Skeuomorphism: The Opiate of the People

It probably goes without saying that I am a huge fan of Apple; as is almost everyone in the design field. However, their UI, especially in iOS, has always bothered me. For a company with such excellent taste and attention to design, the skeuomorphism of their mobile operating system seems so completely out of place. How can a company that is always on the cutting edge of hardware and experience be satisfied to cheaply emulate “real life” objects in their UI? Many people have simply written it off to taste, presuming that Apple wanted iOS to be approachable, even cute; but this argument never satisfied me. Their hardware never sold on personality. (Ok, for awhile it did, but not very well as compared to more recent products) In recent years it’s been minimal and neutral, successful for its excellence of design, build quality, and innovation.

I am not alone in this qualm. In fact, I would venture to say that the majority of the design and UI community takes issue with the leather stitching, mandatory shine, and linen textures of iOS. But today I came across this thought from Oliver Reichenstein of iA that changed the way I think about the issue:

Half way through the Steve Jobs Biography, the biggest revelation for me so far is the clash between Raskin and Jobs. It’s a clash between serious design and selling design:

1. Serious design does not necessarily sell well. That’s why it needs to be expensive to even exist.
2. What sells is sentimentalism, nostalgia, solemnity—what sells is kitsch. That’s why kitsch can be so cheap. Because it sells so well.

That is true for any kind of design. And this is why iCal has this fucking leather surface that makes any user interface designer puke wet feverish dogs. And that’s why Apple has so much money in the bank. Not because of the mind blowing design of its hardware. (They always had the nicest hardware). But because people are sold through its nostalgic interface. The winning path started with OSX, the interface “you want to lick.” Kitsch interfaces makes the average user think:

“I know how to use this!” (which is always a false promise)

instead of

“Looks like I need to learn to use this.” (which is always the case)

In practice, Jef Raskin’s serious design approach would win hands down against the Jobs approach—but Jef would not even get the chance to compete, because no one cares about serious design before getting in touch with it.

I don’t agree with it all, but there is a big revelation in there for me. Some people believe that skeuomorphism makes an interface easier to use, or more intuitive for the user, and I simply don’t buy that. But what hadn’t occurred to me is that it doesn’t matter if it actually does make it easier to use, all that matters is that it makes the average person think it’s easier to use. In reality, a user must take time to learn any interface, whether clad in faux leather or not. The skeuomorphism in iOS plainly tricks people that might otherwise walk away, convinced that they can’t learn something new, into putting in the time required to get acclimated to a new interface.

For every one designer pointing out flawed and unnecessary ornamentation in iOS, one hundred non-designers, normal people, are tricked into thinking they understand something new.

Apple has become increasingly mainstream with the success of the iPod, iPhone, and now the iPad. They always appealed to the creative class, those with a trained eye and developed taste, but now they’re in the pockets of an incredibly diverse chunk of the population. They recognize this, and they’ve draped artificial linen over the eyes of the everyman so the future doesn’t scare or intimidate him too much. Skeuomorphism, in Apple’s case, is not a cute style or an attempt to make their interfaces easier to use, but instead a way to ease us on to the new frontier.

I am certainly not off to throw a linen texture on the apps we’re working on at Friends of The Web, but I am definitely thinking about skeuomorphism differently now.

Thanks to Cemre Güngör for turning me on to the post from Oliver.

Ignite Baltimore 9

I was fortunate enough to present at Baltimore’s most recent Ignite. For those of you unfamiliar with the format, each presenter gets exactly five minutes and twenty slides, automatically advancing every fifteen seconds, to get his or her point across. I chose to present an adaptation and evolution of a paper I wrote for a film theory class in college, one of my favorite classes, about Marshall McLuhan’s evolutions in media and how they pertain to our most recent technological innovations in communication. Specifically, I propose that the Internet and the World Wide Web have retribalized us in many of the ways that McLuhan predicted back in the 1970s.

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Don’t “Learn Code” if You Don’t Want To

A blog post yesterday from the respected Frank Chimero ignited a lively Twitter discussion about the designer’s relationship to code. Some feel strongly that basic knowledge of HTML and CSS is essential for a designer in this day and age; some cling to the idea that a designer’s job is to make things pretty and the nuts and bolts of how that pretty thing is built are of no consequence. I’ve got an answer to settle all the 140-character arguing.

Ready? Here it is:

“Should I learn how to code?”
“If you want to.”

Really, it’s that simple. This question is no different from “Should I learn how to screen print?” or “Should I learn how to bind books?” Basic coding is a skill that will allow a designer to produce something they have designed, which is an immensely rewarding experience, but is in no way essential to the design process. Will knowing HTML and CSS make you a better designer for the web? Maybe a tiny bit, but no more than knowing how to coat, expose, rinse, and pull a screen will make you a better poster designer. We learn about how to design something by using it, not by building it. An avid reader is better suited to lay out a textbook than a bookbinder. If you’re reading this, you’ll probably visit and use dozens of websites today — most of us interact more with screens than printed material on a daily basis. Assuming you’re constantly analyzing the world around you for the basic principles of design (hierarchy, composition, etc.), and you should be if you call yourself a designer, I say you’re all qualified to design for the web.

I know how to develop websites. Once, I even coded a website that accidentally worked perfectly in IE6. However, at Friends of The Web HQ, I am surrounded by far more capable and speedy developers, as any designer working for a decent sized company or studio will be, so I haven’t touched a single line of code since I graduated.

Which reminds me, a real developer doesn’t want your garbage “designer/developer” slashie code anyway. It doesn’t matter how many articles you’ve read on A List Apart or how long you’ve followed Jason Santa Maria on Twitter; your code sucks. But don’t worry, it’s not your fault. Being a good developer and engineer is a full-time job, not a side-dish to your design career.

Yes, there are exceptions. Jonnie Hallman, one of my earliest design role models and now a close friend, is a designer/developer that consistently puts out clean looking, smartly engineered apps and websites. However, I am sure even Jonnie would admit that in order to keep his execution on par with is discerning standards he spends the vast majority of his time and energy wearing his developer hat; design is the cherry on top. Phenoms like Jonnie are the exception, not the rule.

Why this is so important

I am definitely not trying to discourage designers from learning how to code if they want to. Just as Jonnie designs and builds his own apps and Chris Muccioli designs and prints his own beautiful posters, you too can design something and bring it to fruition. I recommend doing it at least once.

However, I think it is dangerous and misleading to say that coding is an essential skill for a designer today. As I have discussed previously, one of the most apparent issues in design education to me right now is the deficient excitement around web and screen based design. The “designers need to know how to code” attitude is largely to blame for this. To some of us, code is meditative, logical, and beautiful. However, to most designers and design students, code is confusing, boring, and frustrating. This will probably never change.

I worry that posts like Frank’s, which perpetuate the myth that you have to know code to design for the web, are pushing students away from screen-based design. The Internet is an exciting and powerful medium and people should be jumping at the chance to design for it, whether they understand code or not.

Besides, breaking the rules is how we get progress. Think wrong.

The Golden Age and Graphic Design

I finally saw Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris this week, and I thought it was wonderful. You all should watch it. As with most Woody Allen films, and good films in general, it left me thinking about a lot of things, not least of which is the idea of the “golden age” and how it pertains to design, specifically design education.

Spoiler Alert.

The movie features contemporary protagonist Gil Pender, a writer that has been successful selling shallow, vapid scripts to big budget Hollywood productions. Though he has been prosperous in all quantitative measures in his career, he longs for the romantic life of an artist and yearns to write a novel set in Paris in the 1920′s, what he considers to be the “golden age.” He discovers if he waits at a certain street corner, when the clock strikes midnight, a vintage Peugeot will pick him up and drive him back through time that he might experience his “golden age,” rubbing shoulders with the likes of Ernest Hemmingway, Gertrude Stein, Cole Porter, and T.S. Elliot. He falls for a brooding and curious woman in the 20′s (GASP! An affair in a Woody Allen film?) and ends up travelling with her even further through time to the 1890′s, what she considers to be the “golden age.” The resolution of this four-dimensional scandal is that everyone thinks that some time before theirs was the “golden age” because life is generally unsatisfying, and this is something that we simply cannot accept. Bleak, existential the–grass–is–always–greener.

This is something I have thought about before, and I find it to be generally true. People who work for others always tell me how lucky I am to be self–employed, and entrepreneurs I know wish someone would do their bookkeeping for them and give them a health plan and a 401k. I suspect this dissatisfaction is one of the major forces driving humanity ever forward, a whole species — or at least a whole hemisphere — chasing the carrot–on–a–fishing–line that is contentedness.

I have found this to be especially true of my peers, who all happen to be recent college graduates, most of which are still looking for gainful employment. I have seen first and second hand how important knowledge of basic interactive and web design is to getting a job in design today, and to put it bluntly, schools can’t seem to keep up with the lightning fast evolution of the web. The vast majority of my classmates at MICA, and I suspect students across the country, feel nostalgic for the “golden age” of graphic design. There is boundless passion for letterpress, screen printing, patinated signs, and 60′s logos and branding. People lament the death, or at least realignment, of print and designing for the screen is tiresome and limiting.

Everything is faux distressed or egregiously skeuomorphic. The web is in the throes of puberty; we have all sorts of new and exciting potential, but we’re uncomfortable in our own skin.

Students should and need to be excited about the amazing possibilities afforded by the Internet. As much as I love the tactility of paper, the sound and feel of a Vandercook, the smell of ink, we are not living in the age of print. Your counterfeit vintage poster is easy; your retro typography is irrelevant. Print is not changing the world, Facebook is changing the world, and not necessarily for the better.

May we all learn to not just accept, but love the times we’re living in, against all odds. Eyes on the future, everyone, not the past.

All My Favorite Designers Aren’t Designers

These past couple months in the “real world” have reaffirmed something I have been feeling for a few years now — as much as I love design, I feel myself turning away from the world of graphic design. Four years ago, I was looking up to the likes of Frank Chimero, Oliver Munday, Nick Felton, Jessica Hische, Olly Moss, Mikey Burton, and Curtis Jinkins. I admired them and dreamed of being in their shoes someday. I wanted badly to be an ADC Young Gun or one of the 20 under 30. I believe strongly in design and wanted to be skilled, influential, and recognized in my field.

I have changed a lot since then, unsurprisingly I suppose. Now I find more inspiration in Louis CK’s brilliant, observational comedy than on any of the “design” blogs out there.

Nowadays, a short list of my role models looks very different. Dave Eggers, the force behind the avant garde publishing house McSweeney’s, 826 Valencia, and by association Wholphin, is one of my biggest influences. I admire Jesse Thorn for building a modest podcast empire around content that he wanted to produce, and looking good while doing it. I am inspired by John Bielenberg, who walked away from high–design — everything I was running towards four years ago — to start Project M. Ben Pieratt, the last of my heroes who could still be considered a true designer, says bluntly on his website “I used to be a graphic designer but now I run Svpply.com.”

I am especially enamored with Ben, whose posts in the past have expressed, more eloquently and thoughtfully than I ever could, ideas that had been bouncing around my own head. These four in particular, in chronological order and going back almost a whole year, resonated strongly with me:

• In Praise of Quitting Your Job
• My Design Career is Dead, Long Live my Design Career
• My Job pt. 1 — I Have No Idea What I’m Doing
• Dear Graphic and Web Designers, please understand that there are greater opportunities available to you.

Ben has been through some big changes this year, and it has been fun to follow along. His shift from wonderment to confidence in his newfound career path has been inspiring.

This all leaves me in an interesting situation. I no longer identify with or look up to any “real” graphic designers who are alive and working today (with the exception of Paul Sahre and Milton Glaser, perhaps. Both of whom reside on the fine art side of design, which I have eschewed for years.) I chose not to take a job at a design firm when I graduated. I haven’t taken a significant freelance job in almost a year. Instead, I am working with three of my best friends to build websites and mobile applications. Right now, some for others and some for ourselves, but our goal is to be supported by our own web-based products and services as soon as possible. We are entrepreneurs, and we are working on a number of self-initiated projects that we hope will connect people in meaningful ways and make a difference in the world.

It seems, without trying or really noticing, I am working on “startups” almost full time.

Ever since I first heard the term “startup” I disliked it and didn’t want to identify with it. Every new venture is a “startup”, so the name itself holds very little meaning. Additionally, I always heard the term in relation to venture capitalists, angels, and other investors; I didn’t know anyone that self-identified their project as a startup, until it became fashionable to do so, at least. The whole thing reeks of capitalism. To say you’re building a startup — as opposed to a service, community, website, etc. — implies, at least to me, that your focus is on money. Startups are meant to be sold, traded, and bought by Facebook and stunted in their infancy, as countless Silicon Valley institutions have shown us. I too hope to make a comfortable living from web-based products, but I make an important distinction: I am deeply passionate about all of the businesses I pursue, and the thought of building something merely to fill a niche only to sell it to the highest bidder doesn’t interest me in the least. An unbelievable and burgeoning business, for sure — just not for me.

As I have touched on before, I am drawn to design because of my affection for people. The simple fact of the matter is that the web allows me to reach a wider and more diverse audience than I could ever practically reach in print. I still identify as a designer, and I suspect I always will. Design is how I solve problems, visual and otherwise.

The web is a tremendous well of opportunity and we’ve only skinned the surface; it’s an exciting time to be working. I cannot imagine finding satisfaction in designing anything else.

“The Why Axis” to Bring a Critical Voice to Infographics

We all know there are lots of information graphics out there these days. Hopefully, we also all recognize that not all of these visualizations are well crafted or considered. I have touched on this subject before, calling for a more thorough, critical analysis of the information graphics in the media today. Bryan Connor, friend, colleague, and former roommate, knows a lot more about this stuff than I do, and he has just started a new blog, The Why Axis, examining the various forms of data visualization bombarding our eyes and brains on a daily basis. The modest amount of content he has posted to date already shows how relevant The Why Axis is going to be. Just in 2011, we have experienced a major revolution in Egypt, furthered unrest in the Middle East, and an earthquake, tsunami and ensuing nuclear disaster at Fukushima, ALL covered in the news by information graphics. Bryan provides us with an unbiased voice to help us digest all of this data; a safe haven in a world of politically and emotionally charged info graphics. I expect The Why Axis to be part celebration of successful data viz, part whistleblower on inaccurate and misleading information graphics in the news, and wholely informative and thoughtful.

The Why Axis

Two Faced Business Cards

I know it’s been quiet around here, but here is a business card I created for local photographer Josh Sisk. Josh has two distinct sides to his photography practice: that of a seasoned, professional studio photographer, and that of a scrappy concert photographer not afraid to put himself or his equipment on the line to get the best shot. In a dark venue or black-lit club, the glowing lettering highlights Josh’s gutsy gig photographer side, while in a well lit studio or office the cleanly typset information speaks to his professionalism and experience.

These are just the proofs, hence the mediocre documentation. Will take better shots when I’ve got a nice big stack of them.

Heirloom Print on Demand Now Available

It took almost a year and a half, but Heirloom is finally available from Lulu, one of the largest print-on-demand publishers. The quality of the book is actually much better than I expected; I have included some photographs so you can get a real idea of what you’ll be getting. For super hi-res versions, check out the Flickr Set.

Purchase the book here!
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Crowdstorms is Live!

After months of hard work, Josh and I have finally launched Crowdstorms, a new online tool that uses the power of words and people’s associations with them to inform the creative process. Registration is on an invite only basis and will likely be for sometime, so if you want in be sure to apply for an invitation here.

For those of you without an invite, we would love some feedback on the top level messaging of the brand, homepage, FAQ, etc.

Degree Project Timeline

I have been hard at work on my degree project for the last month or two. For those of you that haven’t figured it out, I will be designing, branding, and marketing a small line of products. I am going to intentionally stay light on the details at this time, but until I have finalized a name for the product line I will be posting updates directly to this blog about the project. Above is the timeline I created for myself back when I began designing Love & Utility, if you feel like sleuthing you can probably figure out a good bit from it.