New Digs & A New Project
Two weeks ago tomorrow, I flew to San Francisco with my mother, neither of us having ever stepped foot in the City by the Bay. We landed in the morning, looked at three apartments by sun down, and the following day I was signing a lease.
The Road to San Francisco
I studied film at the University of Michigan, and for a long time it was my plan to move to Los Angeles. No explanation needed. Having visited the city often, however, I decided that the sprawling urban metropolis that is L.A. wasn’t for me. The city where you need a car wasn’t going to accommodate my desire to sell my own.
I next turned my attention towards the Big Apple. I had visited dozens of times and knew that I loved it, plus I already had a few friends living there (always a bonus when moving somewhere new). Long story short, I thought I had secured an apartment, then BAM! It was a scam. I only lost $50, so I was more relieved than disappointed. However, it forced me to take a step back and reassess my direction.
Somewhere in between getting scammed and signing the lease for my new apartment on Nob Hill, I decided that San Francisco was where I belonged. Big city: check. Temperate climate: check. Public transportation: check. Can I sell my car? Check. Friendly people: check. Check, check, check.
It had everything I was looking for, including a thriving tech industry, whose ranks I have chosen to join. I truly loved my film studies, but the Web is why I wake up in the morning, and Web design is most definitely my passion. My Dad always says, “Do what you love and the money will come,” so I am doing just that.
Here are a couple shots of my new place, where I’ll be taking over the online world of men’s fashion with my new project. (More on that below.) I make the move on September 4th. Can’t wait to finish setting things up.
New Project: The Garmentor
Having redesigned my personal site with much success–Jeff Croft called it “gorgeous” and Shaun Inman, master of minimalism in design, acknowledged “the minimalism and attention to typographic detail throughout”–I decided that it was time to begin a new project.
With age comes a sense of who you are, not only as a person, but also as a designer, and with the latest redesign of this website I felt that I had begun to hone my signature aesthetic. The Garmentor is not only the latest fruit of my passion, but another chance for me to excercise and establish my personal style as a Web designer.
The Garmentor, which will be published at TheGarmentor.com, is my attempt to remedy the lackluster state of men’s fashion on the Web.
Let’s face it. When it comes to fashion, men get screwed left and right. Men’s departments are a fraction of the size of those for the ladies, and the selection often leaves much to be desired. In catalogs, the first 90 pages are reserved for women and the last 10 (including the back cover, if we’re lucky) are for men. And while you’d expect the Internet, with its innate democratic values, to be a haven for men’s fashion, this isn’t the case. To this day, I haven’t come across a blog or online publication about men’s fashion that gives me what I’m looking for: content that is visually interesting, easily digestable, fun, and useful.
Uncrate does an okay job; however, their focus is too wide to do men’s fashion any real justice. To give credit where it’s due, Men.Style.com has some great content, including their “Hotlists” in which users can rate lists of, say, denim or aviators. Still, the website is cluttered, difficult to use, and too often comes off as just a money-grubbing extension of GQ and Details.
With The Garmentor, I want to fix everything that’s wrong with both of these websites, and others like them. I want users to have a visually arresting experience. I want to tell stories. I want to collaborate with other artists. I want visitors to come back not just for the content, but for the design. So far, I am on track to accomplish all of this.
I am working feverishly, spending many nights at the computer ’til 4, 5, and 6 AM. However, there is still much to be done. (There is always more to be done.)
My grandfather always says, “If you’re going to do it, do it right,” and I’m living by that motto with this project. It will launch when it launches, and when it does I will be the first to let all of you know.
How the Digital Age is Changing UI Design
After reading Marc Prensky’s stimulating article “Listen to the Natives,” I truly have a desire to quote it in its entirety. Instead I am going to focus on one of the opening paragraphs in which he distinguishes between two types of digital peoples — digital immigrants and digital natives — and how they learn differently in the Digital Age. I strongly encourage you to read the entire article; Prensky discusses some very thought-provoking facets of learning in the Age of Information. For now, though, let me begin by sharing with you that excerpt:
I’ve coined the term digital native to refer to today’s students (2001). They are native speakers of technology, fluent in the digital language of computers, video games, and the Internet. I refer to those of us who were not born into the digital world as digital immigrants. We have adopted many aspects of the technology, but just like those who learn another language later in life, we retain an “accent” because we still have one foot in the past. We will read a manual, for example, to understand a program before we think to let the program teach itself.
The last part of this excerpt strikes me as extremely relevant to web application user interface design. I’m no expert on the topic of UI design, but my status as digital native and experience with such services as Facebook, Gmail, and Twitter have provided me with at least an opinion of what I, a Generation Y user, consider to be good and bad examples of UI. Particularly when it comes to understanding and finding my way around a new online web service, certain UI features an make all the difference in whether I become a dedicated user or turn away and never look back. Prensky hits on a key point when he distinguishes between reading a manual to learn a new program — where, as I’m using it, program can mean anything from computer software to web apps — and letting the program teach itself.
A great example of the latter is Geni.com, a website that lets you quickly and easily build gorgeous, online family trees that are interactive and shareable. When someone first visits the site, this page introduces Geni:
The message at the top explains exactly what Geni is and what Geni can do for you. A more detailed list of features is included at the bottom left; however, what follows immediately after the introduction sentence (note: a sentence, not a paragraph) is the Geni interface where a first-time visitor can immediately get started using the service. All that’s required is your name, email address, and gender. No username, no password, no registration process. Instead, an account is instantly created for you and Geni emails you a temporary password so that, if you wish, you can login in the future and continue using your account. This allows the user to immediately begin using Geni to create their family tree.
Leopard looks nice, but the Apple website looks great
Just finished watching/reading the announcements made by Steve Jobs at this year’s WWDC keynote and I think I speak for many when I say that I was significantly underwhelmed. (”You can be overwhelmed, you can be underwhelmed… but can you ever just be whelmed?”)
There were a few mildly exciting points, so I’ll start with those:
The new Finder was great news. It is cleverly based off of the iTunes interface, even allowing one to browse through files in CoverFlow mode. This could be extremely useful when browsing through folders filled with photographs, but maybe not so much for browsing document folders.