“Q: What are the biggest changes you’ve seen in the design industry during your career? What do you interpret from those changes? A: The biggest change has been the interest in design reading and writing that came from blogs, Emigre’s switch to pocketbook format and more blogs. I think this is a reaction to the emphasis on ‘doing’ of design and we have to come to a moment where we all want to talk about what we do. And, inevitably, we will go back to ‘doing’ soon.”

“Ever since Alan Cooper’s 1999 book ‘The Inmates are Running The Asylum’ was published, everyone is mad for personas. They’ve permeated the highest and deepest levels of organizations, and have become a standard interaction design tool. Whole projects are now built around creating them, and there’s a feeling that once you get a half dozen or so, your design problems will be solved. Presumably, your personas solve them for you.”

“In our dreams, the web looks good for all users. So we let web designers view screenshots of their pages in different browsers, at different screen resolutions and with different plugins. We’re trying to make this service easy to use, open for all (including access to the source code) and 100% free, as in free beer.”

“If you have been paying attention, you certainly have noticed an increasing number of websites that are employing CSS and an increasing number of resources talking about how great CSS is. If you have not yet jumped on the CSS bandwagon, you may want to consider doing so immediately.”

“A designologue is a conversation between two designers in the medium they understand best — design. Comparisons can be made to Coudal’s Photoshop Tennis where two designers alternately modify the others image using Photoshop. But instead of one designer versus another, the two converse. No winners. No losers. Just good conversation.”

“Experimenting with black and white conversion methods in Photoshop. I tried the channel mixer and a couple of third-party plugins, but I like the results from the method here, which is apparently due to a gentleman named Rob Carr. I’ll summarize the steps, since I found the presentation on that site a little confusing.”

“A loupe is one of those things that you just can’t buy without trying it out. Prices range from $10 for a cheap plastic device to $250 for a fancy Schneider loupe. In between, there are price peaks at $40 and $100… For over a year I used a cheap $10 plastic loupe. This is probably the worst magnifier I have ever used.”

“Nokia 6682 - my first Nokia phone. There are some UI quirks I’d like to see addressed, but overall I’m really thrilled with the phone. Great build quality, nice materials, nice weight, nice physical balance, nice look, and nice mix of phone-first PDA-second features…”

“While listening to Stefan Sagmeister talk at this years HOW Conference I was shocked to hear him say that he did not believe in Style=Fart anymore. He said this, and then went right on with his presentation. Most people don‚Äôt just put their philosophy on promotional material, on the National AIGA Conference poster, carve it into their chest and then change their mind. In my mind this was similar to the moment in history that Jan Tschihold abandoned the New Typography. Or was it? I asked Stefan about this switch in philosophy and he was kind enough to respond by saying…”

“In a fascinating but unsurprising study of gender bias and Web design esthetics, the University of Glamorgan has demonstrated that male and female Web designers create decidedly different designs.”

“In 1994, the members of European Parliament urged the creation of a new comprehensive road typeface system, the development of a ‘general high recognition and perception font’, and recommended adoption of uniform design practices. Now, after five years of extensive research, the European Committee for Uniformity of Type Design and Type Safety completed the research and presented legible-for-all-purposes-suitable-typeface.” (Thanks Coudal Partners!)

“To experiment with highspeed objects requires a very special technique. A perfect synchronization between the moving object and the actual taking of the photograph is needed. We talk about highspeed photography when we can’t see the fast movement with our eyes. It’s very difficult to see a fired bullet and even more difficult to take a photograph of it exactly at the moment it comes out of an object.”

“Over the last two decades, the Pew people have plotted a steady decline in the credibility of newspapers among its survey respondents. In 1985, 84 percent said they could believe most of what they read in their daily newspaper, but by 2004 that number was down to 54 percent.”

“When I started out on my own a few months ago I quickly became aware of the need for better organization; not only for myself, but for the sake of the people I work with. I have always considered myself an organized person, but this was a bigger jump from being employed. It’s always easier when you can just focus on your own work and rely on other people like project managers and account executives to keep track of time and assets.”

“At User Experience Week, August 22-25 in Washington, D.C., Eric Costello will join us for a talk on the evolution of Flickr, the wildly successful photo sharing site that has become one of the most talked-about examples of the next generation of Web applications. Adaptive Path’s Jesse James Garrett recently talked with Eric about Flickr’s past, present, and future.”