This month marked my five-year anniversary as a subscriber and an allegiant fan of Cook’s Illustrated magazine. The publication started out 15 years ago, but in recent years, the Cook’s folks have been growing a small but venerable empire with a website, the more colorful and gregarious Cook’s Country, and the television show, “America’s Test Kitchen.” It’s become an elegant and relentless cooks’ paradise. More…
Constraints are good. For anyone who’s taken a summer vacation, you know that having more free time doesn’t necessarily make things easier. It doesn’t make things more accomplishable. It doesn’t make you more efficient.
This summer, my cohort Khoi Vinh and I, have been happy to put more constraints on our free time by adding another project to our rosters. I’m proud to announce that A Brief Message, that very project, launched earlier tonight. More…
Last week at An Event Apart Chicago hosted by Jeffrey Zeldman and Eric Meyer, I had the pleasure of meeting a huge number of approachable and impassioned attendees. I heard talks ranging from the high-level-inspiration kind to the get-your-hands-dirty kind that define the event.
For the first time, I gave a talk on The Seven Lies of Information Architecture. I wasn’t sure how it would fare, as I’m an IA myself, and contesting principles is always tricky. I got good feedback from some nice attendees and look forward to refining the ideas, providing more examples, as I develop the Lies. More…
The first investigative design I did was in graduate school. I was in my early 20s and learning about information design, when I went to see a play. I don’t remember the name of the play, or even whether it was any good, but I do remember being struck by the elegance of the play’s program. Afterward, I tracked down the typeface—Scala Sans—and tried to mimic the line length and leading in the most important print piece I was working on at the time: my résumé. More…
Today, I have only one Post-It Note in plain view. But it’s a rare day. I organize my week on 3×5-inch Post-Its on my living room wall. Post-Its at the top are priorities; Post-Its at the bottom are nice-to-haves; and all Post-Its are ordered chronologically from left to right. More…
Think back to the school gym, the backyard, the rec room or the playground—hours devoted to hide-and-seek, flashlight tag, Lite-Brite, The Game of Life, Shrinky Dinks and Big Wheel. No matter where childhood happened or what filled those salad days, one thing is consistent: it probably included games—and lots of them. More…
It’s 7 AM on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Bush is sending more troops to Iraq, Hillary is running for office, and New York is in for snow. We start out on a chilly 6 train toward midtown. Even though the subway trip is only a short 20 minutes, Paul (29, website director) wastes no time as he rides, reading and deleting e-mail that’s come in overnight. By the time we reach his office, only the e-mail “that matters” is left. More…