#design (34 quotes)
It is a cliche in our business that the first 90 percent of the work is easy, the second 90 percent wears you down, and the last 90 percent – the attention to detail – makes a good product.
— , The Graphing Calculator Story There is a similar craftman’s spirit (“shokunin kishitsu” or “shokunin katagi”) in Europe. Yet in Europe I can see it coming alive only from a certain level of sophistication. –In Japan, even ordinary jobs such as cleaning and cooking are filled with this craftman’s spirit. It is common sense in Japan.
— , On Japanese Aesthetics What is required in our field, more than anything else, is the continuous transgression. Professionalism does not allow for that because transgression has to encompass the possibility of failure and if you are professional your instinct is not to fail, it is to repeat success. So professionalism as a lifetime aspiration is a limited goal.
— , Ten Things I Have Learned If you are a sexy, cool charismatic brand, you will have a fairly easy life on social media – people would want to hear from you and be associated with you. They will create fan page for you on facebook, they will talk with their friends about you and share stuff about you on Twitter. They will probably take part if you ask them to submit something etc. If you are not one of these brands, you will have to work much harder to earn your social capital. I’m not saying it’s not possible but you will probably have to invest more. More time and money to help you be more fun, interesting, funny or useful. And you should also find those who love you and nurture the relationship you have with them.
If you’re an asshole kind of brand, you’re pretty much fucked.
— , Basking in Reflected Glory Instead of exploring the benefits of flexible web design, we rely on a little white lie: “minimum screen resolution.” These three words contain a powerful magic, under the cover of which we churn out fixed-width layout after fixed-width layout, perhaps revisiting a design every few years to “bump up” the width once it’s judged safe enough to do so. “Minimum screen resolution” lets us design for a contrived subset of users who see our design as god and Photoshop intended. These users always browse with a maximized 1024×768 window, and are never running, say, an OLPC laptop, or looking at the web with a monitor that’s more than four years old.
— , Fluid Grids The importance of comprehending context – circumstances and conditions that surround a place, thing, or event – within the mobile environment cannot be overstated. Your content is of little value to users if it ignores the context in which it is viewed, manipulated, and processed.
— , Mobile Web Design There are some architects and developers who really get climate change, but most don’t or choose not to. As a result we get a lot of greenwash, such as green gadgets and microtechnology stuck on to buildings, rather than a proper approach to sustainable design.
— , Developers accused of pursuing gadgetry instead of saving planet I’m appalled by those who [judge] advertising exclusively on the basis of sales. That isn’t enough. Of course, advertising must sell. By any definition it is lousy advertising if it doesn’t. But if sales are achieved with work that is in bad taste or is intellectual garbage, it shouldn’t be applauded no matter how much it sells. Offensive, dull, abrasive, stupid advertising is bad for the entire industry and bad for business as a whole.
— , Hey Whipple, Squeeze This You probably know this glyph by one of its other names: the number, numeral, or pound sign — or (if you’re a developer) the hash.
— , About the Octothorp (#)