iPods to blame for total eclipse of the art, says Hockney (via Engadget)

Speaking on the eve of his 70th birthday, Britain’s best-loved living painter said the proliferation of iPods – Apple has sold more than 100 million worldwide – and other digital music players has combined with a decline in art education to create a “fallow period of painting”.
“We are not in a very visual age,” Hockney said. “I think it’s all about sound. People plug in their ears and don’t look much, whereas for me my eyes are the biggest pleasure.

Dude, Hockney, what are you talking about? Not a very visual age? I guess Hockney has only been watching the proliferation of iPods and hasn’t been observing plasma/LCD television sales. Or computer displays, or time spent playing video games by people 13 to 40.
The reason we’re in a ‘fallow period of painting’ is because everything has been done in visual arts. Occasionally I’ll see a contemporary artist doing a good rehashing of abstract expressionism or minimalism, or something faintly resembling the collages of Robert Rauschenberg.
We might be in a fallow period of painting but I’ll bet you sales from painting retrospectives are high. The great art exhibits I can recall recently are all retrospectives the most recent being Richard Serra Sculpture: Forty Years and Chuck Close: Self-Portraits 1967-2005 .
It’s the end of an era for painting. What will be interesting is to see what comes to fill the void.

USA Networks has some nice typography and design/grid consistency going on across all their sites and series. Thanks for the heads up Dalematic.

The New Disruptors (via Business 2.0)
The Minister of Information (via Kottke)

Microsoft’s PowerPoint software is an all-conquering monster of crumminess, a threat to life as we know it. Most of all, if you are making a presentation, you can probably say everything you need to on a single folded sheet of eleven-by-seventeen copy paper, and you ought to.

IA’s are History (via Design View) – true?

Information Architects are often put on the defensive by spears flung by peers and brethren in elated disciplines. In taking the accusations seriously and accepting the truths within them, Grant Campbell reveals our greatest strengths – shallowness, insularity, and being “relegated” to history.

Everything I Know About Design I Learned from The Sopranos

On professional behavior:
“You don’t think. You disrespect this place. That’s the reason why you were passed the fuck over.”

(this is more of a stream-of-consciousness entry than it is a well-structured essay, so I apologize if I jump around a lot)
There seems to be an inverse relationship to the natural evolution of a company on a progressing path and the perception of this company by the public.
I think people are funny, what they complain about, what they react to.

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original Olympics logo:

London 2012 Olympics logo:

Dropping a pile of shit into an ice cream cone would make for a memorable (albeit foul and inappropriate) logo for the Olympics. Just because it’s memorable and would provoke a lot of arguments doesn’t mean its good.
The bottom line is a logo’s responsibility is to distill a huge amount of information and ideas into ONE MARK that conveys the essence of a product, brand, company or event.
The London 2012 logo not only miscommunicates, but needs the original Olympics logo embedded INTO it in order to put it in context! I don’t call that a ‘design element’, I call that a crutch.
End of discussion.

WWDC 2007 – Keynote Address (Quicktime video stream) – Like most of you, I already have all the details from the Keynote, but half the fun is watching Steve Jobs deliver the news.
Regarding Apple’s announcement that iPhone apps can be developed as web applications (sites), here are 2 different POV’s:

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Agencies Behaving Badly

Why are the vast majority of agencies looking merely for people who know how to use certain tools? Why aren’t they looking for people who know how to produce modern product and truly functional results?

Adobe Launches AIR (Adobe Integrated Runtime), the artist formally known as Apollo (via TechCrunch).
Adobe has also dropped Flex 3 Beta (via MacNN) – this makes sense since it kinda ties in with their whole AIR product, letting developers create cross-platform RIA’s in browsers and on the desktop.
Microsoft is (read: wants to) going head-to-head with Flex/AIR with Silverlight. That’s great Microsoft, we’re up to version 9 of Flash and you decide to get into the RIA game. Flash has over 95% penetration and you’d like to to switch to your Silverlight plug-in why?
Video: Aero (Vista) vs. Beryl (Linux) – Ignore the crappy techno music and check out this amazing GUI for Linux. The 3-D rendering of application windows in particular blew me away.
I don’t think I want to post any news items relating to the iPhone. The tension in the air is so thick you could cut it with a knife.

My friend Bryan recently got back from Vegas …and some of the Nevada deserts. What he brought back was some cool stories and some great pictures, check them out on his new photography page.

“If you don’t know Kiera Knightly, she’s a slightly more mannish version of Orlando Bloom.”

Classic. God that ninja has a way with words.

Netscape releases Navigator 9 – I just installed it. It works. It has tabs. The few sites I’ve checked out seem to render ok CSS-wise. Problem is I just still have that bad Netscape 4.7 aftertaste in my mouth… (Hey, cut me some slack, I started web design in the 90’s, it was rough and left some scars.)
Movable Type 4.0 Beta Released – This site was built in Movable Type 3.3, I can’t wait to upgrade, it looks pretty hot.

Kurt Noble ditches Flash for tight HTML Relaunch (via NT) – Maybe it’s because I’m getting older, but there’s something to be said for nice, clean, functional HTML site with a dash of Ajax-y loading content for flavor. I dig it.

Humans make sense of the world through pattern recognition, here’s a pattern I’ve picked up on (and I’m definitely not the first):
August 29, 2006 Google’s CEO, Eric Schmidt joins Apple’s board of directors
9 October, 2006 Google Buys YouTube
9 January 2007 Apple launches Apple TV
2 April 2007 Apple and EMI Music agree to DRM-free tracks on iTunes
30 May 2007 Apple to feature YouTube video content on Apple TV
May 31, 2007 Youtube Signs Deal with EMI
Do you see where this is going? Apple (and Google (and EMI)) is no dummy. The iPod was tossed aside by initial critics…. Apple retail stores were said to go under within a year…. Apple TV is a dud says critics….
I’m not saying Apple is guaranteed success in the everything, but just keep your eye on them, before you know it, they might be in your living room (and phone, and music player and computer).

Today Microsoft announces the release of a new multi-touch screen product/technology called Surface. It allows you to interact with a screen in a very natural way, by dragging objects on the screen around with your fingers and using various gestures, not with 1 finger, but with many fingers on both hands.

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