

Some posts come with very insightful comments as a bonus.

We need to be careful when we talk about digital media, that we don't get the tools mixed up with the behaviors. Obsessing over the significance of one site over another, or arguing the importance of participating on a site while not even considering what you're going to do when you get there or if it's even the right place, is a waste of time.

Facebook.com is not important. What's important is that more and more people are actively building and managing a personal network of relationships that can be accessed at any time via digital technology.

YouTube.com is not important. What's important is that more and more people are sharing original videos with other people all over the world at will.

Twitter.com is not important. What's important is that more and more people are developing a habit of broadcasting every experience and piece of information that they think might be of interest to their network.

As these tools evolve (and capabilities and uses merge), let's remember that the tools we use aren't as important as the behaviors they create.

Here are some excerpts of a comment left by Michael Maurillo:

What I have recently found so interesting about this (incredibly) important point is that there's a very large community in our industry that obsesses about user-behavior and how it affects their craft everyday. I'm talking about designers, YET when it comes to marketing it is something we so rarely think about. And if we do, it usually ends up in a tactic or two (if we're lucky), not in the core of the strategy.

Marketing insights have always been part of the process, but they typically only touch the surface of behavior and revolve around things like shopping habits or purchase behavior.

We all give the same reasons why "advertising is broken" based on how the user's behavior is changing, yet so many creative briefs I read still describe the "target" in terms of demographics with a smidge of pyschographics when it's more than likely that the designer down the hall from you has 5 distinct personas hung up on their wall representing the same audience. Strategists must start thinking like designers and leveraging their tools. It's not just about user-centered design, it's about user-centered marketing as well.

polyester princess

This is a post from Sweet Juniper!, one of my favorite blogs for the longest. It's written by Jim, the dad, who he used to be a lawyer and go by the pseudonym "Dutch". Now he's a Gentleman of Elegant Leisure and goes by his real name.

The mother of one of my daughter's friends asks, "Is she not supposed to play princess?"

I have never told my daughter she couldn't play princesses. We may have had a few conversations about how princesses aren't good role models, but I've NEVER said she couldn't pretend to be one. Apparently while playing at her friend's house, my daughter whispered, "My dad doesn't like princesses. He says they're lazy goodfornothings." Then she proceeded to pull one of those prefabricated princess gowns over her torso and said, "I'll just tell him I was being a fairy." This pleases me, because it shows she is beginning to understand that her highly-opinionated father can be quite difficult, though easily appeased by doing whatever it is he doesn't approve of once well out of sight. This will prove a useful skill as the years go on.

When told this happened, I felt a tinge of guilt. Then the other little girl stood up and said to my daughter, "I AM THE BEAUTIFUL PRINCESS. You must do my bidding. Go and fetch me the finest flower in the land." My daughter reacted with a look of incredulity that could only be translated as, "Fuck that, dude." Or, perhaps less crudely, "My father was right: princesses are bossy and not very nice." She refused the quest, and the princess sulked.

I looked down at them in their ill-fitting polyester costumes, stained with mulberry juice and globs of yoghurt. I could have delivered the coup de grâce right then: I could have pointed out that their threadbare, shoddily-made dresses of imitation satin and tulle made them look more like Courtney Love at the tail end of an Oxycontin binge than any representative of The Crown. But I didn't. As Benjamin Disraeli once said, Everyone likes flattery; and when you come to Royalty you should lay it on with a trowel.

"Worry not, your Highness," I said, winking at my daughter. "I shall fetch my steed and deliver thee the loveliest dandelion in all Detroit."