A politician, as well as a chemical engineer and entrepreneur, Olivetti had a philosophical view of entrepreneurship, one that put people and communities at the center of a business. He was a firm believer in the competitive advantage of treating workers fairly and investing in their wellbeing. Andrea Granelli, president of Associazione Archivio Storico…
The key to the Mac therefore becomes that which the iPad/iPhone isn’t: an indirect input device. The keyboard and mouse/trackpad are what define the Mac. The operating system, the apps, the UX, are all oriented around the indirect input method. The iPhone’s capacitive touch brought about the direct input method, a third pivot in input methods (first was…
The Italian type foundry Nebiolo of Turin was the biggest type and printing equipment manufacturer in Italy. It started in 1852 and thrived in the first half of the 20th century, but never made the transition to phototype. The foundry closed in 1978.
Great profile of Nebiolo, one of the most influential type foundries in Italy. The text in the article was…
Why do products sometimes label things as my stuff, and sometimes label things as your stuff?
Interesting post by John Saito on the use of different points of view in user interfaces.
This is a perennial question from non-designers and folks who don’t use typefaces. They do, of course, need them on a daily basis. Modern life would grind to a halt if every typeface suddenly vanished overnight. Typefaces are so ingrained into our existence that it seems like they’ve always been there. It’s a “problem” that’s been “solved”. Most people…
Archivio Grafica Italiana is the first digital archive dedicated to the Italian graphic design heritage. A growing overview to spread and promote the culture of quality that distinguishes the Italian design tradition. From the greatest classics to the best contemporary projects, commissioned by Italian clients or made by Italian designers, to explore and…
Typography is the visual component of the written word. But the converse is also true: without typography, a text has no visual characteristics. A goblet can be invisible because the wine is not. But text is already invisible, so typography cannot be. Rather than wine in a goblet, a more apt parallel might be helium in a…
Self-driving cars went viral again recently, when Tesla dropped a $2,500 software update on its customers that promised a new “autopilot” feature. The videos are fascinating to watch, mostly because of what’s not happening. There’s one, titled “Tesla Autopilot tried to kill me!” where a guy drives with his hands off the wheel for the first time. He hasn’t…
I look at my Instagram feed and it’s a network; I’m seeing through the eyes of people around the world,” says the image-sharing app’s Teru Kuwayama. Following two decades as a noted photojournalist, covering war and humanitarian crises in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Kashmir, the TED Senior Fellow now works on the community team at Instagram,…
If history is a guide, the costs and convenience of radical transparency will once again take us back to our roots as a species that could not even conceive of a world with privacy. It’s hard to know whether complete and utter transparency will realize a techno-utopia of a more honest and innovative future. But, given that privacy has only existed for a…
A visual history of the design process behind Morning Boost’s brand new website: morningboost.co.uk
As a project I worked on comes to life, I like to compile a snapshot of the key iterations that lead to its final, or better, initial form, in order to spot early mistakes and snatch unexpected insights. It’s like a near-death experience, but safer.
The web is not print. Webpages are not books. Therefore, the goal of Tufte CSS is not to say “websites should look like this interpretation of Tufte’s books” but rather “here are some techniques Tufte developed that we’ve found useful in print; maybe you can find a way to make them useful on the web”.
Agreed. I’ve always been fascinated with Edward Tufte’s…
Although the actual implementation of the 3D Touch is somewhat problematic, the approach taken to the functionality assigned to this feature is the correct one: 3D Touch should be an enhancement to the user experience, not a requirement to achieving a user task. Indeed, so far, all the functionality provided by 3D Touch, whether in quick actions or…
Naming artworks has always been important, not only because it’s useful to have a way to refer to the piece, but also, and much more importantly, to present a window to the creator’s vision and ideas, to clarify his intentions when creating the piece and to provide additional content to the visual. In ‘artistic’ photography it seems that the situation is…
While watching Mr. Robot, Sam Esmail’s terrific new TV series, I couldn’t help but noticing a small detail from main character Elliot Alderson’s personal computer. I find it fascinating that in 2015 we still use Eurostile, the iconic typeface designed by Aldo Novarese in 1962 for the Turin based Nebiolo foundry, to convey modernity and technological edge. Not…
The modern day automobile is not intuitive. Drivers need to learn to operate an automobile. Passengers have to conform to a car’s existing seating arrangement with only marginal modification. Software has the potential to change all of these limitations. While Tesla has become a pioneer in electric vehicles and BMW continues to slowly build momentum in the…
Samsung Electronics on Wednesday called for its operating profits to rise in the third quarter, putting an end to an almost two-year decline — though the recovery is reportedly based mostly on chip sales.
Apple components business is more of a Samsung-saviour than any Galaxy phone has ever been an iPhone-killer.
“Remember a week ago when everyone was saying they were going to return their TSMC devices for Samsung devices?”
“I can think of nothing that has done more harm to the Internet than ad tech,” says Bob Hoffman, a veteran ad executive, industry critic, and author of the blog the Ad Contrarian. “It interferes with everything we try to do on the Web. It has cheapened and debased advertising and spawned criminal empires.” Most ridiculous of all, he adds, is that…
