Things we do, thoughts we have and things we like at Vostok Studio
You’ve probably heard about YouTube Instant, a project by Facebook intern Feross Aboukhadijeh. Just for kicks we decided to do a search for the word ‘newspapers’ and voilà:
YouTube Instant’s suggestion is incredibly revealing, is it not?
In case you’re interested Peter Kafka interviews Mr. Feross in Mediamemo.
Twitter = (kind of like Planetaki) one single stream of information organized in chronological order. (WIN)
Online newspapers = columns, too much information clustered into categories, no apparent distinction between important and less important info, Ads. (FAIL)
Why would anyone think a mashup of these two would be a good idea? Giving up all the good stuff and taking on all the bad. Well, we have found out through bitelia that paper.li has done it. In a nutshell: paper.li organizes links shared on Twitter into an easy to read newspaper-style format.
Sounds like a good idea? You bet! (if you like your twitter feed full of ads that is).
bitelia’s newspaper (hope they don’t mind us using their newspaper as an example).
You heard the man ranting about focus groups, right?. Now, what phone were you expecting he’d have?
Is data from focus groups really relevant? This is what Donald Draper thinks:
Here’s a good way to fresh-start from vacation: finding that this little gem arrived home while you were away and awaits for a relaxed reading:
It’s a first edition of Design This Day by Walter Dorwin Teague, one of the first industrial designers and founder of a design firm that’s still out there after 80 years keeping a no-nonsense approach focused on creating quality products.
Mark Adams, managing director of Vitsoe, states it very clear when talking about their furniture. They make furniture that’s timeless because they don’t believe in recycling, they believe in designing adaptive systems that can be rearranged over time to suit different needs and scenarios.
the concept is to reuse your furniture…we see recycling as a defeat
Modularity and no-aesthetics as design is my big obsession when designing interactive products (mostly websites). It’s not about designing a good website, it’s about designing a system of elements that can be arranged in certain ways and that can fulfill the company needs over time and for different reasons. If done well, when there is a need for some module that’s not designed, its shape, look and behavior comes out of intuition, it’s evident. My goal is to leave something in the hands of my client that will be there in 4 years, probably rearranged, perhaps with more pieces but within the same system.
When I fist read the Ten Principles for Good Design (that was back in 2004) I was shocked. It was like a revelation that made reconsider all I knew about information architecture and HCI. Here are the ones that hit me harder:
4. Good Design helps a product be understood
6. Good Design is honest
7. Good Design is durable
10. Good Design is as little design as possible
In Dieter Rams’ words: less but better.
Los Angeles Times reports that Rupert Murdoch plans on launching a newspaper for the iPad and the like only. Freshly designed. Both content and form from scratch.
I’d sell my soul to Lucifer to be on that team.
In some of my recent talks I’ve mentioned the story behind USA Today. I think it’s one of the best examples to learn about information consumption and adaptation.
USA Today launched almost 30 years ago built on a premise: that most Americans didn’t read, that they mostly got news from television (color television) and that they spent a lot of time in front of the tube.
Al Neuharth, USA Today’s founder, understood the new context and decided to design a newspaper from scratch, one based on these premises where:
This was the result, the fresh design of the USA Today in 1982:
And here is what the New York Times looked like in the early 80′s (see how big the change was?):
In short, USA Today wasn’t targeted to newspaper readers but to TV watchers. The critics called it the McPaper, the junk news, the fast food of information. But despite that they ended up being the most read paper in the USA. They understood their new readers and the new context. They won.
And that is why most old newspapers redesign for the internet or for the ipad and they fail miserably. Why? They don’t pay attention to new users and their new contexts of use.
The difference between product design and architecture is in human scale and that has to do with political power.
There is something subduing in the creation of structures we humans inhabit or use in any way, something about those structures condioning our moves and behaviors. Architecture and (even more) urbanism have that powerful quality.
Architects project their structures to influence in the way we feel and behave. They manage flows of people, they regulate our exposition to daylight to condition our feelings or they make us feel free and empowered through space and height. They make structures that manipulate us.
Architecture and urbanism could be the use of power though means of space. That could explain why politicians have always flirted with architecture, and dictators love to have scale models of their dreamt cities.
Designers instead, have never been that interesting for the powerful (with some interesting exceptions). Their work is usually not that influencing. Designers make things that tend to be smaller than humans. Their structures may condition but don’t force us to do anything. It’s not the space which conditions the individual but the individual who manipulates the object.
Here is one nice pic of the Vostok iPad Sleeves the girls at Jositajosi crafted for us:
Their original post is here.
I just found Modernist, a WordPress theme by Rodrigo Galíndez. Although I think the tags for each post and the social media links could more discrete, overall it’s a very good theme and I would recommend it for anyone looking for something clean in two columns:
BTW, We are about to release a white vostok theme and as you may see (if not using a newsreader) we are tesing it around here.