How To Become Famous
Tricky tricky tricky tips about how to win design competitions. These tips seem to bend the rules, but in fact they simply play the system. The 1-second rule is one that should be applied to every design that is out there. We all have less than a second to impress a stranger with our designs. Simplicity in presentation is crucial. If the user is lost in that first crucial second, you’re out of the game. And deciding which category to compete in is another grey-hat tactic. If I make a poster, I should enter it into the category where it will be the biggest on the table. Seems simple, but coming up with a simple design is a complex process. Neat-o!
It seems like the best way to do design work is to do a lot of design work. Makes sense, repetition is the mother of expertise. And repeating your design process will make you more efficient and skilled. Do lot’s of freebies? No problem! My main goal right now is to get paid for ten pieces of design work before I die. Making your paid work good is a chore: the client always hurts the design. Then they hurt it more and wonder why it’s not working. I’ve been in doubt before, and I’ve made things bigger. It worked out, although they still haven’t paid me. And finally, “It’s nice to be important, but it’s important to be nice.” Thanks ma.
Vladimir Nabokov: Father of Hypertext
This one was interesting enough to get me through the entire 2 pages. Nabokov wrote Pale Fire in a style that fits the way we navigate the web, or at least a dense Wikipedia article. It’s more a style of thinking than a style of writing: the text in the book links you to other sections of content, and the process continues. There’s genius behind this style because, as the author says, you can experience an endlessly fulfilling voyage through the book by taking its many paths. It’s kinda like the internet.
Mr. Vignelli’s Map
The only problems my wife and I had with the NYC subway maps were with the local and express routes. Other than that, it was pretty strait forward. Vignelli’s map looks more like a work of art than a functional map. I guess that’s why they replaced it. But there’s something to be said for this design. On its own, it seems extremely easy to understand. Everything is laid out in a color-coded, simplified world. Real distance and proportion don’t matter to passengers on a subway system: they just get off at the right stop. But when this design is overlaid onto the world above it fails. As a visitor to NYC, I was confused enough by the concrete jungle. But at least having the real proportions on the subway map made it a little easier to understand in conjunction with my iPhone GPS map of the streets above. I’m not sure we would have had such an easy time finding our way, which would have caused us some frustration. Thank you NYC subway officials for replacing Mr. Vignelli’s map and allowing my wife and I and easier time 30 years later.