I will not say concept when I mean idea. I will not say impacted when I mean affected. There will be no hands-on state-of-the-art networking. We will not maximize, prioritize, or finalize…and we definitely will not interface. There will also…there will also be no new-age lingo spoken here tonight. No support-group jargon from the human potential movement. For instance, I will not share anything with you. I will not relate to you and you will not identify with me. I will give you no input, and I will expect no feedback. This will not be a learning experience, nor will it be a growth period. There’ll be no sharing, no caring, no birthing, no bonding, no parenting, no nurturing. We will not establish a relationship, we will not have any meaningful dialogue and we definitely will not spend any quality time. We will not be supportive of one another, so that we can get in touch with our feelings in order to feel good about ourselves.

And if you’re one of those people who needs a little space…please…go the fuck outside.

–George Carlin, Parental Advisory: Explicit Lyrics
Words to live by.

Maybe he was just doing the grumpy old man skit from Jackass.

A great article at A List Apart by Dan Mall on the differences between art direction and design. I know for a while I wasn’t sure what the differences were outside of heirarchy in studios and agencies.
What is art direction:

Art direction brings clarity and definition to our work; it helps our work convey a specific message to a particular group of people. Art direction combines art and design to evoke a cultural and emotional reaction. It influences movies, music, websites, magazines–just about anything we interact with. Without art direction, we’re left with dry, sterile experiences that are easily forgotten. Can a New York subway ad about the homeless provoke you to donate money? Why do you want to beg Clarice Starling to turn around, even though you know she can’t hear you? How do candles transform a regular meal into a romantic evening? Art direction is about evoking the right emotion, it’s about creating that connection to what you’re seeing and experiencing.

and design:

By contrast, design is the technical execution of that connection. Do these colors match? Is the line-length comfortable for long periods of reading? Is this photo in focus? Does the typographic hierarchy work? Is this composition balanced?

Thanks Vic.

This post at the Daily Telegraph folds in nicely with my recent post on noting and flipping. I’m not sure if Twitter is responsible for making handwriting cool again (maybe it is?). Being a designer, I’ve always been surrounded by note/sketchbook toting people. People writing down thoughts, sketches, schematics. People giving form to the abstract things floating around their heads.
From the article:

Wohlgefühl: it’s one of those enigmatic words the German language excels in constructing. It can mean ‘wellbeing’ or ‘good feeling’, but it is the word Meike Wander, owner of Berlin’s RSVP stationery shop, uses to describe the timelessly simple delight of handwriting: of pen in hand, ink on paper and skin on surface as thoughts and images transfer from the imaginative to the material.

‘It’s a physical experience, it’s your body doing something,’ Wander says in her hesitant English. ‘Handwriting produces a good feeling – a wohlgefühl.’

Yes and yes.
Like most things, it’s not and shouldn’t be the exclusive tool for artists and designers. Everyone can benefit by getting their thoughts down on paper.

via Khoi Vinh via Daring Fireball

If we don’t, remember me. (via Twitter via BITM)

Editing The Dead (via Analogue)

I love details.

Khoi Vihn on the tools Adobe is providing to create iPad magazine apps:

In my personal opinion, Adobe is doing a tremendous disservice to the publishing industry by encouraging these ineptly literal translations of print publications into iPad apps. They’ve fostered a preoccupation with the sort of monolithic, overbearing apps represented by The New Yorker, Wired and Popular Science. Meanwhile, what publishers should really be focusing on is clever, nimble, entertaining apps like EW’s Must List or Gourmet Live. Neither of those are perfect, but both actively understand that they must translate their print editions into a utilitarian complement to their users’ content consumption habits.

And:

In a media world that looks increasingly like the busy downtown heart of a city — with innumerable activities, events and alternative sources of distraction around you — these apps demand that you confine yourself to a remote, suburban cul-de-sac.

The advice I like to give young artists, or really anybody who’ll listen to me, is not to wait around for inspiration. Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work. If you wait around for the clouds to part and a bolt of lightning to strike you in the brain, you are not going to make an awful lot of work. All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself. Things occur to you. If you’re sitting around trying to dream up a great art idea, you can sit there a long time before anything happens. But if you just get to work, something will occur to you and something else will occur to you and somthing else that you reject will push you in another direction. Inspiration is absolutely unnecessary and somehow deceptive. You feel like you need this great idea before you can get down to work, and I find that’s almost never the case.

-Chuck Close (via We Are The Digital Kids)

Buzzfeed’s Jon Steinberg on Google TV:

I tried Google TV yesterday. Flying a Cessna is easier and has fewer controls than the Sony remote

Niiiiiiiiiice.
Way to go there Google, with yer engineers, engineering up some complicated shit for non-techie consumers.
Heard of design thinking?
via Gizmodo

Radiohead’s Colin Greenwood reflecting on In Rainbows, ahead of the release of their upcoming album:

With In Rainbows, we were able to be the first people to digitally release our record, directly to people’s personal computers, at 7.30am GMT on 10 October 2007. I was having breakfast, and watched as the file appeared in my email, and the album streamed onto my desktop. I spent the next day and night monitoring people’s reactions online, both to the music and the means of delivery. Journalists in America had stayed up overnight to write the first review as they received the music – again, in the pre-digital age they would have had advance copies up to three weeks before. On the torrent site bulletin boards, people were arguing over whether they should be downloading and paying for the record from our site, rather than the free torrents. Various online pundits and pamphleteers were pronouncing the end of the record business, or of Radiohead, or of both.

Hey marketing and brand gurus, you taking note of his fan-centric infused campaign of real-time value launchpad content?
People, feelings, stories, and things.