Mouli's thoughts and musics over two decades
We did this as a case-study when I did an Engineering Management class at University. This Co.Design article captures beautifully the rise to the top of Cadillac, and how it fell during bad times, and how since 2000 they have slowly crawled back. If you have driven sedans in the US, and if you have ever driven a Cadillac, you would know the difference in driving a Caddy and the rest. The luxury is very evident.
Read the Co.Design article here.
(pic courtesy the same Co.Design article above)
I read this great FastCo article about 4 Bullet points that Seth gave in a talk to Creatives on how to do Design that matters. I personally feel that, these are great points for even non-creatives. For that matter, these are great for anybody who ‘produces’ as part of their job. And yes, I count software lines of code as production. I count efficient management of projects as production too.
The four points are:
I agree with all of these points a 100%. I have actually practiced some of these points in different points in time in my career, and they _work_.
Seth apparently ended the talk with a great quote:
“I have no doubt the people in this room are going to succeed. The question is: Are you going to matter?”
Love the quote.
Read the full article here.
Image courtesy: http://startupquote.com/post/528945569
Came across this beautiful bill board. You should note a few things – the shoe takes center stage. The story takes center stage. The Nature of Performance takes center stage. You get to see the name of the shoe only in a few tactfully hidden places – “Available at the PUMA Store”. And the ubiquitous puma jumping symbol. Beautiful. That is branding.
Not sure if Puma has always been like this, or they have been learning about Nike. Nike is even more manic about this. You would see a sportsman or sportswoman wearing the shoe and excelling. And the Nike swoosh symbol in the footnote. Some ads would not even have the word Nike. It would just have the Nike swoosh symbol.
For more Nike ads, you should look here -> http://pinterest.com/pin/169870217167015064/
Since the beloved Google Reader died, I have been using feedly. It is amazing to see how quickly Feedly has been innovating so that the Google Reader immigrants are appeased. The first set of fixes gave an option to make the feed view much denser – much like the Google Reader. This must have made most of the immigrants happy. The next fix was to get the feed list to the left of the page – again to make it look very much like Google reader.
The latest fix that hit me today is the one that I am going to scream in joy about. This is not quite to mimic google reader, but something that has just been designed so tastefully.
I have the feed to be displayed as tiles. I click on the tiles and I get the article, and the escape and it shrinks back to the tile. I scroll down the page looking at the interesting tiles. And when the stories are over, what do I get?
That blows my mind. Yes, I am done with the feed. Click on the big grey check mark, and it becomes a beautiful green for a second, and feedly marked all the stories in the feed as read. And moves on to the next feed. Just beautiful. Thanks feedly.
Yes. Everywhere. Even in your tea bag pouch.
Have you noticed the small cut in your tea bag pouch that is provided so that you can tear open the bag easily? When you face the front of the tea bag, it is on the right side.
Except for left handed people, this is actually not the ‘convenient’ side to tear. Without thinking we turn over the side and tear from left to right (using our right hand).
Do you now notice that, when you do the above action, the instructions on how to brew your tea is staring at you ! That is design.