› Behance Creative Network
Behance’s Creative Network provides profiles, some nifty little social features like commenting and ratings, a neat succinct projects section, and tools and workflows that make it easy to share work with others.

› Computer Love
My current favorite is Computer Love, an oldie but a goodie (in internet time). Computer Love provides profiles, blog platform, galleries, and typical social features.

› I Love Design
Finally, there is Quark’s I Love Design network, which included profiles, but seems focused on galleries and forces me to log-in to browse profiles and projects.

Did I miss any?

And on a side note, it’s high time Adobe stepped up to the plate and provided some kind of creative network, no? If they were to do it, I’d recommend that they keep it light on the Adobe brand - nearly invisible. Let the creatives just use the framework’s features, but customize it however they desire. Customization, I imagine, is one of the main reasons that Indexhibit is successful.

I Love Typography out with the latest collection of top 15 examples of great web typography. Super good collection. Nice work!

I’d love to see more RIAs out there with stellar typography. Perhaps these sites provide inspiration for rich interactive application design?

Just discovered why 80% of the sites I review from graphic designers and photographers look the same. It’s not just that the left column nav is a tried and true layout, it’s that they’re all using Indexhibit.

Indexhibit is a web application used to build and maintain an archetypal, invisible website format that combines text, image, movie and sound.

Damn. I love it.

From Pentagram: Decipher.

Some of the codes here are more difficult to break than others. But there’s a clue for each one to get you started. Answers and explanations are revealed by rolling the mouse over each cryptogram.

Apropos the last post on State Transitions: Flex 4 Enhanced State Syntax is up for review on Adobe Open Source.

Here are the goals of the enhancements:

1. Reduce the complexity of the Flex view-states feature by (1) providing a new syntax that allows state-specific object and/or property changes to be specified inline, as opposed to with somewhat more verbose, and out-of-context override tags, and (2) eliminating the concept of hierarchical states.

2. Refine and evolve the view states model such that we support a means of sharing component instances between states without necessitating the use of state hierarchies as we have today.

3. Promote the states functionality to an MXML language feature, expanding the set of runtime objects that are supported by the stateful document model.

Update: Open-source at work! RJ over at Inside RIA posted about the new states model, Corey responded, some issues were resolved, others were raised, and the conversation moves into the comments at Adobe Open Source.

Ah… I wish we could open-source the Thermo design-process. It would be great to collaboratively design this application with all the end-users out there.

Martijn van Welie has a nice little article dissecting an iPhone interaction paradigm. He identifies the myriad sub-states the iPhone moves through as it takes the user on a journey to the trash can. He supplies videos and charts to document his case.

The one issue I have with his analysis is his terminology used to described it. He calls is State Glue, whereas I prefer to call it a State Transition.

Some people from the Adobe XD team are heading to this conference. Wish I wasn’t so heads-down on Thermo I could take a break for Serious Play.

The best part of the conference looks to be the Studios. Learn from the great masters.

This one stands out:

Alphabet City: Letterpress Studio
Gloria Kondrup, Art Center faculty and Director, Archetype Press
See language as image and form. Enjoy a hands-on, experimental typographic letterpress workshop at Art Center’s Archetype Press - fast, furious and out-of-control (almost), using wood type, rules and texture. Professor Kondrup has won numerous awards for her letterpress books, and is in private and public collections including The Getty, The Smithsonian, and Harvard and Stanford University. Archetype Press houses California’s largest collection of rare wood type, metal foundry type and ornaments, and is the largest design school-based letterpress in the country.

Mark McGuinness, the great mind behind the Wishful Thinking, has a rather lengthy article summarizing the arguments for an against being a Creative Generalist or Specialist. At the end of the article, he proposes a third way, based on David Armano’s T-shaped creativity matrix, which I’ve recreated in glorious gray-scale below. Armano’s describes his concept:

The notion is simple = cultivate people on your team that have a core competency, but can easily branch out (like the shape of a T). They ideally possess traits such as curiosity, empathy and aren’t afraid to ask why. And there is a distinction between this type of individual vs. a “jack-of-all trades.” The core competency and branches are complimentary, with the branches being secondary strengths. It represents breadth and depth of skills.

When I first started doing interaction/experience design, I recognized early on that the best in the field could research, organize, map and plan the high level experience strategy/vision, as well as execute on the final design. The even better ones could also build out the technology to support the experience. Interestingly, those who could do it all became professors or mad scientists.

In the story of my own career, I started out as a generalist, then happily broke my back to become a specialist. I entered into the experience design profession with a BA in Philosophy - you can’t get much more general that that! I then went on to a Masters in Information Systems which broadened my scope even further. At the end of my schooling, I realized that although I could think intelligently about design, I couldn’t actually do great design. So I found a mentor, worked my ass off to gain experience, tapped into my natural inclination towards detail/taste, and here I am.

I’m curious of your story? How does the dichotomy or synergy between your generalist or specialist nature play out in the world of computer science, graphic design, experience design, or whatever your current named profession?

Christian Behrens, a Berlin native, created this website of information design patterns for his masters thesis at Postdam University of Applied Science. The website is a web-representation of content he has formatted into book form, and judging from the screenshots on his site of the book he’s rocking the design of the printed matter.

I was reminded of Ben Hopson’s work via a link from Josh Spear’s website. Here’s a quote from Hopson about what he does, and why:

My goal is to add beauty and interest to products by investigating the different ways that movement can be designed. While designers have numerous techniques and tools at their disposal to improve the appearance of objects, when it comes to creating ways for objects to move through space, designers are often at a loss.

To remedy this problem, I have developed methods for sketching kinetic concepts and a working vocabulary to discuss them. What you will find recorded here are my initial investigations into this approach to product design.

Definitely check it out. I wonder if Hopson knows Buxton?