09.04.12 |
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David Fincher, interviewed by Art of the Title:
I was eight years old and I saw a documentary on the making of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid…It showed the entire company with all these rental horses and moving trailers to shoot a scene on top of a train. They would hire somebody who looked like Robert Redford to jump onto the train. It never occurred to me that there were hours between each of these shots. The actual circus of it was invisible, as it should be, but in seeing that I became obsessed with the idea of “How?” It was the ultimate magic trick. The notion that 24 still photographs are shown in such quick succession that movement is imparted from it — wow! And I thought that there would never be anything that would be as interesting as that to do with the rest of my life.
Read the whole interview, it’s great. Art of the Title also delivers their usual top notch video excerpts alongside the article text.
09.04.12 |
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I’d be remiss of me to not include at least one recap reference to this week’s tense Breaking Bad mid-season episode finale (brief spoilers below). The A.V. Club‘s Donna Bowman says it best here:
The most tragic outcome, it turns out, is not that the world comes apart when you’re at the top. It’s that the soft landing you’ve engineered, after everything has been taken care of and made right, refuses to materialize. It’s that you are your own loose end.
I found the revelation in the episode’s last few moments a bit forced. Yet the idea that Walt’s sheer arrogance sets off his downfall makes a lot of sense.
09.04.12 |
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Designer Lukas Mathis:
Lots of designers seem reluctant to rely on buttons when designing user interfaces for touchscreens, opting to go with more unusual interactions instead. Sure, gestures are sexy. They’re also easy, allowing you to remove clutter from your user interface.
But buttons are discoverable. They can have labels that describe what they do. Everybody knows how to use them. They just work. It’s why we use them to turn on the lights, instead of installing Clappers everywhere.
Exactly. When I developed my little web based weather app Blue Drop gestures were tempting. But when you want something as straightforward as possible, it’s hard to beat simple button taps.
08.31.12 |
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I originally discovered this on Kotaku. It’s a screenshot heavy look at why Wind Waker, a game released almost a decade ago, still holds up fairly well from a graphics standpoint.
08.30.12 |
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Peter Pachal for Mashable:
Sagi Haviv, who designed logos for the Library of Congress and Armani Exchange, thinks the logo simply isn’t distinctive enough. By opting for a simple array of four colored squares, Haviv says Microsoft missed a big opportunity…
…As Haviv explains, logo designers constantly struggle to create imagery that’s both simple and distinctive. Too much of one often means not enough of the other. In Microsoft’s case, he says it veers that while the new logo is definitely simple, it fails the distinctiveness test.
I agree. Microsoft had the opportunity to really try something bold here but instead they went the ultra conservative route. You can see a similar designer debate over at this Dribbble discussion.
08.29.12 |
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Smashing Magazine contrasts the mobile strategy by both candidates in this year’s presidential election. Mitt Romney’s camp goes with a separate optimized mobile only site, while Obama leans on responsive design. Which is better, and why? I liked the level of detail author Brad Frost brings to this piece, a regular highlight of Smashing Mag articles.
08.28.12 |
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Paul Thomas Anderson’s most mature work so far, There Will Be Blood stands as one of the most critically acclaimed films of the 2000s. This Press Play video has seven minutes of very solid critical analysis.
08.27.12 |
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Quick writing iPhone app Drafts is one of my favorite apps of the year so far. It’s fast, customizable, and has great Dropbox syncing. As of late last week, dev shop Agile Tortoise released Drafts 2.0: extra polish, FF Tisa as a font option (hell yes) and auto sync with a new iPad Drafts app.
If you’re a writer, blogger, habitual Twitter user, or just want to get down your thoughts fast, give this app a try.
08.24.12 |
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Writer/designer Craig Grannell:
I’m not of the opinion Nintendo should throw in its lot with Apple and other third parties, effectively becoming another Sega—yet. This is because Nintendo still has the potential to out-Apple Apple in the gaming space, through making games and hardware. This, note, is what Apple proponents rightly say sets Apple apart from much of the competition—it makes devices and operating systems, and so can mesh those things together far better than other companies. But Apple doesn’t do this in gaming.
An excellent point. More recently I had the opinion Nintendo should go the Sega route but I’m starting to move in Craig’s direction.
(Small logistical note: This is my last post before I head off to vacation through September 3rd. I’ll try to drop in with a few minor link posts, but expect content to slow during this period.)
08.24.12 |
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A great read over at Smashing Magazine; designer Reda Lemeden has a comprehensive overview of the tools available for front end designers and developers to account for responsive, “retina friendly” imagery on their web sites. From device-pixel-ratio to SVG and Javascript, it’s all here.