Jayse Hansen designs imaginary interfaces for Hollywood movies. His credits include “The Avengers” and “Rise of the Planet of the Apes.” In this interview, Hansen talks about how he came to specialize in FUIs (fictional user interfaces)”; “Star Wars” was an early influence, but I was happy to see him mention being influenced by K.I.T.T.’s then-fantastical dashboard in “Knight Rider” too. He also discusses his process, and how his work is an offbeat mix of interface design, motion design, research, staging, animation and client service. Great stuff. Full article here.

Sketch, which I now use for the majority of my design work, has a new version out today. It still lacks the feature that I want most — symbols/smart objects — but there are lots of promising improvements nevertheless.

Two of the biggest are integration with Sketch Mirror, a new iOS companion app that lets you preview your Sketch documents in real time, and background blur, which as the name suggests renders a Gaussian blur-like effect on anything directly beneath a shape set with this property.

In this example, the right half of the coffee cup image is obscured by a yellow rectangle set to 7% opacity, with a 10 pixel background blur. The blurring effect updates immediately when images below are moved on the canvas. Just in time for iOS 7, people.

(Image courtesy of Unsplash.)

More on the update here. By the way, while writing this post I just noticed that Bohemian Coding, the publishers of Sketch, cite an interview I did with .Net Magazine praising Sketch right on the app’s marketing page. Just to be clear, I am in no way associated with Bohemian Coding.

“In August of 1970 Lou Reed quit The Velvet Underground. This decision was followed by a severe mental breakdown and two long years of regret and isolation… These demos were recorded during the fall and winter of 1970. They reflect Lou at his lowest point. He didn’t make any more live appearances that year after leaving The Velvet Underground. The only thing he recorded were these twelve tracks. They are the first known recordings of Lou Reed as a solo artist.”

Twenty-eight-year old Japanese artist Kazuki Umezawa assembles digital collages from imagery he encounters online.

Nice enough stuff but not much better than lots of the stuff that used to be done in Mixel on iPad. Sniff. More on Umezawa’s work at Spoon & Tamago.

A petition to the World Meteorological Organization to switch away from naming extreme storms after normal people, e.g., Katrina, Sandy, Andrew, and instead name them after climate change deniers like Rick Perry, Michelle Bachmann and Marco Rubio.

“Since 1954, the World Meteorological Organization has been naming extreme storms after people. As scientific evidence shows that climate change is creating increasingly frequent and devastating storms, and with climate scientists declaring these extreme weather events as the new normal, we propose a new naming system. A system that names extreme storms caused by climate change after the policy makers who deny climate change and obstruct climate policy.”

The proposal is of course meant to provoke a laugh, but the accompanying video is surprisingly well made. Watch it and read more at Climatenamechange.org.

Photographer Charles Morgan Smith combed science fiction movies and television series to cull these various depictions of outer space. Shown together, it really becomes apparent how each creative team’s vision of the cosmos is unique.

More at It’s Nice That.

A new product from two students at The School of Visual Arts’ MFA Interaction Design program. Sticky Jots are pre-printed sticky notes that facilitate sketching and brainstorming for digital products. There are versions for user stories, for phone apps and tablet apps — and there are even clipboard-like device mockups of the iPhone and iPad that the stickies fit into, for more convincing presentation of your ideas. Sticky Jots come in several different combos, and they’re already sold out of their initial run, but you can pre-order the next run.

As a side note, the app POP — which stands for Prototype on Paper — lets you snap pictures of your sketches and make them interactive easily. More here.

My friend Erika at Mule Design Studio wrote a really salient follow-up to my post yesterday about designer founders of startups. It’s an essential complement to what I wrote, so I encourage you to read it in full on Mule’s blog.

Compiled by Andrew Losowsky and Jeremy Leslie to benefit Bob Newman, a legend of editorial art direction who suffered a serious accident earlier this year, leaving him in a coma. “My Favo(u)rite Magazine” features dozens of designers, writers and artists honoring their favorite magazines in text and images. It’s available for sale in standard and limited editions, with all proceeds going to Newman and his family. See also the full list of contributors.

In this video, veteran documentary photographer John Free gives five minutes of unrehearsed advice on how to become a better street photographer. His central concept is that tension is a major impediment to getting the right shot, and that practice — which is normally foreign to the art of photography even as it’s a core concept of most any other skill — is a key to “getting rid of tension.” It’s good stuff. Watch the video here.