Some quotes from a recently released speech given by Dieters Rams in 1976 that I liked.

I am convinced that a well-thought-out design is decisive to the quality of a product. A poorly-designed product is not only uglier than a well-designed one but it is of less value and use. Worst of all it might be intrusive.

I completely agree with this. Looking good itself is not design, but it tends to be a side-effect of products that had a lot of thought put into them.

The majority of products that we encounter in our day-to-day lives scream for attention or try to impress us with their magnificence or minuscule size. These objects try to dictate our relationships with them. Good design creates powerful long-lasting relationships with products as good design creates objects with balanced proportions; at Vitsoe we go further by trying to create objects in balanced proportion with people.

Again, I completely agree with this. I see way too many products out there that just strive to catch my attention with how “cool” or “modern” they look, but these products themselves are not that great. Most of them are trash.

To use design to impress, to polish things up, to make them chic, is no design at all. This is packaging. When we concentrate on the essential elements in design, when we omit all superfluous elements, we find forms become: quiet, comfortable, understandable and, most importantly, long lasting.

This is entirely true and all too often overlooked. There’s a certain fakeness to products which do this that sets off an alarm bell that its creators spent more time trying to make it look impressive instead of actually being impressive.

At the same time thanks to all the members of staff, who sense that they have done a little more than just produce another short-lived consumer product.

That is undoubtedly a great feeling.

While sifting through files on my server, I came across something I had developed for a friend who wanted to host some computer science contests for people at my school. This was two years ago, just before I learned about using grid systems for layout (I know, right?). Surprisingly, the site is pretty amazing for someone who knew so little. There was an API for my friend to pull contest data as it came in, a user management system, and (of course) a system for creating problems and making contests with them. It does much more than that and has a slick JavaScript-driven interface, along with some CSS3 goodness. My friend insisted it only took me two weeks, and I couldn’t believe I built something like that so long ago in such a short time!

How did I forget about this thing!? I just now stumbled upon it again, and it’s been pretty inspiring. It makes me want to try knocking out my portfolio site within the next week!

A few years ago I realized that I needed a place of my own to share some music and things I was working on with my friends. About a year ago I started sketching the initial designs for this blog, and after nine months of development here it is! The layout is a little peculiar, but I’m quite happy with my little space and intend to fill it with all sorts of creative works. Mostly music. I don’t seem to draw much anymore.

At some point I’ll probably post my notes and sketches from when I was still fretting this site’s design, but right now I’m more concerned about getting my senior project online. I did mine on composing music with code and people keep asking to hear my pieces, so that gets priority!

While I don’t intend for this to become a place for personal ramblings, I guess I should also mention today’s my 18th birthday. Pretty exciting day so far!