Khoi Vinh's Blog, page 77

Blade Runner Model Shop

Posted to Imgur yesterday: a huge stash of behind-the-scenes photographs from the “Blade Runner” model shop. This movie was so influential and distinctive that looking at these pictures now, even more than three decades later, is like a revealing peek at a mysterious, incredibly advanced craft. More after the jump, but you can see all…

Photoshop Experts Try to Use Photoshop 1.0

Streaming education Web site CreativeLive sat eight Photoshop experts in front of the original 1.0 of the product and video recorded them as they tried to use it. The experts’ remarks are riddled with disbelief—“No live preview? Just one level of undo?” It’s pretty amusing, and a stark illustration of just how far the product…

International Verify Your Backups Day

Happy Friday the 13th, the day things are supposed to go wrong and, if Adam Engst, publisher of the venerable TidBITs newsletter for all things Apple, has his way, it’s also occasion to observe a new holiday: International Verify Your Backups Day. Engst first announced this idea back in February when he wrote: The best…

Bill Watterson Gives a Rare Interview

“Calvin & Hobbes” creator Bill Watterson recently gave an apparently extensive interview for his new collection called “Exploring Calvin & Hobbes.” The Washington Post is running an excerpt of it here. Watterson is famously press shy, so any interview is gold for the many longtime fans of his famous comic strip. His attitude towards his…

The Demise of LayerVault and the Market for Creative Tools

No sooner had I written in yesterday’s post that “I firmly believe that we’re in a golden age for design software” than LayerVault, the version control service for designers, announced that it’s shutting down in April. In a note posted to the site yesterday, CEO Kelly Sutton said: Some folks may be wondering: Why? We…

Skala Color 2

I firmly believe that we’re in a golden age for design software. The space has gotten so robust with new players, and there’s more great stuff to come. One of the long-brewing projects that I’ve been keeping my eye on is Skala from Marc Edwards and Bjango. Edwards has been working hard to get that…

New Album from Evans the Death

I can’t stop listening to “Expect Delays,” the second album from London quartet Evans the Death. Their self-titled debut album was enjoyable but I never really connected with it, due in part to my dislike for the band’s ungainly emo-esque moniker. Nevertheless, this follow-up is a real breakthrough that balances off-kilter tunefulness with a raucous…

Erika Hall—How She Got There

Response to my new book “How They Got There: Interviews With Digital Designers About Their Careers” has been really fantastic so far. I’m humbled by and grateful for all of the great notes I’ve been getting from people who have read it and told me how it’s exactly the inspiration and encouragement that they’ve been…

Jason Freeny

These are two of artist Jason Freeny’s recent works: Anatomical He-Man and Anatomical Strawberry Blonde Barbie. They’re sculpted in the tradition of mass-produced plastic children’s toys, excepting of course the cut-away reveal of each figurine’s insides. Many of his works are like this; one half is a note-perfect homage to the toys of a latchkey…

Designing Animation for Mobile

Some very useful principles in this TechCrunch article for designing animation into mobile software interfaces from Tim Donnelly, co-founder of the award-winning Storehouse. With that product, Donnelly and Storehouse CEO Mark Kawano were responsible for significantly raising the bar on how motion is used in mobile user interfaces, so his insight is highly credentialed, for…