That’s a lovely quip from Paul Graham, but it really isn’t as dramatic as it sounds in the context of Ragnar Sass’s 5 Accelerator Lessons.
Still, there’s valuable insight there, so dig in.
Toronto, tech hub of the world.
Six years ago I attended a symposium on Toronto’s roll in the tech/design landscape in North America. At the time it was said we were 3rd in north America for the volume and quality of ICT skilled workers following New York and San Francisco.
This week, Rip Empson, janitor at Techcrunch, shared Startup Genome’s findings on How The World’s Top Tech Hubs Stack Up. And it seems we’re holding on to our ranking in the global context.
A little colour for Easter weekend.
(Source: howaboutorange.blogspot.ca, via likeneelyohara)
Tradeoffs.
John Gruber gave the keynote speech at The Çingleton Symposium this past October, assessing the tech industry from his position keynoting Çingleton 5 years prior, through to the industry as it stood at the time of last October’s keynote, and looking ahead another 5 years.
Looking at the current state of the industry, Gruber reiterated Microsoft’s Windows 8 mantra, “No compromises!”, as Windows 8 looks to bring a touch experience to the desktop and have the power of the desktop on their tablets. The trouble is, this is a massive compromise of an essential tenet of design: reducing complexity.
Tumblr’s new icons. A great improvement.
Tumblr’s just updated their Dashboard blog post icons.
Here’s what they looked like on Monday:
And here’s what our Tumblr Dashboard looks like today:
Wow. What an improvement!
So, what makes these new icons so great? Well, at a glance recognition, that’s what.
Patterns in mobile app design, a series of screen comparisons.
Discover interaction and design similarities and spot the differences between apps in these two categorized directories of mobile app screens.
Mobile UI Patterns
With topics such as Check-in Screens, Empty Data Sets, Maps, and many more, Mobile UI Patterns, gives you a single row of screens to scroll through. Dig in!
Pttrns
Meanwhile, Pttrns joins the fray with a two column approach highlighting such app categories as Calendars, Friends, Messaging, and more. Take a look!
These are great quick reference tools. And I wish there was a crowd-sourced site like this. I don’t think Pinterest really supports this kind of easy sorting, but that would perhaps be the best option. Can you recommend any other sites like these?
Design does matter.
John Gruber, today:
For years, when Apple was down, they were held up as proof that making the best products didn’t matter. The Mac is better than Windows and look what happened was the refrain.
Not any more. Yesterday, Apple recorded the second most profitable quarter of any US company, ever. Just look at these charts from Dan Frommer:
Design for living, beginning tonight at the TIFF Bell Lightbox.
From January 13 to January 17, browse to tiff.net/design for details on joining Gary Hustwit and friends in viewing his three-part exploration of modern design, the docs Helvetica, Objectified, and Urbanized.
Burton Kramer, Identities, chronicles an icon of Canadian design.
Designers in Canada owe a debt to Burton Kramer. As Roger Remington states in the introduction of Burton Kramer, Identities:
Kramer became known as a staunch advocate of fully integrated design at a time when such an approach was virtually unknown in Canada.
Bringing this Swiss design ethos to Canada in the mid-60s was quite a revelation and, with Expo 67, gave Kramer and designers such as Moshe Safdie an opportunity to shine as the world visited Montreal.
