This week’s Unprofessional guest? None other than Dave Coulier.
When I was a kid, Coulier was my hero. I loved Out of Control, I loved Full House, I loved Muppet Babies, and I even watched America’s Funniest People. Getting to have a conversation with him as an adult might be the single most surreal experience of my life. What a great guy.
This week’s unprofessional is my new favorite episode we’ve done. I’m a huge Harvey Danger fan (I flew to Seattle for their farewell show), and especially of Sean Nelson’s songwriting. What a thoughtful, interesting guy.
Microsoft has just released some videos on developing for Azure mobile services starring… Brent Simmons?
You’d be hard-pressed to find an iOS developer with more integrity than Brent, so his endorsement speaks volumes. It shows just how far we’ve come since Bill Gates’s giant smiling face at Macworld in 1997.
Ben Lachman and Bob Cantoni of Nice Mohawk have started a new blog called The Fine Edge, in which they discuss things in tandem. Their first piece is about iCloud, and reads like a conversation. I liken it to a transcript of a short podcast.
Recently I joined some friends on Iterate to talk about the future of design. I’ve done the show a few times, but my inclusion on this episode is most likely attributable to the piece I wrote for Macworld last month. My piece—and the considered response from John Gruber—drew a lot of attention to an ongoing conversation about the best way to design digital things for human interaction.
In the last few weeks, I’ve seen a lot of interesting and thoughtful contributions to the conversation. Marc Edwards didn’t entirely agree with me and John (though Marc and I talked privately and seem to more or less line up on the major points). Sebastian de With chimed in. And of course Louie Mantia (my foil on the latest Iterate) had something to say on the matter. That’s fantastic. This isn’t a right-or-wrong discussion, and it’s fun to see so many talented people sharing their thoughts.
Not everyone appreciates the conversation: I’ve also seen a lot of passive-aggressive tweets and blog posts from designers about how tired they are of the topic. And that’s what I don’t get.
To frame this as an argument over textures is short-sighted; what we’re really talking about is how to best express ideas using technology. Like anything with design, there are a lot of things to consider and no single solution to every problem. Collecting data and opinions and watching trends is part of the fun. It’s how we learn. If you design things for a living, any ongoing conversation about the future of how to design things should be exciting to you.
This is a rare moment in any industry, and we should be savoring our opportunity to make such a significant impact. Wherever you sit on the issue, you should be passionate, you should have strong opinions, and you should want to participate—or at least follow along and consider the arguments. Because if you don’t care, why are you doing this job? If a conversation about design is enough to make you complain, is this even a career you enjoy?
Our industry is very young, and we still have a lot to learn. Those of us who love our work rely on these exchanges to keep us sharp. Settling in on a single visual style for everything is a terrible idea for the same reasons Tim Burton shouldn’t direct every movie. This process of exploration helps us keep it all fresh and new.
At the very least, don’t be condescending to the people who do care.
This week on Unprofessional, our guest is John Flansburgh of They Might Be Giants. Easily one of my favorite shows we’ve done.
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Another Macworld piece by yours truly, this time about Apple’s design philosophy and why it resonates with so many people, and why it turns so many off.
I recruited my friend Dave Hamilton to play drums and sing backup for the new Airplane Mode track. We don’t even live in the same state, so seemingly simple things like Dropbox and instant messaging turned out to be magic. I don’t think this would have been possible to do twenty years ago.
One of my favorite people, Penn Jillette, on atheism. The piece is short so I won’t spoil it here, but this is a must-read for both sides of the conversation.
Our guest on this week’s Unprofessional is Jason Kottke, one of my favorite bloggers and an all-around nice guy. Easily one of the most interesting conversations we’ve had on the show.
Macworld/iWorld leader Paul Kent joins us for a music-heavy Unprofessional. We talk quite a bit about the merits and downsides of auto-tune, and how we approach both creating and listening to music.
Brent Simmons, via Macworld, makes an interesting case against over-connectedness:
I want to not take a photograph, because no picture, no matter how beautifully filtered, can express what it’s like for one person to walk in the woods alone. I need to remember.
Out of beta and ready for prime time, Kaleidoscope 2 is on the Mac App Store and available for purchase. Designer or developer, you need to have this tool in your toolbox.
I know first-hand how hard the team worked on this release. I was involved in the acquisition of Kaldeioscope and Versions from Sofa, and acted as lead designer and product manager on Kaleidoscope until my departure from Black Pixel a few months ago. I worked with some off-the-charts smart developers, and I’m genuinely thrilled to see them ship.
What do you show the user when you have nothing to show the user? Craig Dennis points out an oft-overlooked problem and offers up some examples of empty state handled well.
Our friend Serenity Caldwell joins us on this week’s Unprofessional to talk about secret passions.