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.

The Evolution of Facebook and the Magic of Twitter

The Facebook F8 Developers Conference was today, and though I don’t like or frequent the service, I felt it my duty to tune in. As I discussed in my recent Ignite talk, Facebook has an incredibly huge and invested user base; it is changing the world, for better or worse. There was a lot of excitement about the unveiling of the new Daytum-esque Timeline, as well as new and more comprehensive relationships between individuals and the things they’re interested in. For example, now you can “read” a book or “watch” a movie instead of just “liking” them. While I think that both of these features are smart evolutions for the platform (I am especially happy to see the spirit of Daytum reincarnated in medium that reaches so many people) I don’t think either of these advances are as noteworthy as something Facebook introduced, relatively quietly, a week ago.

On September 14th, they announced the “Subscribe” button which allows users to follow the updates of people they aren’t “friends” with. On the surface, this may seem a small update, a slight twist on the idea of “friending”, undoubtedly inspired by, if not directly taken from, Twitter. However, I think it is much more important than it may seem.

Every other aspect of Facebook is an emulation or facilitation of some common, normal interaction. Your Facebook friends are your real life friends; the service emulates the idea of sending them a letter (messages), having a conversation with them (chat), writing on their wall (posting), and now thanks to the newest updates, listening to music with them and sharing information about various media with them. Zuckerberg in his keynote states directly, multiple times, that the experience of going through someone’s Facebook page should mirror the experience of having a conversation with them. This is all well and good, but it is ground we’ve all trod thoroughly in the course of our lives. At the end of the day, none of these things are unique and meaningful interactions that take advantage of the immense potential Facebook and its 750 million active users have. To clarify, when I talk about the potential of digital media and communication, I mean the types of interactions that the internet can facilitate that would not be possible without it. No matter how cool it may be to listen to music with your friends on Facebook, it will never be as good as listening to music with your friends in real life.

This brings me to Twitter. I have been thinking a lot about Twitter, a service which I adore and use daily, and why it has been so successful. It’s a stupidly simple idea with its fair share of technical problems, way more in its formative years, and what must be the most childish and silly naming conventions of any mainstream website. (5000 tweets later, I still feel like an ass saying “I tweeted such-and-such” and “Follow me on Twitter“.) In spite of this, the service has grown speedily.

Twitter is one of the only truly new things I can think of. It facilitates interactions that would not be possible without digital communication. It allows its users to connect with celebrities, thought leaders, and other individuals that would never friend them on Facebook, and in an intimate way no less. In this massive web of leaders and followers, truly unique conversations occur, interactions that lead to amazing things. I have made friends on Twitter, true friends, whom I feel like I know on a personal level. When Anthony and I traveled to New York for the Photo Hack Day, one of them kindly and without hesitation allowed us to stay at his place, having never properly met either of us before. Connecting with people that aren’t our friends is what gives Twitter its edge. It’s actually taking advantage of digital communication’s potential, and it’s exactly what Facebook is trying to tap into with the “Subscribe” button.

Twitter is a hard thing to describe to someone who hasn’t used it. This is because it is not an emulation of some other interaction like Facebook and every other major service out there. You can’t simply say “oh, it’s like X, but online!” The closest comparison I can draw is everyone in the world (on Twitter more accurately) standing together in one huge gymnasium, huddled tightly around the most charismatic and entertaining individuals, casually and heterogeneously spread out around the average user. Everyone is talking, some almost non-stop and some rarely. In real life, this would of course be madness without benefit; no one would be able to hear anything meaningful. But with Twitter, everyone can hear. That’s the magic of it. Everyone can hear every other person they care to listen to. Even the quietest individual can be heard by the most influential expert. Some are serendipitously amplified into communities they would otherwise be unaware of, wherein they discover meaningful interactions and relationships. The result is an incredibly nimble and reactive community; one that can turn a passing thought into front page news and respond more quickly and effectively than any institution or major media outlet ever could.

These are the kinds of things our social networks should be doing for us. Listening to the same song in real time with my friend is a cool novelty, but it still leaves so much potential on the table. The subscribe button is a step in the right direction, but perhaps only in the spirit if competing with Twitter. I suspect privacy concerns are one reason that Facebook will have trouble competing in this space. Twitter’s brilliant and simple solution is that there is no privacy (save direct messages, which feel tacked on anyway). Everything said is said publicly, and eavesdropping is encouraged. Any “privacy” on the internet is an illusion anyway, might as well play to it.

This was perhaps a bit messier than my usual posts, but I wanted to get these thoughts out.

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 Problem with “Information Graphics”

Not since I created this blog two years ago have I used it as a forum for my rants and raves, but I have grown so frustrated with the current state of “Information Graphics” and “Data Visualization” that I can no longer hold my silence. I decided to write this after finding this “information graphic” this morning on Gizmodo: (and as I am finishing up this article I noticed it got posted to GOOD Magazine as well)

I don’t even know where to start with this one. As anyone who has spent any time making a REAL information graphic or data visualization will tell you, more than half the battle is deciding what data or information you want to present. An info graphic is only as good as it’s content, and this one’s content seems to be defining data visualization with a bunch of loosely sorted buzz words. It is unclear how we are supposed to read the graphic: it appears that there are three large circles representing design, communication, and information, but how are the three other words on the outside (user interface, visual communication, and data journalism) represented in the graphic? What is the significance of the darker, concentric circles within the larger ones? The graphic provides no clarity, only confusion and the illusion that the person that created it somehow understands more the viewer.

It doesn’t help either that they lifted (by their own admission) the format for their graphic from this iA piece, (which is not without ITS problems). The format of the information should match the information itself, not be some arbitrary arrangement of colorful shapes.

Even if we play along with the ridiculous format of the graphic, the “information” to be gleaned from it is largely false and absurd. “Typography” is not part of “Visual Design,” “Logic” has nothing to do with “Design” at all, and “Concept” = “Look and Feel” + “Data” + “Objective”? Not to mention words like “Dashboard” and “Knowledge” which seem utterly out of place.

So maybe I am being a bit harsh. After all, it’s just one graphic, and we all know it’s a lot easier to sit here and pick something to pieces than it is to actually create something. The thing is though, this is far from an isolated incident. Ever since Nick Feltron brought information graphics to the main stage aesthetically, you can’t stroll through the blogosphere, or down the halls of any design school in the country, without tripping over cluttered and confounding information graphics. Many of them are strikingly beautiful; we have collectively gotten very good at making numbers and graphs look dazzling. There is nothing wrong with making things look good, but when it comes at the sacrifice of readability and communication, you sure as hell had better not call whatever you’re making an INFORMATION graphic. Call it a beautiful pile of numbers, shapes, and colors, call it Fine Art, call it “experimental”, but don’t call it an information graphic.

Here is another prime example of information graphics gone wrong, (thanks to Anthony for reminding me) from the author of a popular info graphics book nonetheless:

This graphic does appear to have an interesting data set that I would love to explore and know more about, unfortunately the information has been so convoluted in the name of aesthetics that it is near unreadable. As Tony mentioned, this information would be more digestible in a spreadsheet than in this form, and that makes this graphic a failure in my eyes.

My intent is not to complain or whine about these particular pieces; goodness knows there is no shortage of graphics just like them I could have chosen. I decided to write about this because I care, a lot, about what I do. As designers, we have a responsibility to ourselves, our clients, and our audience to do the best we can to present information as clearly and concisely as possible. Visual language is just as powerful as spoken language, if not more so. You wouldn’t give a speech to a crowd of people you hadn’t thought long and hard about, so let’s stop filling the world with information graphics that demonstrate no thought or consideration behind them. It’s not harmless; this stuff matters.

I would also encourage a re-evaluation of the term “Information Graphics”. Almost everything we design has some information to convey, right? Sometimes that information is better communicated without big numbers in a sans-serif typeface and charts and graphs.

What do you think?

Social Design & Design by Committee

I had the opportunity to watch (a couple of times, actually) the documentary Citizen Architect almost a month ago. I have been stewing over the film, as well as social design in general, ever since, and I wanted to share some of my thoughts and perhaps start one of them fancy internet discussion things.

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Never Pick a Fight…

“Never pick a fight with a man who buys ink by the barrel.”

Mark Twain (via Best Made Projects)

Specialists vs. Extremists

Some thoughts on extremists vs. specialists, with a few little diagrams.

I will now make up a person for the purposes of illustrating what has been bouncing around my head for the past couple of days.

There is this guy I know named Jerry. Jerry is a very passionate person, especially about one subject in particular: lighting fixtures. Jerry’s job is to sell and install lighting fixtures, in his spare time he reads his favorite lamp blogs, and he surrounds himself with other lighting enthusiasts. By all quantifiable measures, it would seem that Jerry is an expert in lighting: the guy you would want to have around when making lighting decisions in your own home. However, for the sake of this story at least, Jerry is an extremist. Though he may know all there is to know about these fixtures themselves, he has no interest in your family, your home, or your specific lighting needs. When you ask him a question about lamps, his answer is so full of jargon and the snobbery that all to often comes with expertise that he is no help to you. Despite all of his knowledge, he is useless and irrelevant to you and your lighting woes.

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