Maldon Salt (Page 74)

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Heaven is full of tiny ponies.

Speaking of tiny ponies, I have something to say. I was a Christian a long time ago. A devout one. A fundamentalist one. A brainwashed one. A very, very naive and innocent one. From the time I was 16 until I started cursing, sinning, and spitting fire again at 26.

Time and aesthetics.

Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, but the eye of the beholder has a biological preference based on mathematical proportions. Within the context of the man-made environment and the natural world, there is a documented human cognitive preference for golden section proportions throughout recorded history. Some of

Talk to me.

In contemplating the aesthetics of interaction design, beauty as defined by all five senses must be considered: Seeing, Hearing, Touching, Tasting, Smelling. And, I’m going to make that six senses by adding one more: Emoting. By which I mean a person’s psychological state in response to an interaction

Kicking and screaming.

Up the stairs. I need to print this damn thing. Need to print it. Sign it. Lick it. Send it. Need to get it off the teuxdeux. I have so much teuxdeux. That’s when you come in, you sad little beast. You promised to work when I need you

"F" is for failure.

JK Rowling, speaking at Harvard on “The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination”: You might never fail on the scale I did, but some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as

Here comes trouble. Her name is Ada.

“Good designers make trouble.” – Tibor Kalman Ada Louise Huxtable wasn’t a designer, but she made trouble. About design. For designers. Sometimes, I’m ashamed by how much I don’t know. I think I’ve heard of Ada Louise Huxtable, but would never have been able to place her

I am an instrument. Stroke me.

Alex Ross ruminates on the differences between live and studio recordings in his New Yorker article, The Record Effect: In 1964, Glenn Gould made a famous decision to renounce live performance. In an essay published two years later, “The Prospects of Recording,” he predicted that the concert would eventually die

Dogs as users and humans as iPhones.

They say that intelligence can be measured by a species’ ability to use tools to accomplish goals. Alexandra Horowitz, in her book Inside Of A Dog: What Dogs See, Smell, And Know, theorizes how dogs use their favorite tool, a flesh and blood Swiss Army knife if you will – the

On the undesigned vs the aesthetic.

I’ve been trying to perfect my latté art for months. Like anything that looks really easy, it’s not. In this interview, David Schomer of Seattle’s Vivace talks about espresso, aesthetics, and precise measurements. Before becoming arguably the Emerald City’s most respected purveyor of artisanal espresso, he

Beauty is like phyllo dough.

In researching the aesthetics of interaction design, I’m at the part where I’m trying to articulate what makes an interaction beautiful on the cognitive/emotional level (I have beauty for the other five senses pretty much figured out). I think this is the aspect of interaction design that