By Michael + April 10th, 2010
I am writing today in defense of the magazine. It’s an aged format which in it’s heyday could be likened to the iPad - a compact and flashy new way to consume content. Unlike it’s predecessors - scrolls, books, and newspapers - magazines afforded a richer more visual presentation of thoughts and ideas. Every page [...]
By Michael + October 12th, 2009
Stirred from hiatus. I’ll admit that originally the intent of this lonely island adrift in the blogosphere was pure selfish sport. Though a day came when I was satisfied. On that day I no longer desired to write - so I stopped. That was nearly a year ago. Though what you may find peculiar is [...]
By Michael + January 27th, 2009
It’s often that I find my mind wandering relentlessly from thought to thought as I walk down the street or navigate Photoshop. It’s then that I take those thoughts and prune them for my blog. This is probably going to be a bit more nebulous than most posts. For the past week I’ve neglected my [...]
By Michael + January 13th, 2009
With the new year comes new ventures. Mine shall hence forth be called Theory + Craft. As with the start of this blog I felt just arrogant enough to think that I had something legitimate to contribute to the creative world. The idea is to reintroduce the notion of mid-century design generalization to the masses. [...]
By Michael + January 1st, 2009
Humans are immensely complex machines. It’s insane that we don’t come with an actual user manual. Then again with all of the education, so called self help gurus, and psychologist there’s an abundant support staff on hand to mend the injuries caused by trial and error. We stumble through life interpreting. We interpret the glances, [...]
By Michael + December 30th, 2008
This is one “big” reply to all of the feedback that I received from my article, Everybody is Faking It. First I wanted to thank all of you who took the time to read my post as well as those who made the extra effort to leave a comment. Thank you. Your words are valuable [...]
By Michael + December 23rd, 2008
If you read this article you’ll be a better designer/developer/producer because it’s going to be a swift kick to your groin. There’s a reason why 99% of all of the shit out there fails. It’s because somewhere in the design process common sense gets thrown out the window. I know you’re really good at engineering [...]
By Michael + December 21st, 2008
A few months back my company Pattern Making Co. decided to enact an indefinite boycott on the iPhone SDK, because our application the Cool O’Meter 3000 was denied live status on the App Store. You can read up on our rationale at the following blog post. When we heard that another App that had also [...]
By Michael + December 20th, 2008
When it comes to designing products a modicum of restraint should be employed to ensure a successful result. Sure there are many features that could be added just because they are possible but I ask you to live strictly by the following cliche - keep it simple stupid. The notion of “just because” has been [...]
By Michael + December 18th, 2008
I was driving expediently from Boulder to Denver yesterday with my friend the barista. We were discussing what she wanted to do with her future and a masters degree came up. I asked her why she wanted to study Art History and she said to get the proper credentials for the job that she wanted. [...]
By Michael + December 16th, 2008
One of my favorite professors in college once said, “Computer experts were those who had put up with windows long enough to get used to it.” He couldn’t have been more right. Recently, Microsoft has done a great job of pantomiming the Apple operating system but in understanding the rationale behind the design decisions is [...]