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Icky Sticky Signs of Life
The kids book Icky Little Duckling tells of a very mature rabbit who obsessively orders and collects things he finds in the woods. One day he comes across a beautiful shiny egg, which hatches a little duckling. Of course, the duckling destroys rabbit’s meticulously-organized dwelling, making a mess of everything. I often feel like that…
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Making Digital Footprints
Last weekend I went ATVing in the forest with my daughter. We followed several trails, turned left here, then took a right at the next fork. I kept trying to memorize the trees and paths we followed, but when we turned around to go back, I quickly realized that I was completely lost. Fortunately we…
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The Art of Missing Out
Today’s news feeds and social media streams do a great job of telling us what’s going on in the world right now. The appeal of refreshing our feeds and tuning into broadcasts is their promise to keep us “in the know”, and let us know what the world cares about at that very moment. One…
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A Fresh Pair of Eyes
The most exciting thing I’ve done in quite a while is drive through an automatic car wash. I know you’re thinking. A carwash is “just a carwash”, but maybe that’s you’ve never driven through one with small kids.. Recently I took my 6- and 2-year-old daughters through an automatic carwash. Just before we drove in,…
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Print’s Finest Hour
We get a bundle of flyers at our doorstep every week. I call this our “fire-starter delivery service”. Paper flyers feel like a waste of time, trees and ink. In the past, we printed things on paper because that was what we had. Paper was the best way to share information and keep records. We…
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Concerning the Planting of Trees
The first house we bought came with an un-landscaped yard. Over the course of a few years we covered the barren clay with grass, a small garden, and a few bushes and trees. As we stuck those first little sticks into the ground, we laughed, knowing that these little trees would likely only mature long…
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Who’s it for?
Often as designers we start a project by looking at the latest design trends, or by trying to mimic the coolest new website that all the other designers are talking about. Too often, the user’s needs take a back seat to our need to flex our design-trend muscles. Often we skip the first, and most…
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Building, Gardening and the Development of the Web
In a recent interview, Paul Coelho drew a contrast between building and gardening. When you construct a building, you essentially build it and leave it. Buildings require some attention once they’re built, but usually only when something’s broken. Gardens, on the other hand, require constant attention. You can’t just build a garden and walk away…
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When is it Good Enough?
The first 80% in any project gets you close. That’s the easy 80%. That’s the part that makes you say, at the outset, “this shouldn’t be too hard”. It’s the last 20% that takes 80% of your time and money, and causes 100% of the frustration. These are the decisions you deferred till later, the…
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Brand Love: Maallust
The best brands don’t just look cool, but they tell a story. I saw a great example of this during a recent trip. While visiting Holland earlier this summer, we decided to visit the Maallust Brewery in Veenhuizen. Our only exposure to the brewery was a brochure at a local restaurant and thought it looked…
