Category Archives: Design

Survival Tips for Working In-House

It’s been almost ten months since I started my job at The New York Times, and I still regularly get asked how I like it, and do I really like it? The implication, I suppose, is that having founded and ran a little design studio would make a transition to a huge company with a century and a half of history challenging. Challenging, is a good word for it, yeah. But here’s the truth: it’s a terrific job, and I feel lucky for having it.

Part of the reason why I like it so much is that I’ve learned a lot — a tremendous amount — about a facet of design that I never thought was particularly interesting until now: work in a design group on the inside of a company. I spent over a decade on the outside, working in studios and agencies on the ‘consulting’ part of the business. Almost all of the projects I’d ever worked on lasted only a handful of months; I’d kick off a new assignment, design it, hand it off and then moved on to a new assignment — or just as often I’d move on to an entirely new client.

I always thought that was the kind of design career that I wanted, and that was the kind of design career that I would have forever. I may one day return to it, but I’ve really discovered that working in an in-house design team, if it’s the right one, has its upsides too.

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Return of the Friday Free-for-All

Fri 03 Nov 2006Hey, it’s time for the Friday Free-for-All round-up again! Just kidding, this is the first one ever. A round-up blog post isn’t something I usually do, but what the heck, right? These are a few things I’ve been keeping in Mori that I’ll never be able to turn into full-fledged weblog entries before they go stale.

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What Kind of People Are These?

AIGAWe were lucky enough at AIGA New York to get Jeffrey Zeldman to do a Small Talk event of his own a few weeks ago. It was a big success, but I still consider that event just one step in a larger effort to make AIGA an organization that’s more conducive to the practice of interaction design. After all, Jeffrey᾿s appearance, while a quietly momentous occasion in its own way, wasn’t the first time we’ve brought folks who work online in front of the chapter’s membership — among others, Joshua Davis has spoken in the past and Matt Owens will be appearing at our upcoming Passion/Payoff Student Conference in just a few weeks.

Effecting change takes more than just getting a few recognizable names to talk to chapter members, though. The trick, I think, is producing a sustained effort in which the kinds of events and content that are applicable and appealing to digital designers are treated on a peer level with those geared towards designers working within AIGA⁏s more traditionally recognizable discipline areas. That’s harder.

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Illustrate Me for Halloween!

It’s no trick. I have a Halloween treat for all you Illustrate Me fans out there: for once, I’m publishing a new entry in this ongoing series early. That’s right, no weeks-long delay this time. Before the last day of October even closes out, the month’s archives have been beautifully illustrated by Ray Frenden, an illustrator from rural Illinois. You can see it right now in all its gruesome glory on the October archive page.

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Plastic, Interrupted

One thing that I like about my new iMac (in spite of its problems) and my iPod— is that they’re both basically hunks of cheap plastic — and neither tries to be anything else. This is a beautiful thing.

By way of contrast, consider my Treo 650. Or, for that matter, consider any of the many, many pieces of digital hardware currently available on the market that, like my Treo, share the absolutely cringe-worthy characteristic of being pieces of plastic that are painted to look like metal.

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When All’s Said and Done

Despite an ugly night of non-stop rain, Jeffrey Zeldman’s Small Talk event for AIGA New York went off without a hitch this evening. In fact, it went great; Jeffrey’s always entertaining, and he gave a spirited, insightful and often hilarious talk on the nature of selling great work to clients. The subject was a perfect match for the mixed audience of Web designers and print designers, and I think everyone got a little something out of it, regardless of how they earn their design dollars.

Just how many of each kind of designer attended, it’s hard to say. During one question, Jeffrey asked for a show of hands, and it looked like most of the room was populated by designers who work primarily online. Still, this is a salient question for AIGA that I’m keen to get an answer on. As I mentioned last week when I was promoting this event, we’ll be surveying the attendees for their opinions starting tonight, so if you attended, check your email.

As promised, we’ll be giving away some prizes to randomly selected survey respondents: two copies of Jeffrey’s “Designing with Web Standards (Second Edition),” each of which have been signed and dated by Jeffrey to commemorate tonight’s talk, and a free season pass to all four of next spring’s Small Talks.

Speaking of future Small Talks, we have three more coming up before the end of the fall 2006 season: Marc Joseph in November, Peter Arkle and Amy Goldwasser in December, and Emmanuelle Linard in January. All of these events take place in the beautiful venue generously provided for us by Bumble and bumble, and all of them are not-to-be-missed if you enjoy listening to incredibly sharp people talk about design.

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When All’s Said and Done

Despite an ugly night of non-stop rain, Jeffrey Zeldman’s Small Talk event for AIGA New York went off without a hitch this evening. In fact, it went great; Jeffrey’s always entertaining, and he gave a spirited, insightful and often hilarious talk on the nature of selling great work to clients. The subject was a perfect match for the mixed audience of Web designers and print designers, and I think everyone got a little something out of it, regardless of how they earn their design dollars.

Just how many of each kind of designer attended, it’s hard to say. During one question, Jeffrey asked for a show of hands, and it looked like most of the room was populated by designers who work primarily online. Still, this is a salient question for AIGA that I’m keen to get an answer on. As I mentioned last week when I was promoting this event, we’ll be surveying the attendees for their opinions starting tonight, so if you attended, check your email.

As promised, we’ll be giving away some prizes to randomly selected survey respondents: two copies of Jeffrey’s “Designing with Web Standards (Second Edition),” each of which have been signed and dated by Jeffrey to commemorate tonight’s talk, and a free season pass to all four of next spring’s Small Talks.

Speaking of future Small Talks, we have three more coming up before the end of the fall 2006 season: Marc Joseph in November, Peter Arkle and Amy Goldwasser in December, and Emmanuelle Linard in January. All of these events take place in the beautiful venue generously provided for us by Bumble and bumble, and all of them are not-to-be-missed if you enjoy listening to incredibly sharp people talk about design.

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Ripped from the Headlines

NYPost.comAs of yesterday morning, there’s a new NYPost.com, and I like it a lot. It’s miles away from what we do at NYTimes.com, and it’s not exactly my taste in terms of graphic design, but its unabashed appropriateness and surprising sense of wit is kind of irresistible.

Then again, this is just me talking. A few people with whom I’ve expressed my enthusiasm about this site aren’t quite as enamored of it as I am. Like my good friend Liz Danzico, Director of User Experience Strategy at AIGA and editor of the information architecture magazine Boxes & Arrows, for one. Her reaction to my endorsement of the site was, “REALLY?” — all caps and everything.

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Selling Out and Selling More

The first batch of my Hel-Fucking-Vetica tee-shirts are just arriving in mailboxes today; if you ordered yours before last Thursday, you should be seeing it soon.

So far the shirt has been selling way beyond my expectations; I’m terribly grateful to everyone who’s shown their support or just liked the shirt enough to order one for themselves. As I mentioned, I printed just one-hundred and fifty of these tee-shirts; in just the first week, about a hundred of them had been sold to lucky buyers, and they’re still selling briskly. Supplies are limited, so you’d better act fast if you want yours.

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