I was asked to write an article for this month’s issue of .net magazine, the UK’s biggest online magazine. I’m very honoured - thanks to Oliver the deputy editor for giving me the opportunity. Also a big thanks to my buddy Diana Levine for the photo. Pick up a copy if you can!
I’ve been asked to write an article for .net magazine in the UK. I am pretty honored. It is the UK’s biggest internet magazine. It is a 750 word full page feature which I will provide thought leadership on design processes with Flash. Watch this space, I will publish the article here too! Of course I get to promote Molecular, although not blatantly 
Diana is an extremeley talented friend of mine who once worked as the designer for Boston Magazine, but has now decided to go solo and concentrate on her amazing photography work. You will probably bump into her at one of the many parties in Boston. Her photography portfolio is excellent, and definitely worth a look:
The graphic design and visual language of signs in the US have a very unique feel to them. I have started a personal project to photograph and record the names and locations of the many signs I encounter as I continue to explore this vast country.
Here is an old sign from the outside dining areas at the Green Mesquite BBQ in Austin, Texas. A great place, incredible food and very good value. The yard had a bunch of old rusty beer signs nailed to the walls. A lot of modern places try to imitate that with reclaimed signage. This place was authentic.
I will post more as the collection grows.
Michael Lopp from Apple was a good speaker and a funny guy. Funny as in humorous. Although, I would probably be laughing if I was working at Apple. Must be a great job.
A couple of interesting facts I learnt from Michael about the process at Apple:
Saturday morning, 10am
Presenter: Naz Hamid - Weightshift
Although this talk was aimed at beginners, I thought it would be interesting to listen to another designer share his experiences and reveal his creative process.
Naz was nice to listen to. You could sense he had that passion for his craft which we fellow designers share. His presentation focused on details, paying close attention to those finite aspects of a project which individually aren’t much but combined together form a complete package, a strong and elegant solution to a problem. His sentiments would be later echoed in a talk I attended given by Michael Lopp from Apple.
Naz outlined 8 key factors in his design process:
1. Experiment - play around with ideas, total creative freedom
2. Make the right choices - pick the strongest ideas, choose visual rules
3. Stay consistent - keep all comps neat and structured
4. Completeness - finish all screens, leave no open questions
5. Step in, step out, step back, balance - take a break, come back to it
6. Be your own critic - you need sound explanations for your design
7. Complexity in simplicity - less is more
8. Obsession is healthy - be dedicated, obsessive
It was interesting to me because his creative approach is very similar to my own. I like to concentrate on the details even at the early stages of a concept. In his initial experiment phase he mentioned that he didn’t sketch ideas onto paper, he collected assets and went straight into Photoshop to see what works and what doesn’t. I think our generation of designers (being much more digital) tend to do this a lot. I like to use the tools I have as much as possible, because you quickly arrive at a more finished look. Have a look at Gapers Block- a site Naz has created which provides entertainment and lifestyle information for Chicago. Good stuff.
After a pretty bumpy plane ride and what seemed like a descent into nothing but grid-like farmland, I touched down in Austin. The weather here is awesome - got to make the best of it before I go home to Boston.
I met up with molecular buddies: Brandon, Paul and Mac. We picked up the hire car and headed into town for some Tex Mex food and Margaritas. What else would you do first in Texas? Brandon went to college in Austin so he knows the place pretty well. As we drove down the highway to our destination, Chuy’s, I noticed a few things. Everything seems much bigger here. The roads are huge. The land around property is huge. Even more so than New England. Also, what is it with all the Piñata stores? There were loads of them. How many of these things do the people here go through?
Chuy’s was very cool, friendly service, massive portions of authentic Tex Mex and cheap booze. We headed off to the Austin Convention Centre in a lighter mood.
The Convention Centre was pretty busy, we joined the first line to pick up our badges. All around me I noticed a lot of different people, some drinking beer whilst waiting, others sat on their laptops geeking out. All just generally waiting in line.
30 minutes later, badge around my neck, I picked up my free stuff (it came in one of those cloth shopping bags with a huge Adobe logo.) I headed to my hotel to check in and relax before the first evening party: Friday night mix at six.
Like the newbies we were, we arrived too late to the party and the line was massive. Instead we explored downtown Austin. There are a lot of laid back bars here, all clustered together in a relatively short space. A bar crawler’s dream.
The coutdown begins for the South by Southwest interactive festival in Austin, Texas. I leave on Friday 7 March. Very excited. I have made a schedule using this handy online utility, Sched.org - check it out.
During the course of the festival I will be blogging at this usual place, but also myself and several Molecular peeps will be adding to our Molecular voices blog.
Open house.
Tonight I attended a lecture on Facebook development hosted by my company, Molecular at MIT. The lecture was held in the incredible Stata Center, designed by the architect Frank Ghery. I had driven past the striking building a few times and was keen to explore inside. Upon entering the juxtaposition of dynamic lines, curves and various textures, I wasn’t dissapointed. What an incredible space to learn. To socialise. To listen. To watch. If only all places of learning were this aesthetically pleasing and well equipped. Although I am not a developer and I have only a certain degree of interest in code, I found some of the lectures interesting. Particularly the introduction from Sandra Lui Huang from the Facebook development platform. She reported a few startling figures about the ever-growing social network phenomenon:
This information is incredible, and reinforces the current trends in how people spend time online. As a Facebook user myself, I find the data easy to believe, practically everyone I went to school with is on it, even friends of mine I know rarely use a computer. The key to this increase in users is the ability for third party development of applications. These third party widgets are extremely popular and include games and applications like flickr photo browsing. Whilst I am not a subscriber to most of these applications (I find some of them quite annoying) I do find value in those that enable me to share pictures and images with my network.