Tuesday, March 6, 2012

The Design Equivalent of "Aloha"

"Finished" can mean many things.

When you give your client a finished rough draft, they will react as if it were meant to be a complete, polished, ready-for-release product. And they won't want to understand why it's not.

When you give your client a finished product, they will react as if it were time for broad changes and revisions.

And they won't want to understand why it's not.

Friday, January 20, 2012

Not mine?

Nope.

It's not yours anymore.

Not if it's anything like "art."

Because art doesn't count if nobody else sees it, hears it, experiences it -- and each of these things allows that other person to own it, in a way.

So, if you did it right and made some art - relax a little as the opinions and the ideas come rolling in.

Friday, December 30, 2011

Borrowing drives buying

Amazon offers Kindle store ebooks through the Kindle Owners Lending Library (http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html/?docId=1000739811) . The hitch, if there is one, is that you agree to make your ebook exclusive to Kindle for 90 days. You also get a share of a royalty fund (I'm not at all clear on how that part works).


So I signed the LBBD up. I had only offered the book through the Kindle store, anyhow, and I thought it was reasonable to let people borrow the book.


And they have. And sales have almost doubled.


Hmmm.  Stands to reason that trying something -- like a book by an author you've never heard of (like me) -- provides a risk-free way to see if you like it. And some people will (and some people did) and then some of them will decide to buy one. 




Which is how public libraries support the publishing (and music, and move) industry. So hopefully this kind of thing  -- Library Ebook Lending Under Attack -- doesn't happen.

Thursday, December 15, 2011

Now available in paperback...

The Little Black Book of Design, my collection of design-related quotes, has been doing well in the Kindle store. Now you can get it on paper.

Ten bucks, and it does look pretty spiffy, and you can riffle through the pages to get a random thought when you need one.

Sunday, November 13, 2011

Parallax

The parallax scrolling effect can be beautiful if used subtly - I like egopop.net.

Ther are other example (some good, some not so good) here at webdesignledger.

Thursday, November 10, 2011

Visualizating data

Examples of making information more usable. I like Tableau a lot.

dotlinking.blogspot.com

Saturday, October 8, 2011

Something

If something is always better than nothing, then less is only more up to a point.