Mere retinal art Instead of an existentially grounded plastic and spatial experience, architecture has adopted the psychological strategy of advertising and instant persuasion; buildings have turned into image products detached from existential depth and sincerity. Architecture of our time often appears as mere retinal art. Juhani Pallasmaa, The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses A set of potential photographs architectureimagesadvertisingpsychology
Designer + Developer Workflow An Article by Dan Mall danmall.me The way designers and developers work together today is broken. It’s too siloed and separate; “collaboration” is a fantasy that few enjoy. The state of advertising in the 1940s was similar. All of that changed when copywriter Bill Bernbach met art director Paul Rand. Their collaborative working style led to the birth of the idea of “the creative team,” the mutual respect and partnership between art director and copywriter that tended to yield unique results. Bob Gage, an art director that worked for DDB, the agency Bernbach co-founded, described it like this: “Two people who respect each other sit in the same room for a length of time and arrive at a state of free association, where the mention of one idea will lead to another idea, then to another. The art director might suggest a headline, the writer a visual. The entire ad is conceived as a whole, in a kind of ping pong between disciplines.” Isn’t that what we all strive for in our jobs? True collaboration with equals and partners? Ideas that build off one another? Why does this seem so far away for some of us? collaborationmakingholismadvertisingcreativity
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
We are working against the grain of the wood A woodworker works along the grain of the wood to prevent splinter. A butcher slices across to the muscle fiber to improve tenderness. A sailor trims the sail to balance the lift and drag from the wind. When we respect the material, the material pays us back in convenience, safety, and efficiency. Good web design requires the same understanding of and respect for the materials. And that material is the browser, along with its semantic HTML, default styles, and standard behaviors. But the wide use of design software such as Figma, Sketch, and AdobeXD has trivialized the nuances of such material into “canvases” or “artboards” of pre-defined sizes. The convenient styling and manipulation of pixels and objects have disguised the hierarchy of the DOM, the constraints of the device, and the personal preferences and browser setting from real users. Dishonest tools encourage dishonest design. We are working against the grain of the wood. Chuánqí Sun, A case against "pixel perfect" design The Web's GrainWhat the brick really wants.What the material wants to be materialwwwdesign