Noisy Decent Graphics

"I could be a millionaire if I had the money"

Clifford T. Ward

"Success can only be achieved with a kind of pioneer spirit and the repeated use of three tools: failure, introspection and courage."

Soichiro Honda

I wonder if the nice people at w+k have seen this quote?

"Make it really, really clever or really, really simple."

Great advice from a close friend of mine at college.

"For some, an iconic design is all about functionality. For others, it simply has to look pretty."

I'm very much a function over form sort of guy. (More about that later.)

So I read these reviews in the FT Magazine with interest. 100 Everyday Marvels of Design looks particularly interesting. Especially if you happen to be writing a book on the ordinary.

If you could come back as a file format, which file format would it be?

That last post reminded me of a question a friend of mine asked me a few months back.

If you could come back as a file format, which file format would it be?

He said he’d come back as a PDF, which is understandable. What would your answer be?

"I think it's called the internet or blogs or something - I don't know, I've only just got used to letters John, I haven't got into all this new technology"

As said by the Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, yesterday.

And to think, you lot were spending all that time worrying about 2.0. Some people still need help with 1.0.

Robot Facts

Brilliant article in the Economist (sub required) about robot ethics.

"If you make a big mistake in your first game it will be your last game"

Graham Poll in a BBC interview before the World Cup started.

The same Graham Poll sent home today for making several mistakes in his first game.

"Things can be interesting without being the answer"

Seen on some student work (from Glasgow School of Art) yesterday.

"If you have lemons, make lemonade."

Hunter S Thompson

"Would you like to see the brains?"

Russell has posted about an interview with a doctor where she describes the texture of a brain as being soft like tofu.

Once upon a time a nice lady from a very famous brain college in London rang us up and asked if we'd like to design some literature for them. I visited the potential client at 8.30am on the morning after my birthday. A little hungover.

The meeting went OK, until the lady said, "Would you like to see the brains?". On autopilot I said, "Yeah, sure".

She took me into a medium sized room, filled with brains. Wall to wall, ceiling to floor. Including, in the middle of the room, someone in a lab coat slicing one up. I made my excuses, dashed outside and threw up in the nearest bin.

We didn't work with them.

"I wish you are always smiling"

A friend of mine sent me this from Japan.

"nothing has changed all over again"

I know I've mentioned it before, but I've just been reading PostSecret and I wanted to point it out again. It's well worth a visit. I'm addicted.

These secrets are particularly beautiful (from a design point of view).

"already, today, 30 or 40 of the most visited 100 blogs in the world are Chinese"

Russell Davies

A table without legs

From yesterdays Independent

"I look to the future because that's where I'm going to spend the rest of my life."

George Burns

"To avoid criticism do nothing, say nothing, be nothing"

Elbert Hubbard US Author

"That's the way it is shouldn't always be the way it is."

"Every Edison Phonograph bears my signature. Without it no machine is genuine"

The power of branding courtesy of Thomas Edison, 1903.

"If you talked to people the way advertising talked to people"

From Hugh MacLeod