Archive for the ‘Design’ Category



TNW Keynote

Monday, May 7th, 2012

Video of my talk at TheNextWeb in Amsterdam.

Iterate 19

Thursday, April 5th, 2012

Photoshop CS6 roundtable discussion featuring Neven Mrgan and yours truly in the guest seats. These guys sure know how to put on a podcast.

TheNextWeb Conference

Saturday, February 25th, 2012

April 25th-27th in Amsterdam. Yours truly will be there to talk about designing mobile apps. If that's not enough to get you there, check out the rest of the (very impressive) speaker lineup. I'm really looking forward to this, and not just because it's a trip to one of my favorite ...

The Evolution of Piezo

Wednesday, February 15th, 2012

Rogue Amoeba's Christa Mrgan walks through the evolution of Piezo's design. I always love seeing how other UI designers do their thing. (Regarding her elevator button aside: I don't think I've ever gotten into the elevator at my local mall without ranting to whoever would listen that there should be zero ...

Iterate 15

Wednesday, February 8th, 2012

My thanks to Marc Edwards, Seth Clifford, and Rene Ritchie for having me on the show. Be sure to check out the older episodes, too. They've had some pretty remarkable guests.

MoneyWell 2

Wednesday, February 8th, 2012

No Thirst has released the long-awaited update to their personal finance software. Full disclosure: I worked on this.

How Designers Can Help Developers

Sunday, February 5th, 2012

Matt Gemmell delivers again, this time with a thoughtful outline of how designers should think about the way their work gets handed off. The creation of any kind of software is (or should be) a partnership between graphic design, interaction design, and implementation. None of these disciplines is any less important ...

Less Than Perfect

Monday, January 30th, 2012

Video of the Macworld Live panel I did with John Gruber, Guy English, Paul Kafasis, and Glenn Fleishman about what we dislike in our favorite apps. Hosted by the bizarrely tall Lex Friedman.

Some Assembly Required

Saturday, January 21st, 2012

An oldie but goodie from my friend (and employer) Daniel Pasco about perspective: Unlike other hobbyist computers of its day, which were sold as kits, the Apple I was a fully assembled circuit board containing about 30 chips. However, to make a working computer, users still had to add a case, ...

Minimal Patterns

Wednesday, January 18th, 2012

I love stuff like this. Bonus points for presentation.

HP Fingers a New Logo

Wednesday, December 14th, 2011

Brand New has a piece on HP's new (possible) logo. My first thought… I actually like the new logo. It's clean, fun, simple, and digital. You could argue that it's a little too digital in a barcode sort of way, but overall it's a step up.

The Condescending UI

Tuesday, December 13th, 2011

Paul Miller at The Verge makes some interesting arguments about the state of UI design, particularly with regards to trends like skeuomorphism. He poses thoughtful questions, provides images to back his assertions, and demonstrates that he has clearly given this subject a lot of consideration. Then he gets to the last ...

Dalek Ipsum

Wednesday, November 23rd, 2011

Background by yours truly.

Turning Hardware Into Software

Wednesday, October 26th, 2011

James Higgs rips into Apple over the disparity between clean hardware design and overly-textured software. It should probably be obvious that my own preference is for design without ornamentation, certainly without a hint of sentimentality, and that I detest these new apps. Why? Simply put: it's because they are lies. They ...

Smart Objects

Monday, October 17th, 2011

Speaking of design advice, Bjango has a great writeup of how smart objects work in Photoshop and Illustrator.