IRALOT #01 — I Read a Lot Of Things 👍
Billionaire Mcafee goes wild, Nintendo will blow your mind and why beauty matters
The first edition. The first step. The spark.
I read a lot (of things) and this series was almost called IRALOB or I Read A Lot Of Books, but then I would be stuck writing about the books only, or I would be mentioning and linking to other articles, and there would be (always) that commenter…
Every week (hopefully) I will be compiling and curating into this series: pieces of articles, books, magazines, cool paragraphs and awesome quotes (I ❤️ quotes — and emojis! 😎).
To get things started, let's add a soundtrack to the article 👌 🎧
This is Gabriel Rios singing Gold.
1. Have you ever heard what happened to John Mcafee?
Does the last name ring a bell? He is the billionaire behind the anti-virus. This story is from 2012 but until today I keep thinking about it. It's a brilliant story written by Joshua Davis for Wired.
The fact that he was running a laboratory on his property only added to the mystery. Adonizio was continuing to research botanical compounds, but McAfee didn’t want to tell the locals anything about it. In part he was worried about corporate espionage. He had seen white men in suits standing beside their cars on the heavily trafficked toll bridge near his property and was sure they were spies. “Do you realize that Glaxo, Bayer, every single drug company in the world sent people out there?” McAfee says. “I was working on a project that had some paradigm-shifting impact on the drug world. It would be insanity to talk about it.”
Read the full article HERE.
2. Google is really good at design.
Aaaand we know it. Now a curveball… Is google really good at design, or is Apple starting to suck at design? I've seen things in the weird iPhone X (Why remove the fingerprint???).
The article written by Joshua Topolski, for The Outline, is HERE.
Still about Google, why not read a bit about Material Design? It's HERE.
3. Why beauty is key to everything.
I love this book. I read it in two days while making notes! (Yes, I underline and make lots of notes. It helps me so much to remember everything I read — Don't know if I mentioned, but I read a lot of things 😉).
The designer Alan Moore shares amazing/inspiring stories and a kind of step-by-step to create beautiful things. All the themes he uses (Beauty, The Craft, The Mindset, The Process, Persevere, Connect and Aspire) are backed by true events/people.
For example (page 32): While in "The Mindset" he writes about Sebastião Salgado (Brazilian photographer and a great human):
"We need to open our senses to all that surrounds us, to simply absorb new information, challenging ourselves to be able to arrive at a new way of looking at, seeing and then understanding the world."
With this mindset I ask you: How are you open to what surrounds you? If you read a book, a magazine, an e-mail, whatever… Are you with the proper mindset to not only understand what's written at that moment, but to connect that information with other bits of knowledge in your head and create something new?!
🤔
The book is written by Alan Moore and the publisher is Do Book Co.
4. Nintendo Labo
Wow.. just wow… I am glad they made a video to explain, because in this case, images speak unbelievably louder than words:
Well done, Nintendo… well done 👏👏
4. From Muzli
The UI Interactions of the week #109.
and
The Weekly Inspiration for Designers #138.
5. One year designing at Whatsapp
The designer Charlie Deets writes a very interesting article about designing for Whatsapp. One thing is designing for a startup, testing with a couple of users and releasing a new version of your app. Another thing completely different is implementing a new, very simple, update to 1.3 Billion users using different mobiles, in different countries, speaking different languages. From an American Billionaire, to favela kid in Rio trying to have his girlfriend send some nudes.
You can read Charlie's article HERE.
Check this quote:
WhatsApp approaches this problem in a different pragmatic way. We try to design and build features which are obviously useful. If the feature needs explanation, it’s not ready.
Creme de la creme of design decisions. This is not only a lesson from Whatsapp team. If you do design you should think deeply about it.
Stats about Whatsapp users HERE.
By the way, I find amazing how super low-profile the founders of Whatsapp are. The founders are Jan Koum and Brian Acton, and both worked at Yahoo for 9 years!!
6. Design Tools from Facebook's team
The title is super straight-forward. HERE are some design tools from Facebook.
Can you believe Facebook has a team that focuses on creating tools to make your job as a designer easier/faster?! Lots of free kits to download such as the IOS 11 GUI (Graphic User Interface… come on, you knew it 😬), Sketch files of popular devices, and more.
Aaaaand also Origami Studio. A prototyping tool built and used by designers at Facebook. So if you want a job there I would assume you should add this to your CV and fill that skill bar to the top.
(I am joking, please don't do this)
Download Origami Studio HERE.
7. Embrace constraints.
Thomas Oppong writes a very insightful article about not being afraid of having to work with limitations. If you really think about it, constraints are part of our life… Time is at the top (so far we all have 24 hours per day).
Check this quote:
Your limitations are starting point for seemingly endless creativity and possibility. Use them to your advantage.
And do you want to know the truth? Everyone has limitations. Deal with it.
You can read the article HERE.
By the way, I was reading the awesome UX Planet and they just released this article that is a perfect match: Great interfaces, they’ve all got one thing in common — they take time.
8. Lessons about creativity
Ed Catmull is one of a kind. He is the Co-Founder of Pixar Animation Studios and President of Pixar Animation and Disney Animation.
And he wrote a book called "Creativity, Inc". Most people, when reading this book, or just buying the book to fulfil the will to read the book and pretending to read one day, thinks it's only about creativity and/or the creative process.
In fact the biggest lessons from this book are about kindness and creating a atmosphere of candor/openness inside your organisation.
Check this quote from page 235:
“I’ve always been intrigued, for example, by the way that many people use the analogy of a train to describe their companies. When things go wrong, we talk of getting ‘derailed’ and of experiencing a ‘train wreck’. And I’ve heard people refer to Pixar’s production group as a finely tuned locomotive that they would love the chance to drive. What interests me is the number of people who believe that they have the ability to drive the train and who think that this is the power position — that driving the train is the way to shape their companies future. The truth is, it’s not. Driving the train doesn’t set is course. The real job is laying the track.”
Oh, Ed… (can I call you Ed?)
9. From the User Experience Design world
- The Things Junior UX Designers Should Do More Of (Not Just Design)
For example: Asking for Help Doesn’t Make You Stupid 🆘 😀 - 9 Effective Tips on Visual Hierarchy
For example: White space is a visual element.
(The link below is gold)
10. Wrap up!
Aaaaalright! I will wrap it up after this great link. This was my first IRALOT ✋ Please let me know what you think. If you have any questions or want to share any link about design, leave a comment below.
