I can understand feeling frustrated, but it's a little unfair on yourself. Most designers hone their ability through constant application of their skill, not to mention very often years of expensive schooling. Nobody does it overnight. Although it's certainly possible to do without the expensive formal schooling.
If you're not going to quit your job to go to SVA or RISD, I'd say the best place to start is to pick up a few books and do exercises. Give yourself time, don't get frustrated, and work at it. There are a lot of good resources in print out there. You could do worse than Alan Pipes's Foundations of Art and Design
Thanks for the suggestions, what is so difficult for me is i don't see progress. How i said, i don't think it is something to learn overnight. I just don't saw a starting point yet, in the technical world there is always a tutorial.
That book sounds very interesting, this is probably the thing i was looking for.
I'm just like you in that I'm more of a hacker that has trouble figuring out how to make things look good. Try this book (I've read 3/4 of it--excellent book):
> there's an awkward separation between high culture and popular culture, mostly based on how old something is.
That's an interesting notion that may prove true in the future, but a few exceptions aside, I don't think it accurately describes the history of what you'd call "the western canon." The reality is that in the past, most popular art has been completely forgotten a few generations out. Of course there are exceptions, but the overwhelming number of plays, songs, novels, paintings, etc are dust. Your example of Shakespeare was a bit off the mark, because while he certainly had and has popular appeal, Shakespeare was in no way 'basically popular entertainment'; Lord Chamberlain's Men, The Kings Men—they were not performing for the sole benefit of the groundlings, they were performing primarily for very wealthy patrons.
Also, Shakespeare created perhaps the finest and most elevated art in the English language, and was recognized for it then, even more so today; the plays that were basically popular entertainment in his time are footnotes or worse today.
And as a side note, I'm one of those people who enjoys seeing Shakespeare performed. I think you'd be surprised how much audiences enjoy it, and not just in that insufferable, look-how-cultured-I-am, self-congratulatory way.
> Flash does absolutely nothing to prevent someone from saving copies of images.
This is only true if Flash is loading external jpegs. If they're embedded in a swf, you would have to go through a great deal more trouble to extract image files. But a right-click 'Save image as' is about all the trouble that most people are willing to go through, and as such, I'd guess that Flash is an effective deterrent much of the time.
I know a few photographers and illustrators, and based on what I hear from them, there is a shockingly pervasive attitude that any image on the web can be appropriated for any reason whatsoever. Even corporate types who should know better think nothing of grabbing images from portfolio sites (or flickr) to use in marketing campaigns, etc. I think it's wise for photographers to do what they can to protect their business and their work.
Also, consider the audience. Often portfolio sites exist solely to impress art directors at ad agencies, who (in my experience) aren't as hostile to flash as, say, developers at startups. And clumsy animated or skeuomorphic interfaces are often totally acceptable in that world. Many of them are still building flash 'microsites', after all. Real sales and commerce are taking place elsewhere (corbis, veer, getty images, et al).
This is beyond most people's capabilities; most people are thwarted by "right clicking is not allowed". (Do browsers let sites disable right-click anymore? I don't think so. But there was a time when they did.)
Someone should make swfextract a browser extension.
I'm working on it. Did you know there's a thing called Emscripten? My dream usecase is I'm out and about, and I need to look up a restaurant's website and OH SHIT IT'S IN FLASH. no worries. [swfextract bookmarklet]. Weee there's all the content. YAY
I guess it wouldn't be so easy if the photo is bigger than the screen. But if they are so worried about people copying their photos, they're probably using a scaled-down version.
I was left wondering why didn't he just export his mailbox. Or add his GMail account to Mail.app and just drag and drop his old inbox into his new Google inbox. There is absolutely no 'lock-in' with Apple's Mail client.
The strangest part was the line about how there were 'many things worse in Snow Leopard than in Leopard.' There was hardly anything different about Snow Leopard from a user's perspective, the things that did change were pretty hard to complain about (smaller application file sizes, Microsoft Exchange support, and um... what else was there?). From a developer's perspective, Snow Leopard was a vast improvement. Just about the only 'bad' thing about it was the end of the line for the PPC.
Emotions about Apple run so high, it's hard not to think of this as trashing one product (OS X) because of negative feelings about mostly unrelated products (iOS, the App Store, the Apple brand in general).
Absolutely. I think people disliked the move away from the more “natural” exposé window sizing in SL vs Leopard. SL went with the equal-sized boxes approach. But that was one of the very few changes.
But I'd wager that most Lion users have a pointing device that enables easy scrolling: a trackpad, magic mouse, magic trackpad, or a mouse with a scroll wheel.
The companies are certainly in different spots -- Apple was floundering in 1997, while Google is growing in 2011. But I do see common threads for the roles that both Jobs played then and Page is playing now.
Jobs returned to Apple after a 10+ year hiatus. So, while returning to his roots, they were not the same team he had left behind. He had to reconstruct much of the company's management structure, which he felt was fraught with engineering mismanagement. (Saw an interview with Jobs from back then, but can't seem to find the source of those comments now.)
Page, in assuming the role as head of the company earlier this year, was taking ownership of a management team and organization that had largely been put in place by Schmidt (remember when he was needed for "adult supervision"). While Page was certainly there during that duration, he also didn't have direct responsibility for the rest of the organization. It's not an exact parallel, but Page certainly had a new organization from when he gave up the reins a decade ago. (And, he quickly responded by re-aligning several key management members).
But more so than environmental, it is the state of product development in Google I find most similar.
Jobs inherited a company that was spinning its wheels on various ideas, but not doing anything particularly well. Any vision the company held was certainly not reflected in the products it brought to the marketplace.
Page inherits a situation where, outside of search, Google doesn't do anything particularly well. I don't mean they suck, just that their product offering isn't much of a differentiator from competitors, or provides a compelling experience for users. I'm sure arguments can be made to counter my subjective opinion, but there are no product or services from Google that rivals the popularity of it's web search.
Referring back to Jobs's 1997 WWDC speech, it was about setting the bar for finding exactly what they should be working on, without regard to whether something had traction or if it was a good technical idea. I believe Page has to make those very same considerations right now.
Thanks for the thoughtful answer. I now see that there are a number of parallels—but I still think the contrasts are more striking.
First of all, Eric Schmidt did an excellent job. In 2011, Page inherited a that is hugely profitable, practically owns search, and has successfully expanded into many other markets. While there's no doubt that he'll do many things differently, you can pretty much guarantee it's not going to be anything on the order of the massive purges Apple experienced in the late 90s. Apple in 1997 was mortibund; almost nobody thought Jobs had a serious chance at turning it around.
Schmidt successfully did for Page and Brin what John Sculley was supposed to do for Jobs; provide guidance for an inexperienced founder until they can assume the chief executive role.
And while I agree with much of what you wrote, I take exception to the idea that, outside of search, Google 'doesn't do anything particularly well'. They have a range of excellent and successful products, most of them well integrated into their core business. I refuse to accept the idea that, for example, Maps, Gmail and Android aren't products 'done well'.
Certainly, Page will be buoyed by the results of Schmidt's tenure. The pressure on Jobs to improve the situation is certainly greater than the pressure on Page, at least in that respect.
My comment about Google and there other products is that they don't do anything exceedingly well over the competition outside of search. It's not that their products aren't done well, they just don't differentiate the company. Maps, as you point out, is a fine product -- but there are other map products that are just as good. Gmail vs. other web-based mail? Android vs. iOS? While fine products, they don't put Google head-and-shoulders above the market.
By comparison, nearly every product offered by Apple is considered best-in-class. The iPod. The iPhone. The iPad. The iMac desktops & laptops.
To be sure, achieving was Apple has achieved is no small matter, even for the bright minds at Google. And, it's not to say that if they don't reach that point, Page's tenure as CEO amounts to failure. But, I believe the expectations are for Google to achieve some of that best-in-class dominance, because of their position in search.
While you make a valid point, I also think the parent post might have been also making a different one. It's not so much whether these markets existed prior, but that Google is entering these markets with vastly more resources and (often) with an intent to commoditize the market by giving the product away or undercutting everyone else by a significant margin, so that they can grow their own data-driven advertising business--effectively turning each market they enter into just another 'moat' around their core product.
While I wouldn't deny their right to do so, I also wouldn't deny that it often casts them as a bully.
"I also wouldn't deny that it often casts them as a bully."
nothing wrong with throwing their weight around, provided the peopel that matter (who, in my eyes, are the consumers) are treated right. I don't care if a few businesses suffer because of commoditization of their product.
I agree that their search engine and ad platform could be classified as monopoly. However I disagree that their actions have been anti-competitive in any manner.
They have a huge chunk of the search market but you can still use very good search engines like bing, yahoo, ask, aol or the awesome duckduckgo.
Google is continually tweaking and improving the design, speed, results and features of their search engine in an effort to stay ahead of the competition.
The reasons that people don't use the other engines are not because of google being "anti-competitive" but rather due to them offering a superior service.
Gmail has started suggesting friends to 'consider including' on emails. Personally, this has resulted in both me and my ex getting some very uncomfortable suggestions recently for whom to consider including in correspondence. It hasn't suggested we email each other, which would be forgivable, but a third party whom I had never directly emailed. And it highlighted for me what I consider to be a major problem with Google's social initiatives, which is that they've collected and employed this 'social' data in a completely antisocial way--behind your back, when you're using unrelated services. And it might be clever, but it can get very creepy.
And this is one of the pitfalls of testing things internally at a company like Google.
There are a lot of important use cases in social networks around "me and my recent ex", but within a corporation you'll be unlikely to run into them. (Similar issues caused a lot of complaints for Google buzz.)
I don't think the suggested recipients feature pulls from other users' contacts. You, your ex, and the third party have probably been recipients of the same message in the past.
> what are the ingredients
The ingredients (AKA the elements and principles of design): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_elements_and_principles
If you're not going to quit your job to go to SVA or RISD, I'd say the best place to start is to pick up a few books and do exercises. Give yourself time, don't get frustrated, and work at it. There are a lot of good resources in print out there. You could do worse than Alan Pipes's Foundations of Art and Design
http://www.laurenceking.com/product/Foundations+of+Art+---+D...
I'm not aware of anything really fantastic available for free online.