Noisy Decent Graphics

Magically produced books

"people ask me from time to time if I’ve thought about writing a book. Well, as a matter of fact, I have… but thinking about it hasn’t magically produced a manuscript, as it turns out."

The brilliant Khoi Vinh (whose name I can never spell without checking at least twice).

Thank you

"Thank you’s from clients can take all forms. Sometimes no news is a kind of thank you (it means nothing’s gone wrong)."

Great (and very true) quote from Michael Johnson.

Design does not mean veneer

"In most people’s vocabularies, design means veneer. It’s interior decorating. But to me, nothing could be further from the meaning of design."

Steve Jobs.

One Secret Is To Save Everything

More here.

20% to 33% equals an increase of 65%

  "Sir Martin, the chief executive of the world's second-largest advertising   company, expects further strength in the internet advertising market, adding   that the medium now accounts for 20 per cent of its sales. He believes the   proportion of sales from the internet will rise to about a third of its   business as penetration picks up in continental Europe."

Masterpiece

I read this little tale in the Evening Standard today. Because the Evening Standard suite of websites are so fucking shit I can't find the full story. So I'm going to try and write it down from memory; ie it may not be 100% accurate.

There is a tale about a man that finds an old masterpiece in his attic. It has lain undiscovered for centuries. The man contacts an expert who cannot believe it's lain undiscovered for so long and therefore must be a fake.

A few months later another, identical masterpiece is found. Now the expert is puzzled. Two identical paintings that have lain undiscovered for months. Which one is the fake?

Actually, both of them were fakes, but no one could see it. Sometimes we want something to be true so bad, greed clouds our vision.

"Old ladies dropped their parcels in shock"

Rev. W. Awdry

"off to the guardian - alan rusbridger read my blog and asked for me to meet with him"

Amelia Torode

"You can't beat quite good and free"

Russell Davies

1 million people x $600, I just did the math

"One million people have asked us to call when [the iPhone] is available"

AT&T (Cingular) CEO Randall Stephenson, 27th March 2007

"Good advertising is whatever works for this audience today, good design is eternal."

Richard Huntingdon (big cheese planner for WPP) has written a fabulous post about the differences between advertising and design

It's very well written and unusually for blogs and for the marketing industry it's not just a ding dong. It just talks about the differences - not we're better than you etc etc. It's all rather intelligent.

You should take a look and then contribute.

"First we design the buildings, then the buildings design us."

Duck comes back from dead, again

Is this sustainable design? Discuss.

"All structural elements, switchgear and trim are made from fully recyclable materials. Better still, it is highly unlikely that your car will ever need recycling at all. After all, more than 60% of all Porsche vehicles ever produced are still on the road today. This exceptional longevity is fundamental to the Porsche philosophy and, in particular, our approach to the environment."

More here.

"People don't want quarter-inch drills. They want quarter-inch holes."

Professor Theodore Levitt. Nothing new, I'm just storing it here. From this via Pink Air.

The BBC's Fifteen Web Principles

Bloody brilliant. I'm saving this link here so I can read and re-read and re-read. Via Darth Strategist's Delicious.

"The blog by a London designer offers intelligence without pedantry"

As said by the very clever people at Applied Arts Mag about this blog. ""Intelligence without pedantry" you can't argue with that as a strategy can you?

I might even get it tattooed.

If you only read one thing this weekend

Make sure you read these comments by Bruno Maag. If you like type, you'll find it fascinating.

"Let's get a little bit of history right. Arial was designed in the Monotype drawing offices, for Microsoft, in the late 80s"

"I am also no friend of Helvetica. In fact, I would love to see this typeface banned from use for a while. Just so designers can see that there is typographic pond life beyond."

"I'd happily give up my day job and wash plates if the rest of the world adopted Univers as the font to be used."

Read, learn and enjoy. You don't get this quality of typographic discussion everywhere.

"The first mobile device that I know of to use the typeface Helvetica throughout"

"It’s the first mobile device that I know of, and certainly the most elegant, to use the typeface Helvetica throughout its interface.

Everyone knows I’m a huge Helvetica fan, and you could sell me almost any device that uses the typeface, in part because there are no devices that do. But there’s a reason that this particular usage seems to signal something more to me."

What the ever excellent Khoi Vinh thinks about the use of Helvetica in a UI.

This is the new That

Brilliant and lovely. Taken from thediagram.com with many thanks. Via Design Observer. If you follow thediagram.com link you can see a much bigger version.