Henrik Fisker, the man responsible for designing the the most beautiful car on the road (Aston Martin V8 Vantage), talks design, inspiration, materials, light, shadow, size, proportion, and more in this detailed three part interview. Here’s part two and part three.
On the cost of beauty…
...a design that is beautiful – except for the manufacturing challenges – is no more expensive to make than an ugly design. There is no excuse, really, for doing an ugly design.
On inspiration…
But where do I get the idea for the design? Whenever I’m awake, I think about cars. It’s not really something that’s from 9 to 4, and it’s not even exclusive to the 5 days a week; it’s 7 days a week. It’s when I drive to work, I look at cars and I wonder, “why’d they do that? I would not have done it like that.” Whenever I watch television, I always watch what cars people are driving…everything, it’s always cars. I think my inspiration just comes out of looking at cars, looking at what type of people are in cars, looking at how light reflects on the cars, that’s how I get my ideas. And I always have more ideas than I have cars to do, so I don’t think there’s ever a danger of running out of ideas. It’s more the other way around; you don’t have enough opportunity to actually put your ideas out.
On perception and expectations…
One of the things I wanted to change – which is just a detail, really – is that I wanted to get away from having carpet on the doors. I felt it was really ridiculous to have carpet on the doors, just because a lot of people kick the door. I thought, “this is an Aston Martin, this is a high quality car, and the interior is like an expensive leather couch.” You don’t put a carpet patch on an expensive Italian leather couch at home because somebody might kick it. You clean it after, or you make sure they don’t kick it. So, there is no carpet on the doors of the DB9. This was an important thing to take out.
Continued…
We’re currently working on modernizing the Basecamp interface to bring it closer in line with Highrise. The new screenshots below represent some of the changes we’re making.
If you have a paid Basecamp account, you can upload multiple versions of the same file and keep them grouped together inside the “Files” tab. After a while, we began to feel the “upload a new version” screen wasn’t as clear as it could be though. Here’s what it looks like today:
It was too easy to ignore the file name (“basecamp.mov” in this example). So we made the header clearer. We separated it with a light blue background, used red text to make the key part pop, and shortened the text from “Select a file to upload as a new version of basecamp.mov” to “Upload a new version of basecamp.mov.” The less reading required, the better.
That’s better but the filename kind of blends into the tail of “new versiona..s.df….sa.mov.” Let’s separate them by making the “of” black.
Now the words “new version” and the file name pop. This follows the principle of the smallest effective difference: Whenever you make a mark (label, line, etc.), make it as small as possible, but as small as possible to still be clear. Look for opportunities to maximize value with the smallest possible change.
Later this year we’re considering holding our first 37signals Customer Summit. We’d like to bring together anywhere from 100-300 of our customers to share our ideas, their ideas, and see if we can all learn a few things from one another.
The summit would be in Chicago. It would be priced at about $100 per person. The summit would be between 6 and 8 hours.
Some agenda ideas we’re considering include demos of all our products, a conversation about building useful software, lengthy Q&A with our designers and programmers, tips & tricks, demos of third party products that integrate with ours via APIs, “15 minutes of fame” sessions where customers can demo how they use our products to run their own businesses, and more.
We’re looking to make it casual, accessible, and valuable. It’s primarily about sharing ideas to help our customers get the most out of the products.
If you were to attend what would you like to hear? What sort of talks or demos would you find interesting? Any and all suggestions would be helpful so we can put together a valuable agenda.
Thanks!
By popular demand we just launched a new Campfire feature. Anyone with Admin access can now kick a guest out of a room.
Hovering over a guest’s name in the “Who’s here” sidebar will reveal a red “Kick” link. Clicking that will boot the guest out of the room. It’s not a “ban” — they can enter the room again — but at least you have some control over rowdy guests.
We hope you find it useful.
pogoLibrary
pogoLibrary: “Rather than lining your walls with books, the books are the wall. You can’t have too much book space. Period. Goes anywhere. And the five shelves hold all your reading material while touching the ceiling and floor on only four white rubber feet.”
Perpetual calendar
Perpetual calendar: “There are only 7 days a month can start on and only 4 different month lengths (28, 29, 30 and 31 days). So with only 14 double sided inserts all 28 variations are covered.” [via SM]
Home Defibrillator
HeartStart Home Defibrillator Complete Kit: “The first over-the-counter home defibrillator guides with calm interactive voice instructions and determines the need for a shock, then advises it only if necessary; also coaches you through CPR.”
Continued…
A recent visit to the Apple campus left me with many impressions. The strongest one was that Apple works hard on getting their message in.
Getting the message out to consumers is something a lot of companies spend millions on, but getting the message in to employees isn’t something I see as often. At least not as seriously Apple seems to take it.
Apple sells Apple to its employees as strongly as it sells Apple to its customers.
The entranceway is flanked by huge 3 story banners (iPod Nano banners when I was there). Their hallways are lined with Apple marketing messages and materials. Every time you go to work you are reminded of the products you ship. In big huge looming living color. I was impressed.
Getting the message in is about feeding the culture. It’s about making people proud of the work working on. I think it’s an important lesson for anyone building a team. Getting the message in is as important as getting the message out.
Neat feature at Virb.com: Click the lightbulb at a video screen and the “lights” go off. The screen fades to black and leaves just a trace of the text that was there before.
The signup page also has a cool UI feature: Click the whole bar to select a radio button and and the form underneath changes to match that item.
While there’s lots of nice design stuff going on at Virb, the copywriting leaves a bit to be desired. Specifically: Good luck trying to figure out what the site does if you’re a newbie.
Continued…
Jason will be speaking at the following events:
If you’ll be at any one of these events please come up and say hi.
David will be speaking at the following events:
Ryan will be speaking at:
Sam will be speaking at:
Other talks are pending.
If you’d like someone from 37signals to speak at your event please get in touch by emailing jason at 37signals.com. Thanks.
[Fireside Chats are round table discussions conducted using Campfire.]
The Chatters
Dave Brasgalla (Icon Factory)
Brian Brasher (Firewheel Design)
Jon Hicks (Hicks Design)
Corey Marion (Icon Factory)
Michael Schmidt (Cuban Council)
Josh Williams (Firewheel Design)
(Moderated by Matt and Jason from 37signals)
| Matt |
paste an icon or icon set that you’re proud of making and explain why. |
| Corey |
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| Brian |
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| Jon |
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| Jon |
I guess I had too! |
| Corey |
Didn’t know Hicks did the Firefox and Thunderbird icons, nice work |
| Jon |
It’s kind of my one-hit wonder! |
| Josh |
I did these icons for a Pawn Shop POS system years ago. The thought of Pawn Shop icons has always made me laugh a bit: |
| Josh |
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| Corey |
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| Corey |
One of our original three sets when stockicons.com launched |
| Dave |
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| Dave |
Cave Troll. :-D
|
| Dave |
Those LOTR icons, I love the CCave Troll, but the book… I’ve been after texture for so long, and that time I hit exactly what I had in mind |
Continued…
“Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men’s blood and probably themselves will not be realized. Make big plans; aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will never die, but long after we are gone will be a living thing, asserting itself with ever-growing insistency. Remember that our sons and grandsons are going to do things that would stagger us. Let your watchword be order and your beacon beauty. Think big.”
-Daniel Burnham, Chicago architect. (1864-1912)
Chicago gets the nod over L.A. to represent the United States for the bid to win the 2016 summer games. Now we’re expected to go up against Rio de Janeiro, Madrid, Rome, Tokyo and Prague.
Applause for Mayor Daley, Patrick Ryan, and everyone who put in countless hours winning the bid. Daley adores big bold projects, and often gets what he wants (sometimes through totalitarian force), so it should be interesting to see what happens next.
More coverage from the Chicago Tribune and details at Wikipedia.
