simonb.com: blog > articles tagged with design

The above is a screenshot from the end of the Adobe Acrobat update process on a Mac. Adobe thinks you want to view PDF documents in your browser via their plugin. No you don't. Do you? I mean come on. Repair? Huh? Even if you've unset the "View in the browser" option in Acrobat's preferences. Anyway, notice the "Repair Setup" window does not focus. No problem, you think. I'll just click on the window and give it focus, uncheck the box, click Continue and this experience will be over. But no! No I say. You can't click on the window.…

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Here’s a game you can play along with at home: cover design for free English language listing magazines in Shanghai.

It’s time for the annual Shanghai International Literary Festival (SILF). Your task is to design a magazine cover with this subject. So, like any good designer your first port of call is Getty Images. You search for Royalty-free (RF) Creative images with the term “bookshelf”. Scroll down the results and near the bottom you’ll find this image.

Here it is on Getty and here it is on Flickr.

“Perfect,” you think. “That’ll do. A bit of Photoshopping and…

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Consider the following activities:

• prototyping
• experimentation
• thinking
• testing

Am I talking about research, design or programming? Could be either. Research, design and programming are all creative endeavours. Or they should be. So, when I left research and started a design company it was not a big leap. Those that think science, engineering or programming are not creative pursuits clearly need to get out more.

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Above is the sign for a shop called "blur" on Julu Lu. Below in the first image you get on a Google Image Search for "blur logo".

(Takes deep breath and sighs.)

Good to see originality is alive and well.

blur are a popular band from the UK. Visit the real blur

Here's the thing: this lack of originality is not even blinked at. If, indeed, it is even noticed since blur are not so well known in China. It's just laziness on the part of the ripoff-artist that made the sign and cheapness on the part of the shop…

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All the episodes of "Design for Life", the BBC's version of Britain's Got Talent/Dragon's Den for designers, are now on Vimeo. Handy for those of us whose eyeball geography does not meet with the beeb's approval. Links below.

• Design For Life: Episode 1
• Design For Life: Episode 2
• Design For Life: Episode 3
• Design For Life: Episode 4
• Design For Life: Episode 5
• Design For Life: Episode 6

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So I got an email from Microsoft about renewing as a registered developer. Copy the link over to a PC so I can do it on IE since I'm pretty sure there's going to be a few bits which are PC/IE specific. The web page says log in with the LiveID used for the account. Mmmm. I never used a LiveID to register. Strange. Maybe they made one for me. So I enter my email address and what I think it my password. Nope. "Either the email address or password are wrong" How helpful. So I go through the forgotten…

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The Leica a la carte configurator allows the customer to customise bits of a M7 or MP camera. It's a great example of a web app done right. Good design and simple navigation. Most importantly it's done sans-Flash. Phew!

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We're not fans of producing work on spec or for free. We're not the only ones, Spec Watch is a site exposing the dark side of crowdsourcing design. In general you get what you pay for. Follow Spec Watch on Twitter.

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Atkins has won an international competition to design a five-star resort hotel set within a beautiful water filled quarry in Songjiang. Wow!

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Baseline Mag has an overview of how MySpace coped with rapid growth. Basically a good lesson in how not to build a dynamic database backed website. 

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