Thought You Should See This

"Instead of robust public education, we have Mr. Zuckerberg’s “rescue” of Newark’s schools. Instead..."

helenwalters — Mon, 20 May 2013 16:16:06 -0400

“Instead of robust public education, we have Mr. Zuckerberg’s “rescue” of Newark’s schools. Instead of a vibrant literary culture, we have Oprah’s book club. Instead of investments in public health, we have the Gates Foundation. Celebrities either buy institutions, or “disrupt” them.”

- George Packer on “Celebrating Inequality.” A sobering read.

"History is changed by people who get pissed off. Only neo-vegetables enjoy using computers the way..."

helenwalters — Thu, 16 May 2013 10:33:52 -0400

“History is changed by people who get pissed off. Only neo-vegetables enjoy using computers the way they are at the moment. If you want to make computers that really work, create a design team composed only of healthy, active women with lots else to do in their lives and give them carte blanche. Do not under any circumstances consult anyone who (a) is fascinated by computer games (b) tends to describe silly things as ‘totally cool’ (c) has nothing better to do except fiddle with these damn things night after night.”

- Happy birthday, Brian Eno, you fabulous person, you.

"Ultimately, the left will lose. Big business will pollute the planet, capitalist culture will kill..."

helenwalters — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 09:49:00 -0400

“Ultimately, the left will lose. Big business will pollute the planet, capitalist culture will kill off the arts and humanities, schools will all be privatised, libraries will all close, social mobility will cease, the gulf between rich and poor will grow and everything beautiful will die. The left may note little human rights victories – gay marriage and the odd bit of better pay – but the machine is rolling inexorably forwards to crush it.”

- Really incredible piece by British stand-up comedian Stewart Lee on why there are no right wing stand-ups. Read to the last line, which actually made me gasp out loud, and I pride myself on having no shame when it comes to “bad” words.

"We weren’t tackling the hard problem of figuring out how to actually make the ads good enough to..."

helenwalters — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 06:40:15 -0400

“We weren’t tackling the hard problem of figuring out how to actually make the ads good enough to integrate with the user experience. With phones, there’s no room for a right-hand column of ads. That forced us to think about what the business looks like on mobile.”

- Don’t know if it’s just me but with comments like this, Mark Zuckerberg sounds like all the magazine and newspaper publishers I’ve known over the years. And so the wheel turns.

"Publishers might be a necessary thing,” he said. “but it’s inevitable that they will shift the focus..."

helenwalters — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 10:23:19 -0400

““Publishers might be a necessary thing,” he said. “but it’s inevitable that they will shift the focus from games being made by people who want to make good games to people who want to make money.””

- Thoughtful, fascinating profile of Minecraft creator, Notch. I think we’ll see more (private) companies rising up which are not driven by the capitalistic imperatives of the past. Suddenly wealthy, young founders have different ideas about management, and are designing corporate systems that suit their own philosophies and thinking. In this case, Notch employs twenty or so people at his company Mojang, which has a flat management struture and no set working hours. “When you have the kind of success Minecraft has brought, you can just choose yourself the way you want to do things,” says Persson, which includes not rabidly pursuing the Next Big Thing. “I try to have a studio where people go to make games for the fun of it, not just because some investor has said we have to make money.” This is a small company, of course, but just imagine how this might float up to influence larger corporations, who always need to be able to attract and hire talent.

How beautiful is this? Christo’s Big Air Package, a...

helenwalters — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 11:22:00 -0400

How beautiful is this? Christo’s Big Air Package, a ginormous piece in the Gasometer Oberhausen, Germany, and the artist’s first major project sans partner in life, Jeanne-Claude, who died in 2009. As the blurb puts it, at 90 meters high, with a diameter of 50 meters and a volume of 177,000 cubic meters, “the work of art is the largest ever inflated envelope without a skeleton.” I die.

"I don’t know what I could do with the money. I’d just start another social networking..."

helenwalters — Mon, 18 Mar 2013 18:20:10 -0400

“I don’t know what I could do with the money. I’d just start another social networking site. I kind of like the one I already have.”

- Mark Zuckerberg on turning down Yahoo’s offer of a billion dollars for his then-fledgling social startup. Whatever you think of the young founder and Facebook, that takes some guts.

The Alan Partridge movie. Oh no oh no oh no (oh yes). [via Emily...

helenwalters — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 12:43:37 -0400

The Alan Partridge movie. Oh no oh no oh no (oh yes).

[via Emily McManus]

"We must abandon invisibility as a goal for interfaces; it’s misleading, unhelpful and ultimately..."

helenwalters — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 16:16:54 -0400

“We must abandon invisibility as a goal for interfaces; it’s misleading, unhelpful and ultimately dishonest. It unleashes so much potential for unusable, harmful and frustrating interfaces, and systems that gradually erode users and designers agency. Invisibility might seem an attractive concept at first glance, but it ignores the real, thorny, difficult issues of designing and using complex interfaces and systems.”

- Beautiful, thoughtful piece by Berg’s Timo Arnall, on the fallacy of “invisible” interfaces. Must-read.

“The Marble Answering Machine demonstrates the great...

helenwalters — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 16:09:15 -0400

“The Marble Answering Machine demonstrates the great potential of making digital information graspable.” This project by Durrell Bishop is from 1992. 1992!

Oh, Olafur Eliasson, how I heart you so. [via Creative Review]

helenwalters — Mon, 18 Feb 2013 12:24:37 -0500

Oh, Olafur Eliasson, how I heart you so.

[via Creative Review]

"I think our ego is like the bark of a tree – but there is something else in us, an energy that makes..."

helenwalters — Thu, 14 Feb 2013 06:43:30 -0500

“I think our ego is like the bark of a tree – but there is something else in us, an energy that makes us feel we are not alone.”

- Ok, so truthfully, I’m not entirely sure what Mariko Mori is driving at here, but I like the sound of it, don’t you?

“A growing, living artwork.” I love this. (via...

helenwalters — Thu, 14 Feb 2013 02:57:23 -0500

“A growing, living artwork.” I love this.

(via Alison Prato)

"Management is the opportunity to help people become better people."

helenwalters — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 14:41:31 -0500

“Management is the opportunity to help people become better people.”

- Smart words from the always-sage Clay Christensen, featured in a Q&A with Wired’s Jeff Howe. Imagine if all managers thought about their role in this way.

"I saw the original."

helenwalters — Mon, 11 Feb 2013 13:15:16 -0500

“I saw the original.”

- So says “The Shooter,” the protagonist of the extraordinary Esquire story, The Man Who Killed Osama Bin Laden… Is Screwed. This is his typically dry, pithy response to watching the movie, Zero Dark Thirty, and the story is packed full of his wry humor. What’s not funny is the disgraceful way in which veterans are being treated once they return home. As writer Phil Bronstein puts it:

The Shooter will discover soon enough that when he leaves after sixteen years in the Navy, his body filled with scar tissue, arthritis, tendonitis, eye damage, and blown disks, here is what he gets from his employer and a grateful nation: Nothing. No pension, no health care, and no protection for himself or his family.”

Bronstein touches on the idea that the business community would be smart to tap the skills of retired SEALs for less violent settings. He details discussions with (now former) Twitter CEO Dick Costolo and Orbitz chairman, Jeff Clarke. “It would be great to get a panel of CEOs together who are ready to help these guys get hired,” says someone associated with the Navy SEAL Foundation. Yes, yes, yes. Make it happen!

"Did you know that vital parts of the US law are secret, and you’re only allowed to read them..."

helenwalters — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 23:13:00 -0500

“Did you know that vital parts of the US law are secret, and you’re only allowed to read them if you pay a standards body thousands of dollars for the right to find out what the law of the land is?”

- Read Liberating America’s secret, for-pay laws by Carl Malamud. It’s chilling and inspiring in about equal measure. Ok, fine. More chilling.

"Strategy is a singular thing; there is one strategy for a given business — not a set of strategies...."

helenwalters — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 22:48:49 -0500

“Strategy is a singular thing; there is one strategy for a given business — not a set of strategies. It is one integrated set of choices: what is our winning aspiration; where will we play; how will we win; what capabilities need to be in place; and what management systems must be instituted?”

- Fine, so Roger Martin is a friend of mine, someone I’ve edited over the years and who’s also essentially published me (by means of the magazine at the business school of which he’s dean, Rotman School of Management, part of the University of Toronto). Nonetheless, conflicts aside, for anyone involved in innovation, design, planning, budgeting, or really the world of business, his piece, Don’t Let Strategy Become Planning, is a smart read. I’ve also just started reading Roger’s latest book, coauthored with former P&G CEO, A.G. Lafley. More on that later.

This takes me back to my days with a teeny tiny flower press,...

helenwalters — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 16:23:00 -0500

This takes me back to my days with a teeny tiny flower press, marveling at the fragile and delicate dried and pressed flowers that even I, an entirely ham-fisted child, could somehow produce. But of course this project has a far more serious goal in mind—to document and barcode every plant in existence. I love the spirit and soul of this project—and Ellen Jorgensen, of the Brooklyn-based biohacking lab Genspace, is a rockstar.

"Downloadable music is just a fad and people will always want the atmosphere and experience of a..."

helenwalters — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 10:04:07 -0500

“Downloadable music is just a fad and people will always want the atmosphere and experience of a music store rather than online shopping.”

- As HMV calls in the administrators, it’s worth taking a look back a Why Companies Fail—The Rise and Fall of HMV, published last August. In the piece, former HMV consultant Philip Beeching gives an inside scoop on working with the iconic music retailer. The quote above comes courtesy of then-managing director Steve Knott, commenting right after HMV went public in 2002.

Beeching describes his reaction to this response with a thoughtful reminder: “the dotcom bubble had just burst and many people were mistaking this stockmarket meltdown for an internet meltdown.” In other words, hindsight is always 20:20 and it’s easy to scoff at those who turn out to have got something wrong. Nonetheless, the inability to imagine a different way often proves to be catastrophic.

As such, this is a useful take on a sorry and sadly somewhat typical story. Just remember: any time anyone writes something off as a “fad,” hear the alarm bells ringing. It may indeed turn out to be a gimmick of the highest order, but it’s certainly worth taking the time to take another look.

[Story via Tom Weaver.]

"Simply having the idea is not enough. Crafting a beautiful solution is not enough. Doing a dramatic..."

helenwalters — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 15:46:00 -0500

“Simply having the idea is not enough. Crafting a beautiful solution is not enough. Doing a dramatic presentation is not enough. Convincing all your peers is not enough. Even if you’ve done all that, you still have to go through the hard work of selling it to the client. And like any business situation of any complexity whatsoever, that process may be smothered in politics, handicapped with exigencies, and beset with factors with have nothing to do with design excellence. You know, real life. Creating a beautiful design turns out to be just the first step in a long and perilous process with no guarantee of success.”

- Michael Bierut is a partner at Pentagram and a simply wonderful writer. In Graphic Design Criticism as a Spectator Sport, he takes on the thorny topic of untrained amateurs daring to voice an opinion on graphic design. Thankfully, he doesn’t come to the traditional designerly conclusion that such interlopers clearly don’t get it, but instead offers a nuanced argument and a call to action for design professionals to step up and do a part of the job they too often don’t consider or relish. As he writes, “perhaps the question in these logo discussions could be more than: could I do better? Perhaps we could also ask: what was the purpose? What was the process? Whose ends were being served? How should we judge success? But we seldom look any deeper than first impressions, wallowing instead in a churning maelstrom of snap judgments. Should we be surprised when the general public jumps right in after us?” Important questions, all.