You’ve likely seen the Astronomy Picture of the Day from NASA, I know I’ve linked through to it a few times, but tonight I actually started digging through the archive, and what I found was pretty awe-inspiring. Looking at photographs of galaxies and nebulas and The Grand Canyon of Mars gives me perspective, hope and humility.

Here’s a selection of my favorites so far. I’m not even halfway through 2006 yet, and the entries date back to 1995:

I came across this video on youtube the other day and I couldn’t get over how gorgeous it was.  Check out http://iikki.com/ for more!

Anyway, back to the point…frankly, I prefer going caseless.  None of them have solved the main reason I wanted a case in the first place: the plastic cover built into the iPhone that covers the camera lens almost immediately starts getting dirty and scratched and degrades the picture quality. I wanted a case that protected this part so that I could maintain the integrity of the camera itself over time. The screen is pretty difficult to scratch because it’s glass, but the back of the phone is plastic and it gets pretty scuffed up.

The only case I have liked so far has been the Ivyskin Xylo T2. It’s great that you can touch the screen through a harder plastic, but their industrial designer needs to do a lot of work on the sides of this case. It’s impossible to press any of the buttons or flip to silent mode without a lot of effort, and I have pretty tiny hands, so it’s probably easier for me than most. I also ended up with the reflective one since I purchased it as soon as it was released, and I really don’t like the mirrored action they have going on.  It’s distracting, really. Fortunately they’ve since come out with colors.

So, to recap…

Do NOT get one of these, whatever you do (no matter how much you like pink, or brown, or any other zune-inspired colors…hehe):

If you REALLY want a case immediately, this is pretty nice:

but it has some major design issues like deeply recessed button holes and poorly designed latching system:

Happy almost-keynote, folks

Dove + Heroin

So I try not to watch too much television as a rule, but there are a few shows that I consider guilty pleasures. While I was watching something a week or two ago, a commercial caught my eye. The ad was for a new body wash that Dove has released, and it is startlingly similar to various sequences from the film Requiem for a Dream in which characters do anything from cocaine to weed to diet pills to heroin.

I’ve done a youTube mashup for your viewing pleasure after recording many nights worth of reality tv (cringe) and watching at 8x the speed…hehe.

I’m assuming that the intent here is to convey the enticing nature of the product in a fresh way, but I don’t imagine that Dove hopes to undermine their brand equity any further by intentionally evoking imagery that relates to addiction. For the record, I think Aronofsky is brilliant, but this was a depressing film to watch and it is anything but fresh and upbeat.

As is, I think the parallel will be drawn instantly in the mind of anyone who has seen the film, but with a few adjustments, Ogilvy & Mather could have easily pulled the final ad further from the film sequences by which it was inspired. Fast cuts alone don’t evoke the film, but the inclusion of the eye dilating is a bit much. It also doesn’t serve much of a purpose in the context of the product since the allure of the bodywash experience is hopefully its scent, how it feels going on, and how your skin feels after you’ve washed it off. It may be in there to signify intensity, but it still feels disconnected from what the ad hopes to communicate, and it is, by far, the most evocative element from the Requiem for a Dream Sequences.

The next couple changes are probably extraneous and/or playing it safe. I would probably also avoid some of the man-made audio like the metal shower curtain hooks clanking against each other and I might drop the volume on the organ music a bit. This doesn’t specifically relate, but the harsh contrast between the natural sounds and the aforementioned audio clips comes across as more startling and aggressive than invigorating and fresh.

Skittles + Candles

Okay, so I actually think the commercial for the new Chocolate Mix Skittles is hysterical, and strangely effective.

It draws attention to the brand and product by being funny and unconventional and I think this is enough to entice people to try a new product. That’s about the most a candy company can hope for when it doesn’t sell actual chocolate.

So here’s the thing about candy, though. If you get someone to actually try it….it better not taste disgusting. And let me tell you…Skittles Chocolate Mix is nasty. They basically taste like I imagine a Yankee Candle would if they added sugar and turned the overwhelmingly artificial aromas of baking into a bite-sized treat.

Gum + Lies

And that leads me to Stride Gum. I actually laughed out loud at their latest commercial.

Now…their entire campaign thus far has been about the gum’s flavor lasting eternally long. Obviously they’re over-promising slightly…but the gum is kinda gross and it really doesn’t last noticeably longer than anything else I’ve tried. <3

So it pretty much all comes down to the same thing…an ad agency can do a brilliant job getting people out to try something, but the product often doesn’t hold up its end of the bargain. Lame.

So, the most important choice I made with this redesign was whether or not to start from scratch with a new concept, or to retain the general idea behind my previous portfolio design, the Cardell Catalogue (heh). Okay, all puns aside, after careful thought and consideration, I decided that this general concept was still highly relevant to me and the web as a whole, not to mention the fact that I was recently approached by a couple authors who want to include my self-promotional materials in an upcoming book (I’ll leave my thoughts on printed books as a delivery mechanism for discussing digital content that is perpetually in flux for another day :)).

I know what you’re thinking, but hear me out…hehe. Although most people younger than me (I just turned 25) have never even seen a card catalogue (I think my hometown library branch got computers and linked into the Minuteman Library Network when I was about 7 or 8), the Dewey Decimal System solved the familiar problem of organizing a vast amount of perpetually growing data. Interestingly, one of my first uses of the internet was accessing the library catalogue using Gopher with the help of my Dad and our Modem 2400 (600 Baud). To sidetrack briefly with a blast from the past, this was followed shortly thereafter by: reading alt.urbanlegends; finding a complete list of emoticons (yes, I was far too cool to use these for years, but lately they just kinda feel nostalgic and I kinda like that); playing with IRC (trumpet winsock, anyone?); marveling at Mosaic the very first time my Dad showed it to me at his office; getting a screenname on AOL when their pricing structure was still pay by the minute and Compuserve was the only other option; getting in trouble for downloading photos of ponies (all girls <3 ponies) that took about a day to download; getting kicked off AOL (hehe…i think I’ll stop there to avoid explaining that).

Additionally, despite the fact that there’s definitely a focus right now on user-created content and the other Web 2.0 or 3.0 foundations, some companies have made significant efforts to diversify their investments to include the digitization of offline knowledge and resources. I think this is, in a word, brilliant. I may be slightly biased because my entire primary education took place while online sources were in the infancy of acceptance from teachers. I remember having to defer to encyclopedias over Encarta. I recall being annoyed by limits of one internet source per paper. For me, finding information online seemed so much more efficient. I’m sure most people agree with me at this point and I’m certain we’ve moved beyond the general distrust of the internet in education somewhat, but I think that the underlying issue which involves the searchability of printed publications is as problematic as ever. There is a a huge amount of potential in the physical world, especially the printed word that all has yet to be digitized. By facilitating access to information from every resource that exists about a particular topic, the greater purpose of accessibility of knowledge would be far better served. Obviously, copyrights constrain this concept a great deal, but it should be noted that the power of crowdsourcing relies upon the fact that individuals as part of the collective all have been exposed to different sources both on and offline. Wikis are a great resource but the information contained therein is still passing through multiple human filters. Having access to original sources in an comparably searchable way would be an incredible asset to collective knowledge and the progression of ideas and innovation.

Finally, in an attempt to get back to my original point and away from that particular tanget, I really do love reading and I grew up reading books. In this way my portfolio pays homage to my roots as well as my research process for a lot of the sites I have created. I’d also like to think that I’m hinting at the fact that great user experience design is informed equally by tactile and digital experience, although that might be a stretch.