Are you curious how the brand of a large suite of complementary products is developed? It's more interesting than you might think. Adobe describes the decisions that went into the new icons, splash screens, and other brand elements of Creative Suite 6.
posted by gilrain on May 25, 2012 - 23 comments

The Ladder of Abstraction does an amazing, Tuftian job of illustrating the convergence of science, engineering, and intuition that is involved in tackling the difficult problems of today's systems and software. [more inside]
posted by rsanheim on Oct 11, 2011 - 31 comments

Dorkbot is a "monthly meeting of artists (sound/image/movement/whatever), designers, engineers, students, scientists, and other interested parties who are involved in the creative use of electricity." Started in NYC in 2000 by Douglas Repetto, Director of Research at the Columbia University Computer Music Center as well as one of Wired's 10 Sexiest Geeks, there are now dozens all over the world. Past presenters have been featured here on the blue. For instance Jeff Han presented his multi-touch interface at dorkbot-nyc in April of 2006. Miru Kim presented her naked city spleen at dorkbot-nyc in October of 2006. Bummed that there's not one in your own city? Start your own! [more inside]
posted by funkiwan on Dec 30, 2008 - 19 comments

We introduce Plushie, an interactive system that allows nonprofessional users to design their own original plush toys.
posted by geos on Dec 15, 2008 - 28 comments

It's not a bug, it's a feature: Carolin Horn has designed Anymails, which represents your email messages and folders as micro-organisms. The morphology of the individual organisms and their behaviour within colonies imparts information about the state of your email. You can view QT movies of the application in action (1, 2), download her thesis, and download the Anymails code itself. See some of her other work here (predominantly in German). via Madame Martin, the "French Metafilter".
posted by Rumple on Aug 31, 2007 - 22 comments

Magic Ink - Information Software and the Graphical Interface
posted by Gyan on Apr 7, 2007 - 29 comments

Designing With Microsoft? Evidently this is Microsoft's attempt at competition with 'Macrodobe', the strange, hybrid beast (lumbering?) that is the combined Macromedia/Adobe merger. Microsoft has launched a full suite of products taking aim at Dreamweaver, (is it better?) Illustrator-Photoshop and Flash. For many designers who pretend to be developers (or vica versa) Microsoft's new "Expression" will be 3 or 4 orders of magnitude less relevant than that old Corel Suite. The central issue seems to be one of credibility: Can Microsoft escape the seemingly permanent "FrontPage" stigma, not to mention even more recent design community letdowns?
posted by thisisdrew on Jan 23, 2007 - 101 comments

Level editor for Super Mario World.
You'll need a SNES emulator and a Super Mario World ROM.
(Ctrl+right-click to insert objects.)
posted by Tlogmer on Oct 20, 2005 - 19 comments

Is Mac OS X Becoming Crufty? I definitely think so.
posted by nthdegx on Aug 2, 2005 - 55 comments

Adobe announces new round of design applications. Inspring groans from designers everywhere who just got used to the CS apps, Adobe announced today CS2, 18 months after the last version. Included in the updates are Photoshop, Indesign, Illustrator, Golive and a new component called Bridge. The only hitch in the planned obsolescence model is that all the applications will now require product activation, thereby inspiring crackers everywhere to get busy.
posted by jeremias on Apr 4, 2005 - 57 comments

Signwave, the creators of Auto-Illustrator, have now released SleepTight. [Press release]
posted by Su on Sep 13, 2002 - 6 comments

Instant Design at the touch of a button More good news for designers -- not only has the ad market bottomed out, now this software from move design spits out instant layouts. Just add the text you want, choose the style, and hit Ctrl-G. The results are surprisingly tasteful. Is this the end of design as we know it, or just a toy for generating new ideas? Would you like fries with that?
posted by fellorwaspushed on Sep 10, 2001 - 23 comments

B&O goes virtual : Beoplayer 1.0 is a Windows application that sits on your desktop and, like everything Bang, works in a sleek, elegant, unintuitive manner (until you learn what the icons and doodads do, then you can show it off for all your friends). Guaranteed you've never seen a music player like this one.
posted by honkzilla on Jul 31, 2001 - 14 comments

Clippings is the GPL-ed code behind IHT's news-clip feature, which has been discussed on MetaFilter before. This is very cool code and I think any site with many front page links could benefit from it. Serendipitously found at smokinggun, which is not the smoking gun.
posted by icathing on Jul 31, 2001 - 19 comments

Damn, your media player is ugly. You should fix it. This site has one of the best collections of skins for various programs I have ever seen under one URL. They almost make WinMedia worth it.
posted by jcterminal on Jun 25, 2001 - 10 comments

Ok, here comes the firestorm. Joel on Software has some very good things to say -- though, like most user-interface-design mavens, I think about 50% of the time that he hasn't comprehended what the problem really is... but in this piece, he's wrong.
posted by baylink on Aug 7, 2000 - 17 comments