Josef Frank was, of course, referring to ‘The Bauhaus’ or ‘Modernist’ Style. Critics of the Bauhaus, like Frank, felt that the ‘style’ had been taken too far and that Modernism and Minimalism had now left out the user – the human – and in doing so, the reason the for the design to exist.

Josef Frank’s, life could be wonderfully characterized as always in motion. Moving with ease from architecture and furniture design to glassware his eclecticism was fueled by curiosity and nothing captures this roaming imagination better than his textiles…celebratory and vibrant, they redefined Swedish modernism.

Franks’s designs defied contemporary sensibilities by offering a welcome contrast to the linear, grid-like restrictions that defined modernism, the Bauhaus and others. And therein lies his magic. Patterns that are almost architectural in their generous scale, that show an affection for craft and reconcile seemingly disparate historic traditions and modern invention.

Frank believed that the purpose of modern design was to provide comfort for both the body and the mind. Reacting to the hard-edged style developed by modernist designers like Marcel Breuer and Mart Stam, he called for a new approach, one that would emphasize a sense of coziness and relaxation. In his many writings, he chastized those who were more concerned with creating the appearance of modernism than with serving the real needs of their clients. The inspiration for modernism, he argued, should come not from advances in technology, but from a careful study of the history and culture of everyday life.

As the ‘Father of Swedish Modern’ Frank’s most notable legacy is, of course, IKEA. Where minimalist (in both use of materials and design), modern furniture do indeed emphasize a sense of coziness and relaxation.

–

The legacy of the Bauhaus is very strongly felt within contemporary culture, an enormous amount of 20th and 21st century design wouldn’t have existed without it. But the Bauhaus resonates further through our current fixation with re-styling our domestic environments and our design-led lifestyles. The Bauhaus ethos also strongly informs the work of many contemporary artists working in design, fine and applied art, and influences ideologies of production at all levels.

The Bauhaus existed in a Germany ravaged by 2 world wars where materials and skills were in short supply. This led to a very logical design solution. The minimalist approach utilises less materials, time and skill by stripping away design elements that are purely decorative to allow the final products form to follow it’s function. At the time this was the only real choice. The Bauhaus ethos also encourages designers to fully understand the entire production process. A designer who understands the construction of the final design will make choices that that simplify the production and thus use less material and time.

And it’s the ideology of hand-in-hand design/production that I think is probably the most important part of the legacy of the Bauhaus. It is certainly valuable to todays multi-disciplined designers who, because of the blurring of divisions between design and production, need to hone skills that would previously be of more use to ‘mac operators’ (yes, that used to be a job title).

But as we see more and more Bauhaus ‘inspired’ designs in print and on the web I wonder if we are again treading the path once criticised by Frank and his contemporaries and that the importance of the ‘style’ has been taken too far. That todays ‘Copycat Modernists’ are also duplicating the previous mistakes of their heroes and producing designs that neither provide comfort for the body or the mind.

It’s been overused by the under-skilled for so long that it has now become a laughing stock. I don’t think I need to add anymore to this particularly long running argument. If you want to know more read about it here.

But, I read recently that Flash is in danger of becoming the new Comic Sans and immediately thought some of my favourite sites over the years have been built entirely in Flash and that it’s – occasionally – the perfect tool for the job. But, it’s just that – a tool – in an extensive toolbox that we designers can call upon to solve the problem that sits in front of us. Reading the backlash against Flash it seemed to be a bit ‘trendy’ with the Flashbashers banging on about usability, HTML5 and CSS3 as the new ‘in’ thing and the Flash advocates declaring war on Apple ( I know, just another day on ‘tinternet.) Ok, so all design follows trends but I’ve alway felt that the web with its l33t culture has always been particularly prone to this.

Ok, Flash is out. But if it’s not the new Comic Sans what is?

Well, for me, it’s The Grid. The oh so dreadfully fashionable grid system is definitely in danger of taking the Comic Sans award for most ‘inappropriate use of’. Everywhere I look a see badly designed and poorly executed sites that, the designer expects us to accept simply because they’re built on a 960px grid layout. Big deal.

Hey! There’s nothing wrong with grid systems...

No, They’ve been around for years, just like Comic Sans. But, they were devised at a time when changing the leading from 10pt to 9pt throughout a document would have cost a fortune in re-setting and re-proofing. They were devised to address a historical problem but, with the advancement of technology, that problem no more… So, the grid system, created as a reasonably foolproof way of designing a complete document by hand before giving it to the typesetter only really remains relevant as a means of handling content effectively.

But recently, I seen article after article written about ‘grid design’ on the web. Now hang on, a grid is a means of handling content, it is a control system. The design bit is outside the grid, it is the stuff that gives the content life. Design is the quality of the air around your content. Imagine building a wall 8 metres by 8 metres. If you know how big each brick is you can divide the wall by the size of a brick to find out how many bricks you’ll need. This will save you money and time but it wont wont help make your wall attractive. For that you’ll need paint, but what colour? What texture?. These are the design decisions. And if decide not to paint the wall and expect everyone to count the bricks in order to accept your decision well, that’s just lazy.

There are, of course, exceptions. Designers like Wim Crouwel makes huge use of the grid to actually form his designs. But, his works were created at a time when their were very few options for designers and it’s this constraint that keeps the idea pure. You can also see a similar approach in action in the new Otl Aicher inspired Adobe CS5 Splash screens here. The grid brings order and control to the graphic elements and the result is stunning.

The opposite is true of ‘Making and Breaking The Grid’. You only have to take a quick glance at a couple of the pages to see how ridiculous the notion of ‘grid design’ really is.

Just like Comic Sans, grids are overused by the under-skilled…

I remember standing in a magazine ‘design’ studio looking at an completed design of a double (A4) page spread. It had about 3 postage stamp size pictures on it and 3 columns of 4pt text and I found myself wondering what the hell was going on. It was unreadable, boring and honestly the crappiest thing I’d seen in a long time.

The ’designer’ explained his ‘design’ to me as a grid-system in a tone like,

1. I didn’t know what one was.
2. That grid was some sort of design system, a mathematically perfect, no-one can better, DaVinci code solution to all design problems.

When I asked him (as gently as possible – they’re sensitive you know) if the pictures were ok at that size he turned on his guides in InDesign to reveal something that looked like the Matrix.

“It’s a 60 column grid” He said.

So, as i’m trying to work out 60 columns across 420mm in my head (it’s about 7mm per column with no gutters!) He proceeded to check that the images were precisely aligned and, when he was happy declared them ‘designed’.

“Designed” I said “surely you mean aligned.” ”No, they’re on the grid so they’re designed”

And it is exactly this one-size fits all approach to design that may ultimately see the grid falling into the same category as Comic Sans. Josef Muller-Brockmann would turn in his grave.

I have 3 macs all running Dropbox. Depending on how I feel, I work on whichever Mac is closest to me. This is great for creativity, not so great for organization.

I keep all my projects in sync between each Mac by working out of the Dropbox folder on each of them. This keeps all my project files nicely in sync and is the simplest way I’ve found. I actually don’t even notice it except that my ‘work’ folder is one level deeper. Like, whatever, y’know?

But… If the project is a website, which requires a database, I have to create a database for it in MAMP. MAMP is not in the Dropbox because it will only run from the Applications folder. I can easily change the Apache document root to the root of my ‘websites’ folder inside Dropbox in the preferences. But no such luck when I want to change where the db’s will reside. Each database is created in Applications/MAMP/db/mysql.

The solution seemed to be to create a symlink using Terminal inside Applications/MAMP/db/. But, as my Unix is about a good as my German, this was proving to be a bit of a problem! Then I found a great little plugin called SymbolicLinker 1.3v2

All you need do is:

• Download the plugin and follow the installation instructions inside the ‘read me first!’
• Move the contents of Applications/MAMP/db to a location inside your Dropbox folder ie: /Dropbox/Work/Databases
• Using SymbolicLinker create a symlink to the folder inside your Dropbox (ie: /Dropbox/Work/Databases) drag it to your desktop and rename it db
• Replace Applications/MAMP/db with your symlink from the desktop
• Have a cuppa, and check out Nicks Software page you’re done!

Caution! You’ll need to do this on each machine, so you’ll have to decide which one is the master version of each database you have (most up to date) or you may lose info. If (as in my case) they’re just test entries etc you may not have too much to worry about. But ‘measure twice, cut once’ as my grandad used to say!

Hope this helps, if you don’t use Dropbox, send me an email and I’ll send you an invite. This way we both get extra space!

;p

this has created endless “please resend as an attachment” email requests from customers, magazines, etc etc. i had resorted to resending from gmail which was a bit of a fudge but it worked. nevertheless it was a far from ideal situation having to send many emails twice.

then i found mails “must have” plugin  Mail Attachments Iconizer!

it basically allows you to specify how attachments are handled and it works a treat. you can give it a whirl for free. but i bought it after trying it for about 10 minutes!

;p

I’m not a company, I’m a freelancer. I work alone and it’s great but… Being a freelance designer can get a bit overwhelming at times.

Sure I can do the design bit, but what about the filing, answering the phone, dealing with email requests and cleaning the office . In an attempt to get a little bit “zen” about things, I’ve been reading lifehacker quite a bit lately as well as zen habits. And they’ve both had quite a profound effect on how I get things done.

It all started with an article about clearing out your inbox (achieving inbox zero) that led me to completely re-think how I managed my email. I followed the advice and haven’t looked back. This led me to look into other ways to automate some of the more ball-achingly boring tasks that were bogging me down, along with some of the stuff that induces the kind of paranoia that keeps me up at night.

Here are the results of my recent lifehack:

1. Gmail. I’m a real Mac nut but mobileme just doesn’t cut it when compared to gmail. So I got a (free) gmail account and now forward all my email to it (I don’t even have mailboxes on my server now, i just forward all messages to gmail). This allows me to keep every email I’m ever sent from all of my email addresses (5) in one place. I never delete them I archive them. I never lose anything and I can grab an attachment from an email that is 6 months old in seconds. And, as I work on a few quite lengthy projects at a time, this has been a massive plus. It allows me to ‘NOT multi-task’ and concentrate on one job at a time. The process is quite simple: I get an email request, book it into my diary archive the message (on my way to inbox zero) and re-instate it when I need it. As apposed to the my old system which would have left said email in my inbox until it was time to do the task, forcing me to read it every morning only to remember that it’s not due yet.

   //This next entry was about Spanning Sync which is a great app and was a lifesaver when I was using my Nokia. However since it was written I’ve got a iPhone and the syncing features of MobileMe made it worth switching to it. Just…

2. MobileMe. may have a lot of faults but it does a couple of things really well, well, ok, one thing then. Whether it’s worth paying for just these features is another story I guess but, in my case, it takes a lot of pain out of keeping calendars, contacts, bookmarks and emails in sync across 3 macs and an iPhone so – for me –  it works.
3. Dropbox. Dropbox allows you to backup and share files online and keep files in sync between machines (each machine must have dropbox installed on it). You can also access these files even if you’re not at your own machine. My ‘work’ folder now lives inside my Dropbox folder, so everything I’m doing is backed-up online and across 3 machines. The 3rd machine is setup to run automated nightly backups to a server in the office so I never have to worry about losing work again.

   //This is a new addition, but I’m slowly finding it my #1 scrapbook app.

4. Evernote. Use Evernote to save your ideas, things you see, and things you like. Then find them all on any computer or device you use. For free.

So, there you have it. Since I’ve implemented them, these tools and techniques have saved me so much time that I honestly recommend giving a ‘lifehack’ a go. It may feel a little odd at first but the freedom you get from breaking out of old habits is well worth it.