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fastcodesign.comA designer who wants to achieve good design must not regard himself as an artist who, according to taste and aesthetics, is merely dressing up products with a last-minute garment. The designer must be the gestaltingenieur or creative engineer. They synthesize the completed product from the various elements that make up its design. Their work is largely rational, meaning that aesthetic decisions are justified by an understanding of the product’s purpose.
Estimated reading time: 8 min
Meetings Are A Skill You Can Master, And Steve Jobs Taught Me How
fastcodesign.comHOW TO HAVE A GREAT MEETING 1. Throw out the least necessary person at the table. 2. Walk out of the meeting if it lasts more than 30 minutes. 3. Do something productive today to make up for the time you spent here.
Estimated reading time: 11 min
A Former iPhone UI Designer Defends Apple’s Fake-Leather Design Philosophy
fastcodesign.comUI design is like selling a restaurant, where you can’t just serve up good food in order to run a restaurant. You have to create an environment around the food that gets people in the mood to enjoy a really great meal: presenting the food really nicely, picking the right plates, the lighting on the table, the music that is playing.
Estimated reading time: 7 min
Can We Please Move Past Apple’s Silly, Faux-Real UIs?
fastcodesign.comBreakthroughs Can Happen When We Drop Skeuomorphism
Estimated reading time: 12 min
The Mac Inventor's Gift Before Dying: An Immortal Design Lesson for His Son
fastcodesign.comIt is an inventive and simple design. The razor takes a flat blade and arches it under a metal shield, giving the blade both greater mechanical strength as well as a protective sheath that keeps you safe. It's the kind of clear insight for which all designers and inventors strive: beauty in turning constraints into advantages.
Estimated reading time: 6 min
How Microsoft Embraced Design, Without Steve Ballmer
fastcodesign.comTo hear insiders tell it, Ballmer had little to do with the radical redesign of Windows 8, Microsoft’s flagship operating system, whose previous versions boast more than a billion users. For example, according to sources, there was never any meeting between Ballmer and the Windows 8 team to green-light the software’s redesign.
Estimated reading time: 5 min
Infographic: An App That Maps The Web In Real Time
fastcodesign.comMankind loves making maps, and the world wide web, densely interconnected and phenomenally complex, always makes for a nice visual. Typically these take the form of neon blobs floating against black backgrounds, like frames captured from old Winamp plug-ins, and while they’re always nice to look at, they don’t always do much in the way of helping us understand the massive global network we traverse every day. This latest effort, however, is a little different. Called simply Map of the Internet, it’s as informative as it is beautiful.
Estimated reading time: 3 min
Benjamin Bacon recommended this story.
How The Kindle Stomped Sony, Or, Why Good Solutions Beat Great Products
fastcodesign.comAmazon’s and Sony’s efforts to conquer e-books were the inverse of one another: Sony enjoyed competence in its hardware but was a stranger to the ecosystem; Amazon was well positioned in the ecosystem but was less competent with its hardware. The e-book ecosystem--like so many of today’s innovative efforts--is ultimately a system of interdependencies. Success is not determined on the basis of a winning effort at any single point; it requires moving the entire cohort of partners in the same direction.
Estimated reading time: 5 min
An HR Lesson From Steve Jobs: If You Want Change Agents, Hire Pirates
fastcodesign.comA pirate can function without a bureaucracy. Pirates support one another and support their leader in the accomplishment of a goal. A pirate can stay creative and on task in a difficult or hostile environment. A pirate can act independently and take intelligent risks, but always within the scope of the greater vision and the needs of the greater team.
Estimated reading time: 5 min
Dyslexie, A Typeface Designed To Help Dyslexics Read
fastcodesign.comReading printed text is so fluid and transparent for most people that it's hard to imagine it feeling any other way. Maybe that's why it took a dyslexic designer to create a typeface that optimizes the reading experience for people who suffer from that condition.
Estimated reading time: 1 min
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