Lost Motion Assembly | Blog

“At Issey Miyake, it was about putting on more and more … here, it’s about taking away. Cut, cut, cut! The only things that stay are the things you need: It has to protect you from the rain, and heat has to escape”

– Naoki Takizawa, Uniqlo design director, explains the reductionist methods behind a Uniqlo parka

From a recent Fast Company feature on Uniqlo.

– Via minimalissimo.com

Made By Hand is a short film series by Brooklyn’s Bureau of Common Goods that explores and celebrates the handmade. The second episode tells the story of Joel Bukiewicz of Cut Brooklyn, who turned his back on writing to become a knife maker. Deeply thoughtful – and at times painfully honest – Joel talks about what it means to make something by hand in an age of mass production.

“So you go into the shop and you cut yourself, burn yourself, fuck stuff up, you ruin something you worked on for three weeks and you never make that mistake again. So this is how I learned… It takes buckets of blood and sweat. “

– Joel Bukiewicz

His notion of creativity is not some rarified indulgence, but instead a dedication; the act of investing time and energy into physically making something. This idea of patience, care and sheer grit, focused for hours onto a single object, is what separates it from something bolted together by a robot on a factory assembly line.

If you enjoy this film, be sure to check out the first film from the series, in which they visit Breuckelen Distilling; Brooklyn’s first post-Prohibition gin distillery.

– Via kottke.org

Physicists at the University of Leicester have – presumably in-between debunking the existence of the Easter Bunny and Father Christmas – revealed that Batman’s dramatic cape gliding would be less than optimal if adhering to real world physics. The report, published in the University of Leicester’s Journal of Special Physics Topics1, revealed that it’s not so much the gliding per se that would prove problematic. Rather, it’s attempting to land at a calculated velocity of 50mph that would lead to a swift visit to Gotham General Hospital.

Now if you’ll excuse me I’ll be in the backyard, burying my childhood dreams.

– Via Wired.com

I come in the next morning and say “y’know, yesterday was yesterday”

– Gary Wallen – McManus & Morgan Paper

A bittersweet documentary by Ben Proudfoot about two neighbouring shops – letterpress printer Aadvark Letterpress and artists paper supplier McManus & Morgan Paper – and how they remain passionate despite their financial struggles in downtown LA.

-Via The Strange Attractor

In Westwood Village Shoup once rode the Raleigh back and forth for weeks tailing cars. He discovered that the average driver had to circle the block two and a half times before locating an open metered space… In a year’s time in Westwood, space hunting by drivers consumed an extra 47,000 gallons of gas. It stalled traffic, increased accidents, and required 950,000 extra vehicle miles, about four trips to the moon and back.

– David Gardetta

Fascinating article by David Gardetta about the seemingly paradoxical economic model behind parking lots in the USA and how they shape not only the urban landscape but also driver’s behaviour.

- Via Kottke

Any of these sound familiar?

I need to research which of the 12 available software packages is the best suited for this project before I can begin

or

I can’t stand writing in anything other than a Moleskine/Field Notes/Rhodia notebook*

or

I have to go to France for 3 months to unlock my creativity

Maybe it’s time to re-evaluate your minimum requirements for production. Is your strict criteria merely procrastination in a smart suit? If your framework of pre-requisites is so complex and brittle that it prevents you from producing then perhaps you need to change your framework. Every dependancy that you choose to put in place is a tacit decision to delay starting. Your choice is whether those dependencies are reasons or excuses.

—

I admit I have as much as a stationery fetish as the next *Muji shopper, but I’m just as likely to put my pen to the back of every envelope that crosses my path.

Really enjoying the subtle work of illustrator Matthew Hollister

• Via Grain Edit

Recently a couple of print designer folks have quizzed me on my opinions on Adobe Muse, Adobe’s recent attempt to bridge the gap between web and print designers by offering up a very InDesign like interface. The general consensus seemed to be that Muse would do away with the need for print designers to learn HTML and CSS. Worryingly, this isn’t just the opinion – or more likely, hope – of print designers looking to wet their feet in the world of the web. This seems to be the entire raison d’être for Muse, and it’s a position that Adobe are using as their primary selling point.

I’m not against improved tools and ease of use – indeed, I’m a very content Apple user – but the last thing the web needs is another WYSIWYG editor that obfuscates HTML. As it stands, Muse does seem to spit out some reasonably clean and standards compliant code, so it at least seems a step forwards compared to Dreamweaver. And it does seem to contain a suite of useful tools (the site planning section has definitely piqued my interest). However the markup it generates is horribly non-semantic and the stylesheets are ludicrously unmanageable. For a more in-depth look at some of the technical failings of Muse go check out Elliot Jay Stock’s excellent review.

I’m going to skip the dissection on Muse’s shortcomings – Elliot has picked it apart very well. As it stands, Muse could still develop into a dominant position as the premier web design tool, in much the same way that InDesign – deservedly – rose up from the ranks to hold the top spot. So my issue is not so much the app itself, it’s Adobe’s assertion that the code should take a back seat to design that rankles.

“Think design, not code”

— From the Adobe Muse webpage

Coding HTML is part of the design process. Ignoring the code to focus on the purely visual is akin to ignoring the structural engineering of a building to focus on the sweeping glass façade. The sooner we stop treating code as a pesky obstacle to be avoided, the sooner we can get on with building a better web. And it is building, with all of its manual, hands-on connotations, not this rarefied notion of design as distinct from the nuts and bolts.

Why should I get my hands dirty?

Here are some reasons: semantics, accessibility, optimisation, responsiveness, compatibility, extensibility. We web designers love to throw these esoteric words around like we’re at a dinner party at Hogwarts, but that’s not to take away from their importance. These concepts are part of the very landscape of the web, and understanding them is vital. If you choose to ignore these then you can at best hope to be a web decorator, not a designer.

But it’s a great way to learn how to code!

This seemed to be a reoccurring argument, that Muse would provide time-starved designers with a gentle slope into web design. Do we think of a microwave as shortcut to learning how to cook? No. Learning to cook is how you learn to cook. I have never met a designer who isn’t short on time, so putting a tool in front of them that promises to remove the need to actually learn something will mean that they will probably never get around to learning.

Learn, or learn not.

The irony is that HTML and CSS is not that hard to learn, and the time (not to mention money) invested in getting to grips with Muse could well be spent getting acquainted with HTML. Understanding the medium you are designing for makes for better designer, in the same way that understanding the print process makes for a better print designer. And if you don’t want to concern yourself with HTML that’s fine, just find someone who is au fait with it and collaborate with them early on in the design process.

Predicting the future

When InDesign first came out it seemed unlikely that it could ever compete with the entrenched dominance held by Quark. By version 3.00/CS 1 it was already gaining position and now with CS6 out in the wild Quark is starting to feel like a poor Indesign copy. Muse will no doubt go through its awkward adolescent years before suddenly finding itself and confidently asserting itself much like it’s older siblings. And perhaps in 12 months time I’ll find myself happily using it to build sites. But I won’t ignore the code, and I won’t hide from it, and neither should anyone else. Go forth, get your hands dirty, and enjoy it.

Go code.

Christian Stoll’s recent photographs of General Electric’s GE-90 – the world’s bigest aircraft engine – are stunningly beautiful. Shot in variously locations for a print campaign led by Atmosphere/BBDO, they transform these massive forms into intricate studies of light and colour. If they ever get released as limited edition prints I already have a space on my wall waiting for them.

– Via Visuelle

Not all design needs to be about creating attention grabbing campaigns for huge corporate brands. Good design lies in the almost invisible; small, subtle details that are noticed only when they are absent. Susan Kare’s seminal work for Apple shows that sometimes design’s goal should be to simply make things easier. To learn more about her work be sure to check out Steve Silberman’s piece over at PLoS Blogs.

– Via Jared Erickson & kotte.org