Thord D. Hedengren

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Tag: design

  • Love it or hate it, The Outline hits a nerve

    The Outline’s Joshua Topolsky:

    On the design front, it’s true that some people love the way The Outline looks, and some hate it. But no one is neutral about it. No one says “eh” when they see it. And no one thinks we’re another anonymous blog populated by random people churning out random content. But perhaps most importantly: The web is ugly. Media brands are ugly. They all look the same. They all use the same tools. They all try and replicate a form that is ancient by any conceivable metric. They all rely on someone else’s idea about what storytelling looks like.

    I’m in the “hate it” corner, although that’s too strong a word obviously, but he’s right. The Outline not only has good content, it’s also a publication that make you react upon first glance.

    Topolsky also fires a salvo at the banner industry in his piece. You should read it if you’re interested in online publishing and the future of media.

  • Design specialization

    Designer Marc Newson, preaching it:

    One thing I find overrated is: specialization. Design is about solving problems; if you can’t apply that skill to a variety of things, then I don’t think you’re a good designer.

  • Designer Marc Newson's first interview since joining Apple

    From Evening Standard’s interview with Marc Newson, the first since he joined Apple:

    “Newson, 51, who was born in Sydney and brought up by a single mother before moving to London two decades ago, has designed for some of the biggest names on the planet. He holds the record for the most valuable work sold at auction by a living designer — one of his Lockheed Lounge chairs (opposite) went under the hammer at Phillips in London for £2.4m last week. The chair, one of his earliest pieces, is so chic Madonna has one. He could work for anyone, anywhere. So why did he choose Apple, based half the world away from his wife Charlotte Stockdale, the fashion director of Garage magazine, who works closely with Karl Lagerfeld at Fendi, and their two children?”

  • Wired is no longer a pirate ship

    From Wired’s editor-in-chief Scott Dadlich’s memo, regarding the new, and overly stylish, offices:

    It’s an embarrassment: coffee stains on walls (and countertops and desks), overflowing compost bins, abandoned drafts of stories and layouts (full of highly confidential content), day-old, half-eaten food, and, yes, I’m going to say it, action figures. Please. WIRED is no longer a pirate ship. It’s the home of world-changing journalism. It’s the West Coast home of Condé Nast. And it’s increasingly a place where we, and our New York colleagues and owners, host artists, founders, CEOs, and advertisers.

    This sounds horrible, and like a magazine being led even further into the gray mass. The whole piece is published on The Awl, where you can be appropriately stunned, or silently applaud, in which direction the creative juices are supposed to be flowing at Wired when they’ve moved in.

  • Jonathan Ive and Xiaomi

    Jonathan Ive’s now famous quote on the Xiaomi copy-cats, from Vanity Fair Summit, is spot on:

    I’ll stand a little bit harsh, I don’t see it as flattery. When you’re doing something for the first time, you don’t know it’s gonna work, you spend 7 or 8 years working on something, and then it’s copied. I think it is really straightforward. It is theft and it is lazy. I don’t think it is ok at all.

  • Redesign

    I’ve begun the arduous process of redesigning my online presence. This is something I do a bit more often than most, but it’s not as bad as it was once. You see, there was a time when I redesigned my sites every six months, which isn’t too bad if you want to stay current. Things moved faster then though, and today a design just works longer, although I must confess they’ve always been relevant for more than six months. I used to love to tinker, that’s how I learned WordPress, which subsequently meant I got to write a bunch of books about how to do things with the platform.

    Back then I redesigned because it was fun, and because I could. I was evolving a lot, as a designer and developer, and probably as a person too, without me or anyone else noticing. I’m still evolving, but rudimentary things such as clever taxonomy usage and new markup techniques isn’t doing it for me anymore. These days, I redesign when I need to. (more…)

  • The Problem With Infinite Scroll

    Infinite scroll is becoming more and more common these days. You’ve no doubt seen it: When you think you’re about to reach the bottom of the page it automagically adds a new set of items thus prolonging the page without you ever seeing the end of it. As you keep scrolling downwards, the site does this over and over again, preventing the page to ever end.

    I hate that.

    OK, so I don’t actually hate that, but I do think it is an overused technique that breaks the design of most sites.

    (more…)

  • Jag tror på 1.0

    För ett tag sedan blev det lite surr kring WordPress-skaparen Matt Mullenwegs post om att version 1.0 inte kan komma tidigt nog. I korthet propsade Matt på att man ska lansera, och sedan jobba vidare – få det gjort.

    Jag tror på det, som ni kanske anat.

    Ajour har som bekant rullat ut med buller och bång, frågetecken och kritik och uppmuntran och hyllningar och sågningar och påhopp och respons och ambivalens och ointresse och hajpsnack och allt däremellan. Lanseringen har kallats ett misslyckande för att vi – jag är en av medgrundarna – inte lyckades leva upp till hajpen. Det är aldrig bra att inte leva upp till hajpen, man ska alltid leverera lite mer än vad man utlovat. (more…)

  • Låt designers vara designers diskuteras

    För den som är intresserad av webbdesign och -utveckling så är diskussionen i kommentarerna till min post Låt designers vara designers läsvärd.

  • Låt designers vara designers

    Jag har länge reagerat på det återkommande påståendet att en designer som jobbar med webb ska ha förståelse för koden. Grundtanken är god: om designern förstår koden så kan hans arbete bli mer webbanpassat. För mig är det en trasig tanke, inte för att lite bakgrundskunskap kring kod skadar en designer, utan för att det är som att begränsa en bilmekaniker med hans kunskap om asfaltering.

    Om en designer har “viss kodförståelse” så kommer det begränsa hans arbete. En designer ska inte fundera på hur något ska lösas i kod, designern ska skapa något som sedan realiseras i kod. Val under designprocessen får absolut inte begränsas av vad designern kan om kod.

    En designer gör design. En utvecklare gör verklighet av designen. Det är inte svårare än så.

    Eller? (more…)

  • Gawker Media updates the hated new design

    Less boxy and a bit cleaner but still not all that appealing is my verdict. Gizmodo is the only Gawker site with details on the new design as I’m writing this, but the whole network got the update at the same time.

  • This is how awesome the Spotify install graphic is

    I really like the Spotify install graphic on the Mac (no idea how the Windows or Linux versions look), pictured below.

    Spotify install graphic

    Don’t have Spotify yet? Grab an invite from here!

  • Några tankar om responsiv design

    Jag har funderat en hel del på responsiv design på sistone. Dels för att det är vad Emanuel hade kallat “en snackis” i webbdesignkretsar, och dels för att det ofta är ett trasigt genomförande som erbjuds.

    Problemen är egentligen bara i renderingen av webbplatsen för mobila enheter, och de inkluderar (men består säkerligen inte enbart av):

    • inläsning av onödigt stora stilmallar
    • bruk av bilder med storlekar anpassade för stora skärmar
    • inläsning av på tok för mycket HMTL-kod

    (more…)

  • Behöver mänskliga rättigheter en logotype?

    Projektet A Logo for Human Rights är lite intressant. Tanken är att det behövs en övergripande logga för mänskliga rättigheter, typ RSS-loggan. Bidra om du vill.

  • Smart Cover är briljant

    Behöver jag ens säga det? Kolla bara, Smart Cover till iPad 2 är briljant.