Despite popular opinion, vocabulary can actually be pretty volatile. Take “innovate,” for example. At one point in the not-so-distant past, “innovation” had some pretty positive connotations. We aimed to be innovative; books on innovation crowded our reading lists; we bookmarked and emailed articles mentioning the topic. But somewhere along the way, “innovation” became dirty. The word has lost its way. More…
I’ve always been that person who brings a something to write on to every meeting — a sketchbook specifically. But for years I never used it to sketch; instead, I fill it with fairly rigorous notes of every meeting detail. Almost ten years of sketchbooks are archived neatly nearby (by size, then date), and their notes, historical artifacts of meeting narratives for later reference.
But last year, I had the pleasure of working with Jonathan Harris. After meetings with Harris, I watched my 10-year-old sketchbook-tradition change: what used to be pages of fairly rigid text notes evolved into charts, scatterplot graphs, four-quadrant diagrams, and Venn diagrams. More…
Before we knew web design, before we knew what we did was called information architecture, we wrote. We sat patiently through grammar class, learning when the participle dangled and the sentence ran on. As we got older, we were handed down paperbacks gilded with lessons and rules about how to write. Guidelines from Strunk & White guided our high school prose.
But if we braved on, we may have encountered a different kind of grammatical attitude. Grammar rules dropped away; Strunk & White became idle on the bookshelf, and we were left to our own devices. More…
Jake Barton, one of the speakers at the upcoming IDEA conference I’m so excited about, is always surprising me. Just when I think I understand his approach (designing spaces to tell stories), he comes out with another type of project altogether (designing films)—through it all, winning awards from every major design organization there is. There’s no doubt, Barton and his studio are truly remarkable. More…
I’m really excited about the upcoming IDEA conference in New York City. Not only is its lineup of speakers the very people I’ve been looking to for inspiration recently, but it’s being put on by the Information Architecture Institute.
OK. It’s true. I’m on the advisory board of the IAI, but I’m still thrilled to see an event sponsored by an IA-related organization reaching outside the typical boundaries of what’s considered to be “information architecture.” 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…
Justin Gignac goes out of his way to find garbage. Right off the street—from back alleys, from uptown, from downtown—he collects it late at night after his day job at an advertising firm. He boxes it up, labels it, then sells it for up to $100 via his company, NYC Garbage. Gignac has made trash trendy through a package design and marketing plan developed while he was a still a student at the School of Visual Arts. More…