Whitehouse & Company will be closed during the 2010 SEGD National Conference down in Washington D.C. June 2nd – June 5th. We hope to see you there and please feel free to say hello to Ben or Roger.
We will also be live tweeting during the conference, so please be sure to check back to find out what find interesting in our nations capital.
We have recently put the finishing touches on a web appliction for the New York State Department of Education. Developed in association with the Literacy Assistance Center in New York, the ASISTS site allows teachers to record the progress and history of students, and to be able to access this information and update it at any location. Being database driven, it can automatically prepare statistical analyses within any specified parameters, for reporting purposes.
For the technically minded, the site features:
All of which means that it is state-of the-art, as well as having a clear graphic hierarchy to enable users to easily navigate and understand this otherwise complex and extensive site.
What was the last book you bought?
Whatever it was, I have a hunch that it had either a distinctive or descriptive title…
(Catch 22 and Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity are my last two and I would highly recommend both of them!)
In essence, every e-mail you send has a title too. it is called a subject line and should describe the contents of that e-mail as clearly and succinctly as possible. Yet often, subject lines end up being the most disregarded aspect of the communication. The Subject line is much like the spine of a book, describing the information it contains. I certainly would never pick up a book that had any of the following titles:
How many times do you check your e-mail every day?
If you are like most e-mail users, your e-mail program is set up to check for e-mails every 5-10 minutes. That’s a whopping 48-96 possible interruptions per day respectively! That’s like the mail person giving you letters every few minutes throughout the day. Oh! here’s another one.
Quark, makers of QuarkXpress just unveiled a new identity which is a really fresh departure from their old dusty 1980’s Quark logo.
Unfortunately, It seems that their new brand is almost identical to that of The Scottish Arts Council.
Remember the days when you’d long to listen to music by the album? You went over to your shelves and looked at the album artwork to find the music you wanted to listen to. With the invention of MP3s and digital music players, the concept of album covers as navigational aids got lost (along with shelves full of records). Suddenly looking for a song meant you had to know the artist, album, or song name. As a visual thinker, I can easily tell you what any album in my music collection looks like from memory, but have a real problem with knowing what album a given song is on.
Netflix and the Netflix logo are copyright 1997-2005 Netflix, Inc. All rights reserved.
When you love Netflix, as much as we do, it can be a real nuisance when you arrive at work having forgotten to post your viewed Netflix DVD envelopes. You curse your eyes for missing the mail box and hope you remember the envelopes on your way home… but then you forget… again… and the cycle continues.
A vicious cycle.
I’m sure it’s happened to you at some point, you visit a website that you registered with, maybe your company’s healthcare provider, but you’ve totally forgotten your username and password. If you’re anything like me, you have a few usernames you’ve used over the years and a few passwords you might have used, but which ones are they? A few minutes of trying and I usually give up and ask for my username and password to be e-mailed to me.
This scenario happens to me over and over again and I never seem to get used to it. Is there another way? Are usernames really the best method for registering users?
As a graphic designer living in New York on a limited budget, I am constantly looking into catalogs and magazines, and drooling over the well designed objects I might someday afford. The Aalto vases, the Eames lounge chairs with ottomans, the Akari Noguchi paper lamps — all these items ignite my interest, but their prices bring up every designers biggest dilemma, design or Dinner?
One such object is the famous Solari Cifra 3 table clock. Manufactured by Solari in 1965 and designed by the flip (or flap depending on your preference) clock master Gino Valle, the Cifra 3 is often referred to as the “museum clock” as it was sold exclusively by MoMA. Gino Valle was an accomplished designer in his own right designing numerous flip clocks for Airport terminals, most notably his Monumental flip clock at TWA terminal.
Unfortunately, the Cifra 3’s, while still produced, sell for well over $200, which is a little out of my budget. Solution — make your mac (or PC) into a Solari Cifra 3 clock for free in approximately 2 minutes with an elegant little screen saver from 9031.com
The screensaver turns your idling computer into a wonderful timepiece. The only thing this clock doesn’t do, which is a real pity, is make a flapping sound as time passes. The Cifra 3 makes a small “flap” with each passing minute and a large “chunk” every hour as every flipper turns over simultaneously to display the new hour… although that might drive some folks crazy.
For more design hacks visit Twart Design’s Design w/o Reach for some low tech answers to high design.
Lezioni Design biography – translated
Artnet Biography of Gino Valle
Solari’s Story
Design Addict’s profile on the Cifra 3