Ok, we're biased, since the list references our collaboration with FICTILIS for the Colors of Commerce exhibit. But author Jude Stewart highlights some other notables in color from 2011:

#1: On This Day calendar

Reusable for every year, this handy wall calendar consists of heat-sensitive cubes, each marking a noteworthy event from that day in history. Scribble your own notes for the year on the cube’s side, then wash-and-reuse next year - or frame and mount a year in your exceedingly colorful life.

 #9: Imprint's series on synesthesia

#6: Google Image Search by Color. More useful than I would have ever thought!

Happy 2012!

In case you haven't heard, Google is in the middle of launching a new language for structured web programming: Dart. This is a hugely ambitious undertaking, the goal of which, according to a fascinating leaked internal memo about Google's strategy, is "to replace JavaScript as the lingua franca of web development on the open web platform".

This, I think, has the possibility of being a big deal. Javascript was written very quickly back in 1995, and was almost immediately adopted very widely (it nicely filled a programming vacuum), despite the fact that it may be, as Robert Cailliau (one of the inventors of the World Wide Web) suggests, "the most horrible kluge in the history of computing".

Histrionics aside, it seems clear enough that there are some significant problems with the state of affairs as it stands. As the Dart technical overview notes (and here I quote at length):

1. Small scripts often evolve into large web applications with no apparent structure—they’re hard to debug and difficult to maintain. In addition, these monolithic apps can’t be split up so that different teams can work on them independently. It’s difficult to be productive when a web application gets large.
2. Scripting languages are popular because their lightweight nature makes it easy to write code quickly. Generally, the contracts with other parts of an application are conveyed in comments rather than in the language structure itself. As a result, it’s difficult for someone other than the author to read and maintain a particular piece of code.
3. With existing languages, the developer is forced to make a choice between static and dynamic languages. Traditional static languages require heavyweight toolchains and a coding style that can feel inflexible and overly constrained.
4. Developers have not been able to create homogeneous systems that encompass both client and server, except for a few cases such as Node.js and Google Web Toolkit (GWT).
5. Different languages and formats entail context switches that are cumbersome and add complexity to the coding process.

The Dart project's stated goals are a response to these problems. This fact (in tandem with the fact that the organization undertaking it is one of the very few that could plausibly meet those goals) should be enough to perk up the ears of anyone interested in web development.

There is no explanation of the analysis, so it's difficult to understand the distribution. But I like the presentation, nonetheless.

I ran across this article a few weeks ago and found it interesting because it illustrates some of the things we've been saying about ethical strategies for a while. Namely, that it might be profitable to behave unethically but that, in the long-term, the Internet will find you out and shut you down. The corollary: being ethical makes good business sense.

The subject of the piece is DecorMyEyes.com, a business that sells designer eyeglasses. Its owner discovered that treating his customers poorly --incorrect orders, insults, and even threats-- helped his business by increasing his visibility online. Apparently, there really was no such thing as bad publicity.

So he started doing it intentionally.

And here's where the story seems to violate our aphorism: When people went public about their stories of awful treatment, it only seemed to have the opposite effect.

The owner brazenly replied to his angry customers on a forum:

“Hello, My name is Stanley with DecorMyEyes.com,” the post began. “I just wanted to let you guys know that the more replies you people post, the more business and the more hits and sales I get. My goal is NEGATIVE advertisement.”

It’s all part of a sales strategy, he said. Online chatter about DecorMyEyes, even furious online chatter, pushed the site higher in Google search results, which led to greater sales. He closed with a sardonic expression of gratitude: “I never had the amount of traffic I have now since my 1st complaint. I am in heaven.”

The owner (whose real name is Vitaly Borker) generated just enough negative feedback to game Google's algorithm, but not so much to be shut down by authorities. For a while he was able to keep enough business to offset the business he loses due to complaints.

That was, until the NYT story. A week after the article was published, Borker was arrested and charged with making threats and mail and wire fraud.

Since the press coverage, Google seems to be reworking its algorithm to better account for bad publicity. In the case of DecorMyEyes.com, at least, the effectiveness of these changes is still hit or miss.

Ultimately, it seems our assertion was upheld. Borker may have profited initially from being unethical, but once word from the forums spread to the wider press, he lost.

Be good. Because if you're not... people will find out.

Last week, Starbucks unveiled a new logo. This move, as readers of BlogLESS are aware, is done at a brand's own peril. (Further case in point, GapGate.)

Nevertheless, as Olivier Blanchard notes, "Seemingly undaunted by the prospect of having its own logo redesign firebombed across the Twitternets by masses of disappointed customers and fans, Starbucks moved ahead to mark its 40th birthday with such an exercise..."

The result?

The reaction, predictably, has been almost uniformly negative (and occasionally funny).

Logos "Starbucksified", courtesy of The Brand Builder Blog

Starbucks had to anticipate a negative reaction. But did they make a mistake?

I myself am not so sure. The logo retains the iconic Starbucks mermaid, and so visual continuity with the previous logo. Starbucks is hardly in a position to lose brand recognition at this point. Certainly, the new logo doesn't "pop" off the cup as much as the old logo does, but logos aren't comic books.

This design seems to me to be more of a political move -- a landgrab -- than a visual one. The point of logos, or at least one of their major functions, is to communicate the idea of a brand to viewers as quickly and simply as possible. If Starbucks can do that with a green circle, that, to my mind, is a huge gain for the coffee giant in the cultural iconographic Zeitgeist.

Of course, we probably ought to mourn the loss of a culture where we didn't associate a green circle with the Starbucks brand, but that's hardly the kind of thing we ought to expect Starbucks to care about. It's worth visualizing the iconographic payoff that Starbucks is playing for with this redesign:

The Starbucks logo, unevolved (contrast: Google's logo)

Google Books is a project to digitize as many books as possible. Though the content in many of the books is copyrighted (particularly in latter titles), the words themselves can be mined/visualized to facilitate research in the Ngrams viewer, basically Google Insights for print. There are a ton of interesting use cases for this, both seeing trends in ideas/concepts and trends in language over time. (And actually, if can be difficult to disaggregate these - as people use more specific terms over time, or language changes over time. And one would like to see a graph of just the amount of words scanned at points in the timeline.  Simple queries can lead to some pretty dramatic conclusions...). Be prepared to get sucked in by this tool. Here's a favorite:

A small but good collection of Ngrams is forming on this tumbleog, and there is a good writeup with nice examples here.

1. So you want to be a (freelance designer)?

In one of the best articles I read this week, Steve Friedl shares his experience as a technology consultant. But I think there is much to learn here for anyone who runs a very small business dealing directly with clients (i.e. freelance designers like ourselves).

I'll share one maxim of Friedl's -- of the ethical variety, in keeping with our theme:

Never, ever lie or fudge on an invoice

If you are ever caught — or even suspected — of funny business on the financial front, you will not be trusted anywhere else. It is impossible to give a customer The Warm Fuzzy Feeling™ if they are wondering about the legitimacy of your invoices, and this is fatal to a customer relationship and to ever getting a good reference.

This is not to say that mistakes on an invoice won't happen, but how you deal with them will tell a customer a lot about how you do business. Your goal should be to overwhelm them with integrity.

Read More...

1. 20 Worst Drinks in America 2010

I like this spread on unhealthy drinks by Eat this Not That. Illustrating sugar content via equivalent stacks of cookies and donuts is a powerful visual. I'll never look at bottled teas and water the same way again.

2. We, the users - Facebook users' Bill of Rights

If you wanted a set of principles from which to base a code of ethics for social media, I'd say look no further than this users' Bill of Rights from the San Francisco Chronicle.

3. Google Font Previewer

Google is breaking into web fonts with its new Google Font Directory and API, part of a collaboration with typekit. The selection is a little sparse at the moment, but it's great to think that we might have some more cross-browser fonts (as long as Google's servers are up).

The font previewer interface is nice, but it bugs me that the new fonts aren't properly anti-aliased in Windows. Until that gets ironed out (if it can be, as I think it's an OS problem), I'm not sure it's worth designing websites around them.

4. 10 Golden Principles of Successful Web Apps

We're very early into developing a web application, so I found this article and video helpful for wrapping my head around the mindset that accompanies these things. It covers the gamut from technology to branding and marketing with a few insights I hadn't considered before.