From Rolling Stone magazine, Paul Simon doesn’t like being Second to Dylan:

Simon, who has just released his new album So Beautiful Or So What, says that in his head at least, there has been something of a folk stand-off going on.

He told Rolling Stone: “I usually come in second to (to Dylan), and I don’t like coming in second. In the beginning, when we were first signed to Columbia, I really admired Dylan’s work. The Sound of Silence wouldn’t have been written if it weren’t for Dylan. But I left that feeling around The Graduate and Mrs Robinson. They weren’t folky any more.”

via The Guardian

Beautiful work by Adam Hill on his site, Velcro Suit.
via Ministry of Type

Nick Fletcher on the flaw in iOS’ Notification System:

Quite simply, the modal alerts that iOS currently uses are broken not because tech bloggers everywhere are struggling with notifications all the time, but because the iOS system fails to account for the contextual areas in which showing a notification is actually impeding your use of the device. For example: when you’re on the phone and an SMS comes in. I’ve never once been on a phonecall where, after concluding the call, knowing I got an SMS from my fiancée was more important than hanging up the call.

I’m looking forward to the next version of iOS where this is fixed. I know it’s something Apple is aware of and has every intention of fixing, but make no mistake, it’s a BIG fix. I would say it’s on par with copy-and-paste because it’s a core feature effecting every part of the operating system.
And like copy-and-paste, Apple is going to take it’s time to make sure the solution release is thought out, elegant and easy to use.

The designer who voluntarily presents his client with a batch of layouts does so not out of prolificacy, but out of uncertainty or fear.

—Paul Rand
via @mullerbrockmann (via Analogue)

I came across a product called Applecore over at Minimal Mac. It’s a little piece of plastic you wrap your extra long electronics cables around so they’re not a gangly mess:

It’s a great idea, but I came up with my own, home-grown, hand-rolled (if you will) solution to the cord problem years ago.
As my friends and anyone who’s worked with our near me knows, I’m a bit OCD about my cables, but you don’t need an Applecore to fix it, you just need to do this:

If you don’t have the patience or dexterity to do what I did, I still think Applecore is a great product.

via design mind

via the Duke University Libraries . . . via the Library of Congress

Frank Chimero on Reading Readiness:

It irks me when people say that blog posts are too long. Sometimes, I catch myself saying the same. Who ever decided the proper length of a blog post? Not me. Not you. Not anyone. An individual only decides the length of their attention. Text takes time–to make, to design, to read. For things to work, effort must be matched. To return to our kung-fu movie: effort and attention from the student is matched with the attention of the master. Similarly so with the writer and the reader. To be willing to match attention is to be kind and ready.

The Guardian: Rihanna and the rise of raunch pop:
S&M marked a pivotal moment for pop. In 2007, Rihanna told Paper magazine she aspired to be “the black Madonna”, and it’s possible S&M was her calculated attempt to top the level of infamy her heroine once attained, but she could just as well have taken her cues from the generation of phenomenally successful good-girls-gone-bad that preceded her: Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera. Their own transmogrifications from wholesome teen stars to FHM poster girls upped the stakes for future pop princesses, who must wear less and promise more to make the same impact on an over-stimulated audience. Pop music has reached a point where it’s most successful young women are shooting whipped cream (Katy Perry) and fireworks (Lady Gaga) out of their bras.

I had read good things about the New Yorker iPad app, but now I’m convinced.
via FishbowlNY

I’ve started a new project and output of this project will be showcased on new website – Tangled Web of Vice. Simply put – I’ve superimposed quotes from Mad Men episodes on top of screen grabs from the scene I’ve pulled the quote from.
Making these quote-graphics wasn’t my original goal. It started out as an exercise to improve my penmanship after reading this depressing article in the New York Times. So I decided to practice my writing skills in my moleskin notebook, but I needed something to write. I wasn’t interested in starting a diary or journal (that’s what this site is for, sort of) and since the new season of Mad Men won’t start until 2012, I decided to start watching all my DVD sets and write down lines I like:

Once I had dozens of these quotes written down (and I started to feel a little better about my penmanship) I started reading them over and realized they would make great little graphic pieces:

Something about the simplicity really appealed to me.
From here, I thought I’d see what adding a screen grab from the show would do it:

The words had impact on their own, but adding a screen grab behind them gave the piece emotion and context. I also crop the images individually – they’re not all dropped in at full frame. The crop amps of the level of impact and emotion.
I’ve started arbitrarily with Season 2 of Mad Men, and I’m going to continue to create these in no particular order. It will be my daily graphics exercise.
Enjoy.

Electronista: Huadian promises to directly clone iPad 2 (my emphasis):

Chinese electronics maker Huadian has stated it will soon build a tablet that will mimic many of the design features of Apple’s very popular iPad 2. These include an alloy contstruction, 9.7-inch capacitive touchscreen and identical 8.8mm thickness. According to GizChina, the device will be noticeably inferior on the inside and sport an 800MHz AMLogic CPU, 512MB of RAM and 8GB of flash memory. There is no word on the OS, but it’s likely to be Android or a freely distributed system.

Imitation is the first phase of the creative process, it’s how you find your voice – be it music, design, or art, but as a final output? Yes, I know about the Chinese culture of shanzai, but I still think direct duplication like this is bullshit.