“When a small, unassuming object exceeds our expectations, we are not only surprised but pleased.” — John Maeda on a smashing magazine article on minimizing complexity in user interfaces
Ben Franklin kept a daily planner and asked himself “what good have I done today” every night. What a great thing to ask oneself everyday. via Maira Kalman’s observations
Bjarke Ingels ted talk on his architectural design process.
1) design is an evolution of good ideas that stick
2) remix ideas that are dropped for future use
3) architectural movements do not need to be counter to current avant garde movements
4) story telling is important to all architectural problems
5) sustainable does not have to be = guilt/suffering/protestant ethic. it can be celebratory and fun
But seen from another angle, craigslist is one of the strangest monopolies in history, where customers are locked in by fees set at zero and where the ambiance of neglect is not a way to extract more profit but the expression of a worldview.
The axioms of this worldview are easy to state. “People are good and trustworthy and generally just concerned with getting through the day,” Newmark says. If most people are good and their needs are simple, all you have to do to serve them well is build a minimal infrastructure allowing them to get together and work things out for themselves. Any additional features are almost certainly superfluous and could even be damaging.
Newmark has been working hard to extend the influence of his worldview. His public pronouncements have the delighted yet apologetic tone of a man who has stumbled on a secret hiding in plain sight and who finds it embarrassingly necessary to point out something that should long have been obvious. He seems to have discovered a new way to run a business. He suspects that it may be the right way to run the world.
