There's an extraordinary amount of hype around "AI" right now, perhaps even greater than in past cycles, where we've seen an AI bubble about once per...

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is one of the greatest games ever made, and one of the breakout hits of the Nintendo Switch platform, which is on its w...

I love any kind of advocacy for safer, more humane streets, so it was a real joy to get to guest on the wonderful The War on Cars podcast. Doug Gordon went d...

We don’t even notice it anymore — “link in bio”. It’s a pithy phrase, usually found on Instagram, which directs an audience to be aware that a pertinent web li...

I was delighted to get to speak with Debbie Millman for her venerable podcast, “Design Matters”. If you have an hour to spare, please do check out the conver...

I spend so much time writing, and thinking, about technology and tech companies. And so much of it’s critical. I point the finger at how the apps and sites we...

The era of User Generated Discontent began about a decade ago, when a critical mass of people started using social apps on the web often enough that they felt...

Last week, we announced the new beta release of ThinkUp (if you’re a geek or developer, try it out!) and one of the reasons I was most excited to talk about...

So, we’re going old school: I’m going to live-blog the XOXO conference! But not like “Hey I’m a writer for The Verge obsessing over an Apple keynote!” or “I’m...

I was very happy to see this morning that Fred Wilson had shared his thoughts on inclusivity , building off of my earlier post You Can’t Start the Revolution...

The other night, we had a wonderful dinner made by chef Tien Ho, who’s best known as the founding chef of Má Pêche (I got to join Ed Levine when he had the mea...

A few nice conversations around the web, either in response to or inspired by what I’ve been talking about here: My favorite TechCrunch post in a long time...

Twitter’s Bootstrap framework for creating web sites and apps is the culmination of half a decade’s work by the web design community in creating CSS resets,...

Last week, I was thrilled to see the launch of Mixel . If you aren’t familiar with it, go grab the iPad app , and while it downloads, take a look at this vid...

“ If you can make it here… “, Jamie Beck, 2011 It’s been 84 years since talkies began their march towards dominance over silent film. But while 1.3 billion...

In a remarkably fast evolution from what-if rumination on a blog to cutting-edge news dissemination, Alex Kerin’s idea last year of how to use Twitter to sha...

A few months ago, I wrote about fat pages , the unbearable burden of clutter that often makes reading on the web so much less pleasant than it ought to be. It...

There are some links I just keep finding myself sending around to friends and coworkers. Hmm, isn’t that what a blog is for? From back in April, a look at...

I’ve really been enjoying the response to my recent blog posts — here are some more thoughtful replies. Rafe Colburn, one of my favorite bloggers for a decad...

Last week’s issue of The New Yorker attracted a lot of attention for its cover art, which was created on an iPhone by artist Jorge Colombo . From the...

Another new version of Windows is nearly upon us, as Microsoft will release Windows 7 later this year. Vista was greeted with probably a few too many jeers, wh...

Last month marked the ninth anniversary of me starting this blog, more or less continuously updating since then. As I begin my tenth year here on dashes.com, I...

These are the things I saw yesterday that I thought were interesting, entertaining, and inspiring. First, Erika Hall , Copy as Interface . (See more on the...

An application that appears cluttered or illogical is harder to understand and use. Aesthetic integrity is not a measure of how beautifully your applicatio...

A Brief Message seems interesting: Essays about design, in 200 words or less. Khoi explains some of the thinking , and the idea of a new design for each upd...

I found Nelson Minar’s thoughtful look at Larry Craig’s arrest to be very moving because of its deeply empathetic perspective. I find one of the things that...

Ryan Freitas, whose culinary wisdom I can personally vouch for, just shared some insights into his idea that designers can learn a lot from the discipline of...

An interesting infographic trend: Square blocks of color are now being used to represent percentage-based statistics instead of the traditional pie chart. Some...

Behold, It’s (K)not Wood . I hestiate to make such a bold prediction, but it just may be the best blog dedicated to fake wood and woodgrain that you’ll see to...

Armin Wagner’s created a brilliant collection entitled Crates and Barrels , cataloguing the ubiquity of these containers in video game culture. Though they’re...

The International Design Excellence Awards (IDEA) winners for 2007 have been posted on BusinessWeek’s site. There are all of the usual slideshows and essays...

Dunstan Orchard is a really nice, talented (and attractive!) man who is a terrific designer. But he has no sense of taste . Discuss....

Pentagram, the designers of the website, signage, marketing materials, and stationery for the new New York Times building , have a fascinating blog post...

Last year, when I wrote Draw the Map, Draw the World about the New York City subway map and Massimo Vignelli, one of the signature designers in the map’s his...

Ask and you shall receive . Armin Vit delivers one of his inimitable logo critiques for the new MSNBC branding effort. I do have to say I support the use of...

A little while ago, my friend Michael Sippey, whom I had the pleasure of interviewing the other day , sent me a link to the new Google Voice Local Search ....

Infographics and Peanut Butter week at dashes.com continues, this time with a terrific set of pie charts from Craig Robinson. You might know Craig as creat...

“ The PB&J diagram has to be the most important food related item I have ever seen on the web. ” Today’s National Peanut Butter and Jelly Day, and...

Because it’s still relevant, and people enjoyed it so much last year, I call your attention to Your April Fool’s Joke Sucks , from a year ago. Let’s revisit:...

Here’s some examples of how graphic artists are trying to save people’s lives. Prince Pickles is the manga-style cartoon character who represents Japanese...

A few years ago, I wrote a post called Portalization which showed a Yahoo homepage screenshot with certain services grayed-out, as an indicator of which corr...

Those who know me know that I’m pretty much inept at any kind of artistic endeavor. Which makes it all the more amusing that I’ve recently had the chance to pr...

In case it isn’t obvious enough by now, contemporary newspapers should be thinking of information presentation in the context of applications, not just as docu...

Summary: Earlier this year, I said that Office 2007 is the bravest upgrade ever, and the reason was simple: The audacity of introducing a radical new user in...

One of the great things about having been a blogger for a long time is that I can present my old posts in interesting ways. I’ve been experimenting with a big...

Windows Vista’s astoundingly long beta period is winding down (they just sent out the “what did you think of the beta?” surveys to testers), which means a whol...

The Sunday New York Times ran a fantastic article by Alex Mindlin, Win, Lose, Draw: The Great Subway Map Wars that details a battle that has brewed, off and...

I launched a new design for my blog about two weeks ago, but I’d been waiting until I had a chance to shake out a few of the more egregious bugs to mention the...

This is the third post in a series where I’m pointing out some nice little touches that take up less than a 100×100 pixel square on a screen. Today’s is from t...

This is the first post in a series where I’m pointing out some nice little touches that take up less than a 100×100 pixel square on a screen. Today’s is the N...

One of the interesting things about being a serious Windows user is that very little attention is paid to efficient users of Windows, and that we suffer from a...

Over at Threadless, “ Hooray Cholesterol! ” I particularly enjoyed the chainsaw-wielding cupcake....

I have this theory about a radical improvement in user experience that could be made for any website that allows comments to be submitted by readers. Especiall...

One of my recurrent sources of frustration with my fellow geeks is that most are just plain lousy at convincing others to try technologies. It’s only because...

I’m pretty sure that dressing one’s child in this manner constitutes child abuse. If you’re interested in committing sartorial offenses against your own prog...

Every dumb joke needs a website, thus the Web 2.0 Checklist , courtesy of Mr. Sippey ....

If you’re reading my blog in a feed reader, c’mon over to the HTML version and take a look — it’s painfully bright! Thanks to Lilia for making a beautiful...

When the site first appeared and all the cool kids were using it, I could forgive the logo. I thought, hmm, ugly and dumb but they’re just starting out and t...

Donnie asks , “But why is your blog soooo damn ugly man?” And the answer is, because I am a lousy designer. I’ll probably be updating the site to use the s...

This fantastic series of photos of subway stations really makes me appreciate mass transit in a way that I haven’t in ages. Look at Stockholm! Any space wh...

Paul Scrivens has been doing a great job of leveraging his brash personality and formidable talent to make a name for himself, especially in the design world....

A list of things that have brightened my day today: Really good support from NewsGator . I’m always glad people rave about our support team at Six Apart,...

Since I didn’t design it and only helped a little bit in building it, I can give the team my unfettered praise: The new Six Apart site looks great. Nice work...

These amazing photos of a japanese storm drain system make it look like the architect behind the system used to work on designing Quake levels....

I’m supposed to be convinced that red is somehow better than purple by the images in this post. But instead, it makes me think how much cooler life could b...

A spadia is a page wrapped around the spine of a periodical so as to appear as a narrow flap or partial page. Now you know....

Jeff Veen asks, What do these pictures have in common? Ooh! I know! I know!...

Sometimes when I see the creativity that my friends display, it makes me wish I had a hammer ....

There is only so much room for innovation or creativity within these design constraints, it seems....

...

I took a screenshot of the Yahoo homepage and greyed out the areas that wouldn’t exist if Google duplicated the same layout and filled it with its correspondin...

I made a bunch of improvements to my Daily Links , with more on the way. The blog is AtomEnabled , the layout and font size are improved, the explanatory tex...

I never cease being amazed at the sheer beauty of some of the Photo Albums TypePad users are creating. Here’s one of the best yet ....

Today I saw Hirata-san ‘s new Movable Type book in person for the first time, and I know it’s tacky to say since it’s about our company’s products, but the...

I love the design and colors on this garden blog ....

Colleen ‘s site is just beautiful. I love seeing the elegant results people make with the template builder....

One of the best things about my job is that I get to go to conferences, meet interesting people, and then watch all their wifi-enabled laptops’ screens turn bl...

So, after we’ve all graduated to using microcontent clients to navigate through websites, people whose weblogs are primarily read through their RSS feeds are...

The Elements of User Experience is not just the first book to list all of the related skills and disciplines involved in the creation of web sites, but to cr...

Microcontent is information published in short form, with its length dictated by the constraint of a single main topic and by the physical and technical limita...

Sometimes following the links into one’s site reveals precious little gems of the web. But then again, sometimes you just get NETQUEER . Apparently, when they...

Sometimes I wonder if it’s the content or the presentation. I might not be the only one who wondered. Why isn’t there a way to syndicate my words without b...

Microsoft’s been promoting its Tablet PC s for about a year now. Despite all the claims, they’re more evolutionary than revolutionary, of course. But that’s t...

WE LOVE NEW YORK...

The LED Museum ....

Wow, I’ve been working on an essay about Vannevar Bush’s "As We May Think" for a while, but a lot of the points have already been covered by an artic...

Cat and Girl still rocks my world....

Creative Commons launched today. From the site: Creative Commons is a non-profit organization founded on the notion that some people would prefer to shar...

Jim Parkinson (whom you know from his logotypes and font designs) has an extremely engaging collection of sign photos from around the world. Go check it ou...

I’ve been working on a project to display more information about web pages to users, surfacing bits of metadata that they might not have been aware of. I had e...

Thomas has a great rough draft of a concept he’s proposing as an alternative to the navigation metaphor, the Metaphor of Attraction . Good stuff....

Boxes and Arrows went live without me noticing. It’s pretty damned good. Congrats to all involved....

Everything looks funny? Different style sheet. The old one is here , and you can see the black and white one I’ve used occasionally here . Or, pretend you’re...

I’ve been playing around with making a totally desaturated version of the default blue theme that ships as part of the updated UI in Windows XP. This idea has...

All I ask, friends, is that games, or art, be elegant. That’s I all aspire to. These , then are both games and art. With elegance to spare....

Nice people I like making art I appreciate: Crans is narrating a Photoshop tennis match pitting Heather against Derek . Will any of the layers feature...

There are a million different ways in which life has changed. I’ve been looking for an apartment here in the city for the past short while, which you’ve probab...

Thinkin’ about CSS . From beautiful, cutting-edge ideas to brilliant recastings of the familiar, profound in their simplicity, the way we make the web is...

Ummm, never mind about that whole other design thing. The detection code is a little screwed. This is because I suck....

Well, the three of you who use Netscape 4 will have noticed, and the might be interested to know, I’ve got a new design up for those of you still using old,...

Bruce “Tog” Tognazzini, all-around brilliant dude, goes on at length about the superior design and usability of Good Grips products . I point this out because...

I already knew Ray was cool, but now he’s really gone above and beyond by helping me track down some bugs in my CSS code on Internet Explorer on the Mac. He...

For designers: a quick-n-dirty gamma calibration tool ....

Pretty and pixels and perspective… QuickHoney . See and view SeaView....

I changed the format of my dates in order to annoy Matt . See my first-ever Guest Peeve for more info....

PizzaMe ! (It’s what these pages used to look like.) As Jesse correctly guessed, this site was discovered in the pursuit of a photo that could be used...

I know I’ve linked to this site a million times before, but you are living a life less lively if you haven’t seen Sam’s beautiful, spare, elegant artwork at E...

Peter ‘s got a cogent, well-written thoughtwander about the confluence of the many different information-organization and presentation disciplines all converg...

So Spring is blooming everywhere, and with it, renewal. Even Brad ‘s getting into the act. But now I find myself wanting to do something with this site that’s...

I’ve never really had a "link list" on my page like a lot of sites do. I have a little database thingy that pops up a few blogs in a sidebar, and the...

I am quite occupied writing emails to people I met in Texas, because I am trying to be sincere without sounding like an ass-kisser. Interestingly, I keep findi...

go to conclave obscurum ....

Okay, let’s try that again… Peter has semi-announced the company that he and a few others are working on. It looks like a great team, and I wish them all the...

This is merges , "an interaction design and interface design consultancy" run by a twelfth grade student in Ontario. Yikes!...

It’s not reflected on their website yet, but the print version of the AARP’s magazine "Modern Maturity" got a slick redesign… the cover blurbs are...

Things I realized while reading back through my site today for the first time ever: All those Peeves make me seem a lot more curmudgeonly than I really am....

Sometimes I get upset that my page is ugly and I haven’t redesigned. Sometimes I don’t . (Yeah, yeah, I know… cheap shot.)...

Well, Chason sums up a lot of my feelings more eloquently than I could…...

My October 12 ’99 peeve was a short, ineloquent attempt at conveying the message conveyed by this essay . And though I already emailed her to compliment on...

In a great interview at designinja , Jason Fried of 37Signals says, We are designers. Design is for other people, art is for yourself. Too many web desi...

I liked this article when it was first published, and I still like it now: Design and User Interface Inspirations at Microsoft ....

So, I added a " To Go " link on the right there, you can see a bare-bones version of this page which is suitable for PDA’s, etc. (Actually, I quite l...

I like Inside … useful, constantly-updated info, and a new, better design. (Although I think the new design is as attractive as the old one.) But the real gem...

Pretty ....

For later reference, I think I want to revisit Tellme Studio …...

Dug up this old article by Tog about Interfaces That Kill , probably the only situation worse than what people are saying about the design of those ballots in...

Did a bad graphic design change history ?...

So, after never having changed my design, I finally did it. It’s been literally years with the old design, and it wasn’t until I looked at my site the other da...

Considering that they’re a pretty big hosting company, Digex sure has one ugly-ass homepage ....

I’ve been meaning to praise Jish’s new design for a while now. I like that he’s always led with pictures of himself on the page, it really gives his blog per...

I like the bright, pretty colors on takarajimasha ‘s site. Especially on the little animated phone....

Brig says: my attention span is getting seriously shortened. i’m sure it’s not a good thing. this statement is, of course, prompted by another long artic...

How come Pyra ‘s homepage doesn’t have a link back to Jezebel’s background tiles ?...

I want to learn a lot more about Paul Rand ....

Kinda cool: I made the skin featured on the Faith Hill page at WindowsMedia.com....

milov.nl has gotten closer to the mythical up button that I was trying to develop…...

I know, I know, I’m not supposed to blog flashturbatory sites, but even I will concede that n.a.s.a.2.0 is gorgeous....

Interesting article on how there aren’t yet any educational standards for becoming an Information Architect ....

Cool tool : See how your website would look to someone who is color blind ....

Interesting article on industrial quality in Japan ....

Joe Clark answered my query a while ago about the cabal of designers who inflict their personal color palette choices on the rest of us: the Color Marketing...

At my ofice, we’ve been working on a new logo . Maybe a globe? A swoosh perhaps? Ah, decisions, decisions…...

Does anyone know the name (or even better, the URL) of the cabal of designers who dictate each year/season’s color palette? Every year, I read some obscure P...

Molly Holzschlag makes a great observation about negative space in the Fedex logo: > Look at the shape formed by the space between the E and the x. I...

A moment of Zen ....

From the "People with funny foreign-looking squiggles in the corner of the page" file comes Lekhani , which I’ve recently become enamored of. Alth...

Ok, I hate SUV’s, but I am a geek, so I have to say I actually like station wagons. And the one I’ve liked ever since I first saw the design was the PT Crui...

Cool thing: Aestheticom , located in the Empire State Building, has as their logo this image , while the logo for the Building itself looks like this ....

While talking to Damien I remarked that the only way Apple could jeopardize its recent revitalization would be to compromise the usability and elegant desi...

Shhh! Don’t tell the geeks! If everyone knows it, how come nobody talks about it? The big, dark secret: Slashdot is ugly. Must Linux geeks fit the stereoty...

Seems almost redundant for any blog to link to CamWorld , but I just had to concur with the following: As a true design geek, I’m in love with packaging...

So naturally I am back at the parents’ homestead in Pennsylvania, and I found it interesting that the local mall had something that I’ve not seen anywhere els...

So the updates to this page have been erratic due to all the extra effort I have to put in for my upcoming move… but, having had the chance to spar with severa...

Been following this for a while, but I just can’t get over how funny Alice’s Swoosh Page where she lists dozens of companies using generic swooshes in their...

p>Hmm… I don’t know if it falls under the "Great minds think alike" catchall, or if it’s merely the increasingly self-referential nature of the...

Of course The Weather Channel is useful . But I’m discovering increasing numbers of people for whom the channel has some sort of hypnotic, addictive effect...

Little bit of appreciation for good design — despite an underwhelming set of new features, Microsoft ‘s Office 2000 has got some damn cool icons. They’re...

Thanks to the design excellence and automotive auspices of the Ford Motor Company , I am in scenic Throop, Pennsylvania . Yes, this town is exactly what one...