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Abridged interview of Facebook designer Ben Barry by Behance What do you think is key to moving ahead in a creative field? Something that is often overlooked with creatives is time management and getting shit done. You can be the most talented designer in the world but if you don't follow through and get stuff out there, it doesn't matter. I have several friends that are incredibly talented. They will start on projects but rarely follow through. They get bored or distracted or discouraged that it's not "perfect" and give up. Following through and finishing things is one of the most important things you can learn. What soft skills do people often underestimate? Pitching and presenting your work well. It's something I see all the time as students and I probably did as a student myself – making excuses. But fortunately I had a professor who said, "You never make excuses for poor work." You just never go into a meeting saying, "Well, if I had more time or this isn't very good..." No. Even if you're thinking those things, you sell it and don't ever make excuses. [Laughs] The other thing of course is never show anything you don't want to have produced. I try to live by that. Do you ever struggle with self-doubt? Definitely. One of the benefits of having all these great design books and online resources around me is they really inspire me and other times it's like "Fuck. I'm never going to be that good." It can be really easy to fall into that trap and stop making things, but you just have to realize that everyone who is successful has made plenty of mistakes along the way. I have always had this view of the world that everybody has access to the same resources I do and if these people can do it, I can do it, too. I recently came across this video after Steve Jobs passed away. It resonated with me a lot. This is my abridged version of Techcrunch’s Top 30 list of Android Apps.
Funded by Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt, Any.DO is the best productivity and to-do application tailored specifically for Android devices. The app’s elegant interface is optimized to limit actual typing through voice-driven commands. Users can swipe each task when complete, and shake their phones to clear them from the screen. The app also offers (mostly) seamless integration with Google accounts.
After launching a beta app last year, SwiftKey X arrived on Android smartphones and tablets in 2011. The app has larger keys as well as superior word and sentence prediction algorithms than what is typically found on Androids. SwiftKey also learns from previously typed emails and messages, and offers three color schemes to simplify the process and brighten things up.
As long as Flipboard remains exclusive to iOS devices, this new release from Google serves as the premier news reader on Android smartphones and tablets. More of a fast and elegant aggregator than social magazine, Google Currents benefits from an organized layout and dead simple third-party publisher platform. There is also — shockingly — nice integration with Google+, including curated content from the likes of Robert Scoble and Guy Kawasaki.
A November update to this trailblazing application introduced indoor mapping functionality to mobile devices. Google Maps 6.0 helps users more easily navigate within airports, shopping malls and other locations where GPS technology is spotty.
When Amazon unveiled this price-comparison app to Android devices just before Black Friday, the company’s retail Death Star became fully operational. Sure, Price Check was available to iPhone owners a year earlier, and there are similar apps across all major mobile platforms. But having an Android app gives Amazon critical mass in this category, and allows the company to (again) upend physical retail as we know it. This includes offering discounts to consumers on their phones during the point of comparison.
This app translates nutritional information found on food packaging into plain English, and offers a letter grade as to how healthy or harmful an item can be. The app offers comprehensive coverage of both mainstream brands and niche delicacies via the scanning of barcodes. Best of all? The app suggests healthier, similar alternatives to the worst offenders.
A significant December update to this social blogging app on Android and iOS devices served as an early holiday present to its passionate and vocal adherents. Beyond sharing photos, users can now tell the world about what music they are listening to and other activities they are doing. The app’s new design and “Automatic” feature, which recognizes when users deviate from routine schedules, also separate Path from the pack.
amazing track to chill too…. from Robert’s In My Element (#AddingThisToMyCollection) via TheFoxIsBlack “Whoever works his land will have plenty of bread, but he who follows worthless pursuits lacks sense.” That pop up on my phone this morning, something to harp on while I finish up my semester….
LA Im Yours.com did an interview with Artist/Designer Steven Harrington and this is a great quote I took away from the interview, (Definitely any creative knows where he is coming from….) Making something you are proud of comes with time, patience, and some obsessing. But, obsessing over one’s work for it to be perfect is something that must be regulated…or else things get out of hand. “You quickly find yourself just in this downward spiral of being pissed off that you can’t fit everything in. You’ll just be anxious and not be able to sleep–but, then you realize you are just doing it to yourself. No one is telling me that I have to take out the time to do these art shows or take out the time to do these wacky assignments. I’ll find myself freaking out over building a life-sized tee pee–‘What am I doing? No one is paying me. What am I doing here?’ Now, I’ve made all these projects a lot more manageable. If they aren’t more manageable, what am I going to do? Just stop making work because I cant fit any in?”
Another update on my love for the simplicity in architecture. Architect: Elding Oscarson – Location: Landskrona, Sweden – Photography: Lindman Photography via Mugutu
Currently my bookmarking tool of choice is Evernote, especially through Google Chrome. Evernote has provided an amazing web interface for organizing your found links/information and they have a very intelligent chrome extension that always you to clip content as easy as selecting and right clicking your selection. Chrome App: Evernote Web – Chrome Extension: Clip to Evernote I use Evernote for bookmarking future blog posts In the past I have heard many people praise Evernote like crazy and it encouraged me try many times hopelessly to use it as one of my tools. As a notetaking or daily task tool it always and still sort of fails in comparison to my main tool of choice Microsoft Onenote. Lately I have been feeling the weight of all the blogs I visit, plus all the tabs I keep opened across several browser windows and all the links I have saved on my desktop in many folders on my computer (chrome app shortcuts.) So I needed a new way to sort through the mess when it came to the important time to post some new up on one of my blogs. Features I needed, which Evernote has:
The thumbnail feature was the most important requirement I had, after collecting a huge number of links in various location and fashions, the biggest issues was finding that one post, when I needed it. Sorting by date is great, but I needed something more visual, and thumbnails of webpages or of website logos wasn’t going to help, it was very important for my to have a thumbnail that correctlated directly to the content I was search for. I wanted to experiment with some other bookmarking options, such as tumblr or posterous which has photo bookmarking features, but I have to say Evernote has to be the best tool.
I just happened to visit this Automotive blog by the UrbanDaddy Network called DRIVEN, just a few hours ago. This layout is completely tablet-focused and tries hard to mimic a magazine (converted for the web), with huge stretching images and strong font headlines. One of the things I like about this design is the navigation bar on the right side, it gives the user basic access to the archive, home, search buttons and buttons for next & previous posts, additionally it has a large advertisement fixed on the right (which is a great place to display an ad but sort of weak uses of all that screen real estate.) I believe there are some issues I don’t like with the site, it doesn’t work well as a true publication and they try to pass off quick updates with that contain a few pics and text as a complete article. Conclusion: The basic layout is amazing for anyone that wants to make a magazine like online publication which works well on a tablet. Plus you can utilize the right panel better than DRIVEN did by integrating a table of contents or related content list, and you still can have the occasional ad popping up in the side panel too.
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