Some design wisdom from Milton Glaser:
Last year someone gave me a charming book by Roger Rosenblatt called ‘Ageing Gracefully’. I got it on my birthday. I did not appreciate the title at the time but it contains a series of rules for ageing gracefully. The first rule is the best. Rule number one is that ‘it doesn’t matter.’ ‘It doesn’t matter what you think. Follow this rule and it will add decades to your life. It does not matter if you are late or early, if you are here or there, if you said it or didn’t say it, if you are clever or if you were stupid. If you were having a bad hair day or a no hair day or if your boss looks at you cockeyed or your boyfriend or girlfriend looks at you cockeyed, if you are cockeyed. If you don’t get that promotion or prize or house or if you do - it doesn’t matter.’ Wisdom at last.
A week or two later I read a joke that I haven’t been able to get out of my head. A butcher was opening his market one morning and as he did a rabbit popped his head through the door. The butcher was surprised when the rabbit inquired ‘Got any cabbage?’ The butcher said ‘This is a meat market - we sell meat, not vegetables.’ The rabbit hopped off. The next day the butcher is opening the shop and sure enough the rabbit pops his head round and says ‘You got any cabbage?’ The butcher now irritated says ‘Listen you little rodent I told you yesterday we sell meat, we do not sell vegetables and the next time you come here I am going to grab you by the throat and nail those floppy ears to the floor.’ The rabbit disappeared hastily and nothing happened for a week. Then one morning the rabbit popped his head around the corner and said ‘Got any nails?’ The butcher said ‘No.’ The rabbit said ‘OK. Got any cabbage?’
Lifted in its entirety from Monoscope, just as it was originally copied from davidthedesigner. I just had to pass it along, and didn’t want to lose anything in the process.
Slowly catching up on the past two weeks…
John Gruber, on the unique constraints and enormous potential of the iPhone interface, saidbest:
The iPhone’s screen measures just 3.5 inches, but it’s now the biggest frontier in interface design.
I am so much more dependent on my iPhone after traveling for the past two weeks. It performed flawlessly. In fact, I have since become very attached to Twitter’s mobile interface (it’s much less cluttered) and I am truly blown away by the iPhone specific Facebook interface (though far from perfect, it may be the one thing that keeps me interested in Facebook, for now). I have an idea for game too, but no idea how to make it happen. =)
Fred Wilson, on the near ubiquity of Twitter and his desire (mine too) to see it work natively with Facebook, saidbest:
I want to use Twitter to update my Facebook status. I don’t update my Facebook status. I twitter it to my blog, my friends phones, and countless other places on the web. I hope that Facebook will be another of those places soon.
Easy prediction: Twitter is the next big thing for everyone. My mom will never join Facebook, but I bet she’s following my tweets by year’s end, and adding her own shortly thereafter. Without a doubt.
Khoi Vinh, on consuming information online not for convenience alone but for the opportunity to do something with it, saidbest:
But, truth be told, the lion’s share of my recreational non-fiction reading happens online now. It’s not just that the diversity of content and the immediacy of that content is so much richer online, it’s the fact that there’s so much more one can do with content when it lives online.
Even my modest attempts at joining the conversation are incredibly satisfying and richly rewarding. I find I’m much more engaged with my thoughts, more coherent in their expression, and more passionate in their application (no doubt much to my father’s dismay).
Seth Godin, on using contrast to define an identity, saidbest:
One of the hardest things to do is invent a brand with no opposite. You don’t have an anchor to play against.
Perfectly obvious, yet often forgotten, and even then rarely done well. See the following for proof.
Digby, on the overwhelming data that indicates an incredible opportunity for Democrats to change the terms of debate in America, saidbest:
But you have to be optimistic, at least, that the American people are eager to hear a new story. The question is whether the Democrats can tell it.
I have some thoughts here, as you might imagine. Now if only I can find the time…
Peter Semmelhack, on the absolute brilliance of his just-announced Fred Wilson-backed company, BUG Labs, saidbest:
So what is BUG exactly? It’s Legos meets Web services & APIs. Imagine being able to build any gadget you wanted by simply connecting simple, functional components together. Now imagine being able to easily program, share and connect these gadgets in interesting ways. In essence, we’re building an open source-based platform for programmers to build not only the applications they want but the hardware to run it on.
You had me at legos. Sign me up now!!
Umair Haque on the creative bankruptcy, strategic blunders, and epic failure of imagination of old media’s new internet plays, saidbest:
More simply: before you can worry about capturing value, you’ve gotta understand how value is created.
There is a lifetime of wisdom in that one simple sentence, and a fortune for whomever figures out how best to apply it.
John Edwards, on the dichotomy of being hopeful by nature but incredibly frustrated by world we have allowed George W. Bush to dictate, saidbest:
“I’m a naturally optimistic person who feels an outrage that should be expressed, and I think that will come across as genuine and authentic. There is no strategy to it. I just have to be myself.”
This is me to a tee. Consider yourself warned. =)
On the sincerity and authenticity that comes only from allowing anyone and everyone to speak on the behalf of the company at large, Rob (the “CEO” of Etsy) saidbest:
As I see it, large corporations try to sanitize all their outgoing messages for the sake of keeping face. It is very easy to identify this kind of behavior. Whenever you read something and it sounds like a series of pre-made phrases strung together, instead of a human being speaking, this is sanitized communication. To me, this stuff sounds inhuman.
I want Etsy to stay human. This means allowing each person’s voice to be heard, even if it’s squeaky or loud or soft. I will not put a glossy layer of PR over what we do. If we trip, let us learn from it instead of trying to hide it; when we leap, let’s show others how to leap. Hence the title of this whole blog post: Open Etsy.
The first paragraph is nothing new, but the second (especially the part I bolded) is both brilliant and beautiful. It’s an amazing end to such an incredible post.
On the imperative that designers must be not only engaged early in the process of creating products, but also in the development of the marketing / messaging and even the larger business strategy, Joshua Porter saidbest:
Now, ask any designer and they’ll tell you that design is about communication. But, how effective can designers be if they don’t have any seat the table where the communication is being decided?
Design can be so much more than a simple veneer. Done well, it can permeate both the product and the process with a unique and instantly identifiable personality. And that, in my opinion, is a worthwhile endeavor, as it brings a competitive advantage that very few can duplicate.
I am not a musician. In spite of such a strong personal affinity to music, I lack even the most basic instincts among its instruments. Instead, I rely on my deep appreciation of it, one which admittedly borders on the obsessive at times, to bring me near to nirvana. To be sure, I am a helpless junkie, always looking for a new fix to tickle my ears and lift my head to the heavens…
I am fortunate to have met and become close friends with many extremely talented, and prolific, musicians in my life. We have, at various times, with various strategies, and with even more varying degrees of success, attempted to sell their wares on the open market. It was not an easy business to enter, let alone master, to say nothing of making a profit. Even with critical acclaim, the cost of doing business the old fashioned way (pressing vinyl, of course) was prohibitive.
Ultimately, we put those dreams on hold and went our separate ways. I was thrilled when Stewart Brown and I recently realized that we were living less than a mile apart in San Francisco, and finally reconnected after nearly ten years apart. We are older and wiser now, and while still foolish enough to dream that same dream, we are intent on finding new ways to fulfill it…
To be perfectly honest, I never stopped thinking of how best to market music, and these thoughts only intensified as this “second life” of the internet and its free and easy tools of creation came to be. Brown’s music is infectious (in a very good way) and made to be spread far and wide, and it has long been clear to me that the ease of “spread-ability” is the key to success. So we set out to eliminate anything that inhibits the free flow of music, starting first with the cost to acquire it, so that everyone can hear it instantaneously. That is why you can stream every song in its entirety within the page itself, and even download good quality 128 kbps mp3s (no DRM!!) for free.
I was adamant that we spend as little money as humanly possible (I think our greatest expense so far was buying the domain name). Brown wrote and recorded the music, I designed and built the website, and Kristin tied it all together with her words. If I may say so, it looks and sounds like a million bucks!! Check it out at FORKLIFT ENTERTAINMENT.
I want to point out and thank a few of the many people who helped make this happen…
To Hugh MacLoed and Fred Wilson, two guys who continually experiment and explore new ideas in real-time, right before our very eyes. Their passion and persuasion inspire me to no end. I had trouble finding a singularly illustrative quote from each one, but if you’re at all interested in reading more there’s a combined 71 posts tagged on my del.icio.us from Hugh and Fred.
To Bob Lefsetz, who sums it up best in a recent post entitled “The New Reality”, “You can’t reach them by asking them to buy first. Quite the contrary, it’s like catching a fish. You’ve got to drop quality bait and wait.” He continues, “You establish a beachhead. You try to get people to notice you. And the way you do this is not through endless cross-linking and widgets and all the tools of the helpless, hapless wannabes, but quality music. It’s the only way you can get recognized.” That’s the blueprint right there.
And lastly, to my beautiful wife Abby, who has lived through my countless great ideas and nonexistent execution, who nonetheless never once wavered in her support and always encouraged me to go for it. I could not have done it without you. I love you.
Wow, that was way more than I originally intended to write; still, I left so much out.
I think Brown’s music is poised to take off, and I believe our approach to doing business can help make it happen. I am so excited to see where this goes. I would love to hear what you think, so leave me a comment here or on FORKLIFT ENTERTAINMENT.
As always, more soon.