Sunspots: the horsepower edition 37signals 16 May 2006

5 comments Latest by Nina Krause

Business historians say agile companies are the ones that win
"Those who came out on top…proved able to adapt to change instead of being prisoners of past success. And in their glory days, these corporate champions were magnets for the best and brightest."

Soccer jersey fonts
Linotype matches fonts from popular soccer jerseys to ones in its library.

Demographics for TechCrunch and Read/WriteWeb
89% male (RWW = 84%), 81% 18-39 (RWW = 71%), 60% publish their own blog (RWW = 68%). Meanwhile, the TechCrunch redesign isn’t sitting well with some.

Creative Department Douchebag
"Sup dickbags? The name’s Trev. I’m 27, totally super fucking hip, and am a copywriter at a global ad agency in New York City."

The limitations of listening to customers
Asking people what they want will only get you so far because of “functional fixedness,” the human tendency to fixate on the way products or services are already normally used. People are unable to imagine alternate functions.

New BMW campaign targets the creative class
"Rather than horsepower and curve-hugging handling, it’s ballyhooing its design prowess and financial independence."

Volkswagen’s new storage facility in Wolfsburg, Germany
"The actual space that the facility occupies is approximately only 20% of a comparable facility with the traditional design that is used primarily in the US."

Comparison of Dojo and Prototype
"Prototype is more of a Porsche, whereas Dojo is more like a Hummer." [Jamis says, "I’d rather be a Porsche than a Hummer any day."]

Euh?
A weird but interesting site of "small experiments." [via Mug]

Barenaked App is Carson Systems documentation of the planning, design, coding and marketing of its second web app
“We will be revealing all of our costings, the reasons behind our decisions, why we chose to work with the people we did and of course the embarrassing mistakes we made along the way.”

Contrary to popular opinion, organic food often isn’t local or sustainable
"For many who participated in the early phase of organic farming, its subsequent history is a story of paradise lost — or, worse, sold — in which cherished ideals have simply become part of the sales pitch."

Video: Eleven Twelve
Some funky Sesame Street marble action.

5 comments so far (Jump to latest)

Greg 16 May 06

Speaking of the TechCrunch redesign, apparently his designer resigned over the dustup it caused.

Well, mostly because he posted a re-worked version in CrunchNotes, and implied that he was going to re-re-design the site. Can’t say I blame him, since the current design went over so poorly, but there’s a lot of negativeity out there about it.

lisa 16 May 06

I think I dated Trev.

Jack 17 May 06

Whoops - there should probably be a ‘NSFW’ after that link, there’s rather a lot of swearing on the page. And in the URL, for that matter.

Nina Krause 17 May 06

Nice article!