Against form follows function An Essay by Andrea Resmini andrearesmini.com I cannot get past the fact that any *designer* who throws that phrase around matter-of-factly, as in “of course form follows function”, comes out as a complete ignoramus. An ignoramus who's not just repeating an 1896 “law” without any clues as to what it means but who also, most poignantly, demonstrates to possess no knowledge of what has happened in design and architecture since Sullivan and Adler contributed to inventing the high rise building and, by extension, much of the world we live in. Useless work on useful thingsForm follows functionForm follows failure formfunctionarchitecture
The Web is Industrialized and I Helped Industrialize It An Article by Dave Rupert daverupert.com In our cultural obsession with billionaire entrepreneurs we laud new features more than the maintenance and incrementalism work of making old features better and more accessible. Maintenance looks like red minus signs in the spreadsheet. New features look like green plus signs. New features look better on our LinkedIn profiles. New features have that pizzazz, baby. When gardening, the building of planters and initial planting is a very short process. The majority of your time is spent nurturing and monitoring growth. I personally feel the struggle between maintainer work and new shiny feature work. I enjoy that new feature smell but I know that my day-to-day is more like a janitor on a boat mopping up someone else’s barf. In terms of metaphors, the gardening metaphor is certainly better, and it acknowledges that design and development still tend to be more creative endeavors. featuresnoveltywww