Style Over Everything

99u:

From the earliest age, we’re taught to strive for perfection. We’re supposed to attend the best schools, get straight A’s, and win Olympic gold medals while we’re at it. To achieve this, we need to have impeccable grades, flawless technique, and unmatchable skills. Once in a while, our society makes a half-hearted attempt to say, “be who you are,” but it’s usually within the context of a winner’s story — someone who wasn’t pitch perfect on paper but still ended up on top anyway.

Talk to career artists and art directors, however, and they’ll tell you that the key to getting commissions and hired full-time isn’t artistic perfection — it’s artistic expression. Those that hire creative talent want, and pay handsomely for one-of-a-kind voices that shock, provoke, scream, joke, and wow — even if they are a little messy at times. Speaking in your own voice is the smartest thing you can do to distinguish yourself from the crowd. And let’s be honest, it’s much more fun. Someone can always come along and be a “better” artist than you, but no one can take away your style. It’s defensible, something you can lean back on regardless of trends and something you can sell that others can’t (one-of-a-kind = more valuable!).

There's nothing more boring than perfect. 

Graphic Design Before Computers

Graphic Means is a documentary film currently in post-production that looks to unveil the fascinating world of graphic design before desktop publishing, and undoubtedly inspire in you feelings of unconditional love for your MacBook for simplifying your life one thousandfold. Take a look at the trailer above, and admire the human ingenuity that was necessary for transforming an idea into a printed page, before heading to the project’s Kickstarter page for more information.

The future of computing

The Economist on the evolving speed of computer hardware evolution:

IN 1971 the fastest car in the world was the Ferrari Daytona, capable of 280kph (174mph). The world’s tallest buildings were New York’s twin towers, at 415 metres (1,362 feet). In November that year Intel launched the first commercial microprocessor chip, the 4004, containing 2,300 tiny transistors, each the size of a red blood cell.

Since then chips have improved in line with the prediction of Gordon Moore, Intel’s co-founder. According to his rule of thumb, known as Moore’s law, processing power doubles roughly every two years as smaller transistors are packed ever more tightly onto silicon wafers, boosting performance and reducing costs. A modern Intel Skylake processor contains around 1.75 billion transistors—half a million of them would fit on a single transistor from the 4004—and collectively they deliver about 400,000 times as much computing muscle. This exponential progress is difficult to relate to the physical world. If cars and skyscrapers had improved at such rates since 1971, the fastest car would now be capable of a tenth of the speed of light; the tallest building would reach half way to the Moon.

The impact of Moore’s law is visible all around us. Today 3 billion people carry smartphones in their pockets: each one is more powerful than a room-sized supercomputer from the 1980s. Countless industries have been upended by digital disruption. Abundant computing power has even slowed nuclear tests, because atomic weapons are more easily tested using simulated explosions rather than real ones. Moore’s law has become a cultural trope: people inside and outside Silicon Valley expect technology to get better every year.

But now, after five decades, the end of Moore’s law is in sight. Making transistors smaller no longer guarantees that they will be cheaper or faster.

Umberto Eco: From Internet to Gutenberg (1996)

Excerpt from a lecture presented by Umberto Eco at Columbia University, The Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America, November 12, 1996:

Today the concept of literacy comprises many media. An enlightened policy of literacy must take into account the possibilities of all of these media. Educational preoccupation must be extended to the whole of media. Responsibilities and tasks must be carefully balanced. If for learning languages, tapes are better than books, take care of cassettes. If a presentation of Chopin, with commentary on compact disks, helps people to understand Chopin, don't worry if people do not buy five volumes of the history of music.

Even if it were true that today visual communication overwhelms written communication, the problem is not to oppose written to visual communication. The problem is how to improve both. In the Middle Ages visual communication was, for the masses, more important than writing. But Chartres Cathedral was not culturally inferior to the Imago Mundi of Honorius of Autun. Cathedrals were the TV of those times, and the difference from our TV was that the directors of the medieval TV --read: good books-- had a lot of imagination, and worked for the public profit (or, at least, for what they believed to be public profit).

Chris Anderson: Follow the Money

In this 99u talk, 3D Robotics founder Chris Anderson shares three lessons he learned transitioning from Wired Magazine editor to helming a 275-person drone company. From “paying” his children in juice for assembling the early prototypes to building a massive factory in Mexico, Anderson’s journey was random and often accidental. But thanks to some healthy ignorance, open source technology, and some rising tech trends, Anderson’s new venture is a successful one, boasting over 100,000 customers.

The key for building a company, he says, is to not wait. Ride the tides of community and macro trends, and keep iterating. “Everything we learned about manufacturing, about the products, we learned by actually doing it.”