“In early August, the medical supplies and drug firm Johnson & Johnson sued the American Red Cross over the right to use the red-cross emblem. Most of us had assumed that the red cross, seen on ambulances and first-aid kits, was a universal symbol of succor to the suffering. But like any graphic symbol, the red cross turns out to have more meanings and more history than would at first appear. And the rights to use this symbol are equally complicated—a reminder that many graphic symbols have more complex stories than we expect.”

“Researching the Human Genom[e], they say that all present humans are very close; and perhaps started from a family in Africa. But taking a hundred thousands years in different locations on the earth, their cultures and the languages have diversified; now communication difficulties happen among them. Humans are social animals; can’t survive without communication. In the beginning era, how did people make a mutual understanding? Looking back at the ways and taking their wisdom would help to build natural EL. Because the ways work even now when a language is useless. My proposal for the concrete EL system is referred to the primitive methods and ideas of main writing/communication systems worldwide…”

“Regrettably I don’t have as much time as I’d like to author this article in polished format, but I wanted to put my thoughts out there while they’re fresh. You’d think I’d have time to slow down now that the book is done, but with running a job site, preparing material for several presentations before the year is over (including a ginormous workshop), maintaining this site, oh and a family and full-time job, “busy” is a severe understatement… I could probably summarize my thoughts in one sentence: The process of self-publishing isn’t as glamorous as some (myself) thought it would be.

One evening shortly after the book was published, I recounted with Suzanne everything I had done over the last 10 months to go from an idea for a book to a finished, published book. Having already co-authored one book through a publisher, I compared the experience of self-publishing, and here’s roughly what I described…”

“The other day we got a telephone call from a guy that wanted to ‘exponentially increase’ his Internet performance. He had an existing, custom built CMS and he wanted a complete re-design and re-build. We met with him, and he explained that he would like us to ‘design everything, ready to program’. He would then send our ‘detailed plans’ to India and let a cheap team program the whole site.

His budget? $1000.” (Thanks Airbag!)

“The emerging field of visualization studies examines the use of pictures to improve the access to information, the quality of software, or the communication of knowledge. Prominent research fields in this area are information visualization (a domain of computer science), scientific visualization, or software visualization. Other highly relevant research sectors for the understanding of pictures in communication are design studies and the psychology of perception.”

“This application example uses live questions from Yahoo! Answers to generate an overall, up-to-the-minute impression of people’s raw feelings and thoughts on the network. Typically such language visualization applications screen out common words, such as our Answers Cloud. When we look at such pronoun words and see how often they are used on Yahoo! Answers, an overall pattern of common meaning and usage emerges.”

“This article introduces the mental process, analysis and evaluation applied by designers during their work on the Warsaw subway signage system project. Users’ points of view were predominant in the design procedure. Establishing the groups of potential information receivers and their needs allowed designers to define the scope of the system and areas it was to cover. Envisioning the street-train-street ‘path’ of users allowed designers to build the conceptual model that defined the design problems and solutions.” (Thanks Doug Wilson!)

“This is an excerpt from the book ‘How To Think Like A Great Graphic Designer:’ The first time I saw James Victore, he was wearing a gorilla suit. And no, he wasn’t trick-or-treating. He was headlining a talk for the New York chapter of the AIGA, the professional association for design. Titled “Mad As Hell,” the presentation was classic Victore: brash, brilliant, and unbridled. Victore didn’t focus on his impressive client roster or his singular talent, but rather crafted a presentation that discussed the designer as a master communicator who had an obligation to inspire social change. The second time I saw Victore, he was speaking at an event, along with Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg, for students involved in an AIGA mentorship program. Unfettered by conventional norms, James addressed the students with raw honesty, enthusiasm, and quite a few expletives.” (Thanks Coudal Partners!)

From Khoi Vinh and Liz Danzico: “A Brief Message features design opinions expressed in short form. Somewhere between critiques and manifestos, between wordy and skimpy, Brief Messages are viewpoints on design in the real world. They’re pithy, provocative and short — 200 words or less.”

Congrats to the fine folks at Smashing — it seems like it’s been much longer than a year since the magazine launched, considering all the comprehensive roundups they’ve published. Anyway, your humble xBlog editor is happy to be participating in the anniversary festivities so be sure to check out Smashing every day this week.

Turn on the music, break out the champaign, get out the balloons and whistles, but — more importantly — keep track on what will be happening this week on Smashing Magazine.

World’s leading designers, developers and graphic designers will be celebrating with us. We’ll also have some giveaways for each and every one of you.

Be prepared. This week we’re going to smash you big time. Really.

UPDATES:
7 Sep: Smashing Freefont and Wordpress Theme (free downloads for all)
7 Sep: 170+ Expert Ideas From World’s Leading Developers (part two of the piece I contributed to)
6 Sep: 1st Anniversary Giveaway (48 free software packages, licenses, accounts and credit giveaways)
5 Sep: 50 Designers x 6 Questions (part one of the piece I contributed to)
4 Sep: 40+ Books For Professional Design & Development (free book giveaway)
3 Sep: Get Out The Balloons: Smashing’s 1st Anniversary (celebration announcement)

“It’s not uncommon, when talking about designers and what to hire for, you hear about ‘T-shaped people.’ IDEO is most commonly identified with this, wherein you hire people with with a strong “vertical leg” in a specific skill, and an empathy that allows them to branch out and engage other disciplines.

Yesterday at Adaptive Path’s UX Week 2007, I sat on a panel on ‘Skills for Current and Future User Experience Practitioners’. As the conversation evolved, we started talking about design teams. Through the discussion, I had a lightning storm in my brain, where I realized that “T-shaped” is insufficient.”