David Cole

Breaking & Mentoring

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 10:06:00 -0800

In August I started participating in the /mentoring project. It took me a while to figure out exactly what I could offer, but I’m getting the hang of it. The most fruitful conversations have been with designers working at their first startup, where process is up for grabs, relationships are constantly changing, and goals are being reset every few months.

I believe that more and more designers will end up in this situation, so today I’m starting a new blog, Breaking and Mentoring, where I share the output of my mentoring work. From the introductory post:

Bringing my fuzzy, subconscious process into focus has given me a new sense of clarity about my work. Breaking & Mentoring is the public-facing component of those conversations, a mix of links, thoughts, and references. In many ways, this is the blog that I wish existed when I was starting out.

In the first real article, I write about getting feedback on your work:

When I was starting out I would just toss my work up on the screen and say, “What do you think?” But if your team doesn’t know what kind of feedback you’re asking for (which is to say, why they’re even at this meeting), they’ll just start giving their opinion about anything visible.

I doubt I’ll be covering new ground, and experienced designers won’t get much out of this, but that’s okay. Much smarter people than I are tackling the tough stuff. This is for the small handful of folks I mentor: they pick the topics and I try to point them in the right direction. Hopefully it will help others in similar situations.

I’m doing the last details on this batch of LEGO kits, the...

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 19:42:09 -0800

I’m doing the last details on this batch of LEGO kits, the bulk of which is the design & assembly of the instruction pamphlets. Here’s what my process looks like:

I build and rebuild the final design a few times with my hands, and I puzzle out the best way for the kit to come together. This is surprisingly hard as the right order for the pieces to come together isn’t necessarily suggested by the design itself. It needs to be a construction that is easy to visualize, and you don’t want to change the “camera” angle too much (since cubes don’t exactly imply their own orientation), which prevents a lot of what might feel natural in your hands. I then take photos of each step.
I come back to the LEGO software I use, Bricksmith, and recreate the photos in the application, snapping screenshots as I go. I then print these out.
Based on the printed diagrams, I draw the instructions. I base them on these diagrams instead of the physical LEGOs to ensure that I maintain a consistent scale and perspective. I don’t trace, so that the drawings still have that crummy look which I kinda enjoy.
I then scan the drawings and bring them into Photoshop where I can clean up mistakes and rearrange the pieces so that it looks correct. You can see that two drawings became one here, as I messed up a chunk but didn’t want to redraw the whole thing from the start. I also fade out the pieces that have already been built to help focus attention on what’s new.

Then it’s just a matter of laying these out on the page, printing, slicing, folding, and stapling. That’s also a ton of work, but not particularly interesting.

Picaro: Say Hello to Picaro

Mon, 23 Jan 2012 06:58:37 -0800

Picaro: Say Hello to Picaro:

yo-picaro:

I’m really excited to tell you about our new project: Picaro.

Picaro is a way to make and play small adventure games. They play a bit like interactive fiction with the control scheme of an old Sierra/LucasArts adventure game. If that was gibberish: the games are completely text-driven, but…

This is one of the projects I’ve been putting a lot of work into during my time off. It encapsulates a lot of what I’ve thought about for the last few years:

How to make game design accessible
How to make compelling, generative multiplayer experiences in mobile gaming
What authoring tools can learn from games
The failure of games to be short and meaningful
How I can collaborate with Joe, Casey, and Rob

Do check it out, I can’t wait to show you more.

I suspect this will reveal a lot about the project that...

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 11:00:29 -0800

I suspect this will reveal a lot about the project that I’m working on with Casey, Joe, and Rob. I previously linked to an early shot of the build interface, and here are some shots of the play interface, the other end of it. It won’t be a native app, but we are thinking of this as a mobile-first experience.

One of my favorite parts about doing the kits is designing the...

Wed, 28 Dec 2011 15:17:36 -0800

One of my favorite parts about doing the kits is designing the stamp that we put on every box.

And here they are!

Thu, 22 Dec 2011 06:04:10 -0800

And here they are!

I'm in the New York Times today

Thu, 22 Dec 2011 05:57:00 -0800

My foray into the world of LEGO was covered by the NYTimes today. It’s all very dizzying and makes me feel a bunch of different feelings about a bunch of different things.

One of the weirdest aspects is that I’m barely getting started in this medium. There are so many talented folks working with LEGO out there, why interview me? I don’t come from the AFOL (Adult Fan of LEGO) community but I’m starting to learn who they are and what they do and it’s lightyears ahead of my work. So, I feel a bit awkward being profiled when these guys are putting out stunning pieces only possible with years of dedication and craft. I am, comparatively, a rube.

I know some people find the taxidermy kits compelling out of a detached irony. I’ve had people ask me about them from this perspective. For myself, I was working more out of an interest in animal forms, and how they render in this geometric style. It’s not new territory for me, and I certainly admit influence from Charley Harper and Always With Honor. LEGO has a tradition of enthusiasm, and modeling kits on real subjects comes out of a genuine love for those subjects. I aspire to convey a similar enthusiasm in my work, and it stings a bit when people read it as the LEGO equivalent of putting a bird on it.

I’m not here to complain, or humblebrag, just trying to process all of this transparently. Really: this has been an overwhelmingly positive experience. It started because I wanted to experiment in selling a physical object (interactive designers tend to be jealous of print folk, in this respect). What I didn’t expect was how connected I would feel to the people who purchase kits from me. I love getting their letters — the majority of the Christmas shipments were going out to the Midwest and the South, often to women purchasing them for their hunter husbands and sons. I don’t know how sustainable it will be for me to have an apartment filled with plastic toys and packing materials, but it may be my full time gig for the next few weeks.

Onto happier things: to coincide with this piece, I’ve brought back the deer for sale and added two new kits to the shop: a bear mount, and a standing fox. I’m not sure where things are headed from here, but it’s been pretty wild.

Here are some of my recent favorite pieces from the LEGO world....

Wed, 21 Dec 2011 16:09:14 -0800

Here are some of my recent favorite pieces from the LEGO world. In photo order:

More on my LEGO inspiration board over on Quora.

New on the shop: Old Fashioned Pixel Art Temporary...

Thu, 15 Dec 2011 10:46:00 -0800

New on the shop: Old Fashioned Pixel Art Temporary Tattoos!

History recognizes two great eras of brotherhood: war-time sailoring and ’80s-era video arcade hooliganary. With this temporary tattoo pack, you can finally avoid wasting time celebrating these two things in separate contexts. 7 designs, sturdily printed, will surely impress your friends, flirts, and, hmm, let’s say… fathers.

(Svpply link)

What's next, or, Have me for January

Sat, 10 Dec 2011 13:17:00 -0800

My job at Disrupto ended last week, on the day my son arrived. It’s quite sincerely been the best job I’ve ever had. I already miss the team deeply.

Right now I’m taking some time off from being employed so that I can be home with the baby. I’m excited to let you know where I’m headed after but that won’t be for a few months. Before that, I have to make it through December and January. And so: I turn to you.

I’m looking for a design gig for the month of January.

I love working in concentrated sprints, and it’d be great to find a company that’s interested in 4-5 focused weeks of my time. If you are, or if you know, a company, project, startup, whatever that you think might be a good fit for me, do let me know: hello@davidcole.me

Most of my background is in product & UI, though I’m honestly up for anything that may come my way. You can read more about the type of work I do here and here.

Needed a photo showing the size of the deer relative to other...

Tue, 29 Nov 2011 08:19:00 -0800

Needed a photo showing the size of the deer relative to other objects, Ashleigh delivered.

I am excited to officially launch my shop with the release of...

Mon, 28 Nov 2011 07:17:00 -0800

I am excited to officially launch my shop with the release of the deer LEGO kit. I’ve tried building it with real pieces now, and I need to make a couple structural changes, but it will look the same. Also, I’m hand drawing the graphics for the instruction manual, which should be fun and painstaking.

I wanted to get these up in time for Christmas, but because I have to order these pieces on an individual basis from resellers, I need orders to come in before December 5th to get them out in time.

This was super fun to do, I hope people like it! Tell your kids, tell your wife.

Purchase it here!

Add it to your Svpply here!

My primary contribution to last night: placards. Ashleigh, on...

Fri, 25 Nov 2011 07:08:11 -0800

My primary contribution to last night: placards. Ashleigh, on the other hand, deserves a medal. (Photos by John Holdun)

The letter that comes from LEGO when you order individual pieces

Wed, 23 Nov 2011 10:07:00 -0800

Dear David,

Thank you for using our special Pick A Brick service. It is nice to see there’s a LEGO enthusiast within you, you clearly have a good idea of what you want and you know how to get it. We hope your package meets, and even exceeds, all the expectations you had when you placed your order.

Our biggest wish is to provide you, and all of our customers, with the best experience possible, therefore we are eager to receive any suggestions or concerns you may have. Please send your feedback to http://service.lego.com/

We hope you have enjoyed the Pick A Brick experience so far, and wish you many hours of good, creative fun.

Best wishes from all of us in the LEGO team.

Hotdogmobile, steakmobile, hamburgermobile, saladmobile,...

Sun, 20 Nov 2011 17:11:16 -0800

Hotdogmobile, steakmobile, hamburgermobile, saladmobile, pizzamobile.

X is the poor man's Y, through the ages

Sun, 20 Nov 2011 10:55:55 -0800

I was thinking about the sentence structure “X is the poor man’s Y” and I started wondering how far back it went. I looked through every appearance in the Google News archives (the poor man’s research library). It looks to be pretty old, and usage from as early as the ’40s seems to have that little dash of snark that comes with the phrase today.

“The street car Is the poor man’s carriage.” — 1880

“The olive is the poor man’s fruit.” — 1892

“The saloon is the poor man’s club.” — 1899

“the moving picture house is the poor man’s theater” — 1917

“Canadian cheese — Canadian chedder it is called — is the poor man’s cheese.” — 1918

“The submarine is the poor man’s battleship.” — 1930

“the tin can is the poor man’s smokehouse.” — 1932

“A visit to Canada is the poor man’s trip abroad,” — 1941

“Somerset Maugham is the poor man’s de Maupassant and Louis Bromfield is the poor man’s Maugham.” — 1945 (Earliest snark use I found.)

“Dieting Is The Poor Man’s Psychiatry” — 1956

“[Heroin] is the poor man’s alcohol.” — 1969

“[A newsstand] is the poor man’s art museum.” — 1977 (Larry Flynt, actually.)

“the family photograph is the poor man’s coat of arms” — 1981

“Crack is the poor man’s cocaine.” — 1986

“luge is the poor man’s bobsled.” — 1988

“[Mark Harmon] is the poor man’s Tom Cruise.” — 1988 (Roughly the beginning of the end for sincere usage.)

“Le Pescadou is the poor man’s Le Bernardin.” — 1991

“[Michael Jai] White is the poor man’s Denzel Washington.” — 1997

“the [iPod] Shuffle is the poor man’s Nano now” — 2005 (R.I.P. “X is the poor man’s Y”)

xgetsthesquare: Who is my Secret Crossword Puzzler? I received...

Fri, 18 Nov 2011 11:45:00 -0800

xword mystery

xword mystery2

xgetsthesquare:

Who is my Secret Crossword Puzzler?

I received this (seemingly screenprinted) crossword puzzle in the mail a couple of days ago. No return address, no actual postmark (is it from INSIDE VIACOM!?), and stamped letters on the envelope. Who is this mystery puzzler?? Should I be scared? Do I have a creepy stalker? Please weigh in.

My crosswords are hitting people’s mailboxes and apparently it’s coming off as creepy and/or scary. Everything is going precisely to plan. It’s the first of a series of items in the shop I’m putting together. More in the coming days.

Also, it’s not screen-printed. The envelope is hand stamped (which destroys my wrist), and the paper stock is nice, but it’s just out of my photo printer here at home.

I’m gonna start a little store soon and I’ll be...

Tue, 15 Nov 2011 17:53:54 -0800

I’m gonna start a little store soon and I’ll be selling a few things. This is a preview of one. More soon!

This is the LEGO kit I’ve been working on. Would you buy...

Mon, 14 Nov 2011 07:47:00 -0800

This is the LEGO kit I’ve been working on. Would you buy this? Would other people buy this? I’ve never sold anything before, but I’m really happy with the guy. I’m considering a series, maybe, but I don’t know if people would be interested. Let me know, somehow?

Dummy content you can type with your left hand

Mon, 07 Nov 2011 09:10:16 -0800

So you can keep clicking with the right hand.

Names

Abed
Bart
Dave
Tag
Xerxes
Descartes

Nouns

Fart
Swagger
Tartar
Czar
Dwarf

Adjectives

Deaf
Starved
Free
Erect
Tart

Verbs

Exacerbate
Fret
Stargaze
Stab
Ebb

Phrases

Caged rats get free water!
Stewardesses dread reggae barf
Sad serfs serve sad cabbage
Vests are cravats! we assert
Cave scarabs scare savages
Fat ragers read great faxes

Thanks to Tag, Casey, and Joe for help with this.