Jason Santa Maria provides some great design les­sons on his journal. In the second instal­ment of his ‘Under the loupe’ series, he talks about mak­ing hier­archy clear and cre­at­ing focal points in your lay­out. For someone who hasn’t really had any formal design edu­ca­tion like me, it’s great to know why things work (or don’t work) visually.

All I had to com­ment was:

Thanks — good stuff!

update: Wow, that Big-ass-first-letter in the block quote looks even sil­lier with just the one line of text!

My ori­ginal intent for this journal was to post my com­ments over on other people’s journ­als on my own journal. I’m still not quite sure if that’s actu­ally quite inter­est­ing or if it’ll work, so it’s as much an adven­ture for me as it is for you!

Here’s my com­ment on Bryan Veloso’s “Lurkers! Speak to me!” post over on Avalonstar. It’s one of those delurk­ing threads — so if you’re lurk­ing here you’re free to finally com­ment here to :)

Dunno how I came here, but you’re writ­ing style’s pretty decent and I find your design oddly com­pel­ling, yet not attract­ive. (sorry)

You’ve been in my sage list since you said that it’d be inter­est­ing meet­ing me — still won­der­ing how that thought entered your brain.

Also won­der­ing what hap­pend to those t-shirts…as long as they’re here for sum­mer it’s cool, but just a little info on how far along the pro­cess is would be nice.

Seeing as how I haven’t really been a lurker I cer­tainly don’t really exactly qual­ify to win — but if I do, give host­ing to some other bloke, as I’ve got free host­ing any­way. It’s a nice price though..also, it’s best not to let me win — I don’t want to use up my luck, as I’m in the ‘Steve Jobs Movie Poster’ con­test over at MikeIndustries.

Oh, and a shoutout to the fel­low Joshualisters!

Mike Davidson has just announced the final Mike Industries iPod Creativity Competition: Design a Steve Jobs Movie Poster. I’ve pos­ted the fol­low­ing three entries…I’m up against some ter­rific com­pet­i­tion, so fin­gers crossed!

My first go. I had ori­gin­ally thought of remak­ing the ‘Saw 2′ poster by exchan­ging fin­gers for pods, but as I was look­ing for source mater­ial I came across the ‘Silence of the Lambs’ poster. Somehow that got me think­ing of Podcasts — and the rest was history!

During my research for the Saw 2 poster I also found an art­icle about movie posters using two fin­gers to indic­ate a sequel. Among the posters lis­ted was the Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle poster…mmmm. Looking at that poster, my mind nat­ur­ally pondered how easy it’d be to fit in a Nano into Cameron Diaz’ hand. Thus “Steve’s Angels” was born.

Saul Bass’ Anatomy of a Murder poster + Ipod’s ad cam­paign. I’ll say no more except that if you look closely, you’ll see some nice details! (Isn’t as good as the iZom­bie though.)

Every day I see evid­ence that we are los­ing our abil­ity to under­stand and appre­ci­ate effect­ive design — trad­ing our appre­ci­ation and under­stand­ing for fet­ish.
~ source: Andy Rutledge

Andy Rutledge, you have no idea how much I agree with you.

I’d like to add that the design of this Journal was an exper­i­ment in design-porn. I found my past designs too aus­tere. I felt it lim­ited my abil­ity to fully express what I wanted to con­vey. I must say that I haven’t quite reached a point where I’m sat­is­fied with the amount of fluff in this design yet.

So get ready for more fluff (and a good cull­ing afterwards)!

edit: Whoops, thanks Bob!

Reading 37 Signals, I came across a recent art­icle about how more isn’t always a com­pet­it­ive advant­age. The art­icle begins as follows:

I want to talk about the concept of less. And more spe­cific­ally the idea of using less as a com­pet­it­ive advantage.

While this strategy may still work for some, it’s expens­ive, resource intens­ive, dif­fi­cult, defens­ive, and not very sat­is­fy­ing. And I don’t think it’s good for cus­tom­ers either. It’s a very Cold War men­tal­ity — always try­ing to one-up. ~ source

Although I agree with the art­icle and the under­ly­ing strategy it recom­mends, there are two things I’d like to point out. Firstly, as more and less are rel­at­ive, more of one thing means less of another. When you recog­nise this, it’s easy to see what the under­ly­ing reason is for less being more in some cases.

On a more prac­tical note, I’d like to add that con­straints encour­age cre­ativ­ity. It’s this cre­ativ­ity from which pro­gress fol­lows. Thus, less can be progress.

Oh my! Veerle’s just pos­ted photo’s of Palau de les Arts Reina Sofía (the new opera house in Valencia) and I have to say it’s the most beau­ti­ful build­ing I’ve seen.

More about Palau de les Arts Reina Sofía in a intro­duct­ory pdf issued by the city itself and on wiki­pe­dia.

Yep, a new journal, new design, launched on the 1st of November together with all the other peeps who’re also cur­rently reboot­ing.

Like it?