This week I take a look at the two papers released to date by Unit Editions and at the first edition of the new Process Journal. It’s only been a few days since the last one but the hot Summer days has given me a chance to catch up on the reading I’ve gotten behind on.

U:D/R 01 and 02

Unit Edition’s Unit:Design/Research papers aim to bring to light forgotten classics of the design world and give them more context than a Blog would provide.

I seem to have a love hate relationship with newsprint. I love the way it feels and how image looks on it, however it’s not exactly the easiest thing to handle, though staples go some way to fix this. I’m guessing U:D/R isn’t printed with the sort of ink that doesn’t rub off because my fingers are filthy after reading it.

As for the content well I’m not so sure, I guess this isn’t the sort of topics that are ideal for me, personally I’m not that interested by the work of Ronald Clyne and Form magazine. But oh well, it’s all very nicely laid out and the it’s beautiful to look at.

Process Journal: Edition One

Process Journal collects and displays the very best Australian and International design. The very first issue brings together work from Tim George, Spin and many others and I have to say I really love the layout and work featured. The interviews are equally excellent and take a more freeform approach than the set in stone style of Eight:48 going into the process of how they made the work featured, which I always enjoy reading about.

I particularly enjoyed the interviews with Kim Holtermand, Tim George and Heydays. Process Journal is released quarterly and I’m certainly looking forward to the next issue which I’m hoping will be coming out soon. ]]> http://craigbaldwin.com/blog/2010/05/in-the-post-udr-and-process-journal/feed/ 0 http://craigbaldwin.com/blog/2010/05/in-the-post-eight48-and-feltron-annual-2009/ http://craigbaldwin.com/blog/2010/05/in-the-post-eight48-and-feltron-annual-2009/#comments Fri, 21 May 2010 11:00:52 +0000 Craig Baldwin http://craigbaldwin.com/blog/?p=6621 In the post features quick reviews of printed publications that I have recently purchased, I buy things on a regular basis so I thought I'd share my opinions on what I've received recently.

Just a quick thought that I mentioned in a tweet earlier today, it just occurred to me today.

When the Times website goes behind a paywall in June this year they’ll be hoping that 5% of their current readers convert to paying for it. Well that’s fair enough if that happens (I’m doubtful) but those converting will be the people that value their editorial content and know the quality of the content already. But looking forward, how are they going to attract new subscribers?

How are people going to know that the Times publishes quality content when they can’t even see it? What happens if people decide to no longer subscribe for it? How are they going to make up for those that stop paying?

I suppose what I’m trying to get at is why would a new reader decide to spend a pound accessing a day’s content that is probably being reported to a similar quality and depth on sites like the Guardian or BBC News?

I guess this all stems from the fact I don’t understand why anyone would choose to pay for a particular site’s news, I suppose I’m the sort of young troublemaker who has come to expect news to be freely available. Of course living in the UK and having to pay the TV License fee has its benefits; BBC News will always be ‘free’.

But all the same it doesn’t seem to have a long term future. Even if all news sites did go behind a paywall how would they advertise their content and entice readers to their content when people can’t see it?

Just seems an odd plan.

Thoughts?

So do you reckon a paywall is the best plan moving forward?

So yesterday the iPhone OS 4 was unveiled just in case you hadn’t heard. There’s plenty of places to get all the details, there’s the coverage from Engadget, Gizmodo, GDGT and Apple’s own page.

But I’m more interested about the knock on effect that the change to section 3.3.1 —  that came with the update — has on the future of publishing, presuming of course that platforms like the iPad are the future. But that’s a thought for another day, the demo’s I’ve seen look good, but cost is a sticky issue to work out.

No intermediary translation

What does this mean? Basically no app is allowed to be compiled using 3rd party software, like the main feature of Flash CS5. Which I presume will include Adobe AIR as well which will have a large knock on effect for the digital magazines in production now. The demo that Wired showed was built on Adobe AIR so that it could be cost effectively transferred to other mobile platforms, not just Apple’s iPad.

John Gruber is absolutely correct when he says that “Apple does not want some other company to establish a de facto standard software platform on top of Cocoa Touch” of course they don’t. But publishers don’t want to have to make a magazine for each format, that isn’t the future of publishing.

This is something brought up by William Owen in his article “must we all have an iPad to share the iPad experience of Wired or Sports Illustrated?”, it is a big worry, subscribe to a magazine app on the iPad and you’re stuck with it. I thought Adobe AIR provided a way around being locked to a single platform but now Apple has gone and wrecked that, and ruined a considerable selling point of Adobe’s Flash CS5.

The iPad may be amazing, it may not (I live the UK so I haven’t played with one yet), but being stuck with one platform is not the ideal, one even more proprietary than Windows or Mac.

Edit: Just to clarify this isn’t Flash on the iPhone, this is apps built in Flash and then converted into native code for the iPhone, and when I talk about digital magazines I don’t mean crappy page-flipping animations, I mean the full blown magazines locally stored on the device like Popular Science+ on the iPad.

Edit 2: This post hits the nail on the head as to why Apple has done this.

Software obsolescence

Dieter Rams as said many times that he hates “built-in obsolescence” and yet in Objectified he mentioned Apple as one of the few companies that take design seriously, while this is true, and the work of Jonathan Ives is exceptional, Ives must feel somewhat put out when his products have obsolescence imposed on them by a software update that the hardware could probably still run.

(Though the iPod always did have obsolescence with their stupid scratchy shiny backs)

For those that haven’t heard the first iPhone and iPod Touch can’t run OS 4 and the 2nd iPod Touch and iPhone 3G can’t do multitasking (the main new feature of 4). I wasn’t even aware that the iPod Touch had received an upgraded processor between the 2nd and 3rd gen model. Apple truly is going rotten if they start forcing you to upgrade from a model they’re still selling to use their latest and greatest.

Thoughts?

What do you think about Apple’s direction on these things?

Following on from what I said last week I’ve noticed what is the decidedly more popular approach and that is to capitalise everything other than prepositions and conjunctions such as ‘of’ or ‘and’. To me this is no longer a satisfactory choice, why are words like ‘High’ or ‘Invites’ in capitals. They’re adjectives and verbs, they shouldn’t be capitalised.

I used to do it myself and it was always tricky deciding which words should be capitalised, sometimes it looked odd if there was a noun in the middle of the title. Even 24 Cutting Edge Rendered Conceptual Car Designs (a guest post) was a bit odd to title.

24 cutting edge rendered conceptual car designs?
24 Cutting edge rendered conceptual car designs?
24 Cutting edge rendered conceptual Car designs?
24 Cutting edge rendered conceptual Car Designs?

In the end I guess the third is most correct, mainly because you should capitalise the first letter of the sentence and nouns. I would still go for the second though as it has a more pleasing flow to it.

This all seems very mundane and trivial really, but that’s just the sort of detail I like to go to.

Click to enlarge the image.

The tweaks

1. Highlights

Give the option to highlight point, this could have multiple uses, to act as high priority items or as headings, in this case I’ve inverted the field to act as a highlight. This could be activated through a simple button when you hover over the item.

2. Click to type anywhere

Currently you have a text box above each column that you type, hit enter and it appears at the bottom of that column. Why not remove the text box and just have click to type, this could tie in with another tweak, allowing spacing in the list. Presently you have to have an item directly underneath another item, I feel it would be useful, especially in the Someday field with highlights to be able to put your to do’s wherever you like in the column.

3. Today starts in the first column

I don’t understand why but currently this isn’t the case, I really find it much more useful to be able to see the next four days rather than the days that have just gone, especially annoying when it’s a Friday.

4. Week jump

The single arrows move your view forward a day, the double arrows could move the next Monday to be in the first column so you can jump by weeks. I figure people don’t have as many to do’s during the weekend so it’s not as important to display. This may warrant the need for a Today button, but how far ahead are you going to be planning your to do’s, sounds more like the job of a calendar.

Thoughts

Anyone else use TeuxDeux have any thoughts on improvements to this fine service?

Do you really need to add these awful qualifiers to your titles to get people’s attention? Does it have any noticeable benefit? It just seems tacky to me. Of course that makes me a hypocrite as I have used them in my own titles before, for the first series of inspiration posts but you may have noticed I didn’t in the second series.

I implore you to consider why you’re putting them there, surely your posts don’t need it, surely the photos/designs/websites you’re featuring are amazing otherwise why are you making a post about it? You don’t need to yell it at me. Perhaps one is enough, it’s not great but it’s better than ’61 Even More Awesome Photo Manips To State At Wonder — Part II’, I don’t know if it’s just me but I’d be perfectly happy with ’61 Photo Manipulations — Part II’ but I guess that’s just not enough for some people. I guess I would be happy if people just stopped using ‘fresh’ in their title…

/rant

So I set out to find Blogs that offer only posts about design, and not links to other design posts. Now of course the trouble with this post is the hypocrisy, I am listing these blogs but I hope you’ll forgive it for the insight these blogs will give you. Listed in alphabetical order.

A List Apart

Well, A List Apart has been a consistent publisher of high quality editorial for quite a long time now and I’m sure anyone who makes websites finds it an invaluable resource, no rubbishy lists found here just quality articles that are well written. If you find yourself with a minute I’d recommend reading about A List Apart’s history so you can find out a whole lot more.

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A Way Back

A Way Back is the blog of Amrinder Sandhu (as you can probably read) and has recently put itself on the map with a very thorough review of the Smashing Magazine blog redesign, some feel all the changes are not required, he even went as far as to code an example of what Smashing Magazine might look like with his changes (which I quite like). I hope to see equally in depth reviews as all his points help me think about my own blog design (a rather inadequate design in hindsight).

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Brand New

As you can probably discern from the name Brand New is all about branding, bringing you the latest news on brands around the world what I love about Brand New (besides it’s excellent editorial and the amount of work that goes into the posts that is) is the polls that new brands come with so you can see how readers feel about the latest news and get a general reaction from the design community. For instance you may be surprised that quite a few people are willing to give the new AOL identity a change, as am I, it’s not really that bad.

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Creative Review Blog

This one needs little introduction, CR Blog is the blog of popular design and photography monthly magazine Creative Review. It’s stands to reason they post good online content and of course their magazine is great as well.

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Drawar

Well, Drawar is what prompted me to rethink dot Blog, its design, what I post and to expect a whole lot more from the blogs I read in my RSS feed so I have it to thank for making me realise design blog posts can be a whole lot better. And the posts since then have been to an equally high standard as well.

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Dustin Curtis

You’ve probably heard of Dustin Curtis before, his blog being one of the few that take an unusual approach to publishing content, using a unique layout for each post that best reflects its content, much like a normal magazine would really. And the content is quality stuff as well of course, with plenty of issues raised to think about. (Just a note: I didn’t really know what to take a screenshot of as the homepage is an index and the latest post was a guest article)

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I Love Typography

Who doesn’t know i love typography? It’s where you go to catch up with the latest and greatest in the typographic world, a beautifully laid out website as well with (as you would expect) brilliant use of typography. John Boardley and the contributing writers show a passion for typography that to be honest I didn’t think one could have but it is pretty infectious.

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idsgn

idsgn posts real posts about the state of design in the world, keeping track of graphic design, branding and typography and what’s more is that it’s all pulled together in one of my favourite blog designs out there, it’s just such a great website to use. It’s never had a list post, it’s just about design, it’s relatively new but I feel the ‘new’ label is slightly wearing now, it’s established itself pretty well.

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Justin Santa Maria

One of the original individually designed article Blogs (even if the past few haven’t been that customised), Justin Santa Maria’s blog discusses various issues about design and is a worthwhile read. Is there really anything else I need to say?

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md words

I’ve noticed in his tweets that Mark Dudlik is confident in his opinion, an opinion that can be divisive but what is design if not a matter of opinion. md words is his space to extend his thoughts and although a few of the earlier posts deal with more personal issues the latest post ‘Defining Design’ puts forward a strong opinion of what design is, and invites people to discuss it which is all quite interesting.

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Mert TOL

Mert TOL is the blog of Mert Tol, creative director and owner of Medyanadolu Creative Media and has regular in depth posts about a wide range of topics, they go into quite a lot of detail and provides the valuable insight of an active and knowledable member of the design community. I mean design wise I’m not that keen on the colours but that’s just a personal disagreement.

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Seth Godin's Blog

Seth Godin is a best selling author with numerous published books and in his blog he talks about a large range of topics concerning what I’d say is the business side of design, his books and his experiences in design which I think are pretty invaluable to the would be design entrepreneur.

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The Designer's Review Of Books

As the name suggest, The Designer’s Review Of Books is a review site for books, they go into plenty of detail with lots of lovely high quality photography, I’d recommend that if they have a review of a book you are about to buy you have a look at what they thought of it, though that’s common sense.

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Tripping Words

I only recently came across Tripping Words (thank you Design Mag RSS feed) and was initially a little disorientated by the design to be honest but once I overcame that I realised how high the quality was on all the posts I’ve read thus far it is a very impressive and would definitely recommend having a look for yourself.

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Further Reading

Smashing Magazine Killed The Community (Or Maybe It Was Me)
Check out the comments as well, including a response from Vitaly Friedman of Smashing Magazine.

Some People Actually Read: Sparing A Thought For ‘Readers’ In The Design Community
I now recognise I have designed my Blog to be designed, rather than for ease of readability, something I will have to address.

Hope you enjoyed the post, be sure to comment anymore blogs you’d recommend.

It was a pretty good today, as not only did I get my Smashing Book but I received my print from Luke’s Beard.

The Book

The Smashing Book is printed on pretty sturdy paper with a satin-like sheen and its 311 pages make for quite a hefty book, it’s A5 in size and almost two centimetres thick (0.75 inches). It’s probably just that I haven’t opened it lots and creased the spine but it’s quite hard to open, and certainly doesn’t lie flat which is a shame as I was hoping for it to be similar to Bulletproof Web Design which is pretty easy to open and lies flat so you can leave it on your desk and glance at it.

Opening it up everything is nicely laid out, the typography is a simple sans-serif which I’m sort of ashamed to say I don’t recognise instantly with a good use of colour to bring the pages to life. I would just say that the chapter intro designs are not my cup of tea particularly, perhaps I was hoping for something with a bit more flair but that’s just me. That aside it all looks like a good book and excellent for their first published book.

The Content

Beyond the superficial I can’t say much as I haven’t had a chance to read it yet, but I’ll get started on that this evening and as someone fairly new to web design (I wouldn’t really call myself one) this book should be invaluable. But just from the appearance it looks like a good quality book, though you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover now should you? More to come.

Well it’s been quite a few months since I last looked at Windows 7 and it’s moved on from its Beta into Release Candidate 1. I’ve been keeping up with the builds using my Macbook Pro and Boot Camp and it’s been really exciting to watch it grow and develop.

So I thought I’d take a look back over my previous complaints and see how they’re doing.

1. It's a Beta

Well technically it’s not a Beta anymore, it’s a Release Candidate and you’d struggle to find any sign it’s not a proper OS release except for the bottom right text telling you so. It is nice, I was watching a program called Click on BBC the other day and they actually recommend you use it, which they say they never do when OS’s are Beta. And it’s true, I haven’t found anything wrong with RC1 yet, it seems bullet proof.

2. They Still Think You're Stupid

They always will make that presumption, but you can turn off UAC, you can tell it not to tell you about what your update settings are, the Action Center does have some useful stuff that I’d have otherwise missed, such as Back Up which is finally somewhere obvious. Hopefully it’s not just in Ultimate.

3. Padding

It’s still there, but I’ve found how you reduce it like I did in Vista, slightly hidden away but I like my Windows lean and not surrounded by a 4 pixel border, or a 35 pixel drop shadow, yes I’m looking at Leopard there. The task bar is still the same but the task bar is too good for me to be annoyed by that.

4. Google Chrome

It works! Without a hack. That is all.

5. Adobe Software

Well, surprisingly this is much better, I have a feeling it was something to do with how Windows 7 handled OpenGL content because I doubt Adobe has bothered to do anything for a Beta OS.

6. PSD Shell Integration

Still dreaming about this one, but found a good conversation between Adobe and Microsoft engineers and it seems like it’s Adobe who couldn’t be bothered, which was a surprise, Window 7’s thumbnail handling is much better now so hopefully Adobe will get round to it, perhaps in CS5…

7. Preview Pane

Still don’t see the point in this, just double click it and it’s opened in a image viewer in a few seconds. Wish Microsoft would just copy Quick View from Leopard and have that amazing bit of convenience.

8. Send Feedback Link

It’s gone. Has been since they moved on from the Public Beta build.

9. Video Thumbnails

Sadly it seems thumbnails are still rendered at the exact same spot right near the beginning, which is useless for videos that all start the same, sort of ruins the point of thumbnails. Maybe it’s just the codecs I use.

10. Bugs! Bugs! Bugs!

Well things are going much more smoothly, haven’t encountered any bugs so far so it’s looking good for Windows 7. They’re actually listening to feedback and making an awesome looking OS in the process.