February 2012
18 posts
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“Culture, like brand, is misunderstood and often discounted as a touchy-feely...”
– Culture Eats Strategy For Lunch
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Tumblr Architecture - 15 Billion Page Views A... →
One of the common patterns across successful startups is the perilous chasm crossing from startup to wildly successful startup. Finding people, evolving infrastructures, servicing old infrastructures, while handling huge month over month increases in traffic, all with only four engineers, means you have to make difficult choices about what to work on. This was Tumblr’s situation. Now with twenty...
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Design to Inspire Confidence →
Inspire confidence with instructions that help users make the jump from one service to another. These need to be rooted in the user’s current knowledge of the system, not their future behavior.
The key well received design will always come from a perspective of empathy for the viewer, user, client or culture. More on the topic of design and empathy:
Empathy is the Root of Creativity
A...
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“Don’t ignore your fear. Acknowledge it. As soon as you know you’re...”
– Peter Bergman, from his article How to Start the Big Project You’ve Been Putting Off
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“Moving fast enables us to build more things and learn faster. However, as most...”
– from Mark Zuckerberg’s founder letter in Facebook’s S-1 to IPO
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January 2012
13 posts
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Beautiful web type →
A showcase of the best typefaces from the Google web fonts directory.
Out of the 404 web fonts currently on Google Fonts, Chad Mazzola put together a collection of some of the better fonts available. Watch the repo on GitHub.
Additionally Sacha Greif recently published a great article, Google Webfonts That Don’t Suck.
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“We found the startups that did best were the ones with the sort of founders...”
– — Paul Graham on the correlation between resourcefulness and success in startups.
I am incredibly thankful for my years at 2Advanced back in the fast-paced, mid-2000s Flash era. Everyone who worked on that team during that period of time learned the value of resourcefulness as you were expected to...
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Design Sets the Tone at a New Start-Up Square →
Square’s front door to customers is a smartphone application. Square has to provide the simplest experience possible, Mr. Dorsey believes, because, along with good design, it will evoke trust and confidence in a new financial institution that lives in a smartphone.
Yet another example that strategic differentiation begins with design.
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“Love your craft everyday. Design the simplest, most delightful product you can....”
– Dave Gamache
From his article Craftsmanship - Quality, Passion, and Excellence
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Look Back at 2011: Most Popular Themes
staff:
Tumblr gives you complete control over all aspects of your blog, and once you know some HTML, you can make them look pretty much any way you want! On the other hand, many of us would rather benefit from the skills of the thousands of brilliant designers whose work is featured in the Tumblr Theme Garden.
The top themes of 2011 were…
The Minimalist
Inspire Well
Wow! That certainly...
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10 Mega Business Trends To Watch For In 2012 →
As long as you can weed through the drastically over-written, buzzword oozing writing style, this is a fantastic article mapping out some broad trends in business for 2012. Trend number seven should be of note for any designers or design focused brands:
Strategic differentiation begins with great design. Strategic differentiation provides a desired reputation, creates a defensible competitive...
December 2011
11 posts
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I think that social blogging platforms like Tumblr may see a huge growth in 2012. Your designs are helping lead the way in responsive and more customisable themes.
I no longer believe in web designers taking thousands of pounds to design a small biz web presence. Social is doing more to drive traffic, and I think it can stand up as strong as seo driving new customers.
An excerpt of a Style...
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“When the song of the angels is stilled, When the star in the sky is gone, When...”
– Howard Thurman
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“Melancholy shouldn’t be confused with depression. Melancholy is an active state....”
– Alexander Stutterheim, post on Melancholy & Creativity
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Color 2.0
Color is a live broadcast from your phone. Unlike videos, there’s no audio, editing, or uploading. You got 30 seconds to tell your story. Up to 5,000 friends can simultaneously visit your broadcast from their phone and Facebook.
So after rehashing the complete flop of the first version of Color, they’re putting their $41,000,000 in funding to use to launch a platform to broadcast...
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“Designing a product is keeping five thousand things in your brain and fitting...”
– Steve Jobs
November 2011
19 posts
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“Don’t ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come...”
– Howard Thurman, an influential American author, philosopher, theologian, educator and civil rights leader (1899-1981)
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Why Instagram Is So Popular: Quality, Audience, &... →
More weight and significance is placed on each image, just because you have to consider it, at least for a split second, in your feed. Instagram forces you to focus.
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