The Tremendous 10 link roundup, #53

  1. The /now page movement | “People often ask me what I’m doing now. Each time I would type out a reply, describing where I’m at, what I’m focused on, and what I’m not. So earlier this year I added a /now page to my site: sivers.org/now A simple link. Easy to remember. Easy to type… It’s a nice reminder for myself, when I’m feeling unfocused. A public declaration of priorities. (If I’m doing something that’s not on my list, is it something I want to add, or something I want to stop?)” Also: sites with a /now page. Via Austin Kleon.
  2. How Ikea Designs Its (In)famous Instruction Manuals | “Love ’em or hate ‘em, a lot of thought goes into that ikea stuff you throw away after assembly.”
  3. Why It’s So Hard to Design Arabic Typefaces | “Typeface design has a western-normativity problem: for years, most Arabic typefaces have been designed by Latin-language typographers. But Arabic is built differently than Latin—its letters can have different contextual shapes, they always connect, and they eschew upper and lowercase letters—which means applying western ideas about type design is asking the script to conform to an unnatural set of standards.”
  4. The Peanuts Movie poster | “The Peanuts movie (Yin Yang) is a poster created for the upcoming movie, in a very simple, almost one line drawing of Snoopy and Charlie Brown. Why Yin Yang? Well, basicly its not Yin Yang, but the connection is the smile and sad face that they have, as Snoopy is always possitive and Charlie Brown is more or less a guy with not a lot of confidence.”
  5. Pixar, Artists, Founders and Corporate Innovation | “I’m still surprised when I find unexpected connections with innovation in different industries. In a recent workshop with a large company focused on the Innovation@50x process, I mentioned that founders and intraprenuers operate more like artists than accountants – on day one they see something no one else does. One of the innovators in the room said, ‘It sounds like you’re describing exactly what Ed Catmull the CEO of Pixar wrote in Creativity, Inc.‘”
  6. BuzzFeed and Vox Call Off SXSW Plans After Conference Cancels Anti-Harassment Panels | “On Monday, South by Southwest Interactive decided to pull the plug on two gaming panels planned for the 2016 tech festival, citing “numerous threats of on-site violence related to this programming.” In response, BuzzFeed and Vox Media canceled plans to participate in and report on the week-long conference in Austin, Texas.” Good for them! SXSW, you are ridiculous and dangerous. (Update: SXSW Announces Online Harassment Summit.)
  7. Why BPG will replace GIFs and not only technology, image encoding, and gifs | “Let’s start with some history. BPG (Better Portable Graphics) is a new image format with the purpose to replace JPEG image format when quality or file size is an issue. This means that BPG not only is way smaller than JPEG but also delivers a better quality. And that’s not all! It also supports animations! And when I say animation, I actually say GIF-like movies with MP4 quality that are actually smaller than the mp4 it was built from.”:
  8. The Ultimate Beastie Boys Sample Source Collection | “Many years ago (more than I care to remember), I began a quest to personally track down every record and song that had ever been sampled by the Beastie Boys. I was inspired by the classic Ultimate Breaks & Beats series as it introduced me to songs that I had only heard in sampled form, and needless to say, hearing these tracks in their entirety as opposed to a quick snippet, stab, scratch, or loop opened my mind to a whole new musical experience.”
  9. Graphic Design Halloween Costumes | “It’s that time of year again, and I have no idea what I want to be for Halloween. Despite a rather random desire to perhaps wear a wig, I’ve got zero inspiration. So I started looking around for some graphic design-related outfits. There are some fun ones out there, so I thought I’d share this collection with you; categories include typography costumes, Pantone costumes, web design costumes, and famous art costumes).”
  10. We’ve been working on this for a while and it’s finally ready—The Gateway Arch 50th anniversary poster: 50 YEARS / 50 FACTS. Buy one at our new store! Update: store is offline. See this page.

Photo by Tremendousness.