“There are people are who are very passionate about coding and there are people who are passionate about design but the overlap is very very small.”– Astute Adobe Engineer
My old employer Adobe has been doing a lot right lately. For one thing they’re starting to give up the ghost that is Flash, an outdated, outmoded platform that was pretty cool… in 1998. The late Steve Jobs and most geeks who embrace future-ing technology such as HTML 5, Javascript, other open platforms, etc as opposed to living in the past. Note I’ve won awards for Flash animation years ago but have moved on, if you still use or think it’s cool, you need to move on too.
Adobe started to come around when they announced Flash was going to try (emphasis, try) to act as a way of exporting something akin to animation. It was clunky and lackluster at best. Now, seeing the writing on the wall, they’ve created a new program for designers called at the moment Muse, it’s in beta.
By designers, I don’t mean programmers, which is a big problem to clients and, well, everyone. People confuse a designer, who’s a visual artist, with a web programmer, they’re not the same. The former is a right-brained human-centered person in touch with how and what people respond to, the latter is a left-brained usually a math geek who maybe isn’t social and isn’t visual (usually). Oh very important, a good programmer is, IMHO, worth more than a designer, because a good programmer can take design and make it bulletproof. The problem is, many designers don’t need a programmer, and like-wise, some programmers write code that doesn’t need design.
“People don’t hand edit post script or PDF files for print, you know, in five to ten years I don’t believe people will be coding to design web sites.” – Another Astute Adobe Engineer
Truth be told, a designers should design not code. It’s great if they know how to, I know enough coding to be a little dangerous but that’s only because I’ve had to and will art direct web sites and if I didn’t know where the hooks of a CMS go I’d not be as valuable to clients nor to the programmers I work with.
Where Muse fits in is finally a person who wants to design websites can, apparently, focus on that and not how animations or dropdowns or other things that work, through Javascript of course (NOT Flash), just have them work. The code it makes isn’t, well, elegant, or bulletproof. For large scale professional websites for the masses it’s still help to have a programmer clean up the code but for most uses Fuse produces pretty good code and let’s designers design.
PS This is all rather close to me as I worked on THE original WYSIWYG program ever for the computer, Adobe PageMill, many, many moons ago. And at the time, the engineers wanted to kneecap, and did somewhat, the product, as they didn’t want designers being able to truly design a site without a programmer around. Things change, so do products. Thank you Adobe.
An intriguing breakdown of a brand in a hefty yet informative infographic. There’s a second graphic below to help understand the dynamic from the core out.
For those wanting to see this in more detail, download a more legible PDF (2.9 MB) big picture sheet to print out.
[this is not an ad for Google but I did like their graphic, and "Tin Cans, Finally!"]
As a not-so-closeted weather geek I tend to seek technology gives us some fantastic graphics, probably found none finer than the interactive Hurricane Tracker the Weather Channel uses.
It’s easy to poke fun of what seems like an overreaction of the news media and some governments, after all, Irene turned to out to more whimper than bang to my New York City. Still did some widespread havoc, yet this is an era where more people are made aware of conditions on a moment’s notice and, in the end, this saves lives.
When people think there’s no hope for today’s youth, I think about a summer theatre workshop I’m involved in. Right as I was about to take a group photo instead of “say cheese” I said “gimme Fosse” and they actually knew who he was and was able to give me jazz hands, trust me, we’re going to be okay. I should note these kids really transform in two weeks, mature, and grow, before our eyes, it’s a wonder what the power of the arts can do.
Here’s a helpful chart from the geniuses over at interpretationbydesign.com. I should note my team, “our losses were never that important anyway.”
When I was a young artist before picking design and art direction as a career, I loved pop-up books, to the degree I used to make my own, with paper, pens, scissors and crayons. I got decent at making them, but never on this, jawdropping, a scale.
The The lovely and talented Lisa Hannigan, who I only discovered through the haunting song “9 Crimes,” has a video that harkens of when music videos were art, in this case, her video really HAS art! Art as two fantastically cut, designed, and illustrated pop-up books! The books were lovingly hand-created by Lisa’s brother and artist Jamie along with Maeve Clancy. With exquisite detail, they not only match the song near perfectly, the video itself has a whimsy that matches Lisa the musician. This is music as art, in an art form as a video, showing art that is materials, it’s fantastic!
As one of the first round of users of Google+ I’ve been poking it listlessly with a stick for weeks, inviting people, and watching with baited breathe to have a eureka moment… it’s not come yet. It’s a bit like when Google Wave came out and many wanted in, like Wave Google rolled out + with the exclusivity one can only guess to create a, ahem, “buzz,” but in some way that approach backfires with resentment, after all for other social networks there’s no waiting. Once you’re one of the lucky few, though that number grows exponentially every day, the excitement gets tempered with a “yeaahh … now what?” Drag people into circles and read the feeds and think “wait, this is like Facebook?” Yep. It is. And while I’ve heard the Google apologists say “yeah but on Facebook you can’t broadcast to only curtain people and not others.” Uhhh, really? Yes you can. At this point the majority people I tend to follow on Facebook I’m seeing much of the same posts on Google+. Awesome! I’ve always wanted to go to two sites to see the same information between friends.
Here’s a way Google+ would be better, let it’s feed aggregate the Facebook feed, after all you can cross-post between Twitter and Facebook (both directions). But of course the fact you can’t tells you what this pissing match is really about, Google vs. Facebook. Only Facebook has a massive headstart, tends to make sense right away, and an easy prediction is will always be the giant while Google+ is riding a crest like Wave. More and more Google is the new Microsoft, trying to play catchup by using a type of copy machine, only in this case to Microsoft’s Apple we have Google sticking Facebook in a Xerox and doing a “look at meeEEE! We’re Google!” Oh, it probably will have a dedicated bevy of users but mark my words, it’ll be niche in the social wars. Next.
When I guest lecture I try to impress upon is that the speed of communication in 2009 is changing, changing exponentially, over the way things were. Less isn’t just more, less is critical to your message. I hate to make a blanket statement, but the majority of people from my halfway-through-life age on down to especially kids these days, don’t read. It’s not that we don’t read or that nobody can anymore (many can’t but that’d be a much longer post), it’s that we’re bombarded. People don’t have to time to read ads, much less articles. There’s a reason why, while at the doctors office, WebMD, a magazine you only find in such places, instead of stories, they pretty much had snippets and soundbites, up to two or three a page. But it works, it truly does.
This isn’t a discussion about is this right or wrong, the soundbite being too short when the reality is there’s not black and white to things but shades of gray. I agree perhaps it’s a slippery slope where everything needs to be distilled into seven words, but again, to get through the clutter, it’s a necessity, unless of course, you don’t want your marketing to succeed, then by all means, write war and peace on an ad in 12 point type. people will be skipping right by you. That’s not how it’d done anymore, the motto “change or die” applies. Clients that get it, are viable, clients that don’t, nice knowin’ ya.
Anyways I’m a visuals person, so here’s some visuals. An AMC ad from the ‘73:
We won... despite this heap steering like crap!
Find yourself a time machine and go back with $3,000 and this car can be yours, race car drivers not included. A little trivia, AMC was the first car company with a bumper-to-bumper warranty, granted it was only 12 months.
Balance this with an actual ad of today…
Toyota makes great cars, their agency makes great ads.
I’d love to pitch something like this to a client myself.
Here’s another goodie:
VW cars, tuned like a horn section.
This is a European ad, in America all the funding to real orchestras has been cut (as well as most anything to do with creativity), hence most Americans probably can’t tell these are instruments. It’s a brilliant ad though. Go Europe!
Being a fan of Audi and an ex-owner, I don’t think this is their strongest ad, but it still gets the point across:
Audi, now sadly jumping into the SUV craze.
Then there’s an ad like the below, it needs no explanation.
Truth in advertising.