VIDEO: A digital still camera + the conference room
A digital still camera + the conference room + a shopping trip to a craft store + some moss + a shiny pop song from a band from Canberra, Australia + 30 hours of setup and editing + the creative minds at Coudal Partners = A recap of the first season of Field Notes COLORS. Check their site for a special $20-off holiday coupon as well. The “Just Below Zero” set is especially beautiful in person.

Product Blog update: Add due dates to to-dos in Basecamp, improved navigation in Haystack, etc.
Some recent posts at the 37signals Product Blog: Basecamp New in Basecamp: Add due dates to to-dos! This one’s been a long time coming. It’s been our top request for quite a while. Now you can add due dates to to-do lists in Basecamp. We spent a lot of time working on the experience, the interface, and flow, and the speed of this feature. Countless variations and hundreds of little tweaks later, we think we nailed it. We hope you’ll agree.

Paul Rand: "Good ideas rarely come in bunches"
Yesterday, I mentioned why the attempt to Frankenstein designs (Frankendesigns?) fails so often. In response, Yuri Victor pointed to this interesting Paul Rand essay on “The Politics of Design.” Rand explains why demanding many solutions to a problem merely leads to waste and confusion. One of the more common problems which tends to create doubt and confusion is caused by the inexperienced and anxious executive who innocently expects, or even de

Cherry picking is the enemy of soul
In “A Talking Head Dreams of a Perfect City,” David Byrne describes what he loves in different cities. There’s an old joke that you know you’re in heaven if the cooks are Italian and the engineering is German. If it’s the other way around you’re in hell. In an attempt to conjure up a perfect city, I imagine a place that is a mash-up of the best qualities of a host of cities. The permutations are endless. Maybe I’d take the nightlife of New York in a setting like Sydney’s with bars like those in Barcelona and cuisine from Singapor

I'm a tailor
When people ask me what I do all day I have a hard time summing it up. I design, I edit, I think, I review, I suggest, I teach. Some things I mess up, some things I fix up. But what I really do most of the time is trim, tuck, iron, cut, press, and fit. I’m a software tailor. And I’m starting to think that’s my perfect role. My team is incredible. I don’t need to tell them what to do. If there was a fantasy software league, I wouldn’t trade my team for anyone. But there are times during the development and design process where the things we make just don’t fit as well as they could. That sentence could be slimmed down. That