Microsoft Visual Studio

Reader Chris Vickio spotted this Microsoft Visual Studio ad and writes, “Saw this and thought of you guys. Yes, the difference is obvious. Painfully obvious.”

Lussumo

On the other hand, John McLennan writes, “Found this great little intro to the Lussumo Software landing page: ’...back with fewer features than ever.’”

Got an interesting screenshot for Signal vs. Noise? Send the image and/or URL to svn [at] 37signals [dot] com.

Speaking of Edward Tufte, at his seminars, he hands out a list of suggested readings (scroll to see list at end of page). It’s chock full of good gift ideas for designers.

So is Greg Storey’s Things Designers Want For Christmas A-Store.

And the editors at Design Observer have a 2006 Holiday Reading List too.

One of Edward Tufte’s presentation tips is “Never apologize.”

Never apologize. If you’re worried the presentation won’t go well, keep it to yourself and give it your best shot. Besides, people are usually too preoccupied with their own problems to notice yours.

True that. Presenting, like performing, relies a lot on confidence (or at least the illusion of confidence). If you get up and begin with an apology, you’ve already undermined your own credibility and dug yourself a big hole.

Plus, apologizing before a presentation is insulting to the audience. If you get up on stage in front of people, you’ve got to believe that what you’re offering them, even if not perfectly honed, is worthwhile. If you don’t think so, why should they?

The power of the pause
There’s also a Tufte tip that says, “Be sure to allow long pauses for questions.” I think the intended meaning here is take your time while waiting for questions. But I’d like to add a related thought: It’s alright to pause before answering a question too.

When someone fires a question at you, there’s an instinctual feeling that you’ve got to respond instantly, especially if you’re billed as an “expert.” You want to show that you’ve got an instant answer.

If you have a response on the tip of your tongue, that’s great. But sometimes it can be a good idea to pause and think about the question, what your response is, and how you want to phrase it. I’m not talking a half-hour lull or anything. Just a few seconds to collect your thoughts in your brain before they come out your mouth.

Unlike opening with an apology, a brief pause doesn’t come across as weak or flabby. It makes you seem like you care about your answer. It shows respect for the question, the questioner, and the audience. And it makes them want to listen.

In this age of instant information, there’s something strangely satisfying about someone who takes a moment to formulate an answer in order to deliver a coherent, thought-out response.

Feedburner

The “ize” have it at Feedburner, which offers a tab called “Troubleshootize.”

YouTube

YouTube’s scheduled downtime screen features a mad scientist cooking up new concoctions.

Gifttagging

Gifttagging gets literal with tags that look like real-life tags.

Got an interesting screenshot for Signal vs. Noise? Send the image and/or URL to svn [at] 37signals [dot] com.

Animators deal with art, story, etc. so there is a lot of intuition and “feel” required. At the same time, effective design is key; Animations have to communicate concrete ideas and emotions. It’s an interesting intersection of intuition and reason. The drawing class notes (book form) of Walt Stanchfield, drawing instructor for Walt Disney Studios, provide a fascinating look at the process. Below are excerpts from Stanchfield’s handouts (all links go to PDFs, bold emphasis mine).

Simplicity for the sake of Clarity:

The artist, when he first gets an inspiration or tackles a pose in an action analysis class, sees the pose, is struck by its clarity, its expressiveness, then after working on it for a while that first impression is gone and with it goes any chance of capturing it on paper. That’s the reason. we should learn to get that first impression down right away – while it’s fresh, while it’s still in that first impression stage – before it starts to fade…

The reason I keep harping on ‘forget the detail’ for this particular type of study is, the detail doesn’t buy you anything at this stage of the drawing. Doodling with detail will cause you to lose that first impression…When I say locate and suggest, that is exactly what and all you need. What you are drawing is a pose not parts. The simplest kind of suggestion is the surest way to a good drawing. I have xeroxed a little series of drawings from “The Illusion of Life” to show how an extremely simple sketch can express so much and thereby be a perfect basis for the final drawings.

Draw Verbs Not Nouns:

A sure way to keep from making static, lifeless drawings is to think of drawing “verbs” instead of “nouns”. Basically, a noun names a person place, or thing; a verb asserts, or expresses action, a state of being, or an occurrence. I speak often of shifting mental gears, and here is another place to do it. The tendency to copy what is before us without taking time (or effort) to ferret out what is happening action- wise, is almost overwhelming.

(A similar thought can be found at The life of products: “Products are not nouns but verbs. A product designed as a noun will sit passively in a home, an office, or pocket. It will likely have a focus on aesthetics, and a list of functions clearly bulleted in the manual…but that’s it. Products can be verbs instead, things which are happening, that we live alongside…a product designed with this in mind can look very different.”)

Abstracting the Essence:

Amphibian Design
The about page at Amphibian Design scores high on the “I wouldn’t mind grabbing a beer with that guy” scale.

Amphibian is a graphic design and digital construction empire with humble beginnings in a one bedroom apartment in Winnipeg, MB, Canada. Today it has grown to have offices in … well, one city … and employ over … well, just one person worldwide. Nonetheless, Print Magazine’s 2005 Design Annual called Amphibian ”... a design agency I’ve never heard of.”*

I’ve been designing and building websites, posters, brochures, CD packaging, business cards, and other various forms of communication in the physical and virtual world since 1997. Sure, some of those early projects were “learning experiences.” However I think my body of work today speaks for itself.

Those with few resources who are working for peace and justice in this sad world have been known to get quoted on a sliding scale according to need, funding, and my own personal passion for their project.

It’s an oft overlooked secret to getting hired: Be likeable. A lot of “hire me” energy is spent on showing off and looking professional — education this, portfolio that, etc. But when you’re trying to attract moths to your flame, a friendly vibe and an easy-going attitude are a great place to start. Plus, you’re more likely to attract clients with the same attitude which can help lead to a saner existence.

(Btw, check out the subtle gradients at the site’s contact form and the in-your-face cover shot.) [tx Andy]

Jewelboxing tells a story
People like stories a lot more than sales pitches. One Thing Leads to Another tells the tale of how Jewelboxing came to be. Stories like this are a great way to show you truly care about what you make and create a connection with your audience.

After all the work that went into the shooting and editing and everything else it seemed like printing out some color sheets and putting the disc in a regular old jewel case was not the best way to make a first impression. We’re pretty good at finding things here and over the next couple days we looked at virtually every single disc packaging option available anywhere and decided that they all stunk.

Kevin had saved a promo disc of stock photography he received from Getty, not because we needed another disc full of serious looking businessmen pointing at computer screens or happy people on the phone, but because of the slick, modern hinged case it arrived in. We tracked down another, ripped all the paper out of them and then made our own inserts and sent the Slowtron series winging its way across the Atlantic. I’ll let you know what happens with that.

Anyhow, it didn’t take us too long to realize that there must be other firms and individuals who like us, wanted to put as much thought and effort into what our presentations discs were packed in as we did with the material that we were burned on them.

Time’s Best Inventions 2006 has some neat stuff:

Janjaap Ruijssenaars air mattress uses a matching set of repelling magnets, built into the bed and the floor below, to support ~2,000 lbs.

The Wovel snow shovel on a wheel clears snow with a fraction of the effort and is safer on your back too. People in snowy climes will, um, wove it.

Attach radio-frequency-emitting tags to your keys or other easily lost possessions and use Loc8tor to point you in the right direction (within an inch of your item) while the tag itself beeps.

CeeLite’s paper-thin, flexible lightbulb “sheets” are funky. See a video clip of Chad Smith of the Red Hot Chili Peppers drum kit hooked up with CeeLite panels.

It’s not on Time’s list but here’s another smart gadget idea: Twist & Spout fits virtually any soda or water bottle with a screw-on cap. Use the Garden style to create an instant watering can.

One more: Ecopod is a home recycling center with compaction and collection.

PlainSimple

PlainSimple’s journal is a nice minimalist offering from Utah designer Gilbert Lee.

College Humor’s weekly roundup email

College Humor filters through thousands of submissions and offers the top three in its weekly roundup email. The 1-2-3 and out approach is a nice alternative to the clutter filled newsletters that most companies send.

Demetri Martin

In this email, comedian Demetri Martin cuts to the chase.

Got an interesting screenshot for Signal vs. Noise? Send the image and/or URL to svn [at] 37signals [dot] com.

There should be an alternative to one-size-fits-all RSS feeds for busy sites. Too many high-volume sites assume everyone wants to read every post. That’s wishful thinking. Some readers may want 5+ posts a day from your site, but what about moderate fans who only want 5 posts a week? Or casual fans who want a mere 5 posts a month? These people just want a glass of water yet sites insist on pointing a firehose at them.

The RSS avalanche
In All Feeded Up, Khoi discusses the challenge of surviving the RSS avalanche:

I’ve collected so damn many RSS feeds that, when I sit down in front of the application, it’s almost as difficult a challenge as having no feed reader whatsoever. With dozens and dozens of subscriptions, each filled with dozens of unread posts, I often don’t even know where to start.

In the past, friends have advised me to just narrow my list down to a manageable number of essential subscriptions — a bare few that I can consume easily, day in and day out. But every time I try to do that, I find that I can’t really bear to get rid of most of these feeds. They all seem essential, and I’m loathe to give any of them up. Of course, I understand the corollary of that reluctance: refusing to part with most of these feeds means I’ll probably continue to benefit from very few of them.

I don’t think he’s alone. A lot of people want to keep up with what’s going on at a specific RSS feed but don’t have the time to read everything there. So people wind up following the advice of Khoi’s friends — ruthless pruning of any feed deemed inessential, even though some of the content there is desired.

If content was filtered better, these on-the-fence sites would at least have a chance to stick around. Here are a few options for filtering RSS feeds so they’re not just an all or nothing proposition for readers:

The author decides
In this approach, authors decide which posts qualify for a “greatest hits” feed. Those top posts are published separately in an abridged, cream-of-the-crop feed.

For example, Gawker blogs, which usually publish double digit posts per day, tag noteworthy posts “top” and then people can subscribe to this tag instead of the entire feed (top stories at Lifehacker and Idolator, for example).

[“On Writing” is a new category of SvN post that offers examples of interesting online copy.]

Freshbooks responds to downtime
It’s easy to provide great service when things run smoothly. Handling problem situations is a much tougher — and often more important — test. Freshbooks’ Up and Running blog post is an example of how to do it right.

The company experienced a hardware failure which resulted in downtime and some loss of data. Bad news for sure. But the company’s response, including a detailed explanation and a free upgrade for all accounts, defused the situation and turned a negative into a positive.

Especially nice: the clearly titled sections that explain the problem, what caused it, what they were doing about it, how to tell if you were affected, what to do if your account was affected, and an apology.

For anyone who was inconvenienced by the interruption of service and/or irretrievable data, myself and the entire FreshBooks teams are deeply sorry. I want to extend our thanks to those of you who called and emailed to enquire about the problem. To a person, everyone was polite and understanding, which under the circumstances, was greatly appreciated by myself and the other FreshBooks staff who were hard at work bringing the service back online.

The result? Impressed customers who left raves like these:

Thanks for the open communication and commitment to quick resolution during this ordeal.

I for one greatly appreciate your detailed information, acknowledgement of the problem, and your willingness to provide your clients with some perks to make up for the inconvenience. Outstanding customer service is very hard to come by nowadays. I am a new trial FB user who is now sold, if I wasn’t already!

I appreciate the honesty, dedication and commitment on the part of the FreshBook staff.

Dreamhost’s anatomy of a(n ongoing) disaster
Dreamhost handled a similar rough patch with a long explanation peppered with tongue in cheek images of disaster scenes. The level of detail is impressive though it’s probably a good idea to offer some sort of Cliff Notes version for people who don’t want to read through that much text.

Our number one priority right now is getting this nagging network problem understood and fixed. Once that’s the case, we should be able to put things back in Alchemy, who didn’t lose power on Friday at least. Once things are going good there, we’ll be able to add new servers and transition old ones slowly with little to no downtime.

We’re also going to be buying our own UPSes, since we have learned we can’t trust our data center OR our building to do it. We’ll start by putting the core routers on them, then our internal databases and servers, then our file servers, and finally the hundreds of customer mail, web, and database servers.