The always reliable design firm Teehan+Lax have released a new psd that contains all core elements from iOS 6 along with a great looking iPhone 5 shell. I’ve used Teehan+Lax’s work repeatedly in the past for my own design ideas. They are always very well organized, critical for psds of this size.
Nathan Ryan, writing for The Industry:
If you’re working from the start date on an open-ended project, it’s much easier for the client to dictate terms which almost always means you end up doing more work than you signed up for when the project started.
Focusing you and your client on an agreed-upon ship date for their project means you can more clearly dictate what can and cannot happen in that timeframe because you’re working against the clock and you can only get so much quality work done in any given amount of time.
I can’t say I fully embrace Nathan’s stance; something about basing things off a hard deadline (which often changes) does feel very “waterfall methodology” to me. Yet he makes some reasonable points, especially the one quoted above.
Jason is one of the designers I respect most from both his writings and tweets, and this extended interview helps illustrate why. I especially liked his advice to designers starting out:
Creativity is like a muscle and you need to exercise it constantly. You need to draw; you need to sketch; you need to constantly be recording and taking in the world around you. A lot of writers say they need to write in order to understand how they think; I believe designers need to draw to understand how they think. Keeping a sketchbook is something that every designer I know takes for granted. Because it’s something they can do, it’s something they don’t do.
Lots of great advice here on running fast design iterations. Many fairly well proven pieces of advice here as well, like the weaknesses of group brainstorming and how tighter constraints and deadlines can lead to innovative ideas.
TechCrunch posts a fairly troubling article on what’s become commonplace in Facebook land: UI slickness to make it more likely that you’ll allow apps to access your personal information.
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.
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.
Dan Mall is a huge figure in the web design community. I’ve been a fan of Mall’s output for years, yet I haven’t spotted many interviews with him after he left NYC firm Big Spaceship. This talk with The Industry‘s Conor O’Driscoll is brief yet informative. I especially liked hearing about Dan’s day to day:
I wake up everyday around 4:45AM-5:00AM. I get to the gym between 5 and 5:30 where I’ll lift for an hour then play either basketball or racquetball with my brother, then head home around 7 to shower and get ready for the day…We’re in bed by 9PM.
That’s an early schedule, and I’m impressed Dan sleeps eight hours a night.
A nice extended comments thread over at Hacker News where users suggest websites and other resources for UX and UI design.
I saw this originally over at Craig Mod’s Twitter stream. I agree with his take: even though the Iconfactory normally does excellent work, there’s something about the default Sublime Text 2 icon that doesn’t quite click. I like this smooth pure black square alternative by designer Dan Perrera more.