On a tertiary note, I’m very curious how they took the “head on” shot of the window, without the camera/photographer appearing in the reflection. It’s like magic!

via Jason Santa Maria (http://jasonsantamaria.com/oddities/2010/02/#reserve-window-design)

Speaking of the iPhone… Over the holidays, my father- and sister-in-law both got iPhones and have been loving it. I noticed that their phones were reporting 3G coverage here in Appleton, which I thought was odd, because I knew for a fact that at&t didn’t have 3G service here, only EDGE.

Well guess what?  The updated service coverage map at at&t’s website shows that they now do have 3G service for the entire Fox River Valley!

Great news!

Each update includes the publication title, cover image, sighting location, and description of reader. What an intriguing social experiment.

It is possible to place and link an InDesign document (“Filename.indd”) into a standard content frame within an InDesign document.

Freaking amazing.

It’s not rocket science, I suppose. I just had no idea that a frame whose default content types are “Graphic”, “Text” and “Unassigned” could handle a live-updating InDesign document itself.

Hate-Hate Relationship

The Moto Q enabled me to browse the web on-the-go for the first time. And man, was it liberating! Applications like Google Maps, Skype, and Octrotalk literally changed the way I lived and worked. Having it meant that I was connected anytime I wanted to be.

But I slowly realized the handful of applications that would be the most beneficial to me were hard to find, or non-existent. Battery life dropped off drastically, it became excruciatingly slow to the extent that I even performed a master reset. (Which brought to light the harsh reality that there was no reliable way to synchronize the contacts with my Mac.) Performance continued to degrade, and it’s now almost 2 years after that point.

We have had the opportunity to upgrade to new phones via an “upgrade credit” from Sprint. But that means extending our contract another two years, which we just weren’t willing do to, because…

iPhone

During that same time, while I struggled daily with my Windows Mobile-powered device, Apple announced and released the iPhone (original, 3G, and 3GS); which have unequivocally and irreversibly changed the mobile phone landscape. Prior to the iPhone, “smartphones” may have been smart, but they were hardly ready for the masses. Nobody can claim that a pre-iPhone Treo or BlackBerry offered a better end user experience than the iPhone provides.

All that being said, we’d love to switch to at&t and get iPhones; but that involves a significant long-term cost investment which we’re just not willing to make. But if we don’t end up with iPhones by June of 2011, we should have just taken Sprint up on their offer and gotten better phones to tide us over.

Time will tell, I suppose!

Rose Antique Tools proprietor, Donna Allan runs a website for her antique tool business. She has acquired, scanned, converted, and uploaded mountains of old tool catalogs. Their real purpose is to help her potential customers identify tools that they can purchase from her stockpile of experienced hand tools.

But her website is a treasure trove of really excellent illustration and typography work from the early-mid 20th century… and you should really check it out. I learned about it via James Draplin, and he said this:

Savor this stuff, people. Savor the beauty in the fact that some guy took the time to scan them in, make PDFs and upload them for tool enthusiasts. Hours and hours of time. Be thankful. I sure am.

If all catalogs looked like these, I sure wouldn’t mind receiving so many of them in the mail.

Rose Antique Tools via Draplin

Via Jason Santa Maria (http://jasonsantamaria.com/oddities/2010/02/#the-best-in-custom-letters-2009)

Seeing great works by other designers is certainly inspiring, but knowing my own creative process, and with my own experiences dealing with clients, getting from concept to completion is hardly as graceful as one might imagine. The journey is often messy—wrought with innumerable twists, turns and frustrations.

On rare occasion, I come across a designer who has graciously shared their journey, and is willing to publish their process. It’s one of my favorite things to see. Not only to be blown away by another’s creativity, but through the process you can almost see their mind working. It’s fascinating.

Check out the examples below.

• Redesigning the Campaign Monitor homepage
• FontExplorer Pro Icon design
  
• Logo design for Visit France

If you know of others, please let me know!

What we’ve all been waiting for. (?)

The iPad is billed by Apple as “the best way to experience the web, email, & photos.” But just how did they plan to live up to that bill? Let’s look at what the iPad actually is.

On the hardware side, it is essentially a 10-inch glass multi-touch display with a wide bezel wrapped around it (the sides and bottom are aluminum) and a single “home” button on the face. Those familiar with the design of the iPhone will be instantly familiar with the hardware.

On the software site, Apple has smooshed together the iPhone OS with hints of Mac UI elements. I’d hazard to guess about an 80%/20% mix. It’s not so much that the iPad’s UI looks like the Mac OS, but some of the UI metaphors haven’t been seen (or have even been possible) on the iPhone’s limited screen. This device is obviously related to the iPhone—and as the iPhone was when it was released, the iPad is chock full of so much potential, it hurts.

Apple has spent a lot of time trying to perfect a full-touch UI, and I think they may have succeeded. Partially because, I think, they lowered their expectations. It is my opinion the reason that the “tablet” computer market has never taken off, is because (until now) they run only slightly-modified versions of their full-featured cousin’s operating systems. That’s a mistake. Our standard computer metaphor is completely wrong for a touch-based UI.

Because they’ve made Apps for major “laptop” functions like word processing, presentations, etc., in addition to beefing up the iPhone versions of Mail, iPod, and Calendar, Apple has created a platform that offers many of the features of traditional laptop computers, without feature overkill.

For example, one doesn’t need a lot of computing power to look up movie times from the couch, or email in the evening; just a convenient device. The iPad seems ideal, even for travel. Long battery life is great for in the car or on flights, access to email and other full-featured “work”-type apps could make taking a laptop completely unnecessary.

Almost, but not quite.

Apple began shipping it’s computers with SD slots in 2009 to easily facilitate downloading pictures without extra cables/dongles. Unfortunately, the iPad lacks this port, which would have enabled the user to download pictures on-the-go, and instead offers a dongle to read the media—a step backwards. This would have really made the iPad a killer device for travel.

Also, most rumors pegged the iPad having one, and even two video cameras for video chatting. The iPad has none.

As with most innovative Apple products, there will be those who disregard the iPad because it doesn’t have Feature X, or Specification Y. And when developing a brand new device category, Apple is sure to make sacrifices and trade-offs. (Remember, they were the first company to ship a consumer PC without a floppy drive!) But for the most part, their decisions on what to cut and what to keep have been spot-on.

In Conclusion

I believe Apple is on the verge of a breakthrough in computing. Additional experience in this new product category, as time goes by, will allow them to tweak the hardware and software of the iPad to create a truly irresistible, game-changing product. I fully expect people to have to seriously think whether or not grandpa needs a computer to get pictures from the grandkids, or if what he really needs is an iPad.

Most of the potential in the iPad platform rests in the software side. But while the future is extremely bright right now for everyone from game developers to the print industry, I stand by my prediction that I would admire Apple’s new device, but not desire it. At least until the next version…

Is an incredibly beautiful short film by Alex Roman. The visuals are immersive and compelling, as is the score. The biggest shock for me was learning that the film is exclusively CGI. Check out the second link for a peek into the production of the film.

Film – http://vimeo.com/7809605
Compositing Breakdown – http://vimeo.com/8200251