Hugh Graham Creative

“Prototype early and often, making each interative step a little more realistic”

Bill Moggridge opens with this comment in the introduction to Chapter 10 of his book “Designing Interactions”. In some ways it’s the best and simplest description of the design process I have heard in a long time.

I finally got around to picking up his book this past week, and it’s a remarkably comprehensive compendium of information about how we went from the Lisa to the Blackberry. It feels like a textbook, and clocks in at over 700 pages. Not all of it feels pertinent to design in a broader sense – the definition of interaction design is surprisingly narrow given the amount of interviews Bill engages in – but there are tremendous nuggets that anyone who does user-centered design will find reassuring and even reinvigorating. If nothing else, every designer should read (and re-read) Chapter 10: ‘People and Prototypes’.

For the past three years, I’ve been a speaker and team mentor at a great design event called “Image, Space, Object”. It’s put on by the AIGA and run by Mike and Kathy McCoy and Fred Murrell. I’m lucky to have been a part of the event; it is one place where my three passions (user-centered design, storytelling, and rapid prototyping) all come together. For three days participants work collaboratively to create something completely new.

This August the event is happening again, with a slightly new theme: “People Centered Brand Experiences”; while some of the studio mentors/presenters are coming back again (Rick Robinson and Hugh Dubberly have been there since the beginning, while Chris Hacker will be back for the third time), this year’s special guest is Mr. Bill Moggridge. Here’s how the process is described on the conference site:

People-centered narratives serve as a starting place for the design of graphic, interaction, product and environmental experiences. Research, modeling, team ideation and experiential prototyping are employed throughout the three days to produce tangible final presentations that can be brought back to work and used with your design teams.

jhh and I watched “Casino Royale” last week. The verdict? Daniel Craig makes a decent James Bond. The movie got incredibly boring once they started playing poker. And the opening scene was one of the best action sequences I’ve seen in a movie in a long time.

It turns out that the opening sequence is performed by a french fellow named Sébastien Foucan, in an activity he calls ‘freerunning’, and freerunning is similar to Parkour. All this is fleshed out in some detail in the April 16th issue of The New Yorker (No Obstacles, by Alec Wilkinson). The article meanders a bit, but (as reported on the westword blog) there is a substantial Colorado contingent of ‘traceurs’, led by Ryan Ford. This video shows some of the craziness, and there’s more on their website at coloradoparkour.com.

When the last
living thing

has died on
account of us,

how poetical it
would be

if Earth could say,

in a voice
floating up

perhaps

from the floor

of the
Grand Canyon,

“It is done.”

People did not
like it here.

–Kurt Vonnegut
(1922-2007)

So it goes…

Tonight JHH informed me that she wants a bunny. But not just any bunny. A french bunny. A bunny that can hear, smell, talk, read the news, wake you up in the morning, tell you to stop working, talk to other bunnies, move its ears, play the radio, read your email, send visual messages in a semaphore-ish sign language. A pretty extraordinary bunny, in other words.

She says there are two reasons why we need a bunny. First, it’s the first of the smart appliances of the future, and if we don’t accept them now we will be left behind in the future. Second, it’s cute.

In my opinion, it might be a bit too cute. I think I might want to dismember the little fellow after about a week. So, I’m not so sure I’m ready for this. But you can make up your own mind. His name is Nabaztag.

“My deal with illustrators was that I couldn’t pay them much, but I could give them freedom to function.”
–Patrick JB Flynn, art director, The Progressive, 1981-1999

For 18 years, Patrick JB Flynn was the art director at The Progressive, the Madison-based non-profit magazine edited (until 1994) by Erwin Knoll. And during those 18 years, Patrick provided editorial illustrators with an unparalleled opportunity to express themselves in whatever manner they desired. The result was a remarkable creative partnership between Patrick and many of the best illustrators of the last two decades of the 20th century.

The list of illustrators he worked with was astounding, and even more amazing given the tiny fees he could offer. Steve Brodner, Joe Ciardello, Sue Coe, Henrik Drescher, Brad Holland, Anita Kunz, Arnold Roth, Ralph Steadman, and many others. And not just the big guns (though plenty of those); he also allowed emerging illustrators (por ejemplo mi esposa, hadley) the opportunity to “produce art without editorial meddling.”

Now PJBF has curated an exhibit of some of the work created by illustrators during his tenure at The Progressive; called “Another Voice“, it is currently being presented at Northern Michigan University, and is also available through an online gallery that shows the remarkable level of quality he was able to bring together. In an article on the Another Voice website that offers a great introduction to Flynn’s approach and results, Steven Heller says the following:

Only time will tell whether The Progressive’s art can equal the staying power of the old masters’ most iconic works, but for now it is among the best indication that contemporary graphic commentary, which can be pondered and interpreted at will, has a place in the fast-moving electronic information age.

In the end, Patrick JB Flynn fell prey to the whims of editorial fashion — his unwillingness to compromise got him fired, and The Progressive is much the worse for it. The magazine no longer has the multidimensional edge that enlivened it during those best years, and the writing suffers as a result. No other magazine in our era has so consistently, and for so long a period of time, presented illustration as art. It’s a shame it is no longer around, but it’s great to be able to take another look at it.

Friend and former denverite John Cuneo has a book out called nEuROTIC; It’s published by Fantagraphics, and is comprised of a collection of sketches from his notebooks. Of course, John’s notebooks are legendary; the content is unabashadly filthy, but what makes them compelling is the insight into John’s psyche.

There is a ’short interview’ with John up on the comics reporter site; he throws out props to his illustrator friends, including Tim Bower, Joe Ciardiello, Mark Ulricksen, and Jill Hadley Hooper (of course).

Give it a read if you are interested in learning more about John’s (twisted?) creative process and how he acts as glue for the illustration community. We had the chance to go up to Woodstock for John’s surprise 50th birthday in January, and it was amazing. One well-placed neutron bomb and the New Yorker would now be using photography for cover art.

“Though silent, he speaks”

In cemeteries throughout the west, Dum Tacet Clamat is written on hand-carved gravestones paid for by an insurance company called the Woodmen of the World. In an era where people had no other form of insurance, they made sure that their ultimate resting place would have an appropriate marker.

Jill and I ran into Dennis Gallagher (Denver City Auditor, Historian, and Raconteur) last Saturday; it turns out that we share an interest in preserving one of the unique parts of Denver’s cultural history.

A hundred or so years ago in the western United States most people didn’t worry much about art; there were more pressing concerns. Looking back from a distance, the most significant works mostly went in two directions; either they were architectural, or they were in cemeteries.

Denver’s most significant (or at least compelling) collection of funerary art is in Riverside Cemetery, located north of downtown off Brighton Boulevard. Jill and Maddie and I go walking there a couple times a week; it’s by far the calmest, most private place in the city. (If you’re interested, I’ve posted a few photos of Riverside as a set on Flickr.

Unfortunately, Riverside is drying up and falling apart. This evocative collection of stories about the people who founded Denver, who lived and died in Denver, is barely hanging on. A few years ago they lost their water rights (even though the cemetery is right on the banks of the Platte River). So now the trees are dying, the grass is brown, the old roses aren’t making it through the hot summers anymore. It’s a shame.

The city of Denver should buy Riverside and turn it into a park; sure, it’s in the middle of an industrial area, but industrial areas close to downtowns are being renovated all around the country.

We’ll see what happens with this; hopefully Dennis and his buddy Tom Noel can raise some awareness about this little known jewel. Riverside has a lot to say. It’s just lacking the right voice to say it with.