Due to the fact that I got married, moved to Beirut and still don’t have internet access, update on the ‘Kode have been kept to a minimum (also internet at work blocks my website, so that’s been a bit of a pain as well, trust me I would love to discuss what’s been on my mind).
Add to the fact that I’m off to Malaysia for my honeymoon and well things will probably remain pretty quiet until after I get back towards the end of June. Hopefully we’ll have a phone line, proper internet and we can start calming down and getting down to the job of creating.
Place for Trace - Either going to make myself one of these, or I’m definitely going to be buying one via SwissMiss.
Productive Macs Bundle - I’ve not bought a bundle in a pretty long time, but I’ve been meaning to buy TextExpander for a while. For a little less, you also get 7 more apps.
Todd McLellan - Love this series so much. Will definitely try and get a print of the blown up Pentax (if/when it appears on 20x200) or the Old Typewriter.
City of Culture of Galicia - This project seems completely insane. The architects are Eisenman Achitects . Spain is definitely one of those places that truly inspires greatly mad architecture.
Sometimes it takes a good long time for the penny to drop, even if you’ve been doing it for a seriously long time. For me the way in which I take and write notes (both at work and during play) has changed on the basis of getting an iPhone, installing Notational Velocity and having a web interface with Simplenote all linked together.
The effect that I didn’t actually expect was that the above three occurrences effectively changed my general workflow and how I take notes in my moleskin, and what ultimately that moleskin is actually used for, and by doing that it’s solved one of the biggest problems I actually had with taking notes in my moleskin.
Moleskines
My favourite type of notebook to use is my moleskins. I’ve been using these for nearly 7 years by now. Definitely read the wikipedia entry about the history of the Mokeskine, it’s actually pretty interesting. The ones that I have been using exclusively are the A5 notebooks, in black hardback, no lines, with the thinner pages.
I used my moleskine for two things really. Taking notes and sketching ideas out. Most of my projects and designs start like this. Based on the way my mind works, I thought that it would be best to handwrite all of my notes and thoughts down and then later take these notes out and put them onto the computer.
What I noticed was that I would come back to my diagrams, sketches and doodles all the time, but I’d rarely come back to my long form notes, and I’d end up rehashing sometimes these notes and ideas again and again. The problem was I never actually did that, and it was pretty rare that I would go back and actually use these written notes in a meaningful way. Basically I was using the moleskine (at least when it came to notes) as a note dumping ground, with some useful sketches inbetween.
And that was fine. The new way is better.
The way I justified it was that before writing any meaningful words, I was getting them out of my system first. Ultimately the system was flawed, and rather than try and find a way to fix it, I kept using the same method. It’s always good to rethink something that you’ve been doing for a long while and actually assess whether or not that is the best way to do things.
Whitelines
Obviously before I got settled on Moleskine notebooks, I went through a vast number of notebooks, and still try out various ones from time to time. The ones that I am actually contemplating on getting are the Whitelines series of notebooks. I’ve owned one in the past, which was the wirebound A5 version. The paper is lovely to use and honestly the work does in fact pop off the page. However I think it’s definitely not the right size for the kind of work that I would use that for. I think I’ll be getting the A4 size for the sketching I envision in those notebooks and keeping my A5 moleskins for the general smaller ideas/sketches and notes that I like to take throughout the day.
The New Paradigm
I’ve now basically separated the way in which I organise my thoughts (because that’s what I’m doing). The first has most (over 90%) of my notes written within one of the three inputs I mentioned above, while the moleskines are basically used only for sketches and maybe small notes if I don’t have the facility to actually input the data electronically (because it wouldn’t be in the moment).
What this does is it basically allows me to now search all of my notes instantly. It also allows me to organise them and file them in a structured way - which definitely appeals to my filing junkie nature (I will be talking about this elsewhere in the future).
My moleskines are now effectively books filled with sketches, doodles, ideas, quick thoughts. There’s something pure about that setup. There’s something empowering. I must admit that out of habit I do go for my moleskine to start writing my list of things to do at work, and have to stop myself a bit and redirect myself to the computer to type that stuff in, but now when I look at my book, it’s just filled with sketches and diagrams and tiny notes that are so much more useful.
The single best bit of advise I can give about filing your notes is given by (of Mac Power users and macsparky fame). Here’s a couple of posts to get you going:
I basically follow the same convention and went ahead and changed all of my colons to an ‘x’ as well. This didn’t take me too long as I have only 100 notes so the pain barrier was pretty small.
But here are a couple of tips I have myself to ease things for me as well. The way I come up with the initial letters to use is basically using the first and last letter of that particular word. So wedding would be wg. When it’s two words, then it’s basically the first letter of each word, so Broken Kode would be bk. This way I don’t have to think about whether or not I’ve used this particular word or not.
Organisation
Having finally organised my written notes, it was time to organise my moleskine a bit as well. The thing that I definitely don’t like is how my book after a while becomes messy on the inside. It’s not as clear what project I’m talking about instantly, because I never used a unified header for each and every page.
This is something I’m still working on to be honest, and so don’t have a clear solution, but the convention I’m working on at the moment basically lays things out in the following way. Right at the top of the page I put the following three items:
- Date
- Project Name
- Function
The function is usually on of the following:
- Notes
- Calcs
- Sketches
- Site Visit
- Meeting
This is neatly lined up at the very top of the page. This convention only took me 9 years of engineering to come up with (d’oh). I guess it’s better late than never and it proves that you can always find better ways to doing something, that makes you sit up and think, well that’s much better.
Alternatives
The fact that I’ve settled and fallen in love with this setup, doesn’t mean that it’s the right setup for you. Instantly Notational Velocity and Simplenote have become my favourite productive tools in the world. They organise my thoughts and information in such a way that information relating to me is now at my finger tips (literally).
There are those that want more information. That want to put images and other things within their documents/notes, and for that sort of thing there are soo many alternatives, so I guess it’s a question of trying what works best for you, but hopefully this setup gives you an insight as to what works for me, and maybe you can pull on some of that to make it work for you.
I remember the first time I came into contact. It was in Greece during one of my many trips from London. I was sitting in the kitchen and my mother had just brewed a new pot of coffee, drip filter with evaporated milk (makes it taste soo amazing and the colour is brilliant as well).
So anyway she pulls out this contoured mug with a handle and saucer. The feel on the outside was earthen and inviting. On the inside with this gleaming white polished inside. Once you put this mug to your lips it just felt correct. It felt right.
The rim was thin at the top but it got bigger gradually as it went down. That had the effect of giving you the impression that the rim was thin and delicate (which appears to be in vogue at the moment), but the actual mug gave it the impression that it was heavy and sturdy from the bottom.
That was the start of my love for S&P products.
The Company
Again, as with a lot of the topics that I will be discussing on the ‘Kode, information about these items is very sparse on the internet. I found the parent company Bambi first, which then led me to the main website. The best introduction to the company is off the official website itself:
Salt&Pepper is a key brand of Australian company, Bambis. It’s Head Office is in Melbourne, Australia. Bambis (www.bambis.com.au) was founded in 1970 by Bambis Pouroundis. At the time it was a two-person operation, mainly specialized in supplying gift shops. Bambis was a pioneer in establishing Australian trade relationships with Europe and Asia.
In the late 1980’s, the company embarked on a brand-building strategy with a wide range of contemporary products appealing to the middle to upper end of the market. It was then that the Salt&Pepper brand was born. Salt&Pepper is an acronym of the names of the driving force and founders of the brand, brother and sister team, Sissi Stasios and Harry Pourounidis. Sissi is the Creative Director and Harry is the Managing Director.
The global journey commenced in 2005 when the Bambis team joined forces with Paul Aerts (Aerts NV) from Belgium and Michael Vitsaxakis (EVE SA) from Greece to bring Salt&Pepper to Europe. Both Aerts and EVE are considered market leaders in their respective countries, hence an ideal combination of skills and experience was formed to ensure a successful launch of the brand.
From its launch in 1995, their passion has seen the brand grow to be one of Australia’s most successful exports, with its contemporary designs distributed to over 54 countries around the world. It offers fashion for the home at an affordable price.
Which all makes sense as to why I saw these excellent examples of kitchenware in Greece, while they had not yet reached the shores of England. Since then the brand has expanded considerably, as I was able to buy the same mugs in Beirut, from the same collection that my mum got in Greece.
However I’ve discussed this with my mother and she loves their stuff just as much as I do, and we’re convinced that someone very high up (I’m thinking either the brother or the sister) in the company must be a designer of some sort that would allow them to keep that level of elegance in their product line. The thing you can guarantee is that the products all look elegant, but restrained. Not looking design for the sake of it (as with much kitchenware, to distinguish itself from the rest).
While I could be wrong, but reading the titles of the ‘S’ part of the S&P, it appears that Sissi is the ‘Creative Director’, while Harry is the managing director. So Sissi clearly is the creative force in this endeavour and we have her to thank for the overall product line?
Product line
The truth is I would love to be able to go into an S&P store and just browse the shelves with their products. There is this amazing consistency of quality design. The way S&P distinguish themselves is through keeping the same level of cognisant design in all of the product lines - something which is actually extremely difficult to achieve in any line of business.
The most recent example of this was when my mother bought a mug over from Greece on a recent trip to Lebanon. The mug was white with a black bottom and a thin gold line separating the two. The form of the mug and the starkness of the black instantly signalled to me what I was looking at. Without hesitation I said ‘Salt & Pepper’.
Website
It comes as little surprise that the official website is also a thing of great beauty that really does showcase the huge number of lines. I honestly had no idea until I found the website, which obviously is not that easy to find, seeing the nature of the name involved.
The stark black and white core colours work obviously with the logo, but as you move through the various ranges you also get the titles of the product range in different colours, to add that bit of life in the design, while the product images themselves take those colours further.
Follow Up
I wish I could discuss it with the owners in more detail, or someone in their creative department. I’ll be updating this post as and when I get more information.
So the new version of TaskPaper (version 2.2.3) is out, offered at a great discount, which is nice for us original buyers. Also the latest version of Notational Velocity is also out (Beta 5)
Now I’ve got nothing but good things to say about Hog Bay Software, but I think I’ve finally seen why Notational Velocity works for me and the reasons why TaskPaper, although an excellently put together application, really actually never clicked, even though I tried, really hard to get into it.
Workflow
The workflow is probably the single most significant aspect of Notational Velocity’s success with how I want to write things. The secret sauce is the single input text field at the top of the application.
After a few years with Google Chrome I am now completely programmed to use an application using a single text input field. I now crave the single line input text field that also offers search and inputing text flexibility, within that same space in all of my applications.
I guess the single essential innovation that works for me on Google Chrome that I miss the most when I flip over to Safari, is that input text field. Sure I love the tabs at the top, but the input field is far more essential and without it I feel like something important has been disrupted.
The thing is TaskPaper is great in it’s own right. It really is a well crafted piece of software, and one that has a lot of quality oozing everywhere, the problem is that there is a fundamental problem with regards to how it was conceived to be used.
Also another important feature is how titles are generated in comparison. While both pretty simple, the fact that the first thing you write in the text field before pressing return is the title, again just works.
Synchronisation
One of the things that NV has over TP is the seamless integration with Simplenote and Dropbox. It seems that Jesse wants to get this done for the iOS version, however the sad truth is that this doesn’t exist at the moment. You can synchronise using simpletext.ws, which has a pretty horrible web interface. So much so it’s distracting.
While the web version of simplenote has the clever search bar at the top and visually reminds you of the software on your mac. I guess because I write notes at work on my windowz machine, and then edit on the fly on my iPhone and then do the heavy writing on my Mac at home, the integration works so much better for me.
From the comments in the post it does seem like it’s on the cards, but basically taking too long, the free versions have won me over (even though I’ve paid for both the Mac and the iOS versions).
NV wishlist
Don’t get me wrong, I still think there are a few things that I would like Notational Velocity to have before it honestly becomes the perfect text editor. In particular is markdown integration.
I’d like to be able to write in markdown and have the words change in front of my eyes, if it’s an option that I choose to activate. Leave the text exactly as it is (so all the original markdown text will be available when I view it in Simplenote) but this would be an excellent feature. I don’t really want a separate generator, just let it update then and there.
While this isn’t a feature request, I would like some of that animated polish that is found in TaskPaper to find it’s way back into Notational Velocity. I know that Zachary Schneirov is already taking some queues from TaskPaper (such as the lists and @done), so some other little interesting visual animations would add to the polish (as in when creating formatting etc).
So will I be slapping down some cash on TaskPaper? No, because it doesn’t fit my workflow and I’ll be deleting it off my iPhone as well since it’s just not something I’m likely to use now that I have established my workflow with the NV/Simplenote note taking combination.
One of the things that I typically don’t do with most of my posts is come back and edit and change. For some reason I always felt that in terms of internet etiquette that was bad form - that will change with these posts. These posts are not intended to be perfect out of the door. I will hopefully have done some meaningful reasearch for them, however they will be modified as time goes by.
The first post in a long and hopefully interesting series of posts on Cognisant Design concentrates on a small part of a much large product, specifically the key to my car. It’s honestly very rare for Google to disappoint me and not give me back some information about something I’m looking for.
One of the things that I touch a feel and fiddle with every single day is my car key and then I saw it mentioned on Objectified as well and it just struck me that this key basically encompassed a lot of what I am talking about with Cognisant Design.
Functionality
When is a key, not just a key? When it’s also the central lock as well, and the car trunk as well. Admittedly I don’t use the trunk feature much. The simple fact is that they buttons
Oh and they’re all equipped with immobiliser technologies - which basically translates to the car doesn’t move if you don’t have the key, which is a nice feature for those thieving bastards (I’m sure those same thieving bastards have found ways around it, but hey you don’t want to make it easy on them).
And then of course you’ve got the metal key itself, tightly tucked away for when you need it with the press of an incredibly inviting metal button, which brings us nicely to the next important point.
Flip Action
This is the action of the key flipping open from it’s hidden position. I guess this has been honed from millions of cards sold, but basically there is an undeniable weight to the key springing open. It clicks into place with a purposeful click. It’s like a samurai being drawn. The thing is it’s totally addictive, so you find yourself clicking it constantly.
The button that releases the key mechanism is curved at the top which again is just exactly the way it should be rather than a flat button. It’s details like this that only serve to enhance what is truly a great piece of industrial design.
Weight
This is one of the most prominent aspects I find. The weight to size ratio of a product is always something that drives home quality in a product. The current iPhone for example is very dense in weight due to the glass front and back. When compared to another smartphone from say Samsung, you get this feel of much more inherent quality due to the weight.
That same concept is in this key. While I’m sure they could have made it lighter, doing so would basically make it feel cheap, and I’m sure that was not what the original designers were aiming for here. Which brings us to part of the reason for making it heavy.
The Metal Key
The person who brought this to my attention was my brother. See he’s got a Mercedes A-Class which is the Mercedes equivalent of the Golf, small hatchback, with a bit of German design thrown in. The key on that car is this plastic thing with a few buttons at the top. Essentially it’s missing the point here, an aspect of which VW have got it so right.
Obviously the sturdiness of the key is also important to complete the overall package, and again the key is a nice metal rectangular block, that again feels weighty due to the metal base which it swivels on.
Ergonomic Design
The final part of this exploration is basically the ‘je ne sais quoi’ factor. The ergonomic design of the key is just so terrible inviting. The groove at the top, just after the buttons invite you to rub your thumb there every single time you hold the key. The curved edges allow you to quickly and addictively flip the key in your hand again and again. Even the little VW logo which is made out of soft silicone is calling you to feel and pinch and poke with your nail.
And because no proper article about something technical is really complete, here is a disassembly of the key in question so you can see what the details are like on the inside.
Lawsuit Action
in searching around for more information about the Smart Key, i stumbled on a bunch of articles, completely unrelated to the topic of the design of these keys, but thought it was interesting as it basically dealt with legal action in relation to these keys. Smart Key Litigation and this FAQ, also there’s this document directly from VW
Follow up
One of the things that I want to make sure these posts have is a certain amount of longevity. I’m not writing these posts for the sake of writing them, but rather because I want to highlight specific things in my life that are designed in the way that I want them designed, and to show some appreciation.
Unfortunately due to how the coorporate world operates, it’s sometimes very difficult to single out the team or persons responsible for a design, unless the achieve cult status in product design, in which case you end up with the question of how much they actually contributed and how much of this was their ideas.
That’s a topic for another issue. Rather than go there, I would rather like to find out more about something if i’ve not covered it here. If there are articles, links or books that describe the topic I’ve written about, I really want to hear about it. If you’re one of the people that actually worked on this and are no longer working at this company and don’t mind talking about the experience, again I would like to hear from you.
I guess in a round about way, I’m trying to put a spotlight on aspects of design that are not typically considered, or really given their due.
The thing that I naturally permeate towards instinctively are are the things that I basically want, admire or are curious about. These are the things that I basically would like to have. These are the things that put a smile on my face, and which ultimately I like to talk about.
Cognisant: adjective [ predic. ] having knowledge or being aware of
This thinking actually can be attributed in many ways to Objectified which honestly completely changed the way I look and appreciate products and design. I guess that was the point of it all, but it seriously touched me in a profound way that no other documentary has ever done. A year and a half after I watched it I still think about things it said or tried to say. Sure there were several douche bags on there, but the message was there.
Crucially, in an in advert way it’s basically opened my eyes as to what this particular site will be about and has been building towards all these years.
While I’ve always wanted a space for my projects to live, and my art, it’s only a small part of me and there may be months before I am able to show what I’m working on a regular basis, even though I honestly am creating things on a relatively regular basis. It’s not just about what I create, it’s not just my therapy. It needed focus.
Which brings us to the here and now. Over the last couple of years I’ve been honing and observing things as I develop a sense of what I like and what I don’t like. Sometimes I used this site to achieve this. Recently I’ve been thinking that ultimately the site needed a direction, something it’s not had since it began. The focus seemed to be on design in general, then it meandered off to blogging software, which was like this loop of eating it’s own tail.
The thing that I hope to concentrate on in the future is the idea Cognisant Design.
It took a bloody long time to finally come up with this collection of words. I kept floating between ‘Considered’ and ‘Cognisant’. They are close to each other in meaning, but it’s more than thinking about something. It’s about knowing the reasons for those decisions. I’m sure I’m not the first to come up with these words together, but I hope to bring to the fore what this actually means and highlight examples of this design sense in action.
It’s not a question of minimal design. It’s not a question of functional design, it’s a question of design that is thought out completely, where things we done in a very calculated fashion, even if those calculations lead to what might be hyper detail or bright bursts of colour.
Although I’ve tried to describe it in this post, I feel that the best way to show what it is that I am talking about is to actually show rather than tell. I don’t think I can post this sort of thing on a regular basis, so the linkblogging will continue, however in addition to these quick things I will be focusing on Cognisant Design and hopefully we’ll all learn something new together.
I’m sure I’m like seriously late to the party, but if I’m late, then I’m sure a ton of people are late as well. Recently been getting back into writing on a daily basis. It’s actually been easier than I thought, but one of the things that I aim to do is basically write and think in Markdown.
For those who don’t understand what that is, basically it’s a syntax for writing words that can be converted into other formats, with all sorts of embellishes (bold, italic, links etc), while maintaining a simple text file.
Obviously then you realise that there is the next step up which is MultiMarkdown and even something called Maruku which basically enhance the original Markdown with additional options and syntax, and extend the functionality to things other than websites.
The idea of just writing something in text which can then be converted into any number of formats that can be used in a number of ways is something that not only appeals to me, but i wish I’d copped onto this amazing benefit years and years ago. Trust me, don’t make the same mistake I did.