Blech. They’re unbelievably ugly. Today’s paper showed an ad for the Trump watch.
They have all of the neo-historical styling of other popular watches but none of the appeal. The logo itself, with a brash serif “TRUMP,” looks about as fake as any Citizen, Bulova, or Rado sold on the streets of Canal. Trump obviously thinks he can sell $125 watches to the masses. But the designer of these time pieces of crap ought to be hung out to dry. Gag, ugly.

I promise not to overhype my new little venture called THE ART BUREAU but I’m really honored to be mentioned by two of my heros in the Web design and development world: Jeffrey Zeldman and Dave Shea.
The site is starting to get picked up by the Web standards community, a small but fiercely dedicated group of folks making the Web a better place to learn and play, and many thanks go out to Michael Barrish for his fine, fine coding of THE ART BUREAU.

We took out of the Brooklyn library a newish book called If I Were a Lion, a children’s book by written by Sarah Weeks and illustrated by Heather M. Solomon. The book’s illustrations are incredible moving and beautifully rendered – a small child is shown imagining, during her time-out/punishment, that animals are inhabiting her home. The furious detail of the watercolors and gouache (I believe) by Ms. Solomon are full of incredible observation, passion, and knowledge of animal fur.
What always strikes me about such lusciously illustrated books is that the top billing goes to the writer. I don’t know if this is a historical remnant of the publishing world, an artifact of written culture, or is it a sign of some kind of half-hearted respect for the creators? The book is well written. But the illustrations are what make the book the book.
P.S. I believe that one of my favorite fonts, Emigre’s Filosofia, is used for the titling of the book on the cover. Specifically, it looks like Filosofia Small Caps.
P.P.S. Nope – just checked. It’s not.

I’m proud to announce that The Art Bureau was (soft) launched on Saturday, April 9, 2005. We’ve been getting some traffic and a bit of buzz here and there but mostly, it’s been a total joy to see this site come up from nothing.
In case you’re interested, here’s the scoop: In 2004, photographer Jennifer Fiore and I determined that what the world really needs is a unique royalty-free collection of stock photography. We were so exhausted at looking at the same ads, bookcovers, trade mags, and websites which use stock images of a boy in horn-rim glasses smiling into a telephone or a busy mother cooking while holding her child or beach sunsets with too-large suns, etc. So we put our skills together, worked with a great programmer and coder, and built (the first) Web standards based royalty free online stock agency.
I’ll spare you the rest but if you think your work would fit at The Art Bureau, please let us know. Oh, and if you have any problems, comments, or recommendations for the site, please let us know that, too.

I’m working, slowly, on Version 3.0 of Deckchairs on the Titanic. I want the site to have the following characteristics:

• Iconography should be funnier
• Colors should be less garish even if they are less historically representational
• Site should probably be centered
• Text should be even more legible and more white/beige space should exist
• The color black should be prominent
• It probably shouldn’t be called a “monologue” anymore

Your thoughts, suggestions, and recommendations are welcome. And no, I won’t be providing iPods, cash entitlements, favors, lovesongs or other somesuch for help in the matter.

If you have ever accidentally (or purposefully) clicked on Google’s more link at the top of its pages, you’ll be confronted with something called “Google Services.” This has to be one of the least finely designed pages I’ve seen by a company of this size. It’s as if Google, forever cutified by its occasionally changing holiday logos, came up with a few unrelated stock illustrations to represent some of their very powerful services such as “Answers” and “Scholar” and “Alerts.” A few of the icons on this page are designed well but it’s always suprised me how little research Google does regarding icon design.
Hey Google: check out a few of these guys.
Related: Right now, Google appears to be in some hot water with a lot of folks regarding its new autolink feature in its new (beta only) toolbar. Zeldman covers it: essentially it seems that Google can somehow create new links within your site without your permission. Google does a lot of things right but it’s still only one click away from those influencing and designing the Web.
Also related: I’m starting to try my hand at high-end icon design and am excited about it.

Finally, it seems that the good folks at Six Apart, the company behind Movable Type, have knocked the “.org” on its head. I still don’t understand the appeal of commercial ventures having a non-profit .org address — with a redesigned site and reincorporation of movabletype.org into the fold, the company is starting to make sense to me and probably to many users who might fear the oddity of a technology company with identity issues.
Jay Allen writes about the new design and so does Mena Trott, co-founder of the company.
Regarding the design, it’s just nice. There’s nothing sharp about it, literally. All of the edges have been sanded down, the colors are awfully dull, and the typefaces used look so friendly that I feel like gagging. In terms of usability, it’s fantastic — much easier to read, recognize information, and find new knowledge. Mule Design did the job.

I love the Airbag blog and buy into most of what Greg Storey has to say. He’s a wonderful designer and commentator and he gets tremendous amounts of traffic, as can be witnessed by the 163 comments about his “contest” to design a logo for his buddy. Greg isn’t the first one to ask designers to submit their work (called “on spec” because there is no pay) for credibility and a gadget (he’s giving away a $99.00 iPod Shuffle). But I find it rather grotesque that even beginning designers would want to help a business design a logo for some shilling and a t-shirt. It’s my humble opinion that if a business wants to do business, they should do business with other businesses and not look for handouts. Anyway, the comments in this post do better justice to the injustice than I.

It’s been a not very interesting week so I’ll end it in the middle with a not very interesting set of designs for Boxes and Arrows, an online group that focuses on information design and user experience for the Web.
Click through some of the designs, including the winning one, and you’ll be able to see the full range of possibilities people are offering up for the future Web. None are bad, some are good, but none are grabbing and perhaps, as the comments indicate, perhaps this is what you get when you get for free.
In better news, a happy and peaceful and joyful Thanksgiving to all. I plan on reading a book.

For anybody who has ever created a website (or built a house) this little ditty may strike a chord: If Architects Had To Work Like Web Designers…. This has been making the rounds for a while, but it’s so completely right on. Thanks, Jake.