Past

I Will Find the Centre In You

iTunes and iPad Equals Bliss

iNdependence Day!

The iPad has been announced. Shut up and buy.

Where is all the heroic anti-DRM speech now Apple?

And yes, Apple did use the above advertisement. It isn't even ironic.

Identity Work

Specs and Contests: We All Lose

What is spec work?

Spec work in the mainstream world refers to doing work on the speculation that a client will pay for something. Speculative work is created with the hope that the client will pay for the work after looking at the output. Speculative work also encompasses design "contests". It occasionally is erroneously labeled crowd sourcing, group sourcing, or even outright incorrectly as open sourcing.

If spec work is about money, why do you think it applies to Libre design?

While half of the trap of spec work is failure to get paid for applying one's training and experience to a project, the other half is about a neglect of process. Spec work is devoid of the traditional client / designer relationship - there is no process, no iteration, nor any planning or strategy. It is, in the end, a glorified contest of randomness.

There has yet to be an earnest discussion about spec work and contests in our culture. Much like a poisoned water supply, the approach is everywhere.

It is entirely acceptable to work in a pro bono situation while it is entirely unacceptable to work in a contest driven environment.

Who is this about?

This is about every Libre / Free Software project that requires art and design. The problems surrounding spec work impact both the developers and artists.

Why is spec work in Libre / Free Software culture bad?

Developers do an injustice to their projects by permitting contests and spec work scenarios. For the developer, spec work is devoid of strategy and planning. For the artist, hours of work are given up to the chance of a toss of the dice.

In addition to problems of chance, the output quality of spec work is symptomatic of a dysfunctional design culture. We need not look far to see poor design, terrible execution, and a distinct lack of harmony across presentations.

The complexities stem from a contest mentality and start with the individual or individuals that are selecting a 'winner'. What is the chance that Apple, BMW, Nintendo, Gucci, or Starbucks would bet their design ethic on an art / design director with zero to no experience in the realm?

Are there any solutions?

We should attempt to build and grow relationships with disciplines outside of our own. Artists should seek to be involved in a project with the goal of providing the iteration, process, and planning necessary. Developers should seek to enlist a designer or artist full time in their projects with the goal of bringing quality and consistency to their project.

Developers and projects need to understand the pitfalls and shortcomings of contests and spec work. Artists and designers need to acknowledge that by contributing to spec work they are dragging the culture further away from sustained design innovation and quality.

How do I find an artist or a designer?

Any project seeking an artist or designer should be active about it. Discuss work within your project and look for someone you feel is capable of delivering an effective solution. Any artist or designer that chooses to call themselves such will have work available for evaluation in the form of a blog, portfolio, or samples. Don't expect miracles. It takes trust and ability to create good work that is appropriate for your audience and goals.

Spec work is completely devoid of value and fails to do a project justice.

Imagine what an iPhone would look like if it were delivered in final form via a spec contest. What type of design ethic would there be at Nintendo if every single sprite or 3D model was farmed out on speculation? What associations with quality and luxury would BMW hold if they ran contests to develop their automobiles?

The very act of suggesting spec work and contests drags the design presence of a project down.

But I want to control the output!

Remember that enlisting a designer / artist affords you more control as opposed to less. A designer is enlisted to ask questions, figure out the issues and problems, and attempt to design a solid and innovative solution.

Also remember that many artists and designers have spent many years in education, practice, and research. A solid artist / designer will be able to leverage that background against your project's needs.

Creative direction is no easy path that is filled with many opportunities for failure. If someone with training and education is capable of utter failure, what is the percentage chance that someone without said training and education will succeed?

We are all responsible.

Spec work fails miserably at internal consistency and delivering an overarching style. Worse still, it creates the appearance of a culture or project that is crass and completely ignorant of all things creative. Spec work is just as terrible a decision in Libre / Free Software culture as it is in the mainstream. Spec work and contests will never deliver the quality of traditional art and design process.

We need to shout it loud and clear that spec work should not be affiliated, is not related to, and will not be tolerated with the Open Source / Free Software movement.

We are all guilty. Now let's fix things.

Further reading:

AIGA's view on spec work
The impressive logo designer David Airey's view

No Spec

Thank you for reading...

Surpassing Apple: Step Six - Cultivate a Culture

This blog posting is the sixth in a series. The full series as it currently stands is:
Surpassing Apple: Step One - Animate Everything
Surpassing Apple: Step Two - Get an Audience
Surpassing Apple: Step Three - Set a Tone
Surpassing Apple: Step Four - Vision and Desirability
Surpassing Apple: Step Five - Think Cinematic
Surpassing Apple: Step Six - Cultivate a Culture

A Cult of Creativity

Many people view innovation, creativity, and like matters as chance, or at best, the work of a singular brilliant mind. To those that only have a passing interest in the creative world, it is rather akin to the old phrase "catching lightning in a bottle."

To those that are responsible for manifesting creative ideas, however, it is far from chance and even further from accident. It is the secret sauce that allows companies such as Nintendo, Starbucks, Apple, BMW, and others to deliver their benchmark products time and time again.

Where does it start? How do we in Free Software go about creating that atmosphere, attracting those minds, and building those processes?

We can get some degree of insight from listening to the rather valuable advice from such visionaries such as Chris Bangle, Jonathan Ive, or Shigeru Miyamoto. What is fascinating about listening to, reading, and researching these incredible individuals is that you can see a common thread woven into each of their disparate disciplines. There is little discussion of magic, eureka-like cognitive snaps, or accident. In fact, most of their discussion seems to return to the notion of process. Iteration. Team.

The Missing Link and a Potential Symptom?

We already have teams in Free Software. Why then, does it seem we often miss the mark with art and design related matters? Is there something missing in that mix? Why do we have so few exemplary patterns where we should have a plethora?

Developers? Check. Packagers? Check. Brilliant problem solvers? Check. Work ethic? Check. Passion? Check.

What is it then? Why does so much talent and brilliance often arrive at either a watered down muddle of mediocrity for a presentation or dissolve into a puff of stop energy before a bold choice is made?

Creative Thinking

It is no massive logical leap to understand that the origins of Software Libre required extremely specific individuals with ridiculously specific programming ability. When Stallman was writing his first few dribbles of code there wasn't much need for a full fledged holistic design campaign.

What can creative thinking bring to the table? Apparently quite a bit if you take a trend in book content these days. It seems that there are more than a few books on the subject of "design thinking" these days.

Why? Clearly the upside is huge if you have faith in any of the published books listed above. It also yields significant business gain if you have been watching the video game and cell phone market where, despite a plethora of choice, two companies are dominating the mindshare in their respective fields.

The answer? Creative personalities are problem solvers of a different breed. They know how to solve a particular problem given a particular set of constraints. Steve Jobs offers some insight into Paul Rand's problem solving :

I asked him if he would come up with a few options. And he said, ‘No, I will solve your problem for you, and you will pay me. And you don’t have to use the solution — if you want options, go talk to other people. But I’ll solve your problem for you the best way I know how, and you use it or not, that’s up to you — you’re the client...’

Sounds familiar doesn't it? So then, what's the difference between a creative solution versus a solution in C or C++ then?

Where one exists in manifesting logic into C or C++, the other works in manifesting logic into the computing language of the mind and emotion.

The Very Real Upside

A creative problem has many facets that tickle the "you". To someone unaccustomed with dealing with creative solutions, the immediate response is often either "ZOMGAWESOME" or "DO NOT WANT". One response reinforces and steers through pleasure, the other steers via pain. Both are equally worthless without context.

A creative solution has a clear audience and a clear goal / desire / need to fulfill. Creative problem solvers focus on the audience and focus on the goal. While it is difficult to escape the world of the subjective, a creative problem solver should be able to distance themselves from the goal with the same ability a surgeon distances themselves from the "Oh my gosh I have an open body in front of me".

In doing so, creative problem solvers are extremely adept at keeping the problem in focus. In doing so, the inevitable subjective problem of stop energy can be directed into energy used to solve the creative problem at hand.

Finally, creatives are well aware of the individual. Their bag of emotional tricks, rules, cheats, and theory are the culmination of practice and formalized training. When should we use low end subsonic audio in a piece? What is classical composition? What leading works for the given type in conjunction with our goal? What colours are viable given our audience and emotional tone?

The creative solution is a solution that is not stale, dry, institutionalized, or bland.

The creative solution is tightly wrapped up with an emotional experience.

It is that simple element, the emotional response, that is so desperately lacking in Libre Software.

From Have Nots to Haves

"Great. We don't have artists, designers, illustrators, musicians, and animators. I get it. What now?"

It starts with you. Chances are if you are reading this blog, you have a slightly greater than passing interest in art and design. Fostering your creative interest is key. Learning creative thinking techniques is critical. Not only will you probably gain a good degree of insight, but you might even expose yourself to a wide range of creative output beyond your current scope. We all fall into ruts, and keeping things fresh is darn important. An alternative creative viewpoint can highlight problems, jar the mind into a solution, or simply deliver plain old fascination and satisfaction.

In addition to this, you will quickly see how relevant all of the "arty-farty-fluffy stuff" is. You should develop a keen ability to see how rapidly something of perceived simplicity peels apart into a complex mix of audience, need, desire, culture, history, and similar terms. Analyse what your responses are and attempt to diagnose why. Why did song xxx make me feel that way? Why did I cry in movie yyy? Why do I see good composition here and not in zzz?

If everyone takes a moment to foster the creative in themselves, we stand a fighting chance of understanding that there is a lot more going on in art, design, illustration, sound, and image than pure fluke or magic. We stand a change of appreciating the craftsmanship, education, and dedication to the craft. We stand a chance of not alienating the very people we desperately need and actually appreciating their field of contribution.

We need to grow the creative culture and make it part of our core ethic - permeating everything we produce. Deliver creative solutions. Deliver compelling design. Deliver desire and emotional attachment.

Elevating the Culture to Greater Heights

Through rounding out your own (hopefully) passionate views on creative work, you are helping to build up the Culture of Creativity. Perhaps you are able to assess a creative problem where only a programming issue was seen before. Perhaps you are able to spot stop energy over a creative problem and contextualize the issue so that others can see it. Perhaps you are able to frame a creative issue in such a way that a compelling solution is within reach.

The positives that come from fostering a creative culture in Libre Software are very tangible and very worthwhile. With it comes the mysterious "must have" killer application. With it comes the "wow beautiful" distribution. With it comes the immersive soundscape. With it comes the creative thinking that connects an audience to a need and bundles it up with an emotional core.

In short, with the creative culture comes a large piece of sustained Libre Software success leadership.

Thank you all for reading this lengthy post. I am, as always, but the sum of your clicks...

This is the last blog posting on the series. In hindsight, I probably should have expanded the first to be more loosely about a fully immersive architecture, but animations seemed to be the easiest choice for illustration purposes.

I don't know if we are capable to adapt our current direction, but I sincerely hope so. We struggle so hard, it seems, to take the audience out of our computing experience. How many times do we see 'average user' or 'usability' without attaching it to the complex entity known as a human being. How often to do we read 'emotion' or 'desire' in our culture? This is a fascinating blog posting from an ex-Google designer that seems relevant to our culture. It sums up a pitfall of audience-blind design, something that I view is the core of the issue at hand. It creates atmospheres where rants that promote proprietary pattens over Libre Software to ward off said audience-blind design. While I disagree with the provided solution, I entirely agree with the symptoms cited.

With the sadness though, comes a good deal of hope. There are people cropping up that care about these issues. Heck, if you are reading this subtext you might be one of them! To all of you, I tip my hat. Blog. Write. Think. Most importantly, provide the status quo with food for thought. If there are more creative types like yourself out there, we might stand a fighting chance of breathing some much needed emotion into the cultural product. We only have ourselves to blame if we fail.

Six Ubuntu Oopsies and Possible Quick Fixes

With all of the discussion of Karmic's 'new look' and 'design', I took a month or two to stew on the overall presence it delivers. While some have been leaning to the "rip-it-all-out-and-start-anew" approaches, I thought I'd try to make a short list of minor tweaks and twiddles that would solve some of the issues.

Below is a list of six items with a perceived art / design oopsie attached.

1. Unique Window Decoration Styling. If red, yellow, and green gems speak OSX, boxy outlines with the square and x inside speak Windows XP. While our culture is loaded with individuality and unique personality, our outward design manifestations are rarely anything but mimicry, and this move is symptomatic. A completely ridiculous design decision can be easily remedied with Rico St. Cruz's unique Dust theme.
2. The Window Title's Story of Bold and Clunky. I won't go and repeat my principle of FreeSoftware design clunk. It manifests itself quite frequently in subtle things such as typography. From type selection to design, we like our awkward and heavy "outline, outline, outline, bold, then outline again" approaches, as seen with the Tango icon set. Somewhere, we confused bold and awkward with legibility. Take a page out of Bringhurst and walk away from awkward geek toward a middle aged elegance. Turn the bold, massive titling down to standard Roman minus the massive drop shadow.
3. Palette. We probably need to start with an audience and a conceptual view of the computing space, but alas, that might be a lot longer coming. At a bare minimum, take an agreed upon anchor tone and round it out into a full blown palette triplet. Provide a wine pairing for your entree with a compliment or a split compliment. This move would help to avoid the traditionally stifling monochromatic trend as well.
4. Composition. There are still some people, often completely outside of photographic or artistic circles, that would try to argue that perfect symmetry is a good thing that connotes balance. Practically, center punching photography and artwork only screams to the world that you failed your grade three art class. The culprit - the default desktop wallpaper. Use classical composition or asymmetrically balanced designs.
5. Typography. While closely tied with (2) above, we could easily gain a few more glints of elegance by toning down the "in-your-face" largeness of presence. A few bumps of point sizes across the entire platform sands the coarse surface into a more refined state.
6. Harmony. While tightly tied with (3) above, we can see an overall discontinuity between the loading xsplash and the rest of the desktop's presence. Tighten up the palette across the story line - the loading screen, the default desktop, and the logout. We aren't in need of claustrophobic monotony and the hobgoblin's consistency, but rather a sensible harmony for the experience.

That's it. Nothing entirely radical. Nothing entirely insurmountable. A baby step in the right direction perhaps, and something that Canonical could implement overnight...