Thursday, April 23, 2009

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

An Interview with Kelli Hall



I recently had the chance to learn more about one of the designers who's been pwning the design challenges on minted.com. While her start in design is interesting, I hope the community does not miss the part about her process.

minted: I also believe that iteration is the key to uncovering what works, how many versions do you create for a design and how do figure out which one is best?
Kelli: It’s a little embarrassing to say. I’ve worked with some designers who can consistently nail it on the first go. I take a little longer. For most any design, I create, on average, between 10 and 20 variations. After that, I whittle them down to 2 or 3 — then I print them out and walk away for a while. Usually, what speaks to me when I come back is the version I choose.

Read the entire interview at minted.com.

Saturday, April 11, 2009

Sunday, April 5, 2009

The Prelinger Archive

Sorting the Stacks

Today I followed Jess to The Prelinger Archive. The archive was born in 1983 in New York City. Over twenty years, Rick Prelinger put his passion into a collection of unique, hand-sorted, works spanning the last 100 years. It is primarily non-fiction, with topics ranging from old trade periodicals like American Cemetary and Modern Plastics, to government produced info-porn from the middle 50's. It is impossible to sum up the collection in just a few genres.

Modern

Major Seasonal Movements in Intermountain Region

Rick shared the vast oceans of information to be found with a brief, enigmatic, and eclectic tour of the archives. It is a place where you can find the behavioral economics of television as well as a mapped visualization of the major seasonal movements in the west inter-mountain region of North America. As we rounded the third aisle, he picked up a section of six books, a set of periodicals he handed over to his taxonomist, Megan, who was working on resorting something to do with zoos.

Over the course of hours, we explored, with lively conversation about a variety topics, all crammed into Rick's ever-curious mind and found treasures that you would never happen upon in the public-library.

Unexpected

Comic-lined

It was a place to be curious, a place that you knew if you looked, you would find delight, the thrill of discovery, and something you had no idea you wanted to read.