How I Waste My Precious Time

The new iPhone SDK comes with an iPhone simulator named Aspen Simulator, which is a full iPhone emulator and includes a few built in Apps including the iPhone Safari (Mobile Safari, Safari Touch?). Using this simulator is a sweet way to test how webpages look on an iPhone without using a scrunched up Safari window or an actual iPhone.

This appears to require a webserver though, as I haven’t figured out a way yet to just specify a path to an html file. Maybe it’s in the manual.

Common’s new album: Finding Forever is firstly awesome, but also has this cool detail of the Chicago skyline on the cover art that reminds me of the header image up above. Cool!

Here is the original illustration that I used for Sean’s new album art, free from effects and surroundings. Crappy nasty gradient edition.

In response to my Dad’s curiousity about some people talking about the new CS3 icons (one didn’t like them and linked to Adam Betts’s replacements: Betts CS3) I wrote this:

Good question.

Icons are a passionate topic for many Mac users. Mac icons have always been better than Windows icons, with the capability of being larger and having more colors and generally appealing more to discerning users (like many of the features of the Mac OS). This general trend has continued throughout the years and grown with the technology up to Mac OS X’s current and long standing ability to display icons with resolution of up to 128×128 pixels. (Vista finally catches up and surpasses the Mac by allowing 256×256 pixel icons, but does not have as well an established history, design language, nor guidelines as the Mac, and when October comes around will again be surpassed by 10.5’s ability to show 512×512 icons).

Additionally, the ability to easily customize an Application or indeed the entire Operating System’s icons has long been a feature of the Mac OS. Just Get Info on an icon, and copy and paste another icon to customize it to your liking. Popular companies such as the Iconfactory and individual designers (including me now and then) have been making cool replacement icons for years. There is even an iPhoto like program to catalog our custom icon collections called Pixadex.

This helps explain why such an intense debate broke out earlier this year when Adobe revealed their new icon system:
Adobe Software icons

Apparently the creation of the former Macromedia design team (now part of Adobe after the merger), the current color schemes of the large stable of applications now under Adobe’s roof were laid out on a color wheel and given a common typographic style. Criticisms were the order of the day, and designers and technologists lambasted Adobe for, amongst other things, essentially not designing the icons at all, turning icon design into a stale periodic table instead of an art form, and worse.

I was inclined to agree at the time. The icons all look very similar, and it seemed like they had indeed made a lame effort that would also prove to become a barrier to usability as users spent more time reading icons than looking at them at a glance to tell them apart and find the application they were looking for. Corporate branding appeared to have won out over truly usable and useful design (again). Not to mention they had abandoned the history of art alluded to and represented by Illustrator’s Venus icon as it had progressed over the years (actually already lost in CS and CS 2) and just cool expressive illustrations in general. Letters in a box? This is what the design team of the world’s leading producer of design software comes up with? Come on!

I’ve since changed my mind though. I now think the bold colors and square icons are really strong and stand out well. It’s easy to find the CS3 apps from all the other programs you may be running, especially when using the keyboard shortcut Apple -Tab to quickly switch through apps. The brightness and shape help the CS3 apps stand out, and the color is quick to get used to if you use them frequently as most people involved in digital production will.

Sean Haefeli has just released his latest album, a 4 track EP featuring cover art by me. Check out some samples of the tunes at his website. The album shipped in a sleeve, so the art is just a front and back image. No inserts or anything extra.

The best looking part actually turned out to be the disk itself, but I can take no credit
. The disk is printed in just three colors, which was a reduction of my original artwork done by the disk printers. It looks sweet on the silver disk. Props to Disc Makers for doing a nice job on that for me, although some type on the front cover is a little jagged for an unknown reason.

The current theme, Gray gets Green by Fred Banuelos, started with this image up top, which is gorgeous:

I hope it’s not too plagiarist to steal the idea and colors and rebuild it with my own imagery. I decided a Chicago skyline would give it a nice local touch, and this resulted:

I think it is pretty apparent that it’s a rush job, but it also captures the intent completely so it’s fine for starters. Seeing the rough edges up there gave me the idea that I could just build up better versions over time, which appeals to me completely, I’ve already added an estimated outline of the under construction Trump Tower, and I expect subtle enhancements will appear frequently.

A link to the source image, a photo taken by my buddy Josh Lane and used without asking his permission (yet), clearing violating the Copyright which does not permit derivative works.

I can’t decide which is better:

I also think that this zune logo is almost cool, but it doesn’t make sense in three dimensional space. What are those vertical lines right down the center? Are they supposed to be diagonal cross bars on the top and bottom horizontal planes, or are they vertical supports on opposite corners and if so why? I don’t think any structural engineer would sign off on this icon design: the slightest weight on the top would likely result in an immediate racking, shifting, and collapse of the whole thing. Which sounds like a plausible future for the Zune, actually.

It should actually look like this, if you want to see the Z:

Or like this if you don’t want it to turn into a pile of web 2.0 colored rubble:

(those are on me Microsoft, I know your designers are hopelessly lost)

Which brings up another point: no one will ever accuse this product of having timeless design. While the 5 year old iPod looks a little clunky (compared to todays iPods, it’s still more elegant that the Zune), it’s white and polished metal appearance still looks brilliant. This brown turd Zune box with neon highlights will look as old as day glow yellow leotards in 5 years. Admission of internal contradiction: I actually like the box colors, they’re just not timeless.