Scott Berkun's Blog, page 5

Design During Pandemic: an Inspiring Visual Collection

Good design is a critical part of all that’s going on during this crisis: the design of respirators, of supply chains and of public policy in times of crisis. But there’s also some excellent visual design work happening to help the cause. Communicating information to the masses is a critical part of saving people’s lives.

We all need some inspiration these days – here’s a collection of the best design work I’ve seen.

Did I miss a good one? Leave a comment with a link and I’ll add it in.

Click on the image to go to the source.

Did I miss a good one? Leave a comment with a link. Thx.

The World Needs Designers Now More Than Ever

When Dr. Jan Mikulicz-Radecki designed the first surgical mask, he was questioned by his peers: they didn’t believe that by creating something so simple, millions of lives could be saved. And when chief nurse Caroline Hampton complained about her hands after assisting with surgery, William Halsted was inspired to design the first surgical gloves and asked her to be the first to test them. These stories are just two among thousands about how ideas became things we depend on. Most ideas go nowhere, it’s true, as it takes more than just having an idea to change the world. We need people who know how to make ideas real. And for this, designers are among the best we have.

Every challenge we’ve overcome in human history was led by a designer of one kind or another. Someone designed the first city, the first market, and the first hospital. It was a leader who designed regulations to keep people safe (or not) or crafted plans to help them recover after a crisis (or not). Design is everywhere we look and in everything we depend on. It explains what resources we can get or wish we had, fueling the fears that we find hard to shake. Mostly design is an act of hope. It’s the belief there is a better way and that creativity and persistence will find it.

We take good design for granted, as when it works we assume “it just happened that way.” When we flick a light switch or take a hot shower, it never enters our minds how many people with different design skills worked hard, over decades, just so we could live our lives free from thinking about their work. It’s only when things fail that we start to ask questions that perhaps we should have considered all along. Design questions. What were the goals? What tradeoffs were made? How could this fail (or have been designed to be more resilient?)

Often we dismiss design as a matter of luxury: designer handbags, designer jeans, designer living rooms. But we’ve been forced to see the limitations in the design of our systems, like schools, markets, and hospitals, which like a light switch, we assumed would always work without a thought. Design defines our social safety nets, our shared plans for emergencies, and our systems that either help us, or prevent us, from working towards the greater good, especially when lives are at stake.

Someone designed every chart, each curve and line, updating you about the state of the world, and the cities where your friends and family live. Another kind of designer designed the database that makes those charts work. Someone designed every sign or video you see about “flatten the curve”, “physical distancing” or “how to wash your hands”. Someone designed your sick leave policy, and the policy for the people who drive your bus or make your food, assuming you and they even have one. Someone is working right now to design a vaccine, or better logistics for your supermarket or even a society that works with fewer people working.

There are designers everywhere working hard right now and the work they do matters more than it ever has before. Websites, services, systems and laws are being designed, and redesigned, right now, and their quality will determine who survives and what the future holds. We all should be learning and thinking more about good design: it profoundly impacts our lives and the sooner we understand how good design is done, and demand it, the more likely we’ll see it where we need it most.

The book: How Design Makes The World, May 5, 2020

Photo Credit

Free digital version of The Year Without Pants (my book on Remote Work)

I worked with Wiley, the publisher of The Year Without Pants: WordPress.com and The Future of Work, to make the digital editions of the book free to all. We’re doing this to help anyone who is adjusting to remote work acclimate to what the next few weeks or months will be like.

Please spread the word. You can also read all of my posts and essays about remote work here.

Kindle
iBooks
Nook / Barnes and Nobles

Wanted: Ambassadors For Good Design

Most designers agree the world would be a better place if more people understood good design. But since designers are always in the minority, outnumbered by managers, marketers, programmers and more, who is going to show them the way? Enter the design ambassador.

Design ambassadors already exist, they just don’t go by that name. They’re the ones who know how to talk about the value of good design in ways most folks can understand. They’re comfortable talking to executives or project managers, confidently making business cases for design resources. They’re OK with the management politics for budgets and strategy and working to gain influence. They’re patient in teaching, for the 50th time, the same basic ideas and concepts to new clients or coworkers, no matter how senior or junior they are.

They do this because they know no one else but designers can or will do it. If we want a better-designed world, or product or organization, or more respect for design, it will only come from designers gaining power or the ability to influence it. Design ambassadors know from human nature the challenge isn’t about more design knowledge: it’s about persuasion, teaching, coaching and inspiring others to think differently.

My mission is to bring design ambassadors together, to help them and to coach new ones. I wrote an upcoming book to pave some of the way for us all.

Will you help? 

Are you a design ambassador? Will you share what you know with me?
Do you know a great design ambassador I should talk to?
Do you want to become a better ambassador for design?
Would you help me find, organize, or create, resources design ambassadors need?

If you can say yes to any of these, please leave a comment or get in touch. Thanks. 

My new book – How Design Makes The World (Coming Soon)

I’m excited to announce my next book is almost here. It’s called How Design Makes The World and it teaches anyone how to better understand good design.

It’s been 5 years in the making, yet it’s one of my shortest and most fun to read books.

This book teaches everyone:

What good design is and why it’s so important
How our lives are defined by designs, good and bad, made by others 
How to ask better questions of everything we buy, use and make

And it gives designers and makers:

A fun and fast way to explain what we do to coworkers and friends
A tool for making organizations more design mature
Stories to use to be a better ambassador for good design

Early praise and reviews:

“This fascinating book will help you see design everywhere and question why it works—or why it fails” – Ellen Lupton, curator of contemporary design at Cooper-Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

“An invaluable, essential resource that demystifies and democratizes design for everyone who lives with it—which is to say, all of us.” – Khoi Vinh, Principal Designer at Adobe and Former Design Director of The New York Times

 “Design does indeed make the world, and Scott Berkun has written a highly readable book about this fact.” – Henry Petroski, author of Small Things Considered: Why There Is No Perfect Design

You can read more early reviews and sign-up to be notified when pre-orders are available by going here.

What’s the best first book on visual / graphic design?

I posted on twitter recently asking for recommendations. Specifically for non-designers who need some design literacy, but without the goal of becoming a professional designer. Not UI design, not UX, but focusing on aesthetics.

Often pro designers recommend books from their degree program, but that’s not quite what I’m after, as those books tend to assume you’re going to be a practicing designer.

Here’s the list, annotated with my notes (as I’ve read some of them).

Non Designer’s Design Book, Robin Williams (recommended by 4 people – it’s also my current go to recommendation, and was glad to see it’s still popular for this scenario).
Go, by Chip Kidd (recommended by 4. Written for kids, but ten pages in so far and that seems to mean it’s friendly and well written. I wish more books were).
Thinking With Type, Ellen Lupton (Recommended twice. I’ve read her Design is Storytelling, which is excellent, but not this one).
Graphic Design: The New Basics, Ellen Lupton (new to me)
How To See, George Nelson (a fun and visual to thinking about design that uses a cityscape, streets, cars, buildings, as the way to start thinking about the design of things. But it’s not focused on visual design).
Slideology, Nancy Duarte (it’s primarily about presentation slide design, but it does thoughtfully introduce many basic visual design concepts).
Graphic Design Rules, Peter Dawson (new to me)
Graphic Design as a second language, Bob Gill (new to me)
Stop Stealing Sheep & Find Out How Type Works, Erik Spiekermann, E.M. Ginger (It’s a friendly a short introduction, but focused on typography).
The Vignelli Cannon, Massimo Vignelli (a collection of one of the most famous graphic designers works. It would help someone new to design to understand what design is, but doesn’t teach specific concepts or how to start to critique designs experienced in everyday life).
Design Basics Index, Jim Krause (new to me).
The Elements of Typographic Style, Robert Bringhurst (it’s a beautiful book but very focused on typography as the name suggests)
The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, Tufte (This book is recommended often but for the wrong reasons. It’s a beautiful book, but it’s not easy to learn from for understanding design in general. It’s rare that most people will need to think about representing data visually, which is the focus of this book).
The New Typography, Tschichold (It’s apparently a classic, but this is the first time I’ve heard it mentioned).

Free pass to Interaction 20

[UPDATE – WINNER HAS BEEN CHOSEN: will reveal who won once they confirm.]

I have a free conference pass for IXDA’s Interaction 20, in Milan, Italy this year. I was granted a free pass to the conference in return for speaker coaching for their speakers, but turns out I can’t use it.

I’d hate to see it go to waste, so if you’re able to go (Feb 5-7, 2020) and arrange your own travel, leave a comment. 

This Friday I’ll do a random drawing from the comments and pick a winner (and will update here that it’s all over).

If your comment makes me laugh, I’ll count it twice in the random drawing.

Help wanted: motion graphics / video for book launch trailer

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[Update: filmmaker found! Position closed.]

My next book, How Design Makes Out the World, comes out in a few months. I’m looking to hire a motion graphics / video producer to make a trailer video to help market the book and get the word out.

Interested? Or know someone you’d recommend? Provide a link to a portfolio in a comment below, or send it here.

Trailer Design Brief:  

Vision: The book teaches everyone what good design is and why it’s so important. It uses everyday objects and real life situations as the basis for asking new questions about our daily lives and how design impacts our quality of life. One approach to the trailer could be as simple as stock footage of everyday experiences (driving in traffic, making dinner, dealing with meetings at work, etc.) overlayed with motion graphics and narration calling out things we don’t notice and hinting at how much we can learn from looking at them in a new way (that the book provides).

Length: 1 to 2 minutes at most

Previous book trailers I’ve had made:

Cover design vote: How Design Makes The World (first round)

My next book, which teaches just about everyone how to understand good design, is on the home stretch (release May 2020). Which means it’s time to get your feedback on cover design directions (I’m working with PageTwo Books).

If you haven’t been following along (outline and more at the link), Here are the book’s goals.

The book’s goals are:

To teach anyone to see people, places and things more like our best designers do.
To invite everyone to ask better questions about the designs they experience every day.
To give designers a compelling, short book they can share with coworkers, clients and friends to explain what they do and why it’s so important.
To have fun while understanding the world. Life is too short.

Stories in the book explore city design, product design, web design, aethetics, design process, flow, user research, mobile design, ethics, system theory, inclusion, business, org politics, tradeoffs, design for conflict and more.

Rules for Feedback

These are preliminary so the specific images or objects should be considered placeholders.
You’re voting on the approach, rather than for these being the final cover.
The book is for everyone, not just you. Your personal opinion is interesting, but if you’re a designer most people buying this book won’t be.
The brief is: clear, simple, inviting. Fun if possible. Readable in a thumbnail.
Thoughtful comments welcome.

Approach A

One approach to thinking about the world, with a sample map etching as the background.

Approach B

Simpler visual style one an an anchored image, in this case a globe (one idea for representing the world). Some variations below.

Approach C

Rough sketch – the idea here is to show some kind of progression in style and fidelity. This was done quickly but if we went down this path we’d invest in high quality hand lettering.

Approach D

The background images suggest different kinds of design, and there could be many different options for what’s put there. Or how many there are.

Option below shows a different orientation of the images.

Take Our Poll

Help wanted: design literacy for everyone project

UPDATE: This book is in progress – head over here for details: designmtw.com.

My next book is about teaching basic design literacy to everyone.

The pitch: Everything we use, from social media, to our homes, to our highways, was designed by someone. But how did they decide on what was good for the rest of us? What did they get right and where have they let us down? And what can we learn from the way these experts think that can help us in how we make decisions in our own lives?

The goal won’t be to teach readers to be designers (which takes experience and practice). Instead, it’s to get them to design literacy. Which means to understand why design is so important, the basics of how good designers do it, and to be able to think critically about what’s well designed and what isn’t in their daily life and the world. It’s also a book designers will want to read, as it explains design in a fresh, inspiring and powerful way.

The plan is to make this a fun community project (join the list here). It will be funded through Kickstarter, so we control the intellectual property and can donate parts of it away (to schools or other groups) as we choose. Backers will be able to help the project as it develops, including participating in UX methods I’m using to write the book itself.

Project advisors include: Jared Spool (founder of UIE), Kim Goodwin (author of Designing for the Digital Age & former VP of Design at Cooper), Christina Wodtke (lecturer at Stanford and co-founder of IIA), Lisa deBettencourt (co-founder of Pearl Partners & co-founder of IXDA), Sam Aquillano (Executive Director, Design Museum Foundation), Laura Klein (Principal at Users Know), Nick Finck (Distinguished Faculty at General Assembly, CXO at Craft & Rigor) and Bob Baxley (former design director at Apple and Pinterest).

The team has two important (part time / freelance) roles I’m hiring for:

Graphic Designer. You will be the lead designer for the book (cover design experience please), as well as for the related materials evangelizing design itself through the project website, the kickstarter campaign, fun marketing materials like posters, stickers and other side projects you propose. You’re expected to be a collaborator on the book itself, from the title to the chapters themselves and to participate with the project community. I’m open to working with a design studio for this role, or a Voltron-like team of freelancer friends, as this job description is admittedly unicorn-y.

Design researcher. A book is a designed object just like any other and the researcher will apply user-research methods during the development of the book and related materials. They’ll work with the author to define a research plan for the book (which may never have been done before from a UX context before!), help with general research (who already teaches design literacy well?), conduct research and offer findings, and make recommendations to the author and other collaborators. You will be invited to collaborate on the book itself, from the title to the chapters themselves and help with the project community.

To apply, do the following:

In 10 sentences or less tell me why design literacy is important to you
Provide a link to your resume or LinkedIn
When are you available to start?
Designers: include a link to the related bits of your portfolio. Researchers: a link (or brief summary) of the most related, or the most unusual, research you’ve done.
Bonus points for a reference or two.
There is no step 6! Since it’s nice when applications have one less annoying step than you expect.
Basic info on your rates / fees for an unusual project like this
Send the above to this address, with the subject “for hire: design literacy (designer or researcher)”

And/or if you want to follow this project, please join this list for updates. Thanks!