northtemple

I'm going to stop listening to you because I disagree with your politics, even though you aren't talking about politics

Today we received an email from a concerned subscriber:

It’s a very sad day – I have always found NorthTemple a great, entertaining, and informative read.

But, today I am removing you from my feed, and will no longer be sharing with my team.

I cannot reconcile the Mormon church’s views and directives on Prop 8 with my own, and refuse to support anything associated.

Good luck to all of you – you have a great team.

Northtemple is made up of 30 someodd designers who do work for the LDS Church, yes. But our About page has said for 2 years:

Northtemple.com is not an official publication of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The websites linked, opinions expressed, quotes cited, and articles written do not necessarily express the views of the Church. We bear sole responsibility for, and firmly stand behind, the content featured here.

A few points I wanted to make clear this morning:

This is a design blog. We write about design.
We rarely, if ever, talk about politics. The occasional Obama link has always had a design or tech element to it. We have never voiced an opinion on Proposition 8.
The Church does not own Northtemple.com, and has no control over what we post. The site is not an approved publication of the Church, and is hosted and owned privately. We just all happen to work here.
To reject Northtemple because of the Church’s stance on Prop 8 is like refusing to watch the Utah Jazz because a Mormon owns it, or stay in a Marriott hotel because a Mormon owns it, read any of the Twilight books (or watch the movie this weekend) because a Mormon wrote it, listen to Glenn Beck or Gladys Knight, or watch any of the many professional sports teams that LDS members play for.

While we respect the political views of our readers, we just don’t care about them on this blog. If you care about design, read us. If not, don’t. It’s a design point, not a political one.

It's so hard to find things. ...

"It’s so hard to find things.
I’m finding it hard to not blame you." ~ My wife Caryn, experiencing the joys of using lds.org.

Google further cements its over...

Google further cements its overlord status by making millions of LIFE magazine photos available for search. How about those Mormons?

Take black and white photos on ...

Take black and white photos on your iPhone with Vint. Via ISO50.

Compartmentalists, Specialists, and Generalists

Jared Spool just posted an interesting article on the ideal makeup of a UX team . He makes a useful distinction between a specialist and a compartmentalist:

While the former is about having the majority of your experience in a single discipline, the latter is about only having experience in that discipline… . A compartmentalist isolates themselves from the other disciplines around them, not really learning what they do or how they do it. Compartmentalism is bad for teams, because it means you have to have enough work to keep that individual busy within that discipline, and if needs shift or emergencies crop up, their value is dramatically diminished.

I would also add that a compartmentalist tends to make decisions that cause problems for other team members—the compartmentalized user researcher makes design recommendations that don’t meet the needs the business analyst identified previously; the designer designs something that will take $5 million to implement; the HTML coder who transforms those ultra-accessible semantic forms into screen-reader nightmares for the blind.

So I agree with Spool that compartmentalism is bad. But he also says that the main reason to choose a specialist over a generalist is economic; if a specialist is available and affordable, you would hire a specialist, according to the article. But aren’t there times when specialization is a negative for the project? Even if I could afford a specialist HTML coder, business analyst, interaction designer, and user researcher… isn’t there some inherent value in having the same person play one or more of those roles, depending on project size, complexity, or a host of other factors?

I don’t think economics is the only factor.

Leaders inspire. Managers requi...

"Leaders inspire. Managers require." ~ A participant at the George Wythe University Statesmanship Retreat last weekend, commenting on the difference between leadership and management. Not to say that good managers can’t also inspire—but when they do, that is when they Lead instead of merely Manage. Also, you can lead without being a manager—something good designers do every day.

Motrin provokes mommy bloggers ...

Motrin provokes mommy bloggers with an insensitive ad, gets nailed on twitter, removes the ad and issues and apology, and it all happened over the weekend. The best part – when a few bloggers contacted the advertising company, they had never heard of twitter and were totally clueless as to the online backlash.

Sounds eerily similar to a few of the ad agencies we’ve worked with..

Power to the Poster impresses i...

Power to the Poster impresses in its restraint.

You'd do yourself right to pick...

You’d do yourself right to pick up this new offering from mountain folkster Ray LaMontagne, called Gossip in the Grain. It’s the 3rd CD of his in high rotation around here, following Trouble and Till the Sun Turns Back.

He’s packed this thing full of his trademark raspy soul, with some upbeat funk thrown in (“You are the best thing”), a full out confession of love to Meg White (“Meg White”), a little banjo plucking action (“Hey me, hey mama”), and some heel-tappin’ blues, complete with reverb’d harmonica (“Henry nearly killed me [It’s a shame]”).

You need this. Buy now and save yourself future embarassment.

Last night I saw a couple of co...

Last night I saw a couple of commercials for Smoker Man! Nice treatment of showing how smoking can impact one’s ability to fly. I think he’d choose invisibility.

Jim Coudal is twittering an exp...

Jim Coudal is twittering an experiment called startwithagrand – he started yesterday with $1000 worth of stock, and he gets “one trade per day. One stock in portfolio. No tears.”

Finally able to use CSS child a...

Finally able to use CSS child and adjacent sibling selectors in a real project. Feels so good!

Carsonified launches their site...

Carsonified launches their site for the Future of Web Apps – Dublin.
They’ve taken a page’s worth of information and blown it up to three and a half pages of design. Web 2.0 goodness, or a bloated excuse for a brochure? I can’t decide if I like it or not..

Just a note – I love these Carson workshops. I don’t exaggerate when I say they are the most professionally produced conferences out there. This note isn’t meant as criticism of their biz, just a note on the design direction of these latest sites of theirs.

How to spot a hidden handgun a ...

How to spot a hidden handgun, a sweet infographic from Megan Jaegerman, as analyzed by Ed Tufte.

Threadless tweakage ...

Threadless tweakage.

Target's new gift cards are als...

Target’s new gift cards are also 1.2mp digital cameras.

Design Titles

Do they matter? Do your titles line up with what you do? If you could change your title or job description what would it be?

I love it when web technologies...

I love it when web technologies get used in unexpected ways. A great example of this can be found in this article about how the CDC is experimenting with using Google search trends to track the flu.

The Designer's Sixth Sense

Exploring the inner workings of a designer’s mind is no picnic. Stop over-analyzing and go with your gut.

Web AIM just posted a brief but...

Web AIM just posted a brief but good introduction to ARIA.

Theater...is a process where yo...

"Theater…is a process where you iterate, you see what works, you try it in rehearsal, and then you make changes, and then you try it again." ~ Jared Spool makes an interesting connection between User Experience and The Theater. From a 2005 Interview by Peter Merholz .

CD cover for _Focus Jazz_ desig...

CD cover for Focus Jazz, designed by Barral Fabien

How the son of a Kenyan economi...

How the son of a Kenyan economist became an Illinois Everyman.
A New Yorker piece from 2004 on the newly elected.

Doing 4% less does not get you ...

"Doing 4% less does not get you 4% less.
Doing 4% less may very well get you 95% less." ~ Seth Godin, The sad lie of mediocrity

Just learned from PRINT Magazin...

Just learned from PRINT Magazine that iLife and iWork have an OpenType palette. Though it seems you can’t access all open type features (e.g. stylistic alternatives), you can still get to ligatures, small caps and old style & lining figures.

To access the Typography palette: from the Fonts palette, click the gear icon in the lower-left and select Typography.

Oh, and don’t forget the Glyphs palette in Illustrator & InDesign

Enjoy

Election coverage

Here are some handy sites for those of us tuned in tonight:

Election.twitter.com – nerds in realtime
CNN
Fox News
MSNBC
NPR
Google News
NYTimes – elegantly presented, as usual
Yahoo Political Dashboard
Pollster – awesome interactive map (hover over some states)

Official sites: Obama · McCain
Youtube Propaganda: Obama · McCain

Saturday Night Live on Hulu – VP Debates, and Fred’s map
Alfred E. Smith Charity Roast: Obama · McCain
Hulu – debates, speeches, sketches, commentary

For history, Electioneering08, which is taking screenshots of every major news site every 15 mins today.

“Forvo is the place where...

“Forvo is the place where you’ll find words pronounced in their original languages. Ever wondered how a word is pronounced? Ask for that word or name, and another user will pronounce it for you. You can also help others recording your pronunciations in your own language.” What a great idea. Via JSM.

Impressive work from iLK which ...

Impressive work from iLK, which is comprised of “two very cool guys, Ludovic Prigent and his cat, Pitou.”

For now, we should just be happ...

"For now, we should just be happy that Windows 7 appears to be on the right track. You can almost look at consumer-level Windows—that is, 95, 98, Me, XP, Vista and Win 7—like the first six Star Trek movies: They pretty reliably alternate between crap and quality." ~ Summarizing paragraph of the review of Windows 7 by Gizmodo. As soon as they brought up the Star Trek movies I knew just where they were going. Does that make me a geek, or does that make it a great analogy? Anyway, I use Windows at home, and am simply looking forward to an OS that gets out of my way. Hopefully they can deliver this time.

Golden Ratio Calculator (Dashbo...

Golden Ratio Calculator (Dashboard widget). Sample calculations: 24 columns = 15/9. 960px = 593/367.

OK, so not everything on leavey...

OK, so not everything on leaveyourprint.com is a nice as this banner, but it’s a big improvement on a lot of Utah government sites I’ve seen. Get involved in designing your government!

What a wonderful story. Sheds n...

(flash video content)

What a wonderful story. Sheds new light to accessibility and the power of thoughts.

Creation

Visiting with Rob a few days ago about our role as experience architects, he mentioned that we are creators and that our work is to lead people.

My first thoughts when he said those words were about Heavenly Father: how He is the Master Creator and how His entire work is centered around leading people. As our Father, he is the ultimate architect, crafting experiences—such as our lives on this Earth—to lead us and to guide us so that we may become like Him and return Home to live with Him again. I then thought of His Son, Jesus Christ, and how He completed the largest and most significant design project in the history of this world when he lead and orchestrated it’s creation.

Reading stories to my kids this...

Reading stories to my kids this morning, I was impressed by the hand-drawn type on the cover of The Little Engine That Could and found it interesting that you can still see the rules the artist drew to guide his baseline and x-height. It’s interesting how typography has been both blessed and injured by advancements in technology. Even the best designers among us get lazy and let the computer do too much. Here’s a casual reminder for you this morning to not forget that it’s just a tool and that it’s still up to you to make sure that your type is set perfectly. An example of this is the introductory line in the book that our team is currently reading. I was shocked to see that the last word was hyphenated. It looked horrible. It’s sad that the publisher let that go to print.

Today I give up Twitter and go ...

Today I give up Twitter and go back to reading blogs, talking with friends, and paying attention to life instead of tweeting it.

What I have gained from using Twitter? An amazing ability to write brusquely in 140 characters or less, and a timeline of my thoughts and experiences over the last six months. The timeline is the most valuable, but being brusque is a skill I’d rather not have.

Sometimes, when design rhetoric...

Sometimes, when design rhetoric and deep discussions (such as the one presented by Frank this week) start to cramp my brain, I like to unwind by reading science fiction. One of my favorite authors is Dr. Ronald Chevalier. His work is deep. The graphic design of his site is a bit dated, and a bit over-the-top, but I highly recommend it.

A Cluster Award-winning, published author since the age of 13, Dr.Chevalier’s robust body of work includes titles such as Cyborg Harpies, Brain Cream, and the all new, completely original novel Brutus & Balzaak. Currently, Dr. Chevalier lives on a ranch in southern Utah.

Love this new Museum of London ...

Love this new Museum of London logo, dissected over at Brand New. I don’t agree with his small bits of criticism at all – I love the type, the shapes, and the whole feel of it. The website, on the other hand, seems to dilute the vibrance of the logo by splashing those colors across the header and nav and such. But the logo, I love.

A good diagram explaining the d...

A good diagram explaining the different areas in user experience design and how they are affected by content. Several more models and theories can be found at Challis Hodge’s UX blog.

Embracing the word "ugly"—so ...

"Embracing the word “ugly”—so readily identified with everything popular design claims to have been a reaction against—seems a logical choice if we are to create a vision for the practice of design freed from the restrictions and prejudices of its past." ~ Tad Toulis makes an argument for Ugly, suggesting that our pre-conceived ideas about beauty and aesthetics may be a dogma that is actually holding us back. Great read from Core 77.

Interaction Design (IxD) is a r...

"Interaction Design (IxD) is a reverse blanket term that describes how people apply many theories in psychology and physiology, including Heuristics, Cybernetics, Ergonomics, Planning Theory, and even more disparate fields dealing with Audio and Visual design.

To reduce that. Interface Design is about where buttons appear on a page, and what those buttons look like. IxD is whether or not that page needs to exist at all.

Or

Interface Design will tell you how best to ask a user for his address, IxD will tell you to harvest it from somewhere that you already have it stored.

Or

Interface Designers design interfaces, IxDs design ways to avoid them." ~ Read in a discussion at interactiondesigners.com. The members are discussing the difference between Interface Design and Interaction Design.

Continuing the _rash_ of conten...

Continuing the rash of content today.. KayaKing jumbo peanut ad.

Reckoner Lockdown - a DJ Earwor...

Reckoner Lockdown – a DJ Earworm mashup of Kanye and Radiohead. Both Chris and Sam should love this one.

If web standards ever get a foo...

"If web standards ever get a foothold, I’m hosed." ~ Pete, reflecting on his future relevance once his days of
gratuitous browser wrestling are over.

Veerle threw in a nice surprise...

Veerle threw in a nice surprise in on her new business site for peeps with larger monitors.

Typeface is a new documentary a...

Typeface is a new documentary about the Hamilton Wood Type Museum in Two Rivers, Wisconsin. Wonder if we can get a screening in SLC?