Khoi Vinh's Blog, page 110

Interfaces That Make You Feel Old

Idea for a Tumblr blog: screen captures of user interface elements that make you feel old. Here’s one I came across today that asks for the year of your birth — but lumps everyone born “1990 or earlier” together: So basically if you’re any older than 23 or 24, it’s all the same to this service.…

Inside Stories

In the magnificent romantic comedy-cum-fable of journalism “Broadcast News,” Albert Brooks’s character, a brilliant but socially challenged network television reporter named Aaron Altman, sneers at a moment when the news camera momentarily turns back to show a fellow reporter on screen. Sarcastically, he jokes, “Let’s never forget, we’re the real story, not them.” For decades,…

Firefox 29

I pretty much use three browsers continuously every day, but the browser I spend the most time in — out of choice — is still Firefox, despite the fact that it has gotten steadily less and less popular over the years. I appreciate Chrome’s sleek dependability and Safari’s deeply integrated Apple-ness. But I still like…

Helvetica Wine

I try to resist feeling duty-bound to blog most of these gimmicky Helvetica-related tchotchkes, but this one seems particularly well done: Wild Wild Web Studio of Madrid produced this beautiful packaging for Helvetica wine. The corks, in particular, are impressive. +

Gofor

Gofor is a service that provides drones on demand. Download the app and summon a drone on a job basis to help you complete a variety of tasks such as location scouting, aerial visual documentation, personal security, telepresence, internet range extension and more. The team refers to it as “Uber, for drones.” Drones are summoned…

Facebox on Sale This Week

Excuse the plug: my friend Matt and I are holding a sale for Facebox, our pack of stock avatars for user interfaces design and presentations. Here’s the deal: the full pack is usually US$35, but today only you can get it for US$10. Tomorrow, the price goes up by five dollars to US$15; the next…

The 12 Principles of Animation

In his project “The Illusion of Life,” animator Ceno Lodigiani illustrates the “twelve principles of animation” set forth by Walt Disney Studios in the 1930s. These ideas guided the pioneering hand-drawn animated craft of Disney’s films, and they were later enumerated in a 1981 book by two of that studio’s animators, Frank Thomas and Ollie…

Century: 100 Years of Type in Design

Now open at the AIGA National Design Center in New York City: Century: 100 Years of Type in Design. This is a major exhibition put together by Monototype; its somewhat broad goal is to celebrate the past century’s worth of “type as a constant influence in the world around us.” Gathering rare and unique works…

Blokk Neue

I tweeted about this last year but was helpfully reminded of it today by ThinkUp, and figured it would still be useful to lots of folks. Norwegian design agency Dinamo Services created Blokk Neue as an font alternative to lorem ipsum dummy text. They cheekily describe it as “a font for quick mock-ups and wireframing…

Sketch Viewer

This is a lovely concept for a companion application to Sketch that would make it easier to collect the necessary measurements for design specifications. The idea is that it could open up Sketch’s native files, and allow anyone to simply hover over UI elements in order to reveal measurements automatically. This would certainly be useful…