By the handling of human hands This type of beauty grows with each passing day. Utilitarian craftwares become more beautiful the more they are used, and the more beautiful they become, the more they are used. Moreover, the heavens have ordained that these objects should attain an even greater beauty as they become worn by the handling of human hands. Yanagi Sōetsu, The Beauty of Miscellaneous Things Putting Thought Into Things utility
Our aesthetic sense has been severely impaired Until now we have been taught that the right way to appreciate beauty is through visual perception. Utilitarian crafts have been looked down on as something of a lower rank. As a result, our aesthetic sense has been severely impaired owing to the fact that beauty and life are treated as separate realms of being. Yanagi Sōetsu, What is Folk Craft? utility
Primary uses Any primary use whatever, by itself is relatively ineffectual as a creator of city diversity. If it is combined with another primary use that brings people in and out and puts them on the street at the same time, nothing has been accomplished. In practical terms, we cannot even call these differing primary uses. Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities utility
Wide sidewalks The narrower the sidewalks, the more sedentary incidental play becomes. Sidewalks thirty or thirty-five feet wide can accommodate virtually any demand of incidental play put upon them—along with trees to shade the activities, and sufficient space for pedestrian circulation and adult public sidewalk life and loitering. Few sidewalks of this luxurious width can be found. Sidewalk width is invariably sacrificed for vehicular width, partly because city sidewalks are conventionally considered to be purely space for pedestrian travel and access to buildings. Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities utility
Hacking is the opposite of marketing An Article by Tom MacWright macwright.com One of my favorite definitions of “hacking” is the creative reuse of tools for new and unexpected purposes. Hacking is using your email account as a hard drive, using your bicycle seat to open a beer, using Minecraft’s red bricks to create a calculator in the game. The opposite of hacking is marketing. Marketing tells you that this particular non-stick pan is the pan you’ll use to make omelettes, and you’ll do it in the morning dressed in fashionable clothing in a nice kitchen. It includes a photo and inspirational copywriting to drive this home. Marketing dictates a style, context, and purpose for even the most general-purpose products. This narrative needs to be specific so that you can readily imagine it: it’s you, in an Airbnb, laughing with friends. All sorts of ways to use the machineIn ways you didn't anticipateStretching the product toolsadvertisingcreativityutility
A Dao of Web Design An Essay by John Allsopp alistapart.com What I sense is a real tension between the web as we know it, and the web as it would be. It’s the tension between an existing medium, the printed page, and its child, the web. And it’s time to really understand the relationship between the parent and the child, and to let the child go its own way in the world. Conventions of a mediumTo abandon controlThe journey begins by letting go Web History Chapter 6: Web Design wwwuxaccessibilitydesign
Conventions of a medium When a new medium borrows from an existing one, some of what it borrows makes sense, but much of the borrowing is thoughtless, “ritual,” and often constrains the new medium. Over time, the new medium develops its own conventions, throwing off existing conventions that don’t make sense. If you ever get the chance to watch early television drama you’ll find a strong example of this. Because radio required a voice-over to describe what listeners couldn’t see, early television drama often featured a voice over, describing what viewers could. It’s a simple but striking example of what happens when a new medium develops out of an existing one. filmmedia
To abandon control In print the designer is god. An enormous industry has emerged from WYSIWYG, and many of the web’s designers are grounded in the beliefs and practices, the ritual of that medium. As designers we need to rethink this role, to abandon control, and seek a new relationship with the page. The control which designers know in the print medium, and often desire in the web medium, is simply a function of the limitation of the printed page. We should embrace the fact that the web doesn’t have the same constraints, and design for this flexibility. But first, we must “accept the ebb and flow of things.” typographyconstraints
The journey begins by letting go The journey begins by letting go of control, and becoming flexible. wisdomzen