Week 750

This was week…

To start off, I can’t remember much of what happened on MONDAY (I didn’t take notes), though I do know I had a very nice conversation with Tino Chow, founder (and fellow RISD alum) of Monthly Design Review, about what he’s trying to do with the magazine and some possible opportunities for me to contribute. I’m excited for them about this publication—the articles I’ve read so far seem quite good.

TUESDAY began with our internal kickoff for a new project, creating a new site for the American Forest Foundation. Sarah, Brian and Dave will be our team working with a new agency partner, Bates Creative Group. In these meetings, we review the objectives, scope and participants of a project before we actually have our first project meeting with the client.

On WEDNESDAY morning, we kicked off a second new project, creating a new site for Platinum Medical Parts. Steve, Jillian and Dave will be working with Cambridge Design Group to merge two different sites into one to represent the new company created by the merger of Platinum and Eclipse Medical Imaging.

On THURSDAY, I published a blog post on how mobile devices both enable and disable our ability to focus on content.

On FRIDAY morning, we kicked off yet another new project (wow, three in one week!), the redesign and rebuild of MelMark.org. Katie, Brian and Jim will be working with Leonard Feehan Associates, an agency in Pennsylvania on this one. Then, after coming back from lunch, Mark surprised us by serving some of his homemade creme brulee!

I was in New England this weekend to attend the memorial on SATURDAY for my college mentor and friend, Alfred Decredico (pictured in his studio, above), who passed away shortly after Christmas this year. Al’s son Cesare planned a wonderful and eclectic event that was attended by hundreds of people—family, friends, colleagues, former students, art historians, etc. My family, who live in the Boston area, came with me. We all decided to visit the Boston Museum of Science the next day (my idea). Here are a couple images from that visit:

This is an optical illusion on display in a new exhibit. In the background, my stepdad studies the timeline
created by Charles and Ray Eames for their Mathematica exhibit (a favorite of mine since childhood).

This is another (famous) optical illusion on display. Both my brother and stepdad saw the young lady first, whereas I saw the old lady first. I was only able to really see the young lady by blocking the mouth/necklace with my finger. Which do you see first?

Finally, my article for Smashing Magazine was also published on SATURDAY. This has been in the queue for months now, so I was happy to see it among the feeds in my Google Reader account this weekend. The article, which I wrote as an extension of some of the ideas in my Future of the Web series from last summer, covers the continuing evolution of the web browser, functionally-limited mobile web applications, web-enhanced devices, and advanced personalization opportunities. Here’s a clip:

The future of the Web is not at your desk. It’s not necessarily in your pocket, either. It’s everywhere. With each new technological innovation, we continue to become more and more immersed in the Web, connecting the ever-growing layer of information in the virtual world to the real one around us. But rather than get starry-eyed with utopian wonder about this bright future ahead, we should soberly anticipate the massive amount of planning and design work it will require of designers, developers and others…

You can read the full article here >