The concept of quality is difficult to define, for it is not merely seen, but somehow intuited in the presence of the work in which it is embodied. Quality has little to do with popular notions of beauty, taste, or style; and nothing to do with status, respectability, or luxury. It is revealed, rather, in an atmosphere of receptivity, propriety, and restraint.
Quality is concerned with the weighing of relationships; the discovery of analogies and contrasts; with proportion and harmony; the juxtaposition of formal and functional elements — with their transformation and enrichment.
Quality is concerned with truth, not deception; with ideas, not techniques; with the enduring, not the ephemeral; with precision, not fussiness; with simplicity, not vacuity; with subtlety, not blatancy; with sensitivity, not sentimentality.
UI porn. Hard to define but you know it when you see it.
P fell asleep on his knees after an apparently raging sleepover birthday party. Out cold.
Hands down – truth be told – my favorite TV show: Adventure Time.
And I despise your books, I despise wisdom and the blessings of this world. It is all worthless, fleeting, illusory, and deceptive, like a mirage. You may be proud, wise, and fine, but death will wipe you off the face of the earth as though you were no more than mice burrowing under the floor, and your posterity, your history, your immortal geniuses will burn or freeze together with the earthly globe.
Paul’s Boutique redux
Absolutely epic. DJ Cheeba, DJ Moneyshot and DJ Food recreate the Beastie Boys’ Paul’s Boutique using all of the original sample sources. A must-have for any Paul’s Boutique fans. So, so great.
https://soundcloud.com/ninja-tune/solid-steel-radio-show-31-8-1
Meteor inspired. James Blake, “Retrograde.” Directed by Martin de Thurah. (Thanks, Gish.)
A.G. Lafley explains why everyone gets strategy wrong
The nutshell: ’Cause making choices – and being specific – is scary.
Not hard. It’s “hard” to have acquired the experience and expertise to make effective choices. But it’s not hard to choose. Just scary.
From the article:
“… the essence of strategy is making 5 integrated — sometimes difficult — choices. And a lot of us, a lot of human beings, don’t like to make choices, right? Choices are difficult, we want to keep our options open, choices involve taking risks, and not only risk to the business but personal risk. So I think there’s this sort of human resistance to making choices, and choices are the core of strategy.”
“Companies have to define an ideal future in strategic terms, limit the field rather than try to please everybody, decide on the best strategy for that market, discover and use what they’re best at, and determine how to support and measure its people as they carry out the strategy.”
“Strategy is five choices…
• What is winning?
• Where am I going to play to win?
• How am I going to win where I play?
• Where are my core competencies that are going to enable me to win where I play?
• What management systems and measures are going to help me execute my strategies?”
http://www.businessinsider.com/ag-lafley-roger-martin-playing-to-win-2013-2
Stefan Sagmeister (among other talents) is a master at launching – getting the right people to pay attention to what he’s up to at just the right moments. It’s always to do with his, uh, little sagmeister… But hey, it works.
Sagmeister opens his studio (20-ish years ago)
Walsh joins Sagmeister
Sagmeister & Walsh site launch
Periodic.net
I nabbed periodic.net and built this page in 1997 and more or less haven’t touched it since. (I updated the links at some point, apparently, but that’s it.) Tonight I finally got around to torpedoing it. Goodbye, 1997. Goodbye, baby Stefan website. He’s 10 now. Oh, and to whoever’s still squatting on periodic.COM all these years later — still having done nothing with it — not even a dumb page like mine: YOU WIN.
