Details
The subtlest slightest kinds of differences
I am here
Scoop it up and whisk it away
It's not just a little thing
Good for the next man
Feeble and ugly
Rain Chains & Musical Drains
Conversations, not commandments
Good software comes from a vision, combined with conversations not commandments. In a craft-focused environment, care for efficiency, simplicity, and details really do matter. I didn’t leave my last job just because I wanted to make something new. I left because I wanted to make it in a way I could be proud of.
Modularity
One of the most pervasive features of these buildings is the fact that they are “modular.” They are full of identical concrete blocks, identical rooms, identical houses, identical apartments in identical apartment buildings. The idea that a building can - and ought - to be made of modular units is one of the most pervasive assumptions of twentieth-century architecture.
Nature is never modular. Nature is full of almost similar units (waves, raindrops, blades of grass) - but though the units of one kind are all alike in their broad structure, no two are ever alike in detail.
The same broad features keep recurring over and over again. And yet, in their detailed appearance these broad features are never twice the same.
Designing detail
My heart belongs to the details.
I actually always found them to be more important than the big picture.
Nothing works without details.
They are everything, the baseline of quality.Truly functional design only comes from the most careful and intense attention to detail.
Although he did not directly design all products and even had very little to do with some of them, he constantly encouraged tiny improvements that could make a good design better. This attention to detail ranged from the acuteness of angles in forms; the size, feels and distances between switches; the integration of handle fixings; the placement and nature of graphic elements on the products themselves and extended to product photography and packaging.
Designing detail is about achieving a fine balance in all aspects and areas of the product, including those external to the object.
Incidental details
In these journals lay the incidental details by which a book can be differentiated from a set of scientific articles. Such incidental details can become ends in themselves.
What you have observed closely
Drawing requires that you pay attention to every detail—even the seemingly unimportant ones. In creating an image (no matter how skillfully), the lines and tones on the paper provide ongoing feedback as to what you have observed closely and what you have not.
A cumulative effect
It is a cumulative effect, this character. It results from the combined impact of the design of a great many separate things, none of which is so very atrocious but too many of which are flatly negative, wanting. The design of each single thing in the environment, however small it may be, is really important.
A few millimeters apart
Aesthetes force us to consider whether happiness may not sometimes turn on the presence or absence of a fingerprint, whether in certain situations beauty and ugliness may not lie only a few millimeters apart, whether a single mark might not wreck a wall or an errant brush stroke undo a landscape painting.
The inner nature of material
The work of an artist in getting the details that he wants is greatly facilitated if he selects a material whose inner nature makes it want to take the desired shape.
Theatre Epidaurus, Greece, 330 BC
Mounting the massive cut stone stairs [of the amphitheater], we note the way in which the overhanging front edge of each seat folds down to form the first step up to the next section, the second step being the front edge of the foot space of the next set of seats. This detail is complemented by the way the undercut beneath the front edge of each seat is curved rather than sharp-edged — a detail that, being hidden in the shadows, is first revealed by our touch. An equally subtle detail is the way each stone seat is lifted slightly above the level of the foot space behind it, so that one does not set foot on the surface upon which others sit.
Warmed by the afternoon sun
Textbooks on water-system engineering state that supply mains are generally installed on the north side of the street in the Northern Hemisphere and on the south side in the Southern Hemisphere, so that the sun will warm them. In both hemispheres they are supposed to be on the east side of north-south streets, on the premise that the afternoon sun is warmer than the morning sun.
We must get our hands dirty!
We must get our hands dirty!In every work of architecture, the construction details are the heart of the project, and the true makers of the project are the ones who make the details, who make the materials directly, and who are not afraid to get dirt
under their fingernails.
Eggs, Easter and poached
When a site is done with care and excitement you can tell. You feel it as you visit, the hum of intention. The craft, the cohesiveness, the attention to detail is obvious. And in turn, you meet them halfway. These are the sites with the low bounce rates, the best engagement metrics, the ones where they get questions like “can I contribute?” No gimmicks needed.
What if you don’t have the time? Of course, we all have to get things over the line. Perhaps a challenge: what small thing can you incorporate that someone might notice? Can you start with a single detail? I didn’t start with a poached egg in my breakfast, one day I made a goofy scrambled one. It went on from there. Can you challenge yourself to learn one small new technique? Can you outsource one graphic? Can you introduce a tiny easter egg? Say something just a little differently from the typical corporate lingo?
Cloudbusting
An Article by Daisy AliotoIt is fun to revisit memories this way, a digital stamp in my weather passport, where everything can be contained in a forecast and Stockholm sits between Vilnius and London by sheer chance. It has also been a way to feel close to people I love while traveling, to know whether it is raining where they are.
As with most technology, this is artistry by committee. There is no Thomas Cole waiting in the wings. But someone has to animate the stars, to decide when to streak one across the screen–to play god in our pockets.
The other way to build a massive tech company - doing it slowly
A Podcast by Howie LiuI like to think about the early years of [Airtable] as not only a great time for us to be patient and to get a lot of details right in the product. I think some of those details had to be done in a slow, deliberate way with a small team. You can't necessarily parallelize the design and development of a really detail-oriented product.
Care for the Text
An Article by Robin RendleWhenever I’m stuck pondering the question: "How do I make this website better?" I know the answer is always this: Care for the text.
Without great writing, a website is harder to read, extremely difficult to navigate, and impossible to remember. Without great writing, it’s hardly a website at all. But it’s tough to remember this day in and day out—especially when it’s not our job to care about the text—yet each and every <p> tag and <button> element is an opportunity for great writing. It’s a moment to inject some humor or add a considerate note that helps people.
…These are the details that make a good website great.
Intelligent arrows
A Fragment by Chris CoyierReminds me of a little feature I like in Notion where if you type dash-arrow (like ->) it turns into → — but intelligently — like it doesn’t do that with inline code or a code block.
Subtilitas
A BlogSUBTĪLITĀS (latin; noun f., 3rd):
fineness of texture, logic, detail; slenderness, exactness, acuteness; sharpness : precisionI recommend eating chips
An Essay by Sam AndersonJoin me. Grab whatever you’ve got. Open the bag. Pinch it on its crinkly edges and pull apart the seams. Now we’re in business: We have broken the seal. The inside of the bag is silver and shining, a marvel of engineering — strong and flexible and reflective, like an astronaut suit. Lean in, inhale that unmistakable bouquet: toasted corn, dopamine, America, grief! We are the first humans to see these chips since they left the factory who knows when. They have been waiting for us, embalmed in preservatives, like a pharaoh in his dark tomb.
Why YKK zippers are the brown M&Ms of product design
An Article by Josh CentersA ‘pro tip’ for evaluating the quality of a piece of gear is to look at the small details, such as zippers and stitching. Cheap-minded manufacturers will skimp on those details because most people just don’t notice, and even a cheap component will often last past a basic warranty period, so it’s an easy way to increase profits without losing sales or returns.
If a designer does bother to invest in quality components, that’s a tried-and-true sign that the overall product is better than the competition.
littlebigdetails
A Blog by Floris DekkerLittle Big Details is a curated collection of the finer details of design.
As Charles & Ray Eames put it:
“The details are not the details; they make the product.”
This is intended to be a source of inspiration.
Created and curated by Floris Dekker. Alumni: Andrew McCarthy.
80/20 is the new Half-Ass
An Article by Shawn WangThe Pareto Principle is making you lazy.
Let me be more precise: The Pareto distribution is a useful model of power law effects in real life. But people are using it poorly, primarily as an excuse to be lazy.
...People forget that the devil is in the details. The first 20% everyone knows to say on Twitter. The remaining 80% is the ugly, nasty, hacky, unglamorous shit nobody talks about unless you've got time to sweat the details.
The 99% Invisible City
A Book by Roman Mars & Kurt KohlstedtMakespace.fun
An ApplicationIn today’s software, live video feeds are stuck inside static rectangles that can’t go anywhere. MakeSpace flips all that on its head. Your cursor is your live face, and you can roam free, controlling who and what you want to be close to.
The Nature and Aesthetics of Design
Any imaginable shape
The thing which sharply distinguishes useful design from such arts as painting and sculpture is that the practitioner of design has limits set upon his freedom of choice. A painter can choose any imaginable shape. A designer cannot.
Useless work on useful things
Anyone can verify by simple observation two important facts.
The first is, that whenever humans design and make a useful thing they invariably expend a good deal of unnecessary and easily avoidable work on it which contributes nothing to its usefulness.
The second fact is that all useful devices have got to do useless things which no one wants them to do. Who wants car to get hot? Or to wear out its tires? Or to make a noise and a smell?
Presentable
I have sometimes wondered whether our unconscious motive for doing so much useless work is to show that if we cannot make things work properly we can at least make them presentable.
The principle of arrangement
It is really rather remarkable that, while anyone can tell whether a thing is a pocket-knife because, presumably, anyone can recognize the principle of arrangement which constitutes the similarity between all pocket knives, no one can visually abstract that arrangement. We recognize it when we 'see' it embodies, we can describe it disembodies, but we cannot visualize it disembodied.
The minimum condition
When a device is so designed that its component parts are only just strong enough to get the intended result without danger of failure, we may say it is in its minimum condition.
I suspect that the functionalists sometimes meant by functional design simply design aimed at the minimum condition for a device. In that case 'form should follow function' would mean that every system should be in its minimum condition, thus having certain limitations imposed on its form.
The requirements of economy
Economy is the mother of most inventions, not necessity, unless in the sense of poverty and hardship. A requirement for convenience is simply a diluted requirement for ease and economy.
It seems to be invariably true that those characteristics which lead people to call a design functional are derived from the requirements of economy and not of use.
When design gets too easy
Design has invariably exhibited styles because some clear limitations on freedom of choice are psychologically necessary to nearly all designers. When design gets too easy it becomes difficult.
The one best way
It is a most diverting spectacle to see the experts in work study exercising their considerably ingenuity to find the one cheapest way of doing operations which could perfectly well be dispensed with; for example, getting shiny surfaces on furniture. The 'one best way' of doing things like that is not to do them.
The versatility of flat surfaces
The versatility of flat surfaces is not commonly seen in nature.
The works of God
Via reddit
Thus the first and most important stratagem adopted to cheapen construction was the squaring and turning of components in order to eliminate offering up and individual fitting. The flatness, straightness, and squareness which more than any other characteristic distinguish man's construction from the works of God, derive from economy. We see the mark of economy in every building of squared masonry however magnificent it may be. Only the few remnants of ancient polygonal masonry remind us that the pattern of stone work where each stone is individually fitted can be very different from the cheap squared pattern to which we are accustomed."
Skill vs. knowledge
We should say that anybody has skill enough to build a good dry-stone wall but that few know how to design one, for the placing of the stones is a matter of knowledge and judgment, not of dexterity.
6 methods for economical design
- Use readily available materials.
- Use easily worked ('wasted') materials.
- Avoid dexterous labor.
- Use standardized materials or components.
- Avoid intermediate states (get straight to the final product).
- Use standardized language and geometry. Design only what can be easily communicated.
Old solutions
Where the problem is old, the old solutions will nearly always be best.
The bloodless ghosts of memory
The bloodless ghosts of memory.
A strangely negative character
Utility has a strangely negative character. We speak of the secret of happiness, for its causes are elusive; but there is no secret about the causes of unhappiness: thirst, hunger, want of sleep, exhaustion, pain, constraint of movement and too great heat and cold, are evils which can effectively prevent happiness. Utility has a negative character, because useful devices are adopted in the main for the sake ultimately of avoiding such evils.
From the fact that deadly injury, pain, and exhaustion prevent the fulfillment of the universal wish for happiness, we have always tended to infer that if only life were safe, comfortable, and effortless, we would be happy. It does not follow.
Sine qua non
What we see of a device is rarely the essential part, the sine qua non, but nearly always the superstructure which economy has imposed on it.
It seems that the work we call purely utilitarian is not more useful than its more ornamental counterpart. It is merely more economical.
The contribution that something in them yet compelled them to make
Makers and designers must gradually have come inwardly to believe that half their work had been mere frivolity because it had been avoidable, and because some of it had contributed nothing to the satisfaction of people's material wants. This must have affected them like a conviction of original sin.
The idea that utility was the purpose of work overpowered them and seemed unanswerable. From that time on perhaps the artist and workman have been weakened by an inward suspicion that they are supporting a lost cause. They have perhaps half-believed that the world could get on very well without the contribution that something in them yet compelled them to make.
No more than a sketch
The quality of a musical performance depends on the performers as much as on the score. The performers are said to be interpreting the score, but in fact they are adding intention of their own to those of the composer, recognizing that no score can in practice ever fully express the intentions of a composer, that it can never be more than an indication, a sketch; and no designer can in practice ever produce more than a sketch.
Purpureus
Our way of talking about surface quality as 'texture' is rather like the ancient Roman way of calling anything bright colored 'purpureus' on the principle perhaps that any bright color was much the same as any other.
The weather in the space
The architect's special preoccupation is first to decide what kinds of spaces shall be enclosed.
All manner of different considerations will influence an architect's decisions about the shape of the spaces they are to enclose, but the chief of them will always be the probable activities of the people who will enjoy the weather in the space.
Holding together a civilization
It is only in the present age that it has been asserted that 'architecture is not an art' or 'should not be an art': and that strenuous efforts are made to made a distinction between design and art. And nowadays we build cities of such a quality that no one likes living in them, everyone who can do so gets a motor car to escape from them. Because of the multitude of motor cars, escape is now denied us, the country is destroyed, and the cities become still less tolerable to live in.
All that is the consequence of contempt for art. Art is not a matter of giving people a little pleasure in their time off. It is in the long run a matter of holding together a civilization.
A cumulative effect
It is a cumulative effect, this character. It results from the combined impact of the design of a great many separate things, none of which is so very atrocious but too many of which are flatly negative, wanting. The design of each single thing in the environment, however small it may be, is really important.
Scenery
What is designed and made outlasts the people for whose profit and for whose use it was made.
We may think we are designing furniture of motor cars, but we are not. If we are designing a motor car for one man, we are designing scenery for fifty thousand others.
Something more is required
Efficiency, the capability of performing effectively, never made anything beautiful yet and it justifies no design in itself. To say of a design 'it works, it does its job', or 'it gets the intended result' no more commends or excuses it than to say of a man 'he has never actually defrauded anybody'. That is not what virtue means! Something more is required.
Beauty is like a joke
If some story makes you laugh aloud, then something in it causes the experience which issues in laughter. But can you describe that something to a person who does not think it funny in such a way as to make him see the joke and experience just what you have experienced?
A being-without
Not having a toothache is no goal for a lifetime. Happiness, however one defined it, is not something negative, a being-without.
Some emptiness in us
Whenever we encounter beauty we become aware, each time with a sense of shock and pleasure, faint though it may be, that some emptiness in us, not consciously felt but continually present, has been assuaged and fulfilled. We have a sudden high sense of completeness and harmony.
The matrix of all we know
Man's species has existed for an immensely longer period, unimaginably longer, in an unmodified natural environment. That unmodified environment was the matrix of all man knows of beauty. All the means of his experience of beauty evolved in it. Now, in the artificial environment, art creates an equivalent for that beauty, for it is a need of man's spirit.
The evolution of devices
All the first antecedents of man's devices were given him by Nature. Every one of his devices is traceable back to something in nature which suggested the first remote and primitive beginnings of its evolution. And every feature in art that man's mind conceived is conceived by a mind that has evolved as a part of nature: that grew out of nature.
The evolution of devices is as much a natural process as the evolution of organisms.
Deliberate acts
I do not know what one should call the landscape of a long cultivated countryside, or the enchanting pattern of lights which shows at night time in a modern city seen from overhead. Are these not works of art? It is scarcely justifiable to say that these things have taken shape by chance. Each part of them has been made as it is by what seemed a deliberate act, and it need not necessarily be assumed to be a matter of chance that the results of many acts of many men over a considerably period of time should harmonize together aesthetically.
The skill of perception
The newborn baby and the [blind man suddenly gifted with sight] do not have to learn to see. Sight is given to them. But they do have to learn to perceive. Perception is learnt and learnt slowly. Skill is required for perception as for speech. We are largely unaware of the skill we exercise. None of the things we have to learn to perceive are self-evident, or, apparently, instinctively evident. No doubt, however, we have an instinctive aptitude for this learning, and once we have learnt we cannot easily see as though we had not.
As Ruskin says, one has to strive, if one is to see with the 'Innocent Eye'.
Who did the teaching, then?
It has been contended sometimes that our response to works of art is entirely learnt and in no way innate; but the questions 'Who did the teaching, then? and how?' have not, I fancy, been much investigated. This contention is very true of our responses to styles and fashions, but it is not true of our response to beauty.
No kind
No kind of shape, no kind of design or kind of picture or other work of art can be beautiful. No kind of color is beautiful. Beauty comes always from the singularity of things. Two things which happen to be closely similar in size, color, insurance value, smell, weight, or shape, may both seem equally beautiful. It is not therefore to be deduced that, say, a smell of turpentine is a necessary prerequisite of beauty; and nor is the fact that the two things' shapes are measurably within a millimeter of each other. They might still be as different as chalk and cheese: they might differ hugely in surface quality so that one lived and the other was dead. One judges a man by what he is, by his individuality, his idiosyncrasy; not by his measurable properties or measurable behavior or by the shape of his nose or the description in his passport. So with a work of art.
Tradition
Change is of the essence of tradition. Our declining civilization has largely lost the conception of tradition as continuous change by small variations – as evolution, in other words – and can produce only fashions which, one after another, appear, live for a little while, and die without issue.
What a greenhouse was for
The new-found ability to make a wall all of glass had advantages, undoubtedly, in certain particular cases, but not in nearly so many as the Bauhaus stylists pretended. It is not forgotten by those who have to work in buildings with these glass walls that their propagators must have known quite well what a greenhouse was for and what it did. That knowledge counted for nothing beside the imperative necessity of showing how new the 'new architecture' was, by doing something obvious different from the fenestrated walls of the styles which had preceded it.
The act of creation
What I suggest has usually happened [during the act of creation] is this: the artist has glimpsed something: he has seen, perhaps fleetingly and indistinctly, some particular relation or quality of visible features which had previously been disregarded, and which impressed itself on him by its beauty. By means of making a work of art he then seeks as it were to fix isolate and concentrate what he has seen.
No one has ever succeeded in demonstrating in principle how this is done, but done it is; and when we see it done we find it hard to understand why it should have been so intensely difficult to do.
The imprint of a man
Art is the imprint of a man: a creature whose nature is idiosyncrasy sparring with conformity.
Déjà vu
The artists expression may make us aware for the first time of something we had too little regarded or had not been fully conscious of, presenting us with something which is quite new to us and yet at the same time disturbingly familiar – déjà vu.
The signature
It has long been understood that striving for originality as an end in itself is the mark of an inferior artist. The personal style of a good artist is never something that has been deliberately cultivated and forced but something that has appeared unsought as inevitably as the personal style of a man's handwriting.
But since artists of note are seen to have a distinct personal style, no artist can hope to make a reputation in a competitive society unless he too can show a distinctive style which easily differentiates his work from that of other artists and draws attention to it. Therefore artists of little capability or uncertain vocation will take great care to make their work look 'different', whereas those with any certainty in them will know that their work cannot help but look different from that of other people any more than signatures can.
It is worth reflecting that the fact of the unmistakable individuality of each man's signature is one foundation of modern commerce everywhere. To establish the individuality of it one need not write it vertically up the page in letters two inches high. And yet there are only twenty six letters, and everyone else uses them too.
It will not stand still to be pointed at
The cause of the experience of beauty is a series of events, not a state of affairs existing continuously. That perhaps is why the cause of the experience is something we find impossible to point out. It will not stand still to be pointed at. We can point out only what we perceive. We can never point out or describe what we see.