Words
We may stray fairly far afield, but we promise to come back to mostly industry news, shop talk, grab bag and (since everybody’s got one) opinion.
Taking Hints from Pixar
Peter Sims at the Harvard Business Review has a great piece on how Google might want to consider taking a few hints from Pixar—”as close to a constant learning organization as there is, with a proven ability to reinvent and a genuine cultural humility.”
Creativity Crisis? Break the Pattern
A recent article from Newsweek cites that American creativity is in decline. That’s something America has always had going for it. Our legendary ingenuity. The ability to figure out the solutions to tough problems. Boldly go. Build a better mousetrap. Reinvent the wheel. Weave a tapestry of clichés.
Clever. How’s that working out for you?
The Social Network movie poster. Clever indeed.
Combining Fonts
Good type can make or break a project. How you choose to combine typefaces is just as important. Fantastic write-up from the folks at H&FJ: Four Ways to Mix Fonts.
Internet Explorer 6
If you’re using Internet Explorer 6, we’re betting that this site looks a little off. That’s because we’re not supporting IE6 any longer. IE6 is really old. In dog years it’s over 49.
Books, the iPad and Print Armageddon. Again.
Don’t take that the wrong way. I love print. There’s few things as satisfying as getting a finished journal, book, report—even business cards back from the printer. The faint smell of ink. The reality of it. It’s an object. That’s fantastic. And immensely satisfying.
Web Licensing from FontShop
Awesome news for the type geeks here at Sky2x Creative. We can finally get web licenses for some of our favorite faces—DIN, Meta and so on—thanks to FontShop opening the gates to web licensing. Sure. They’re kind of steep. Yet, if you’ve got an established brand you’ve been working with and you’ve been settling for Verdana and Georgia you don’t have to any more.
$5 Guerrilla User Test
Drunk people are a pretty accurate mimic of distracted, indifferent people.
Spec Work is the Devil
We don’t work on spec. We just don’t. We’ll do pro bono work. In fact, later this month we’ll be showing off some work we did gratis. Speculative work is just a big bucket of lose for the design firm. We’re idea people. Creative people. Spec work devalues that.