At Apple's
keynote presentation at the WWDC yesterday, scorn for Scott Forstall – their
recently-fired VP of iOS software – ran rampant. His preference for skeuomorphic design (calendars that look like leather and so-on) was
mocked repeatedly by Craig Federighi: “Look! Even without all that stitching, everything just stays in place.” But the real shocker was the completely redesigned
iOS 7, created under the supervision of Jonathan Ive, who prior handled all of Apple's hardware design and none of its software. Previously Ive and Forstall were much at odds,
reportedly refusing to even meet with each other—and it should be noted that
Ives' famous idol, the legendary industrial designer Dieter Rams, famously rejected artificial wooden furnishings with his breakout design,
the record player that was nicknamed "Snow White's Coffin" for its transparent lid. Forstall's ousting
placed Ive in charge of interface as well as industrial design, and it was expected that the shift would lead to a change in iOS design philosophy. But the change was perhaps more radical than expected—
a complete overhaul that looks simple to the point of cartoonishness, with abstracted icons and stark layouts. Some critics are already complaining that
iOS 7 goes too far in the other direction; others note the
deep rigor of its new rules-based design. You can hear Ive talk about his design
here [warning: obnoxious Apple promo video]. And Apple threw its support behind Ive with
an unexpectedly lovely short video about the design process [warning: possibly also obnoxious]: "We start to confuse convenience for joy, abundance with choice. There are a thousand no's for every yes."
posted by Rory Marinich
on Jun 11, 2013 -
301 comments
There’s an old dream in game design. It drives the design of games like SimCity, Dwarf Fortress, Tropico, The Sims, and Prison Architect. I like to call it the Simulation Dream. - Bioshock Infinite designer Tynan Sylvester on games, complexity, stories and simulation.
posted by Artw
on Jun 10, 2013 -
29 comments
Throughout human history and across the globe, whether as intimate artifacts of interpersonal relations or state-level monumental works, textiles have been imbued with political importance. Textiles can communicate and construct status, ethnicity, gender, power, taste, and wealth, and have functioned at the nexus of artistic, economic, and political achievement in human culture. As trade goods, creative medium, and social artifact, textiles have been instrumental in generating, supporting, and challenging political power.
The
Textile Society of America 13th Biennial Symposium (2012) will explore the crossroads of Textiles & Politics.
posted by infini
on Jun 9, 2013 -
12 comments
"There isn’t a style book for this stuff," Tom Bodkin, design director of the
Times explains. "There’s no consistency."
posted by larrybob
on May 3, 2013 -
9 comments
150 U.S. city flags, ranked from best to worst. Top-rated flags are typically tasteful and abstract, like
that of Washington D.C. (#1) or subtly representational, like
Madison, Wisconsin's flag(#11), which is more or less a glyph of Madison seen from above. The bottom of the list has some that seem stuck in a briefly popular graphic style, like
Provo (#143), but most are timelessly
ongepotch like the
flag of Milwaukee (#147), which features a boat, a skyline, some smokestacks, some grain, County Stadium, a Native American,and a church. And then there is Pocatello (#150), whose flag
was memorably profiled on badflags. (Vexillology
previously on MetaFilter.)
posted by escabeche
on Apr 14, 2013 -
126 comments
Sian Jarvis, the supermarket’s head of corporate affairs, had undermined her claims to care about the health of her customers and let slip one of the secrets of a multi-billion-pound industry ... she revealed that one in three Asda checkouts “are what we call guilt-free checkouts”. Jarvis insisted “guilt-free” was merely “a term that’s commonly used in retail”. But it was too late, and her “guilt” gaffe quickly invited scorn in the industry and among public health professionals. Whatever the damage, she had already opened a door to the arcane science of supermarket psychology. To the designers of the modern store, shoppers are lab rats with trolleys, guided through a maze of aisles by the promise of rewards they never knew they sought The Secrets Of Our Supermarkets
[more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns
on Apr 10, 2013 -
238 comments
Animated Engines has been mentioned a
couple times before, but I wanted to highlight the site entire, along with its sister site,
507 Mechanical Movements. Both sites have animated diagrams of a huge variety of engines and (relatively) simple machines, the latter based on an
1868 book by Henry T. Brown of the same name. While all of the engines are animated, the animated machines start on
page 3, and go on from there. And every diagram leads to a page that explains the machine's function — step-by-step in the case of the engines.
posted by cthuljew
on Mar 23, 2013 -
14 comments
25 (of the) Top Movie Posters of All Time with commentaries from non-movie-poster designers. Ignore or critique the ranking, note any obvious omissions, or just chuckle at the unstated similarity between #13 and #14. Still, a fine showcase of movie - and movie marketing - history.
posted by oneswellfoop
on Mar 22, 2013 -
48 comments
Stop Using Small Font Sizes "I'm calling you out. All of you. The hackers, the designers, the code monkeys, the word-smiths, the editors, the CSS gurus, and everyone else who works on content management systems and style sheets for news sites. Stop using small font sizes."
[more inside]
posted by mediareport
on Mar 12, 2013 -
120 comments
In 1963, BBC production designer
Raymond Cusick was asked to design the first monster for a new show, Doctor Who. Terry Nation's script required aliens called "
Daleks" whose hobbies included world-domination and shouting "
exterminate". In response, Cusick came up with the amazing and even iconic Dalek design which spawned Dalek-Mania across the world.
[more inside]
posted by w0mbat
on Feb 25, 2013 -
60 comments
"This week, we discovered an utterly charming card used by Isaac Asimov ('natural resource' is right) and, inspired, began hunting for more
famous peoples' business cards, whether boilerplate or highly designed, staid or comical."
posted by gilrain
on Jan 22, 2013 -
92 comments
Take a copy of Monopoly, cover it in lye for a few days, boil from off the bones whatever flesh remains, and give the clean white skeleton a tasteful, minimalist paintjob, and you end up with
ONOPO, an extreme reduction of the original boardgame by Metafilter's own Matthew Hollett, aka
oulipian.
Via mefi projects, hat tip to fastcodesign c/o Rock Paper Shotgun's always-lovely Sunday Papers feature.
posted by cortex
on Jan 20, 2013 -
56 comments
