Craig Mod on Intertwingularity and the "User Experience" of Printed Publications→

It may seem strange to think about printed publications as having a "user experience." But they do, of course. Print is a technology as much as desktop computers and tablets are technology. One of the qualities most natural to the user experience of print is the sense of potential completion, defined by the physical edges. It is a quality that is wholly unnatural to digital formats.

The digital reading experience makes one want to connect and expand outward. Print calls for limit and containment.

Boundaries are good for creativity. The creation of printed materials brings with it the challenge of borders, limits. Creating digitally is such an open-ended process that I find a large part of my work is conveying to teams what the project is not rather than what it is, making borders, limits. ​

Designer Craig Mod continues to explore the edges of print and interactive work through fantastic essays, like this one for CNN.com, and beautiful work. ​

The Very Concrete Place Where The Cloud Lives→

If you’re looking for the beating heart of the digital age — a physical location where the scope, grandeur, and geekiness of the kingdom of bits become manifest—you could do a lot worse than Lenoir, North Carolina. This rural city of 18,000 was once rife with furniture factories. Now it’s the home of a Google data center.

Engineering prowess famously catapulted the 14-year-old search giant into its place as one of the world’s most successful, influential, and frighteningly powerful companies. Its constantly refined search algorithm changed the way we all access and even think about information. Its equally complex ad-auction platform is a perpetual money-minting machine. But other, less well-known engineering and strategic breakthroughs are arguably just as crucial to Google’s success: its ability to build, organize, and operate a huge network of servers and fiber-optic cables with an efficiency and speed that rocks physics on its heels. Google has spread its infrastructure across a global archipelago of massive buildings—a dozen or so information palaces in locales as diverse as Council Bluffs, Iowa; St. Ghislain, Belgium; and soon Hong Kong and Singapore—where an unspecified but huge number of machines process and deliver the continuing chronicle of human experience.

Steven Levy, once again gets unprecedented access to the world of Google in the Wired article "Google Throws Open Doors to Its Top-Secret Data Center," detailing the very physical buildings where the cloud we so heartily depend on live. Must read article if you use any Google products, and let's face it, you do. 

The Creativity of Web Design, Indie Video Games and Fans

There has been much talk about support for public television this past week​ and so it is time to visit PBS Off Book once again to remind ourselves of the great work PBS Digital is doing. From indie video games, featuring many great games I've played and highly endorse, to the creation of websites and the powerful role of fans in shaping not only the niche cultures they passionately love but also society as a whole, these three mini documentaries showcase the best the studio is producing. 

The Creativity of Indie Video Games

​The video game industry is now bigger than Hollywood, with hundreds of millions of dollars spent developing these interactive experiences. But there are also small-scale developers working in the indie game realm, creating unique and experimental video games without the budgets of the larger "AAA" games. These indie game developers devote time, money, and take great risks in a quest to realize their creative vision. They deftly balance game mechanics & systems, sound & visuals, and an immersive storytelling experience to push the gaming medium into revolutionary new territory. Much like indie music or indie film, the indie gaming movement provides a creative outlet for game designers who want to work outside of the mainstream.

Featuring:

Jamin Warren, Kill Screen Magazine
​​Zach Gage, creator of Spelltower
​Darren Korb, audio designer of Bastion
​Eddy Boxerman & Andy Nealen, creators of Osmos
​Leigh Alexander, gaming journalist

Complete list of games featured.​

The Art of Web Design

The explosion of the internet over the past 20 years has led to the development of one of the newest creative mediums: the website. Web designers have adapted through the technological developments of html, CSS, Flash, and JavaScript, and have mastered the balance between creativity and usability. Now with the advance of mobile, the greatest websites have taken user experience and responsive design to the next level, and continue our evolution from print to a digital world.

Featuring:

Jeffrey Zeldman
​Jason Santa Maria
​Whitney Hess 

Can Fandom Change Society?

Before the mass media, people actively engaged with culture through storytelling and expanding well-known tales. Modern fan culture connects to this historical tradition, and has become a force that challenges social norms and accepted behavior. Whether the issue is gender, sexuality, subversiveness, or even intellectual property law, fans participate in communities that allow them to think outside of what is possible in more mainstream scenarios. "Fannish" behavior has become its own grassroots way of altering our society and culture, and a means of actively experiencing one's own culture. In a sense, fans have changed from the faceless adoring masses, to people who are proud of their identity and are stretching the boundaries of what is considered "normal". 

Featuring:

Prof. Francesca Coppa, Muhlenberg College 
​Chris Menning, editor at Modern Primate
​Amanda Brennan, researcher at Know Your Meme 
​Dr. Whitney Phillips, lecturer at NYU
​Alexa Dacre, fan fiction writer
​Naomi Novik, Organization for Transformative Works

Previously:

The Art of Animation, Motion Graphics, Tech Gone Wrong & Why They Go Viral
​The Art Of Logo Design: PBS Off Book
​Seeing Beyond The Human Eye
​​Pop Culture Through The Lens Of Nostalgia: The Evolution Of 8-Bit Art
​The Culture Of Reddit
​The Vast World Of Lego Art
​Three Points Of View On Fandom, Fan Fiction & Fan Art
​The Art of Film & TV Title Design: PBS Off Book
​Tattoos: Pop Portraits, Japanese Traditional, American Eclectic
​Art In The Era Of The Internet: The Impact Of Kickstarter, Creative Commons & Creators Project
​Animated GIFs: The Birth of a Medium
​Off Book Series One: The Complete Series

Who Invented The Internet? We Did.→

In other words, it’s impossible to overstate the importance of peer production to the modern digital world. Peer networks created and maintain the Linux operating system on which Android smartphones are based; the UNIX kernel that Mac OS X and iOS devices use; and the Apache software that powers most Web servers in the world (not to mention the millions of entries that now populate Wikipedia). What sounds on the face of it like the most utopian of collectivist fantasies — millions of people sharing their ideas with no ownership claims — turns out to have made possible the communications infrastructure of our age.

It’s not enough to say that peer networks are an interesting alternative to states and markets. The state and the market are now fundamentally dependent on peer networks in ways that would have been unthinkable just 20 years ago.

​Steven Johnson, in The New York Times, expands on ideas from his most recent book Future Perfect. While both governments and corporations want us to believe that they are responsible for the creation of the internet, it is really the users, us, that shape what happens and how the internet grows. Johnson shares how Harvard legal scholar Yochai Benkler calls this phenomenon "commons-based peer production."

And so, while much discussion occurs amongst large corporations, the government and even the press - about maps on mobile, ecommerce, privacy, bandwidth, regulations and restrictions - it is our behavior and how we spend (or don't) our money within the internet that pushes its evolution forward.

It is a bit like voting in an election, every time we consume anything related to the internet we build it a little bit more. In the same way that we have a responsability to be an informed electorate, we should be informed consumers and not let self-aggrandazing origin myths shape what we want and need from the internet. 

Design Wants to Be Free

Design wants to be free, to paraphrase Stewart Brand. And when I say “free,” I’m talking about the broadest sense of the word—meaning both low-cost and liberated. We’re not there yet, but that moment isn’t far off. What will liberate design? Our tools, for one; they are increasingly cheap, powerful, and available to all. Design no longer signifies high priests at their drafting tables but rather you and me at our computers: 3-D printers are the new inkjets, and the age of desktop publishing is fast becoming the age of desktop manufacturing. Haven’t yet printed your own toys, household staples, and replacement parts? You will soon. And even if you’re not remotely interested in making stuff yourself, you’re probably still quick to appreciate that there’s something really cool about skyscrapers that go up in two weeks or the glass that protects your iPhone.

...

Design isn’t just something we appreciate, it’s something we do. Autodesk is helping by creating tools and services that it hopes will power the maker movement. And Etsy is changing the definition of “handmade” by helping its sellers manufacture their wares on a larger scale.

Yves Behar introduces the Wired Design Issue, featuring a look at the new MakerBot Replicator and an engrossing article on something we all carry in our pockets, gorilla glass.