We create the stories of the connected society

The biggest surprise from yesterday’s unveiling of Apple’s iPad was that print publishers and journos weren’t terribly excited. “Waiting to be surprised. That hasn’t happened yet,” said Jim Roberts, the only New York Times wonk who didn’t confuse Steve Jobs with Moses. Valleywag has a good take on Print Media’s Big Tablet Letdown.
Our [...]

New technology spawns new ways to tell stories. That’s the exciting part of Apple’s new tablet, an old idea whose time has apparently come.
Now comes the hard part: creating the content and designing the experience for the next wave of consumer devices that deliver our stories. We’re about to discover whether incumbent publishers and [...]

Before we’re swept away (oops, but that seems to have happened already) by the unveiling of Apple’s tablet we ought to pay homage to technologies before the iPad and visionaries before Steve Jobs.
The original messiah machine: the Mac Plus. Introduced in 1986, this little beauty brought a revolution in publication design. It came standard with [...]

Magazine and newspaper publishers have fantasized, for more than a decade, about the day when portable digital display technologies render paper, ink, printing, trucks, postage and home delivery obsolete. The flaw, of course, is expecting too much from technology – the next big thing.

A new design for Craigslist – better, easier and pure fantasy.

Designer Jonathan Harris explores new territory.

Back in the September, I wrote that “one of the fundamental tasks of design and business is to stand between revolutions and life, to help people deal with change.” That was the premise of The Right Brain Rules, a strategic vision and a portfolio of assets for creating value into the future.
Allison Arieff goes beyond  by [...]

A few months back we asked each of our 2009 Game Changers Awards finalists to write about their projects, what they have learned along the way and what’s next. (Here’s the rest of the series). Somehow, amidst the flurry of conference preparations, this one slipped through our crack(ed) editorial process. But it’s important, so here [...]

Two programs, the latest in a long conversation, have brought smart people together this week to save journalism’s role in democracy.
Journalism That Matters, a community of “media innovators and stakeholders,” is concluding a three-day seminar at the Poynter Institute “adapting journalism to the new news ecology.”
At the University of Nevada in Reno a [...]

The always relevant Good magazine distributes a free poster on the economy at your neighborhood Starbucks beginning tomorrow. In an illustrated timeline titled “It’s the economy, stupid,” graphic designer Nigel Holmes outlines “how our temperamental economy machine works.” Or doesn’t.
Holmes’ patented, cartoon-like approach injects fun into serious stuff, managing to provide an easy-to-understand overview of [...]

One of the loveliest social media startups I’ve run across in the last few years is Scrapblog. I say lovely because it’s well designed and design itself is a core value of the service and the user experience. Users create multimedia collages with Scrapblog, then share them with embed codes, just like you share YouTube [...]

PC pulls an advertisement in the guise of an editorial, called “Stop Switching to Mac”, from the sacrosanct news wall on today’s front page of NewYorkTimes.com. Washingtonpost.com, too. A godlike Mac watches and comments just below the nameplate.

[We like to use, celebrate and design products that are both useful and beautiful. Here's the first in an occasional series of quick tips for improving your designs. Add yours in the comments or in a guest post.]
Here are two tools I use to help select and code the right colors for my designs. The [...]

The Society of News Design has announced the World’s Best Designed Newspapers, an award I conceived as chair of SND’s design competition back in 1995. Once again no American newspapers. Papers in Europe, Mexico and former Eastern bloc countries have dominated the World’s Best competition, reflecting the emergence of free expression and the flourishing of [...]