(via: The New Yorker Blog) Artist Jorge Colombo drew this week’s New Yorker cover using Brushes, an application for the iPhone, while standing for an hour outside Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum in Times Square. The magazine’s blog has also posted a video playback of Colombo’s painting (embedded below). According to the post, the NewYorker.com website will post a new drawing by Colombo each week.

The last time a virus story hit the news radar was six years ago (almost to the day). One of the symptoms of the SARS virus was its effect on magazine cover designers and the editors with whom they work. I can’t track it down, but that week’s cover of U.S. News & World Report also had a version of the same cliché. Each of these covers appeared on the issue dated May 5, 2003:

Some of you may recall my post last November when I was in awe of a post-election New Yorker cover illustration by Bob Staake. (Later, the cover was selected by Time as the best magazine cover of the year). When I just saw the cover of the current New Yorker in my stacked-up (staaked up?) in-box, I recognized the Staake style immediately. Perhaps it won’t be best cover of the year, but I like it a lot:

(credit: HelveticFanatic, Flickr, [CC])

Robert Scoble has jumped into the debate over the new interface design of Facebook. Scoble’s piece expresses an insight I believe is too often missed by those who confuse the concept of “pleasing the user” with “creating breakthrough ideas.” In his post, Scoble does a tremendous job of describing why “like” is the breakthrough idea that is the foundation of the new Facebook design. Of course, the whole “like” idea is not Facebook’s idea (more on this later), but making “like” and “comment” central to the idea of what Facebook is is (to quote a former President).

Scoble (and I) are fans of Kathy Sierra, creator of O’Reilly’s Head First book series and a presenter extraordinaire. Over the years, in evangelizing what software developers need to do to create “passionate users,” she has addressed the need to create “breakthrough ideas” instead of merely better products. Last week in Austin, I was able to catch Kathy presenting to 1,500 of her fans and was reminded once more of how she can explain in a polite, yet explicit way, that focus groups and user research has its place, but that place is not in helping you design great software. It helps you tweak software, she says, but it’s no help when you want to create breakthrough ideas.

Another incredible discussion thread that is bouncing around the tech blogosphere this week about “research-driven design decisions” vs. “break through ideas” was started with this essay by Douglas Bowman, in which he announced his departure as the lead visual designer at Google. Design, of course, is merely one aspect of breakthrough ideas, however, the process of design at Google, as Bowman describes it (and as revealed in recent profiles of Marissa Mayer), seems obsessed with research into iterative changes (as in, what shade of blue gets more clicks) rather than creating something that changes everything. Bowman admits (who wouldn’t?) it’s hard to question anything Google does, as they have the users and money to prove they’re right and everyone else is wrong. However, as someone who uses Google products to the point of considering turning everything over to them (heck, even moving this blog to Blogger.com), I’m more impressed by their ability to make products solid and simple than with their ability to come up with anything new. (And, frankly, to me making web applications solid and simple is a breakthrough idea.)

I say all this to emphasize that I agree with Scoble: What Facebook is doing is not necessarily original, but it is building on a foundation they have that will help create the opportunity for breakthrough ideas. While most of the analysis I’ve read has compared the new Facebook design to Twitter, I believe that comparison is wrong. To me, it seems obvious the benchmark for “the new Facebook design” is FriendFeed. (As those who’ve made it this far likely know, FriendFeed was created by some Google alumni and is one of many services — but the most popular among the A-List geeks — that aggregates ones creations, comments, jestures or expressions from across all the social media he or she uses (i.e., sharing a photo via Flickr, favoring a video on YouTube, reviewing a restaurant on Yelp). If you’re reading this on my blog (vs. via an RSS reader or on Facebook), over on the right you can see a sidebar box (widget) that displays the headlines from my FriendFeed account, something I call jokingly, “The River of Rex.”

While the FriendFeed creators seemed purposeful in not trying to replicate or compete head-on with Facebook (Exhibit #1: The service has no user profile page), they obviously served as a proof of concepts that didn’t go unnoticed by Zuckerberg & Co. Concept #1: You don’t need lots of complicated “invite and display” applications to get users to aggregate every social media thing they do. Concept #2: Those “like” and “comment” fields make every tidbit of content a launchpad for conversation and insight.

Unlike past attempts by Facebook to change the service in ways that violated principles of trust or privacy, I believe the new design will actually be of great benefit to Facebook users — after they get over the whinning. So put me in the 5% group: I like the new Facebook design. I believe it serves the user (rather than screws them like the previous changes). In fact, I like it a lot.

However, I think soon the word “like” will be as confusing as the word “friend” is today.

Technorati Tags: facebook

Last night, I grabbed a screenshot of Whitehouse.gov so I could compare it to what is today, a new site. The design and typography reflect the look established by the Obama campaign, however, the “new” site brings along some standard navigation and perhaps even better conveys the gravitas that comes with the office. There’s also a nice (and subtle) use of the American flag “button” in a more prominent position with the new design. I like American flags. Apart from the design, one of the most prominent “changes” (other than, of course, the change in Presidents) is the use of words like “post” and “blog” — as in, here is the first blog post written by Macon Phillips, the director of New Media for the White House and one of the people who will be contributing to the blog.

I think it’s pretty cool that a blog is going to be the featured platform with which the White House is going to communicate with the world.

It’s odd, but just five years ago, on February 19, 2004, I was the first* person to ever “blog” a private White House meeting with a President. (See: Related posts.) I was told later that the White House media staff had a melt-down when they learned what I did, but quickly figured out that what I had written was about as harmless as, well, anything I write here.

Five years from that to a blog being front and center on Whitehouse.gov. I’m pretty amazed. Change, indeed.

*Source for “the first” claim: This article by Dan Froomkin of the Washington Post. Also, see Dan Gillmor’s We the Media.

Arthur Hochstein, writing for Time.com’s list of top 10 magazine covers of 2008, says #1 goes to The New Yorker, Nov. 17, 2008 cover:

“Why is the cover great? It doesn’t do a victory dance. Rather, it whispers to the reader (the tribe): “Everything’s okay now — we have our country back.” It’s set at night, a time when creepy things happen, but also a time when people sleep, safe and sound. It is beautifully rendered. Simply spectacular.

As I’ve already declared the cover one of the best of the next 50 years, I obviously agree with Hochstein’s choice. As a reminder, here’s what I wrote when the magazine came out:

The most daunting challenge a magazine designer and editor face is a cover of an issue when every magazine on the newsstand is going to be featuring the same story. How do you capture the event and moment uniquely? Secondly, an illustrator for the New Yorker has an additional competitive challenge: how to tell this story more dramatically than all of the previous New Yorker covers that appeared following unique historical events. This cover responds to the challenges on many levels: evoking both Lincoln and Martin Luther King. However, what makes this cover a masterpiece to those who love magazines is its striking awareness of context — this is not merely an illustration: it is a magazine cover and the “O” of the magazine logo is providing the illumination of the story. This, “my friends,” (to quote the losing candidate) is one of those times when genius is an easy label to apply.

Later: You can purchase a print of the cover from NewYorkerStore.com. (Please note: I am receiving no payment whatsoever for that link.)

In a week when people are snapping up printed media as personal mementos of an event of a lifetime (I jokingly asked on Twitter why people didn’t just print out a copy of a website), I’d like to make a prediction that you can verify in 50 or so years. The cover of the current issue of The New Yorker will be considered among the best magazine covers of the first half of this century.* (Ironically, another New Yorker cover from the campaign — the Obamas as knuckle-bumping radicals — could also make the cut.) The illustration is titled “Reflection” and was created by Bob Staake. Below is an video Staake created that animates the cover:

*Later: I’ve been asked “why is this cover so great?” so here goes: First, the most daunting challenge a magazine designer and editor face is a cover of an issue when every magazine on the newsstand is going to be featuring the same story. How do you capture the event and moment uniquely? Secondly, an illustrator for the New Yorker has an additional competitive challenge: how to tell this story more dramatically than all of the previous New Yorker covers that appeared following unique historical events.

This cover responds to the challenges on many levels: evoking both Lincoln and Martin Luther King. However, what makes this cover a masterpiece to those who love magazines is its striking awareness of context — this is not merely an illustration: it is a magazine cover and the “O” of the magazine logo is providing the illumination of the story. This, “my friends,” (to quote the losing candidate) is one of those times when genius is an easy label to apply.

Update (12/8/2008): Accolades as “the best cover of the year.”

Today, Yahoo! announced the release of Fire Eagle, a service that, according to Search Engine Land, “is intended to be something of a ‘clearinghouse’ or ’switchboard’ for location and help users ‘manage location’ across the internet and on mobile applications.”

Those of you who know what this means, raise your hands. Okay. That’s what I thought. Actually, I’m not blogging about what the service does. I’m blogging about Fire Eagle’s logo. I’m outraged! Yahoo! would infringe on the Tennessee Titans’ famed “flaming thumbtack” logo. While I’m sure that Yahoo!’s designer intentionally meant to make their logo look like a flaming thumbtack and with the Titan’s designer’s, it was just good ol’ dumb luck, I still think consumers may be confused by the remarkably similar flaming thumbtack images.

To protest Yahoo!’s blatant disregard for my home team’s copyrighted logo, I have decided that when I attend Titans games, I will not use Fire Eagle to manage my location across the internet and on mobile applications.

From the funny folks at CollegeHumor:

[via: Print CEO Blog]

From the post: “Who Should We Put On The Cover?“

Artists Shan Carter and Amanda Cox created the interactive chart in the video I’ve embedded below. (Added later: There is now a permanent spot for the graphic on NYTimes.com: here.) It is appearing this afternoon on the front page of NYTimes.com and interprets exit polling data from the entire Democratic Party presidential primary campaign. My video is a quick screencast (a video screengrab) of me clicking through the tabs of data that are displayed in the graphic. (What I didn’t show was how a cursor-hover reveals data related to each state box.) I believe it’s an impressive (dazzling) use of subtle interactive-animation and information design that effectively translates a mountain of incomprehensible data into an understandable statistical narrative. I’m especially struck by the way the NYTimes artists eschewed colors and relied on the animation and the relative placement of data to interpret the statistics. For a chart junkie (I confess), I’m impressed that it is strongly visual, yet at the same time, is very “un” info-graphic. This is serious information design porn, in other words. (For future readers, today is the last day of the marathon 2008 Democratic Party presidential primary campaign.)

Credits that appeared with the graphic: Source: Edison/Mitofsky exit poll Design: Shan Carter and Amanda Cox

Actually, I think you could ask Khoi Vinh a question anytime and you’d get an answer, but this week, you can ask him a question and he’ll answer it as part of the NYTimes.com’s “Talk to the Newsroom” feature. Khoi is NYTimes.com design director. And he’s a really, really smart guy. He loves Helvetica, also.

If Edward Tufte were a rock music blogger, he’d be Earl Boykins, aka Andrew Kuo, an artist the New York Times commissioned to go to seven straight Bright Eyes, aka Conor Oberst, shows and to review them the way he does on his blog. Here are the results. I wonder what Tufte thinks.

A few months ago, I told a group of marketers that the reason some people have difficulty understanding social media is the baggage some bring from other media when trying to understand how “digital natives” experience the web. “Your metaphors suck,” is perhaps the only thing I said that day they all can remember. Specifically, I noted that the metaphor of “a page” that we’ve brought from print to the web is a tremendous burden in trying to comprehend the “live” nature of the web — that the web is a place, not a thing.

In his typically insightful and eloquent way, NYTimes.com design director Khoi Vinh today explains how the term page “burdens the digital page with the false expectation that it will share many similarities with a printed page, where a more accurate term might clean the slate.” This, he says, can be a challenge for the designer, as well as the reader or user.

Quote:

“A Web page and a printed page are so materially different from one another that it’s almost ridiculous to use the same terminology to describe them. It’s nearly as counter-intuitive as using the terms ‘episode’ (for a television show) and ‘issue’ (for a magazine) interchangeably. When Web designers think of a page, we tend to understand that it’s a page in name only, and that in fact its true nature is as a container for content, features and behaviors. But the idea of a page has such a deeply rooted connotation in centuries of printed matter that Web novices tend to think of Web pages as simply finite blocks of text and images, with functionality and interactions as only superficial garnishes.

Khoi (nor I, for that matter) is not suggesting the word “web page” be replaced — obviously, it is here to stay. However, there is no reason designers (or the rest of us) need to apply the metaphors of the physical page to the digital one.

(Sidenote: I won’t point to it, but I long-ago grappled with the “episode” metaphor as it relates to magazines. In some ways, thinking of a magazine as “episodic journalism” can be a helpful metaphor for editors and designers trying to understand both the constraints and opportunities of regularly publishing something that reassures the reader with its consistency while surprising the reader with its freshness. Another metaphor for another day.)

I’m glad others share my pet-peeve with page-view boosting hacks that are common on some magazine (and other) websites. Mike Davidson says that breaking up a story (pagination) to juice pageviews is evil.

Quote:

“Over the last several years, many publishers have convinced themselves that breaking up stories into sometimes as many as ten pages is an acceptable way to present content on the web. The realistic ones at least admit that it’s a cheap way to boost stats. The disingenuous (or naive) ones actually posit that they are improving readability and usability for their audiences by reducing scrolling. Because scrolling is so hard.”

I saw this via Rex Sorgatz, who says he isn’t bothered by it. “I’ve just always been willing to find the ‘print’ button,” he says. My problem with the “slide-show” version of this page-view juicing hack (the even-more-evil cousin of the pagination hack) is that there’s no “print” button. Question to Rex S: Do you include list slide shows in your year-end list of lists?”