garygilliland:

At the Mac World conference filmmaking students asked Kevin Smith how succeed in film making. His answer pretty much covered how to succeed in any creative endeavour.

“I’d make one.

Make one that everybody likes.

What do you think happened? Think I was standing over a virgin holding a necronomicon?

The trick is to make something everybody digs.”

I’ve mentioned Daniel Eatock’s creative manifesto before. His presentation at AIGA gives you the opportunity to see the man himself talk about his work and see how his manifesto plays out in his work.

Daniel Eatock — AIGA | the professional association for design

It’s just after Christmas and like a lot of people I’ve spent my fair share of time in toy shops and I’ve been reminded of a goal that I had when I ran a programming team. Everything should be designed like a Tomy toy. I don’t mean child-like but where possible solutions should follow the pattern in toys.

I’ve got a memory like a sieve so I like acronyms hence SERIES

• S imple – nothing wasted
• E ngaging – asks to be used
• R obust – hard to break
• I nteractive – instant feedback
• E lective – you choose how to use it
• S timulating – encourages creativity

Compare this with Word, Photoshop and even web apps like Gmail. How many menus, icons and hidden rules are there to cope with before you can use the things?