As a former student of this institution, I totally dig this animated typographic infographic about “information”…

I just stumble upon this blog - Daily Routines. It’s fascinating. I feel there is more to learn from what a person does daily - their habits - than what major accomplishments they have achieved. For this reason I much prefer reading about people’s daily routines - their consistent mundane practices - than biographies that tend to memorialize.

So dope - I can’t wait to play!

For more than 10 years the Flash community has been incredibly unique in it’s vibrancy and creativity. This is a community that was essentially created by the users. It was driven by the beautiful, amazing, and downright cool things that people were creating with Flash. In the beginning the most innovative works were created by designers, artists and other non-developers. These people created the “hype” that made Flash rise above, way above, any similar technologies – but today these enthusiasts are becoming an endangered species.

Flash has matured incredibly in the past decade, but it has done so in a way that has blocked non-developers from even getting started. The simple fact of the matter is that with older versions of Flash you could learn the tool and how to program ActionScript almost entirely through creative play. With the latest iterations, unless you have a background in object-oriented programming, that method of learning by doing is simply not an option.

This is where HYPE comes in.

HYPE is a creative coding framework built on top of ActionScript 3. A major goal of HYPE is to allow newcomers to Flash and ActionScript to creatively play and express themselves while they are learning how to program.

To get started, the user needs only the most basic knowledge of programming – variables, conditionals, loops, and functions, for example.

As the user learns more about programming they can extend HYPE and thus grow their skills, while at the same time inspiring the next generation.

Now, that’s not to say HYPE is just for people who are new to programming. Instead, HYPE is for anyone, regardless of skill, who wants to play with code. Fundamentally, the point of HYPE is to make Flash fun again. We made HYPE to help bring back the playfulness that once defined our community.

HYPE - come out and play!

Branden Hall & Joshua Davis

In this recent article in the NYTimes, Motorola’s cellphone CEO Sanjay Jha provides some good insight into the companies management changes:

“The problem wasn’t the engineering culture,” Mr. Jha recalled telling people. “We weren’t connecting the engineers to the market and giving them problems to work on that matter.”The blame, he said, rested squarely on management. “A fish rots at the head first,” he declared.

Ralph Hauwert writes about his experience, then and now, with the Flash Platform. Some fantastic words from one of the Flash community’s best and brightest.

Just came across this wonderful video showing the making of the Chemical Brother’s Star Guitar music video. In it, Michel Gondry sketches out a concept for Guitar Star, then takes the loose sketch to the street, where the video is then prototyped using oranges, forks, brooms, and shoes.

Sketch, prototype, sketch, prototype, the practice is the same across so many design disciplines.

Making of the video.

The final Star Guitar video.

Cooper Union’s Herb Lubalin Study Center has a new exhibition coming into view November 5th. Lubalin Now features a great diverse array of graphic designers influenced by the late great Lubalin. The range of quality folks showing together in one place is going to make the event epic.

A few other choice Lubalin links to whet your triple fantasy:

› Creative Review’s in-depth article on the Lubalin Study Center.
› Lubalin bio by AIGA.
› Wonderful collection of Lubalin photos.

This stuff is so good, I may very well try to paint the walls of Adobe’s XD design space in rich, lustrous, IdeaPaint.

There are no limits to the amount of information the mind can hold. But when you’re confined to the space of a blackboard or typical whiteboard, you’re limited to how much can be shared. IdeaPaint can turn virtually anything you can paint in the classroom into a high-performance dry-erase surface, giving you and your students the space you need to collaborate, interact and discover new ways of learning. No matter where you use it, minds will open and fill with big ideas.

Awesome product, great brand, bold website.

As touch-based experiences become all the rage, Bill Buxton, one of the industry’s most valuable leaders in general and one of the first touch innovators, is having his well deserved time in the limelight. In his latest Business Week article, he writes about when and why to use or not to use touch.

So while executives and marketers all seem to be saying, “It has to have touch,” I am more inclined to say that anyone who describes a product as having a “touch interface” is likely unqualified to comment on the topic. The granularity of the description is just too coarse. Everything—including touch—is best for something and worst for something else. True innovators needs to know as much about when, why, and how not to use an otherwise trendy technology, as they do about when to use it. Let me explain.

Ryan from 37 Signals with this great post on sketching flows through websites.

Flows are made out of individual interactions. A screen offers some possibilities and the user chooses one. Then something happens, and the screen changes. It’s an ongoing conversation. Each moment in a flow is like a coin with two sides. The screen is showing something on one side, and the user is reacting on the other side. My flow diagrams illustrate this two-sided nature with a bar. Above the bar is what the user sees. Below the bar is what they do. An arrow connects the user’s action to a new screen with yet another action.

Considering the myriad ways to document flows, Ryan’s technique is a smart, small innovation.