“6 Essential Design Lessons From Sushi” plus 1 more - Speckyboy Design Magazine Feed |
| 6 Essential Design Lessons From Sushi Posted: 23 May 2012 12:44 AM PDT Sushi has been popular in the Western world since the 1970s, when it was introduced to diners in the U.S. You probably have a strong opinion about it – either you love it and are always looking for ‘the best’ sushi in your neighborhood, or you absolutely hate it and can’t understand how anyone could go near it, much less put it in their mouths. Personally, I’m in the ‘love it’ camp, and today I’m going to share with you six ways that you can leverage the power of sushi to improve your designs. Yes, really! 1. Tell a Story For Your ClientsTraditional sushi chefs in Japan are known for chatting with their customers at length about the local ingredients so essential to their cuisine. If you sit down at their restaurants, they will regale you with stories about the work they do, informing you and engaging you at the same time. Restaurants are social environments – we go out to eat when we could easily stay in because we want to be around other people while we enjoy a (hopefully) delicious meal. People, like this guy, have since turned this traditional, sociable behavior into an international legend, comparing every sushi experience to the pleasant, informative one they had in Japan. As a designer, you too can leverage this narrative power when you engage your clients. People respond well to storytelling – it makes you stand out from the pool of other designers who never use this tool. Make sure you have a story to tell about your work. Do personal projects you love, and make a habit of explaining your unique and fascinating process to potential clients. They’ll definitely be interested as long as you keep it brief. 2. Simplicity is keyFor many Japanese people, eating a little raw fish with rice is a complete meal. The story you tell with your work need not be complicated or overly dramatic. The more you simplify your process, the easier it will become, and the more work you’ll be able to accomplish. Take writing this article, for example. If I hadn’t started out with a process to keep things simple, I would have spent far too long going into details that aren’t necessary to tell the story. Simplifying your process isn’t easy, but once you develop your own system for tackling your work, it will definitely make your life much less hectic. 3. Uncover New PathsOriginally, the rice in sushi served a very specific purpose – to keep the fish preserved as it traveled from the fishing docks to the fish markets. To accomplish this, the rice was fermented and consequently had a very strong flavor that few could stomach. It was traditionally discarded until the 18th century, when people began reducing the fermentation levels and including it as part of the actual dish. Now, sushi rice is the most common ingredient in most types of sushi. Making the rice part of the flavor profile opened up a whole new range of possibilities for flavor combinations. Coming up with a function, or a solution to a problem you didn’t even know was there is a crucial part of design. Imagine if chefs still threw away their sushi rice before they served you your meal. We’d be missing out on so many different types of delicious sushi – nigiri, temaki, gunkan, and all those delicious rolls we Westerners love. How sad would that be? Good thing someone figured out how to prevent this tragedy from happening. As a designer, your job is to navigate uncharted territory, making use of things that others miss or overlook. Have a bunch of throw-away supplies, research, or junk mail staring you in the face? Look at it again with new eyes and see if you can’t create a ‘sushi rice’ moment of your own. 4. Details, DetailsBecause they work with raw fish, which can contain harmful microorganisms, professional sushi chefs are specially trained to pay attention to certain characteristics of the fish that most commercial inspectors don’t bother with. Things like the smell of the fish, its color, firmness, and sterility are examined much more closely to ensure a safe dining experience for their patrons. Designers can learn a lot from this ultra-specific attention to detail. As you are a decision maker, expected to come up with solutions to your clients’ problems before they even realize the problems are there, you need to learn how to think like a sushi chef and closely examine your designs for tiny flaws that others might not see. Be relentless; weed out whatever doesn’t belong and don’t be satisfied until you’re sure you can present your clients with the absolute highest quality designs you can possibly create. This does two things: one, it puts more awesome design in the world (and who doesn’t need more of that?), and two, it signals to your client that you are different from all the other average designers out there who just turn in work that’s ‘good enough.’ 5. It’s All About the PresentationThe reasons for inspecting sushi and sashimi ingredients aren’t all dire and health-related. Fish used for sushi and sashimi is also inspected for its visual appeal. Only the most attractive and flavorful cuts of fish are used, and great care is taken to make sure the beauty of the fish is retained once it arrives on your plate. More creative chefs have signature styles of presenting their sushi – things that make their dishes unique to them and which inspire a mythology among their customers. Does that remind you of anything? Sushi is definitely a designed product, from inspection to presentation. In fact, I can’t think of another traditional food that incorporates more conscious design into every aspect of its creation than sushi. Everything from the way sushi chefs select their ingredients, to the way they proudly tell you about them at the restaurant is a carefully orchestrated production – almost a performance. You can definitely harness this process for yourself in your design work, and create a similar production experience for your clients and your users. When you develop your own unique production style, clients and users will take notice, and your work will take on a life of its own in the stories people will tell each other about it. You want those stories – that mythology – to take root. It’s the single most important part of your reputation as a designer. What people say about your designs, and how they say it, is vital to getting the best clients. Plus, you can actually influence people’s opinion of your work based on they mythology surrounding it. People are more likely to respond positively to design that has a good mythology, than to design that has little to no mythology. 6. Juxtaposition: the ‘Secret Sauce’In the West, we don’t really pair unremarkable cereal staples with other, much more flavorful dishes. Except for pasta, which, of course, comes from Asia and is traditionally made from…rice. Go figure. But in Asia, chefs and cooks do this all the time. Rice is used as a palate cleanser and a kind of ‘shock absorber’ for the spicy and flavorful foods it normally accompanies. Sushi is no exception. I suspect the reason Japanese cooks began including rice in their sushi dishes was that they wanted to experiment with different types of flavors for the fish – flavors that would be a bit too strong if consumed by themselves, without the rice as a ‘buffer.’ When you employ this practice in your designs, you are having the same effect on people’s eyes and brains that sushi has on their palates. Simplicity paired with tiny moments of intense detail or "flavor" is a philosophy you can use to create designs that are intriguing and unexpected. What Do You Think?How else can you draw design inspiration from sushi? Could you really, really go for a Hawaiian roll right about now? I know I could… You may also like…Good Old Static HTML Sites Aren’t Dead Yet. Should They Be? →
       |
| 10 Tips for Better iPhonography Posted: 22 May 2012 08:30 AM PDT As cliché as it sounds, the best camera is the one you have with you. Fret not if you don't have an expensive DSLR. When you have your iPhone cam ready, under the right conditions, it can take some amazing images! With the help of these 10 tips, you’ll be able to your iPhone shooting images that look as great as any point-and-shoot. 1. Do not use the zoom function; your feet is the best zoom.No matter how tempting, don’t use the digital zoom in. If you really want to take that shot from afar, it's a sure thing that you won't get the photo quality you'd want — a picture with noisy background, grainy texture and pixilated outcome. Instead, if possible, get closer to the subject and click on the camera button to shoot. 2. Do not use the flash function; get more light in the background.The iPhone's flash is not enough to shine good lighting over on the background and give you truly great digital photos. Rather, it tends to wash out or overexpose everything horribly, particularly the subject's eyes. The problem can be solved with natural or indoor lighting. Though you may not see the dimness in your screen before taking the shot, once the photo has been taken, you will clearly see the difference when light is more present. 3. Stabilize your hand when holding the iPhone.Notice that when either you or the subject you're taking is moving or isn't steady, the result of the photo would be blurry. To solve this, advise the subject to stay very still. For your part, hold your iPhone like a regular type of camera — steadily. Count to three and if you can't make one hand stabilized enough, use both hands or find something like the wall or a chair to lean your back or arms on. Slowly click the shutter button to capture the subject and let the lens absorb more light to expose the photo nicely. 4. Tap to focus.With built-in aperture, the autofocus function is already present in the newer version of the iPhone's OS. It would automatically take the focal point and show a square on the subject to make it appear clearer. However in some cases, when it is not readily recognized, you have to suggest where the focus should be. Simply move closer and tap directly on the main spot of the subject to focus for better lighting and exposure and higher quality photos. 5. Try different angles.The standing-straight position can sometimes be just boring, when you can have a lot more. Because the iPhone is just light and easy to carry and turn around, you have the advantage of playing with gravity. As the iPhonographer, try different angles to snap more interesting shots. Be artistic and build up on your imagination! You can try squatting down and shoot at a view lower than the usual eye or shoulder level. To be more comfortable, don't be shy to sit down on the floor or stand on a chair in a crowded place. You will notice that you will not only capture the subject but also give the impression of how big the room is. You can make your subject loom bigger or smaller, with more dominance or greater depth, emphasis and drama. 6. Keep the iPhone cam's lens clean.Most of us carry our phones around everywhere but not our camera. When you have and use your iPhone with you all the time, even if it has protected casing, there is a good chance that the camera lens will get dirty. The iPhone cam's lens is so small that even a small smudge or a fingerprint on it would affect the quality of your taken photos. Clean it regularly to maintain brightness with a handy microfiber polishing cloth, that piece of cloth you use to wipe off your eyeglasses or your old cotton t-shirt. Also clean the flash near the lens with soft circles, as to remove dust or blotches. Never use any polishing agent on the lens or the touch-screen area with aerosol purifiers, especially those which contain liquor, ammonia or other chemicals or severe substances. These could be harmful for your iPhone's delicate, oil-repelling touch-screen technology. 7. Take again and again until you capture the best.Unlike the old days when you had to buy films to practice your camera shooting abilities and find the best frames, digital cameras today offer us with the great incentive of trying and trying until we go tired. There's no cost except for the draining of the battery and the memory space, of course. But these things can be easily replenished once charged up. Similarly like any regular digital cam, you can have lots of mistakes in using your iPhone camera. Take multiple shots of the same scene and just select the best afterwards. Don't get disappointed and delete the comparatively “bad” photos as well; you can always use other photo-editing applications or software to improve their quality later on. 8. Experiment with apps!As mentioned, you can use the many photography app available in the AppStore to edit photos. You can make a collage, combined photos with creative frames, different filters and gradient backgrounds, cartoon versions, embed them with layers of text and stamps and so much more. Install and mix these features from multiple apps. You'll be surprised with the various results from these exciting applications. 9. Explore around you. Be adventurous!Take the initiative to go around places and discover great things to capture candidly. People have stories within them and they change in every second with their emotions. Every corner of an establishment has something worthwhile. Whatever event may it be a birthday, a talent showcase, or a sports event there’s something in there you’ll find interesting. Look at the signs and slants of the street and document the wonders of normal everyday life. Magical memories happen only once. Just keep your thumb ready to click and snap them away. 10. Hold, then release.Want the subject to be in focus and the background blurred out? The trick is to not take it easy and tap the shutter button right away! Instead, before doing so, hold it down for a few seconds until you're ready to release it to prepare and compose yourself first. This will also relieve you from shaking probabilities and prevent crappy photos.
     |
| You are subscribed to email updates from Speckyboy Design Magazine To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
| Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610 | |
Keine Kommentare:
Kommentar veröffentlichen