What do you think?

I recently added a page produced by Delicious Library to show the books I am currently reading, the books I’ve recently read, and the books I plan on reading soon. The webpage was produced automatically by the Delicious Library application. Its really just an experiment. I’d like to strip the automatic html and place it in the current site template to produce something like this:

Of course, I’m also thinking about redoing the whole theme. So i might just leave it for a while.

Check it out, and let me know what you think.

(19) Draw Hierarchically.

When drawing in any medium, never work at a “100% level of detail” from one end of the sheet toward the other, blank end of the sheet. Instead, start with the most general elements of the composition and work gradually toward the more specific aspects of it. Begin by laying out the entire sheet. Use light guide lines, geometric alignments, visual gut-checks, and other methods to cross-check the proportions, relationships, and placement of the elements you are drawing. When you achieve some success at this schematic level, move to the next level of detail. If you find yourself focusing on details in a specific area of the drawing, indulge briefly, then move to other areas of the drawing. Evaluate your success continually, making local adjustments in the context of the entire sheet.

This one is great. It seems relatively obvious. If you replace the word “drawing” in the above passage with information architecture, interaction design, or design research and the author could be speaking about what I do everyday.

One of the strategies that I’ve found that has works very well is to start in the middle of something and move outwards at a mid-level of fidelity. Try to flesh everything out first and then work into more details.

(23) Reality may be engaged subjectively, by which one presumes a oneness with the object of his concern, or objectively, by which a detachment is presumed.

Objectivity is the province of the scientist, technician, mechanic, logician, and mathematician. Subjectivity is the milieu of the artist, musician, mystic, and free spirit. Citizens of modern cultures are inclined to value the objective view–and hence it may tend to be your world view–but both modes of engagement are crucial to understanding and creating architecture.

This one hit straight to the core of a belief of mine that has been fundamental for as long as I can remember. It been very important in my life to view things from both an objective and subjective perspective simultaneously. In design research and ethnographic research this manifests itself by looking at both the emic and etic perspectives, or relying on both analysis and synthesis of data. Or also constantly balancing using deductive, inductive and abductive logic. Its vitally important that design research both “inspire imagination” and “inform intuition.”

Analysis without synthesis can often lead to narrowly focused solutions that don’t solve the real problem. On the other hand, synthesis without analysis can often lead to ideas or solutions that are not grounded in reality.

(26) Good designers are fast on their feet.

As the design process advances, complications inevitably arise-structural problems, fluctuating client requests, difficulties in resolving fire egress, pieces of the program forgotten and rediscovered, new understandings of old information, and much more. Your parti–once a wondrous prodigy–will suddenly face failure.

A poor designer will attempt to hold onto a failed parti and patch local fixes onto the problem areas, thus losing the integrity of the whole. Other may feel defeated and abandon the pursuit of an integrated whole. But a good designer understands the erosion of a parti as a helpful indication of where a project needs to go next.

When complications in the design process ruin your scheme, change–or if necessary, abandon–your parti. But don’t abandon having a parti, and don’t dig in tenaciously in defense of a scheme that no longer works. Create another parti that holistically incorporates all that you now know about the building.

I see this all the time. Designers trying to hold onto an idea that worked at one level of granularity, but not at another. There is a time and a place to hold onto ideas, and a time to let go of them. As a designer, I always try to create an information architecture that creates a systematic solution for the specific design problem at hand.

(27) Soft ideas, soft lines; hard ideas, hard lines

Fat markers, charcoal, pastels, crayons, paint, soft pencils, and other loose or soft implements are valuable tools for exploring conceptual ideas early in the design process, as by their nature they tend to encourage broad thinking and deny fine-grained decisions. Fine-point markers and sharp pencils become more useful as the design process moves closer to a more highly resolved plan. Value drawings can help express nuances and subtleties.

Hard-line drawings–drawings drafted to scale with a straightedge or computer program–are best for conveying information that is decisive, specific, and quantitative, such as final floor plans or detailed wall sections. They can be occasionally useful in schematic design, such as when you need to test out the dimensional workability of a design concept. When overused as a design tool, however, computer drafting programs can encourage the endless generation of options rather than foster a deepening understanding of the design problem you wish to solve.

Ah, an oldie, but a goodie: the medium is the message. The tools we use have a very strong influence on how we think about what we are doing and creating.

(28) A good designer isn’t afraid to throw away a good idea.

Just because an interesting idea occurs to you doesn’t mean it belogns in the building you are designing. Subject every idea, brainstorm, random musing, and helpful suggestion to careful, critical consideration. Your goal as a designer should be to create an integrated whole, not to incorporate all the best features in your building whether or not they work together.

Think of a parti as an author employs a thesis, or as a composer employs a musical theme: not every idea a creator conjures up belongs in the work at hand! Save your good but ill-fitting ideas for another time and project–and with the knowledge that they might not work then, either.

I was watching Project Runway the other day, and noticed another manifestation of this same idea. One of the designers was criticized from not “editing her ideas.” As designers, we have to know when enough is enough, and when a great idea is appropriate for the project at hand.

What’s your take on these five concepts? Do they resonate with you too, or do you disagree with them? Let me know what you think.

Hooray. Mad Men is back on again, and I finally caught the first episode of season 2. If you have watch this show before, then you probably already know what happened. I’m looking forward to another season of getting into the psychie, behavior and norms of these 1960’s ad men and the people in their lives.

If you haven’t seen it yet, or didn’t see season 1, you can check out the best of season 1.

I came to last season late, and watched all the episodes in a couple days on my computer, but this year it looks like going to have to wait a week to watch each episode, which really changes the dynamics of consumption.

Have you seen it yet?! what do you think? Leave your thoughts in the comments.

The Pencil Project is a Firefox add-on “for making diagrams and GUI prototyping that everyone can use.”

I give it a try when I get a chance and let you know what I think.

Much has been made of the whole “what do women want/what do men want” thing. I think it’s actually pretty simple: Women want men to know what women want. And men want women not to want anything.

read full article here

Below are a few of the sketches of the type of thing I’m talking about. When actually printed and put on the wall they could be in a single frame with 6 sections, or in 6 separate frames. The exact manifestation is yet to be determined.

The above sketches show two of the three obvious classes of representations. (1) photos of actual letters [ ransom note style], and (2) physical objects that unintentionally represent a given letter. The third class of font that isn’t represented is further removed, showing a photo of an object that begins with the letter you want to represent. So for Cooper, maybe that is a series of 6 photos of a clock, orange, orange, pyramid, elephant, and ring.

What do you think? Any recomendations for directions or options?

I just got Jim White’s new album today, Transnormal Skiperoo, and I’m very excited. I’ve only had a chance to listen to it a few times. So, I’ll give you a more detailed review at a later date.

But for now, the album’s webpage has a great bio of Jim as well as a song by song commentary by Jim about the album, which I’ve cut-and-pasted for your convenience below:

Transnormal Skiperoo is a name I invented to describe a strange new feeling I’ve been experiencing after years of feeling lost and alone and cursed. Now, when everything around me begins to shine, when I find myself dancing around in my back yard for no particular reason other than it feels good to be alive, when I get this deep sense of gratitude that I don’t need drugs or God or doomed romance to fuel myself through the gauntlet of a normal day, I call that feeling ‘Transnormal Skiperoo.’ Jim White

Jim White traveled many a junkyard road to get to Transnormal Skiperoo. Raised in Pensacola, Florida, a town crushed between the church and heroin, Jim’s songs reach deep into the underbelly of the South. One time Pentacostal, fashion model, New York taxi driver, drifter, pro-surfer, photographer, film-maker, his music is the conduit for all the stories he collected along the way. His previous albums ‘Wrong-Eyed Jesus’ [1997], ‘No Such Place’ [2001] and ‘Drill a Hole in That Substrate…’ [2004] were acclaimed as masterpieces of ‘outer space alt.country’ and established Jim as a phenomenal maverick talent. Jim also starred in the BBC4 film ‘Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus’, an award-winning road-movie exploring Southern culture through its music and stories. Now living in an old farmhouse in the backwoods of Georgia, Jim White may have finally reached a place called home, but his other search, for what he calls ‘the gold tooth in God’s crooked smile’ continues in this new set of backyard tales. Transnormal Skiperoo was produced by Joe Pernice and Michael Deming, recorded with the band Ollabelle, and also features tracks with Tucker Martine and Laura Veirs, local Georgia legend Don Chambers & Goat, bluegrass duo Jeff & Vida and percussionist Mauro Refosco.

Jim White is a highly original voice in the immense Southern gothic tradition. When broken humanity aches for grace, music like his may give you a shot at redemption.

JIM WHITE on TRANSNORMAL SKIPEROO

A Town Called Amen is a song about growing old and settling into a sort of tender acceptance of life. There’s a film by Ingmar Bergman called The Wild Strawberries that reminds me of what I was trying to get at in that song.

Blindly We Go is an unusual song for me musically, although the lyrics deal with a familiar preoccupation of mine—-the (for lack of a better term) unknowability of God. It’s something I find myself thinking about a lot. There’s that old Zen saying, “If you meet God on the road, kill him.” In the South everyone is always telling me about how God told them this and God told them that, and their recitations of divine contact always feel like constructs of hubris. I have little trust for people who tell me they talk to God and God replies in strangely anthropomorphic, culturally precise ways that exactly mirror the person’s mindset.

Jailbird is an old song from the days when I had to run from my problems

Crash Into The Sun is my message song. Since it was so preachy I wanted it to be musically adventurous, so I talked my good friend Tucker Martine into producing it. I flew to Seattle, all excited at the prospect of finally getting to work with Tucker with his stable of incredible musicians - Karl Blau, Steve Moore, Laura Veirs, Eyvind Kang.

Fruit Of The Vine is a song that was prompted by thinking about that movie I did with BBC 4 [Searching for the Wrong Eyed Jesus] The images and characters in the film returned to me a lot, particularly the meth dealer who was doing life in prison. I thought about all my friends in similar situations and how their lives carried them to points of desperation and wanted to put some of those sad stories and cultural elements into a song.

Take Me Away is a story song, a hillbilly stomper, loosely based on the life and times of a friend of mine who’s daddy was a preacher and who married a woman who’s daddy was a preacher. He was surrounded by Jesus on every side and there was lots of pressure put on him to be a preacher as well. But he just didn’t have it in him. In his heart of hearts he was a deeply creative, intuitive artistic person, but in the church he had no outlet for his profound talents (he was my musical inspiration when I was in my teens) so he slowly but surely lost his mind. I took him as a character and created a context with the train and the men from the asylum that I thought symbolically represented his plight.

Turquoise House is a corn ball homage to misfits. Every album I put out has some goofy song on there that seems to contradict my perceived personality–this sensitive, suffering lost soul.

Diamonds To Coal was a real challenge, both to write and produce. I’ve always relied on dramatic situations—crimes and murder and betrayal and terrible loss—to convey my feelings about life. This is sort of a juvenile mindset. Sooner or later you have to move on from those dramatic archetypes and talk about the meaning that can be found in the quotidian realm. This is my first attempt to do that. Musically I was shooting for Tony Joe White and never quite hit the target. It makes me appreciate all the more what he does.

Counting Numbers In The Air is a question song. It asks “how did we get in the mess of being grown up and disconnected from what is essential in life? Musically I’ve very proud of this song–I feel like I went to an exotic sonic club med on this song.

Plywood Superman started out as an observational song, (a song about imagined others), and slowly came around to being a song about an aspect of my personality that I used to struggle with, but that of late I’ve learned to disregard. For years that side of me held a lot of sway with my sensibilities and choices. I was always a fingertip away from something that I could never quite reach. I quit reaching a while back and what I craved found me, instead of the other way around.

Pieces Of Heaven is a song I wrote to my two daughters. It’s my way of wishing them well on their way and hoping that they will remember me with the love that I daily feel for them.

Long Long Day - I collaborated on this with a buegrass outfit called Jeff & Vida. They’re a husband and wife duo that have great musical skills and really understand how to compliment each other. Vida really nailed the wistful bucolic feeling that I was hoping for in the vocals. She a great singer and Jeff can play the hell out of anything with string on it (bathing suits excluded, so far as I know, anyway)

If it sounds interesting to you, you can grab it at Amazon like I did, either as a physical disc or an mp3 download: