Allison Shaw

Memories.

Tue, 21 May 2013 23:43:00 -0400

Memories.

"Both Tumblr and Yahoo! share a vision to make the Internet the ultimate creative canvas by focusing..."

Mon, 20 May 2013 15:12:42 -0400

“Both Tumblr and Yahoo! share a vision to make the Internet the ultimate creative canvas by focusing on users, design — and building experiences that delight and inspire the world every day.”

- Marissa’s Tumblr

I hope so. I would like that company very much.

"Why Society Still Needs Feminism Because to men, a key is a device to open something. For women,..."

Sat, 18 May 2013 14:42:00 -0400

“

Why Society Still Needs Feminism

Because to men, a key is a device to open something. For women, it’s a weapon we hold between our fingers when we’re walking alone at night.

Because the biggest insult for a guy is to be called a “pussy,” a “little bitch” or a “girl.” From here on out, being called a “pussy” is an effing badge of honor.

Because last month, my politics professor asked the class if women should have equal representation in the Supreme Court, and only three out of 42 people raised their hands.

Because rape jokes are still a thing.

Because despite being equally broke college kids, guys are still expected to pay for dates, drinks and flowers.

Because as a legit student group, Campus Fellowship does not allow women to lead anything involving men. Look, I know Eve was dumb about the whole apple and snake thing, but I think we can agree having a vagina does not directly impact your ability to lead a college organization.

Because it’s assumed that if you are nice to a girl, she owes you sex — therefore, if she turns you down, she’s a bitch who’s put you in the “friend zone.” Sorry, bro, women are not machines you put kindness coins into until sex falls out.

Because only 29 percent of American women identify as feminist, and in the words of author Caitlin Moran, “What part of ‘liberation for women’ is not for you? Is it freedom to vote? The right not to be owned by the man you marry? The campaign for equal pay? Did all that good shit get on your nerves? Or were you just drunk at the time of the survey?”

Because when people hear the term feminist, they honestly think of women burning bras. Dude, have you ever bought a bra? No one would burn them because they’re freaking expensive.

Because Rush Limbaugh.

Because we now have a record number of women in the Senate … which is a measly 20 out of 100. Congrats, USA, we’ve gone up to 78th place for women’s political representation, still below China, Rwanda and Iraq.

Because recently I had a discussion with a couple of well-meaning Drake University guys, and they literally could not fathom how catcalling a woman walking down University Avenue is creepy and sexist. Could. Not. Fathom.

Because on average, the tenured male professors at Drake make more than the tenured female professors.

Because more people on campus complain about chalked statistics regarding sexual assault than complain about the existence of sexual assault. Priorities? Have them.

Because 138 House Republicans voted against the Violence Against Women Act. All 138 felt it shouldn’t provide support for Native women, LGBT people or immigrant women. I’m kind of confused by this, because I thought LGBT people and women of color were also human beings. Weird, right?

Because a girl was roofied last semester at a local campus bar, and I heard someone say they think she should have been more careful. Being drugged is her fault, not the fault of the person who put drugs in her drink?

Because Chris Brown beat Rihanna so badly she was hospitalized, yet he still has fans and bestselling songs and a tattoo of an abused woman on his neck.

Because out of 7 billion people on the planet, more than 1 billion women will be raped or beaten in their lifetimes. Women and girls have their clitorises cut out, acid thrown on them and broken bottles shoved up them as an act of war. Every second of every day. Every corner of the Earth.

Because the other day, another friend of mine told me she was raped, and I can no longer count on both my hands the number of friends who have told me they’ve been sexually assaulted. Words can’t express how scared I am that I’m getting used to this.

Because a brief survey of reality will tell you that we do not live in a world that values all people equally and that sucks in real, very scary ways. Because you know we live in a sexist world when an awesome thing with the name “feminism” has a weird connotation. Because if I have kids someday, I want my son to be able to have emotions and play dress up, and I want my daughter to climb trees and care more about what’s in her head than what’s on it. Because I don’t want her to carry keys between her fingers at night to protect herself.

Because feminism is for everybody, and this is your official invitation.

”

- Caitlin O’Donnell, Drake University. (via on-another-note)

rollindeepwith3cheeses: Magnificent.

Fri, 17 May 2013 01:10:26 -0400

rollindeepwith3cheeses:

Magnificent.

I am Gillian Anderson - AMA! : IAmA

Thu, 16 May 2013 14:24:44 -0400

I am Gillian Anderson - AMA! : IAmA:

My sister lives there with her illegal wife and my mom lives nearby and I am seeing this as a new adventure.

Gillian Anderson, regarding Chicago, in her [AMA on Reddit](http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1egkr9/i_am_gillian_anderson_ama/), happening now.

Cool co-hort set, bro. As a designer, I prefer the first,...

Thu, 16 May 2013 11:00:10 -0400

Cool co-hort set, bro.

As a designer, I prefer the first, original version. 3 is obvious winner if the only goal is to increase searching. As a PM, I would probably advocate for 2 as the best choice to bridge visual beauty with increased results, and eventually fade it out over time as people got accustomed to the UI.

archiemcphee: Never has a droid been so colourful or...

Thu, 16 May 2013 03:23:17 -0400

archiemcphee:

Never has a droid been so colourful or tentacular. LEGO wizard Matt Armstrong, aka Monster Brick, created these incredibly awesome RU-KRAZY!? and R2-Cthulhu LEGO R2-D2 sculptures. Visit Matt’s Monster Brick Flickr account to view more of his fantastic LEGO creations.

[via Nerd Approved]

"Photoshop is like grandfathers workshop. There may be 20 similar tools and at a first glance most of..."

Thu, 16 May 2013 00:03:41 -0400

“Photoshop is like grandfathers workshop. There may be 20 similar tools and at a first glance most of them feel dispensable and the whole shed looks messy, but your grandfather knows where everything is, what to use first and which version of which tool is best for the task at hand.”

- So you’re looking for an alternative to Photoshop? » UARRR.org

More thoughts in the ongoing mindstorm I’m having about Adobe vs. the Alternatives.

Rubber Duck [UX] Debugging — Design/UX — Medium An article by...

Wed, 15 May 2013 23:51:13 -0400

Rubber Duck [UX] Debugging — Design/UX — Medium

An article by Ed Lea, my co-worker overseas, detailing a great workflow for prototyping app interactions. I used a nearly identical process when working on Scrit Scrit.

Daft Punk on Pitchfork

Wed, 15 May 2013 15:32:45 -0400

Daft Punk on Pitchfork:

After 20 years, the world has finally caught up with Daft Punk, so the helmet-clad retro-futurists are embarking on a new mission: to make music breathe again

Granted, it’s for a music magazine profile on one of the more futuristic bands ever, but man—this is the proper equivalent to reading a solidly designed magazine spread in a print mag. Beautifully choreographed, spaced, timed, and taking advantage of what we can do with our web browsers now. You can even flip through it (fast scroll) and get a feel for what you’re going to get.

Awesome.

Vine User Inks Deal With ‘Peanuts’ Gang Can’t...

Tue, 14 May 2013 14:17:31 -0400

Vine User Inks Deal With ‘Peanuts’ Gang

Can’t wait to see these!

The power of the RSS reader – Marco.org

Tue, 14 May 2013 11:00:20 -0400

The power of the RSS reader – Marco.org:

Compelling argument from Marco. Although Tumblr is basically a closed RSS network, I often wish that I had a feed of “the fun stuff,” and a feed of the meaty stuff. And indeed, this is something I did when I was in school: Google Reader for thesis-related stuff, Tumblr Dashboard for the climbing pics and fixie porn.

Perhaps that, in combination with smart Instapaper use would be the best way to manage my daily stream…

Adobe SaaS: Room for disruption

Tue, 14 May 2013 10:00:00 -0400

For those living under a rock this past week, Adobe has announced that going forward, they will be abandoning their tried and true method of software delivery, the hard copy, and will be moving entirely to delivery via Creative Cloud subscription. Starting in July, you’ll be handing over $50/month to Adobe for the rest of your life. In exchange, you’ll have full access to the entire library of Adobe Creative software, unlimited use of Typekit, and some other “goodies.”

Here’s my reaction, as written in an email to my friend Mike:

Creatives with a capital C are some of the most stubborn people to design for—stuck in their ways, snotty about their bad habits, practically unable to understand that sometimes new is better/easier/more efficient, etc. The SaaS move allows Adobe to keep their software updated, always. Really good for them, probably good for users (whether we realize it or not), and probably not good for printers/producers who are notoriously slow to support new software.

So I think that is going to be a problem: the initial adoption. I also think it is going to require a significant amount of extra work on the side of production for that industry to support this. Maybe I’m wrong. If Adobe is smart (not sure about this), they will have reached out already to their production partners and will be ready to help them get going.

In a general sense, Adobe is basically deciding to say Fuck You to some-time freelancers, prosumers, and anyone who believes that they should be able to own the things they pay for. The cost is huge—$50/month. Adobe does give you some nice add-ons for this cost: unlimited access to TypeKit, some sort of collaboration tool I’ve never bothered with, etc. And you do get access to the entire suite of apps from them, which is awesome, if you’re like me who dabbles in basically everything Adobe is involved in (motion, print, web). But most people aren’t and don’t.

Year over year, the cost is roughly equal to the cost of a full Creative Suite: $50/month = $600 per year. Adobe used to charge about $1200 for a baseline creative suite that was specific to a particular vertical (motion, web, print). They updated the suite every year-ish, usually with a .5 release at one year, and full refresh at year 2. Updates ran anywhere from $200 for a single app to $900 for the Master Suite.

So in this model, if you’re a person that updates every year, you end up paying the upgrade price once a year—same as always. In fact you save money, because you never have to put down for the initial full suite.

Unfortunately for Adobe, most people don’t upgrade at every cycle. They skip the .5 releases, or even do things like go from CS 3 to CS 6, etc. Adobe doesn’t make very much money from those users right now, because they still offer the upgrade price for several releases back.

So. Adobe wants to make a more consistent cash stream from their customers, and they also want to get everyone running the same-ish version of software, which will allow them to save more money by not having to support old software. Something has a weird bug, or a security hole? Just upgrade your cloud-software.

On the user side of things… There is something very painful about paying $50 every month, whereas with one large charge every year-ish or more is something you put on your charge card and either swallow the big hit as part of normal operating costs, or you spread the charges out over a few months, and forget it after the first month as after that, it’s just a balance you carry on your card.

Adobe is betting there will be a contingent of users, probably similar to me, who will pay the $50 every month, even though they might not use the software enough to really justify the expense. In other words, the gym membership theory. “Well, I might need to use it for work, freelance, or some fun personal thing,” we’ll say, as we end up forking over $600/year for apps we barely touch, that have way more features than we need. Unfortunately, I know of no software that can replace InDesign, which is probably my favorite Adobe app. It’s the closest they ever got to Good Software. So people still doing print design are still going to be tied to them (Adobe having basically killed Quark).

Anyways, yes, Adobe has further opened itself up for disruption by consumer and prosumer level apps for photo-editting, web design, and illustration. To an extent they’ve already cannibalized their Photoshop group with Lightroom, and Aperture has undoubtedly taken a large chunk of this type of user as well. Their video apps have already been disrupted by Apple.

Adobe might not care. They’re going to make enough money off the groups that decide for pay for Creative Cloud to more than make up for the loss of the casual users (most of whom haven’t actually PAID for CS… just figured out ways to get it for free, whether through putting work copies on home computers or just blatantly ripping it off). They will definitely get more than a few people who don’t need to pay for it to pay for it.

And in the meantime, there is room for a challenger in the consumer/prosumer area of things, in the areas of illustration and web design comping, as well as desktop publishing. I really hope either one of the current players (Pixelmator, Sketch, etc.) or a new player comes in and takes advantage of that market. I hope they eventually creep into the pro areas.

Mike wrote back with a simple reply, summarized here by me: that Adobe is focused on platform-building, rather than software innovating. In other words, it seems somewhat crazy that we’re discussing how we’re going to pay for the software, instead of talking about the software itself.

Have the business guys completely taken over? Maybe. But then I saw this post from Zeldman: Adobe Love, in which he states:

It sometimes seemed to me that Adobe hadn’t so much acquired Typekit as the reverse: that the people and thinking behind Typekit are now running Adobe (which is actually true), and that the mindset of some of the smartest consultants and designers in our industry is now driving a huge corporation.

And I have to wonder if Adobe has the grit to drag all of us annoying, snotty, stubborn creatives into the 21st century, kicking and screaming. If, in transforming their own culture, they can transform us too. After all, we are the products of the tools we use…

What Your Culture Really Says - Pretty Little State Machine

Mon, 13 May 2013 11:00:05 -0400

What Your Culture Really Says - Pretty Little State Machine

Innovate on Purpose: Too busy to innovate

Sun, 12 May 2013 11:00:24 -0400

Innovate on Purpose: Too busy to innovate

littlebigdetails: Yelp for iOS — When in New York City, the two...

Sat, 11 May 2013 14:52:19 -0400

littlebigdetails:

Yelp for iOS — When in New York City, the two tightest distance filters are measured in blocks, not miles.

/via lilzet

"The best thing we can do isn’t necessarily to try to pay for everything, which is unrealistic and..."

Sat, 11 May 2013 11:00:19 -0400

“The best thing we can do isn’t necessarily to try to pay for everything, which is unrealistic and often not an option. Our best option is to avoid supporting and using proprietary monocultures.”

- Free works – Marco.org

Hyperbole and a Half: Depression Part Two

Fri, 10 May 2013 11:00:32 -0400

Hyperbole and a Half: Depression Part Two:

Yea. Right on.

User Inter Faces

Thu, 09 May 2013 14:02:21 -0400

User Inter Faces:

A site that generates user avatars in whatever style you need. Nice.

Every lane is a bike lane, especially when buses block the...

Wed, 08 May 2013 16:07:21 -0400

Every lane is a bike lane, especially when buses block the actual bike lanes.

… Good job, LA.

Via Cyclivist.