A little while ago, we had a great guest post here by Jason Cohen titled “Why Your Startup Shouldn’t Copy 37Signals or Fog Creek”. In it, Jason makes some great arguments on why you shouldn’t copy successful startups like 37signals. I (mostly) agree with Cohen. Blind copying just doesn’t work for reasons Jason Fried (CEO of 37signals) outlines in a follow-up article.
Here’s what Fried had to say:
“Here’s the problem with copying: Copying skips understanding. Understanding is how you grow. You have to understand why something works or why something is how it is. When you copy it, you miss that. You just repurpose the last layer instead of understanding all the layers underneath.”
7 Things Your Startup SHOULD Copy From 37signals
A Good Trademark: A Historical Perspective
Alas, no copies of this textile logos book are presently available on Amazon or eBay.
“The significance of trade-marks in the textile industry is, perhaps, greater than in any other industry of equal magnitude,” wrote V. Alexander Scher (no relation to Paula or Jeff) of Richards & Geier, patent and trademark attorneys, New York City. He was writing in a now forgotten book titled Textile Brand Names Dictionary, which was published in 1947, designed “to be of daily service in identifying the names already in use, thereby facilitating the choice and registering of new names and marks,” asserted the editor at the Textile Book Publishers Inc. Included were more than 4,000 names of fibers, yarns, fabrics, and garments registered with the United States Patent Office between 1934 and 1947. 4,000!!! That’s a lot of 7th Avenue brainstorming to devise names like Devogue, Denicron, Glritone, Glossitwist, Ma-Tex, Perma-Fluff, Permacrisp, Perma glaze, Permaglo, Perma-Seal, Permaset, Perma-Shade and Permoflex, to name a few (today they could double as rock band or design firm names).
Baseline — a designer framework by ProjetUrbain.com
Typographic and design standards on the web…
When I first started to design Baseline, I wanted to base the grid on the work of Josef Müller-Brockmann, unfortunately some missing CSS attribute — like type leading — kept me from implementing a true grid based approach. I then decided to look back at the basic grid that is used in print: the baseline grid.
ISO50 Blog » Color Management: A Field Guide
ISO50 lays down the knowledge on color management:
Whether you are designing for print or for the web, making the leap from what you see on your computer screen to the outside world can be a tricky process, fraught with unpredictable changes and unexpected results. The web is full of information regarding color management and sifting through it can be very overwhelming. Contradictory opinions abound and it can be difficult to find reliable sources of information.
Over the last few months, Scott and I have been researching this topic extensively [and] we have implemented a color management system that works for us. Below we have tried to aggregate this knowledge into a simple and useful guide, designed to help you ensure your studio is set up correctly. It is not intended to be the end-all article on color management by any means — but it’s a good place to start if color management isn’t something you have previously implemented or considered.
(Thanks Quipsologies!)
Personas | Metropath(ologies) | An installation by Aaron Zinman
Personas is pretty fun to watch. Wish you could do something with it, like click through to the sources.
Personas is an art installation by Aaron Zinman that is a component of Metropath(ologies), an interactive exhibit by the Sociable Media Group, MIT Media Lab… It uses sophisticated natural language processing and the Internet to create a data portrait of one’s aggregated online identity. In short, Personas shows you how the Internet sees you. Enter your name, and Personas scours the web for information and attempts to characterize the person — to fit them to a predetermined set of categories that an algorithmic process created from a massive corpus of data. The computational process is visualized with each stage of the analysis, finally resulting in the presentation of a seemingly authoritative personal profile.
XPLANE named #1,708 on Inc. 5,000
Global information design consultancy demonstrates 186.4% growth
PORTLAND, Ore. (Aug. 13, 2009) — XPLANE, a global information design consultancy, ranked 1,708 on the 2009 Inc. 5,000, Inc. magazine’s listing of the fastest-growing private companies in the United States, and 29th of companies in the Portland-Vancouver-Beaverton area. Between the years of 2005 and 2008, XPLANE has experienced growth of 186.4 percent, exceeding the average growth of 126 percent by Inc. 5,000 companies. 2009 marks the third consecutive year XPLANE ranks on the Inc. 5,000.
“We’re very proud to once again join the Inc. 5,000 ranking of some of the top, entrepreneurial organizations in the country,” said Aric Wood, chief executive officer, XPLANE. “Given the current economic climate we are extremely pleased to still hold a top spot on the list, and we attribute that success to our focus on delivering measurable results for our clients through the application of visual thinking and design.”
XPLANE was founded in 1993 by Chairman Dave Gray with $10,000 in startup capital. Today the company operates on a global scale, serving multi-national organizations, including Microsoft, Intel, BP, Nokia, ITT, U.S. Marine Corps and U.S. Directorate of National Intelligence.
The 2009 Inc. 5,000 list measures revenue growth from 2005 through 2008. To qualify, companies had to be U.S.-based and privately held, independent — not subsidiaries or divisions of other companies — as of Dec. 31, 2008, and have had at least $200,000 in revenue in 2005 and $2 million in 2008. According to Inc. the total revenue of companies on the list in 2009 tops $214 billion, up 16 percent from last year. Median annual revenue has crept up to over $10 million, and for the first time the list’s total employment count exceeds one million. But growth has slowed considerably. The median growth rate is down to 126 percent from last year’s 147 percent.
ABOUT XPLANE
Founded in 1993, XPLANE is an information design consultancy that drives better results for many of the world’s leading organizations including Microsoft, Nokia, ITT, and BP through visual thinking and design. XPLANE offers clients unique and personalized service through its employees’ diverse backgrounds and areas of expertise, including journalism, consulting, technology, marketing, training, illustration, interaction, process improvement and information design. Global XPLANE headquarters are in Portland, Ore. USA; European offices are based in Madrid, Spain and a third office is located in St. Louis, Mo. USA. More info: www.xplane.com.
For more information contact:
- Ann Smith
- 503 956 2791
- asmith@xplane.com
“GOOD” Design
Behind the scenes of GOOD Magazine’s infographics.
We always found that there’s info lurking behind everything in the world,” says Morgan Clendaniel, deputy editor at GOOD Magazine. “You’ll read an article, but you won’t see the data behind it — nor would you want to. Nobody wants to read an Excel file.”
Clendaniel and I are discussing GOOD’s Transparency section — a regular print and online feature of standalone infographics. The general interest magazine best known for its social consciousness has published infographics on a number of topics, some serious (fuel efficiency between modes of transportation, a map of international legislation on death penalty), others more playful (relative trophy sizes, museum ticket prices).
“The goal is to illustrate these issues in a way that is entertaining, accessible, but also informative,” Clendaniel says.
(Thanks @swissmiss!)
The Golden Hour Calculator | Sunrise and Sunset information for photographers
This is nice!
Discover when the Golden Hour is at your current location, explore visually how the golden hour changes with the seasons and where you are in the world…
The Golden Hour (sometimes referred to as the Magic Hour) is often defined as the first and last hour of sunlight in the day when the special quality of light yields particularly beautiful photographs.
For this Golden Hour calculator website, I have used a more precise definition of the Golden Hour. I have chosen to define the Golden Hour as that period when the sun lies between 6 degrees below the horizon and 6 degrees above. This definition of the Golden Hour more accurately accounts for the speed of the transition from day to night around the world at different times of year.
