The Cosmonauts

Vostok desktop

Javier — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 18:37:27 +0000

A simple wallpaper image with our three window rocket:

Downolad the one that better fits your computer:

· Vostok Wallpaper 1280 x 800 (.png file)

· Vostok Wallpaper 2560 x 1600 (.png file)

Panflutes

Javier — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 10:18:28 +0000

This one made me laugh.

(We love I Love Charts)

Braun stuff

Javier — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 01:51:35 +0000

A simple video with some of the Braun/Rams stuff that coincidentally arrived to my place on the same day.

On writing novels / Sobre escribir novelas

Javier — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 11:48:32 +0000

Translated from the original:

I write novels. And I work everyday as well as I can. This is a job, not a gift from God. I’m not an artist. I have a moral obligation to myself and to those who read me. I have to focus on that and not going around theorizing on literature, which I don’t give a damn about.

Arturo Pérez Reverte at El Cultural

And the original quote, in Spanish:

Yo escribo novelas. Y trabajo todos los días y lo mejor que puedo. Esto es un trabajo, no un don divino. No soy un artista. Tengo una obligación moral conmigo mismo y con la gente que me lee. Tengo que concentrarme en eso y no ir por ahí teorizando sobre literatura, que me importa un carajo.

Arturo Pérez Reverte en El Cultural

How would you sell your car?

Javier — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 21:04:16 +0000

How to sell a car with a camera and a little bit of imagination…

Thanks Daniel

Floresfrescas.com confirmation email

Javier — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 14:59:27 +0000

This is the email you get from Floresfrescas.com when you purchase flowers:

We are kinda proud of how it is designed. Its main goal is to minimize uncertainty. Some of its virtues:

It tells (and shows) right away what did you buy and when it will be delivered.
Direct invoice download.
A visual reminder that your flowers will arrive closed and will blossom after.
Info on what to do if you want to change anything (links, email adresses and even a phone number).
Minimal visual identity elements from Floresfrescas.com, just so you can identify the email quickly and without reading anything.
Print-friendly layout.
It can be read with images disabled (for those malware-aware).
Confirmation emails are a very important part of a purchase process and sometimes are ignored by interaction designers. Do you have any good examples of this? How would you improve the Floresfrescas one?

Branding, Coolhunting, Graphic Designers and Advertising

Javier — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 09:42:30 +0000

FFFFOUND!

I just turned off Buzz

Javier — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 15:45:27 +0000

I just turned off Buzz.

It took me a while to understand why I didn’t like it and then I realised it’s quite a simple reason. Google Buzz, like Twitter or Facebook are for entertainment while Gmail is mostly work.

When I want to concentrate I usually shut down anything distracting and focus on what I may be doing whereas it’s sketching, designing, writing emails, proposals, etc. I usually have a break every 10-15 minutes. Something short, just to check my planetaki, twitter and perhaps facebook (that happens less often). Everything is on separate tabs so work and distractions don’t get messed.

And then came Buzz with this bold number of “buzzs” right next to the number of messages in my inbox so every time I checked if there was eny new email I’d see that there was some fun going on at the Buzz Cantina and I couldn’t concentrate. I couldn’t have my Continuous Partial Attention the way it was supposed to be, in moderate intervals.

And friends, that is why I am shutting down buzz. Not because I don’t like it (in fact I really hate facebook for what it has and Buzz lacks) but because it’s too invasive, just like my friends throwing a party at our studio at office hours.

Re-google by Yusef Hassan

Javier — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 12:15:39 +0000

Now this is a nice proposal (Spanish) for a search engine redesign by Yusef Hassan:

Where Search does a “classic search”, Re-find looks on what I already have seen (and starts digging on my social info up in the cloud) and Discover does te opposite bringing results I’ve never seen before.

It makes sense to me, ¿Does it to you?

Astudillo on UCD

Javier — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 20:56:23 +0000

I think of UCD (User-Centered Design) a little as I think of Christianism. The fact I’m an atheist today does not stop me from recognizing that some Christian values have shaped my worldview and my belief system in very positive ways.

César Astudillo

User centered design doesn’t work for innovation

Javier — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 21:14:52 +0000

Ariel Guersenzvaig, who knows me well and understands my take on user-centered design, refered me to Apple’s Secret? It Tells Us What We Should Love, an article that questions UCD as a tool for radical innovation. I’ve been moving from true believer in UCD to these positions over time and, although I think it’s easy to use Apple as an example, I consider this article by Roberto Verganti full of true statements:

User-centered innovation is perfect to drive incremental innovation, but hardly generates breakthroughs. In fact, it does not question existing needs, but rather reinforces them, thanks to its powerful methods.

Firms that create radical innovations make proposals. They put forward a vision. In doing that, of course, they take greater risks.

Thanks to this process these companies are serial radical innovators. Their non-user-centered proposals are not dreams without a foundation. Sometimes they fail. But when they work, people love them even more than products that have been developed by scrutinizing their needs.

User centered-design (observation, interviews, user testing, etc. ) is for those who want to improve something existing, not for those who want to create something new. Those need to understand human nature but don’t need to microscope every little behavior and take it as a starting point.

Houses, freedom and isolation

Javier — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 10:52:37 +0000

This is a house with no exterior windows, only skylights. It’s percieved as a closed space from the outside but if you see it from the inside it gives a great sense of openness:

More pictures here

It kept me thinking about isolation, percieved isolation and openness. Do their inhabitants feel free? Do outside people see it as a jail or, even worse, as a bunker? How it would be to have children inside? How seing only the sky would affect your mood if you lived there? Would that be a good solution to ugly sorroundings?

The house can be found in Obama, a Japanese town. It was designed by Suppose, a Japanese design and architecture firm which has other interesting and provoking works.

Renfe.es by Keko Ponte

Javier — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 13:36:02 +0000

Our admired Keko Ponte (we want to cosmomeal with you!) suggested a redesign for renfe.es, übercrappy and ultrabuggy website for the Spanish railroad company. This is his proposal:

Just call. It’ll be easier.

Jamie Bolton movie posters

Javier — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 08:31:48 +0000

Jamie Bolton artwork and movie posters

Time spent on a pop-up ad

Javier — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 22:55:50 +0000

I Love Charts

Hello Mark - Alex Cornell

Javier — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 15:49:43 +0000

FFFFOUND! | Hello Mark - Alex Cornell

Solar Eclipse

Javier — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 15:48:45 +0000

FFFFOUND! | Solar Eclipse on Flickr - Photo Sharing!

Marchesini headquarters by LAN Architecture

Javier — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 15:40:11 +0000

Designing Design, right to our library

Javier — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 09:03:39 +0000

Designing Design - Kenya Hara — The Designer’s Review of Books

Fanboy t-shirts for today

Javier — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 08:15:53 +0000

Today is Apple fanboy day. Go get one of these 101 Apple t-shirts, popcorn and a beer so you can fully enjoy the Keynote.

First class or coach?

Javier — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 11:24:33 +0000

Chances of surviving a plane crash according to statistics:

Plane chrash on Hudson river:

What would you chose?

Bento boxes and Japanese aesthetics

Javier — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 12:41:08 +0000

Kanya Hara, art director of Muji, explains Japanese design taking knives as an example:

Japanese cooks who have special skills prefer knives without any ergonomic shape. A flat handle is not seen as raw or poorly crafted. On the contrary, its perfect plainness is meant to say, “You can use me whichever way suits your skills.” The Japanese knife adapts to the cook’s skill (not to the cook’s thumb). This is, in a nutshell, Japanese simplicity.

The piece, translated by Oliver Reichenstein is also part of a larger article about Japanese aesthetics published at the NYTimes under the title Beauty and the Bento Box where also John Maeda, Nick Currie and Denis Dutton go through the subject.

Worth reading.

Want it!!

Javier — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 11:38:42 +0000

When I see these things I feel designing websites doesn’t make any sense at all anymore:

(thanks denegro)

Muffins

Javier — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 20:30:47 +0000

I want to believe (how movies are made)

Javier — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 12:21:39 +0000

This is how movies are made nowadays.
ALERT: not suitable for those who want to keep believing.

I.D. Magazine is closing

Javier — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 10:14:32 +0000

I.D. will close. It was announced recently on a press note published on FC:

Since 1954, I.D. has served as one of America’s leading critical magazines covering the art, business, and culture of design. Today it is with regret that we announce its closure. The January/February issue of I.D. will be its last; subscribers to I.D. will receive Print magazine for the balance of their subscription.

Image ©Fast Company

I used to buy every number of it when I was a junior interaction designer. It was fascinating to see those amazing projects and prototypes where technology met real atoms. You couldn’t (and still can not) see that in Spain. I even dreamt of working for the companies mentioned there: Pentagram, IDEO, Teague… After some time I felt that the interaction side of it was weak and form + firm was somehow more important for the Magazine than real life projects and I quitted buying it.

I don’t buy design magazines any more. Well, somtimes I pick Metropolis at a press kiosk in some internationa airport (it’s hard to find in Spain) but I mostly read about design on the web. I feel kind of sad, though. It was part of my professional life for some time.

FAIL: Spanish online newspaper design

Javier — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 14:51:30 +0000

Spanish online newspapers seem to be clueless when it comes to designing their homepages. Their strategy seems to be “put everything on the homepage, no matter how”. No order, no sequence, no freakin’ idea about reading patterns. I’m not making this up, check these screenshots, they speak for themselves:

The images correspond to El País, El Mundo and ABC.

These structures bleed consensus and politics from every pixel. I’ve been in a couple of these projects and I understand the politics behind a newspaper redesign. All the “we cannot harm our current readers” and “we need to find a spot for this and that” only leads to having the same again and again.

And the constant increase of screen resolution is not helping but increasing the damage. Remember when most newspapers went from 800×600 to 1024? Instead of using those extra pixels to make everything bigger and give some white space they came up with an extra column for junk.

Much has been said about how to renew online journalism. If they just started by questioning these obsolete structures… Jeez… I am so looking for the day when a big exec has the guts to get rid of commitees, consensus and departmental presence to make something different, some design where you see a strategy, a point, a purpose.

[es] Buscamos desarrollador web, media jornada

Mark — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 17:18:52 +0000

Vostok está buscando una persona con perfil técnico, media jornada o prácticas profesionales, para trabajar presencialmente en Madrid. Buscamos gente con potencial, con miras formar a parte del equipo más adelante.

Necesitamos a alguien con conocimientos prácticos sobre desarrollo web (html, css, ssh, xml, ftp y demás acrónimos), y algunos conocimientos de programación (javascript y php o rails). Preferimos candidatos con nociones de diseño, pero si eres muy bueno en la parte técnica y estás dispuesto a aprender, también nos gustaría saber de ti.

Somos un equipo pequeñito, por lo que importa la química personal. Te adelantamos que nos gustan las personas que le prestan atención al detalle, con una amplia gama de intereses y con mucha pasión por su disciplina.

Es imprescindible presentar un portafolio, sin importar si los proyectos son profesionales, personales o académicos. Si está montado en una web recibes puntos extras. Envía el enlace o PDF con una carta de presentación a hello@vostok.es.

How to kill an idea

Javier — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 11:39:29 +0000

I found this pretty illustrative. Too bad I don’t know its author (source here).

UPDATE: Here is the author info (thanks Ale).

Windows Official Magazine

Javier — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 16:24:00 +0000

This picture I took yesterday at a magazine in Barcelona symbolizes all the pain and suffering Windows users have to cope with…

Incompetence, design and some large companies

Javier — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 11:41:41 +0000

A few months ago I wrote an article expressing my displeasure with American Airlines‘ hideous online presence. I also spent some time mocking up a redesigned version of their website. To my surprise, a user experience designer at AA.com emailed me an amazing response describing some of the design problems faced in large corporations. You should read my original article here and the response from Mr. X here.

An hour after I posted the response, American Airlines fired Mr. X.

Dustin Curtis at The Incompetence of American Airlines & the Fate of Mr. X

(Thanks Bastian)

Helsingfors Series by Juan Leal

Javier — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 12:37:40 +0000

Juan Leal is on a travel trip in Helsinki. He is using his blog to document his observations and meetings with interesting people in the interaction design field. That is what he calls Helsingfors Series, definitely worth reading.

Google Insights and Vostok Statistics

doctora — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 18:32:13 +0000

Today we played around with Google Insights. We started out by searching ‘sex‘ (of course) and discover that Vietnam and Eritrea are the countries most obsessed about it. ‘Free sex’ is the most sex-related search, and here we stopped our investigation.

We went on searching for terms that make a real impact in our personal lives: zombies vs vampires, unicycle vs spacecraft, palin vs obama, etc. We wrapped it up with a name search, and finally… Maria wins! (thanks to Brazil, wtf).

We end up searching war vs love, and we find out our next project, Okamore, will be successful :)

The redesign of minube.com

doctora — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 09:07:47 +0000

We’ve been working with minube’s team for two years, and now we’ve had the chance to redesign their homepage.

Minube.com is a traveller community where everyone shares their experiences, photos and videos. So you can plan a trip based on the experience of travellers along with minube’s flight and hotel search engine.

We’ve used a modular design that uses the entire width. Modules are easily interchangable, so adaptations can be done by adding, removing, and reordering whatever you want. Modules are also very comfortable to read on an iphone.

The users’ expriences of minube have been given prominence on the first shadowed module, which includes the destination search and all the relevant stats (users, experiences, photos and places). Minube is now pretty much self-explanatory, with a glance you know what is it about.

The new homepage is not only clean and lightweight on the visuals: thanks to minube’s stellar programming team, it’s now lightning-speed fast, loading in 1.2 seconds using our homebrewed tests. A very significant improvement over the 4 seconds of the previous version.

Our favourite detail is the realtime display of travellers’ experiences. we wanted to display a thriving community with user participation on the homepage.

Raúl (CEO of minube) has a great post on the redesign and evolution of their hompage.

Vignelli on design

Javier — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 17:49:57 +0000

A few quotes on design by our admired Massimo Vignelli:

I don’t think that type should be expressive at all. I can write the word ‘dog’ with any typeface and it doesn’t have to look like a dog. But there are people that [think that] when they write ‘dog’ it should bark.

Creativity needs the support of knowledge to be able to perform at its best.

There are no hierarchies when it comes to quality. Quality is there or is not there, and if is not there we have lost our time.

Any color works if you push it to the extreme.

There is no design without discipline, there is no discipline without intelligence.

We detest the demand of temporary solutions, the waste of energies and capital for the sake of novelty.

I like design to be semantically correct, syntactically consistent, pragmatically understandable.

I like it to be visually powerful, intellectually elegant, and above all timeless.

It’s not important to develop your own style but your own approach.

And finally a couple of videos of him, one explaining his hated/admired NYC Subway map of 1972 and the second one on his appearance on Helvetica (with Spanish subtitles):

Derek Powazek on SEO

Javier — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 10:33:21 +0000

Search Engine Optimization is not a legitimate form of marketing. It should not be undertaken by people with brains or souls. If someone charges you for SEO, you have been conned.

Derek Powazek at Spammers, Evildoers, and Opportunists

This article is so clear, so well explained and so aligned with us that I am seriously thinking of translating it into Spanish.

Google was always there

Javier — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 09:57:31 +0000

Just like Stalin used to remove people from pictures and pretend that they never existed, some guys do the oposite with Google (it’s just an analogy, don’t take me wrong) as if it always existed:

Google Maps 19th century (via GMM):

Vintage Google search:

Background color optical illusion

Javier — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 08:03:39 +0000

This video just sums up to my obsession about form, figure and background in interterface design. Check it out, it’s plain amazing:

(via Ilustrae)

O Canada

Javier — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 10:46:00 +0000

We congratulate Mark MacKay for acquiring his first Canadian passport. O Canada, Mark’s home and native land, with glowing hearts he sees thee rise, he stands on guard for thee…

And now DANCE with us!!

New Planetaki Theme: Helvetiplanet

Mark — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 16:54:22 +0000

Today we replaced our ageing white theme with a minimal theme named Helvetiplanet.

It’s no secret we’re huge Swiss nostalgics, and this is a little homage to one of our favorite typefaces, Helvetica. We hope you don’t mind us being retro-stylish once in a while!

To check it out in action just set ‘Helvetiplanet’ color in your preferences. Don’t have a Planetaki account? Sign up here, it will take you less than a minute, really.

Vostok ♥ Mixiote

Javier — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 13:40:13 +0000

You suddenly realize the world is well designed after you have a big plate of Mixiote Chicken (Mixiote Wheat Gluten for María) cooked by our always surprising comrade Mark Mackay.

Paper towels

Javier — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 10:40:17 +0000

We could go for hours on how well designed are paper towels but this is way more effective ;)

The funny thing is that this vid is a response to a ShamWow infomercial)

Nearness

Javier — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 15:34:51 +0000

Nearness explores interacting without touching.
With RFID it’s proximity that matters and physical contact isn’t necessary.

(thanks mort)

Old TV newscasts meet internet infographics

Javier — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 11:08:18 +0000

I read at infograficaymas that the CNN used this inphographic video to explain how the Mexican drug cartels operate in the US:

It makes me think about the convergence between video and data in new storytelling formats. These narratives jump from analytical (narrative details ordered in a lineal fashion) to synthetic (big picture view, more visual) communication styles back and forth, which kind of maps how people learn.

It’s interesting to see that this new format, which is kinda popular for explaining new internet products and services, jumps to the mas media and merges with old style things such as the anchor’s voice.

Do you think it’s just another import made by the old media from the internet (just as when they use Google Earth) or we are in front of somehting bigger? What’s your take?

Windows 1.0 + Ballmer

Javier — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 07:57:20 +0000

This is Windows 1.0:

I still doubt wether I should categorise this under interaction design or humor.

Beautiful smoke

Javier — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 21:06:26 +0000

There is beauty in everything, even in the most awful catastrophes. You just have to know the right angle to look from:

Timelapse - Los Angeles Wildfire from Dan Blank on Vimeo.

(vía Feroxlogos)

Back home

Javier — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 12:26:43 +0000

We are back! July was a tough and intense month. We closed may projects and left nothing (or almost nothing) pending so we could go to Vigo to focus on new stuff and relax a bit. It was more relax than focus but hey… we deserved it. August was complete disconnection from the studio matters and now… Man, we are back. New projects on the horizon, freshness and a huge blackboard…

Secret code in Snow Leopard

Javier — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 22:09:33 +0000

Looks like there is a secret sort of constellatory message inside Apple Snow Leopard:

(seen at the Secret Diary of Steve Jobs)

Mark Coleran on designing Sci-fi interfaces

Javier — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 20:16:09 +0000

Mark Coleran just commented on our recent post about designing interfaces for sci-fi movies giving very interesting insight:

In the movie business, screens and interactive elements have a very low priority in the grand scheme of things (with a few notable exceptions).To really sum it up, there are just three considerations.

The first is to do somethign that sits with the look and feel of the environment and set. The nature of the film always dictates. If it is in the future, then the desire is generally to have a different way of interacting or displaying things, than is currently the norm. It is a small way of differentiating the interfaces. The reality is that these systems might already exists, but are not widely used or known about outside of labs or specialist groups.

The second is the worst part. Prior art. Some of the people involved, directors, production designers, producers, bring with them their own biases, pre-conceptions and pragmatism that can result in less than satisfactory interfaces in the films and content on those interfaces. It is not uncommon to hear people day “I want it like it was in that movie” whether a good example or not. People try to play safe at times and it is not always easy to overcome.

The third and most important part is that the interfaces are there for only two things. Set dressing and story. Irrespective of design and plausability, if they tell the story they are deemed a success by those commisioning. CSI might seem implausable in action and stylistically but they do one thing and one thing well. Tell you what happened or what they have found. This can lead overall to interfaces and systems seemingly doing some very unrealistic things, but in the end the story is all that matters.
Mark Coleran

Caution, wet paint

Javier — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 19:57:56 +0000

August is for crafty stuff. Laura and Daniel helped us made a blackboard out of a spare wall in our new office and they documented it in this lovely video: