Designers should not be mere decorators, but understand language and microcopy, which is a crucial design skill, now more than ever. — Look at these two images

Design and music intersect in many areas; fashion, art, filmmaking and set design, yet one relatively obscure but staggeringly creative area, is in the design of graphic notation used by composers. — Design and music intersect in many areas; fashion, art, filmmaking and set design, yet one relatively obscure but staggeringly creative area is in the design of graphic notation used by composers. Graphic notation is one side that is relatively unknown outside the sometimes rarefied world of orchestral and experimental music.

Massimo Vignelli, the multi-faceted designer and thinker, was the last of the great modernist designers. A utilitarian, design reactionary, and vocal critic of poor design, his views feel unfashionable today, yet, younger designers can learn much from the Canon. — I came to Vignelli early in my graphic design career and his Canon is a book I dip in and out. Even though I work primarily as a digital designer, his recommendations are still relevant.

My path to becoming a designer wasn’t conventional, and that’s a very good thing. — When people ask me how I became a product designer and get to be creative for a living, I have to pause and think how to present it. There is no straightforward answer, as my route to the present looks like a drunken person on their way home. It was…

The Barry Lyndon poster is an iconic masterpiece, and an interesting example of the inaccurate attribution found while I was researching it. As with much of Kubrick’s life and work, it is difficult untangling myth from fact. — The very mention of Barry Lyndon will either elicit a groan you get from an over stimulated teenager forced to trudge through economics class or silent reverence in a middle-aged man who bought the Criterion Collection edition, and delicately wipes it down every month. It is Kubrick’s overlooked masterpiece, sandwiched…

The ‘Mount Everest’ of graphical musical scores, Treatise still surprises with its invention and beauty. It is also one of the finest fuck yous to the musical establishment. — Seeing the pages of Treatise for the first time is akin to stumbling across an alien manuscript, something unearthly and beautiful, but incomprehensible. Cornelius Cardew created Treatise, the ‘Mount Everest’ of visual musical scores and graphic notation, to break away from the straitjacket of traditional musical notation. There are many…

Shadow doesn’t get as much love as other design elements, such as cool colour palettes or super sexy shapes, but it is vital in communicating interaction. — Plato gave shadows a bad name. Alright, look, I may be stretching this a little, but bear with me. In the Allegory of the Cave, Plato contended shadows mislead people about the true nature of reality, setting up a distrust of darkness and shadows. …

How Alphonse Chapanis, a young psychologist, saved the lives of WWII pilots through clever design. — As the massive B-17 ‘Flying Fortress’ touched down after a long day of combat, the pilot flicked the control to drop his speed as he had always done. Within seconds, the massive plane collapsed onto the tarmac, skidding and screaming on its fuselage. These accidents were to happen with increasing…

Listening is a vital UX skill we can all get better at, and a chatbot experiment from the 1960s teaches us how. — Joseph Weizenbaum, a computer scientist at MIT, created the first natural language computer program called ELIZA in 1964, a precursor to the chatbot we put up with today. A person would type their question in to a terminal and ELIZA would magically come back with a response on the screen…