Ed Lea

design = metaphor

Sun, 04 Sep 2011 00:00:00 +0200

design = metaphor

A metaphor is a literary figure of speech that uses an image, story or tangible thing to represent a less tangible thing or some intangible quality or idea

That’s pretty much what we [designers] do every day. Serious metaphoring. Sometimez I just got to let the metaphorz out for the lolz… :)

Original: http://cl.ly/0Q2S1s2e2R4335401L3k/o produced by me @ed_lea inspired by@jeanniehuang via @jeffrey

Spock not impressed at my spock is not impressed (many more...

Sat, 03 Sep 2011 11:59:45 +0200

iSpock not impressed

Spock not impressed

Spock not impressed at my spock is not impressed (many more here http://spockisnotimpressed.tumblr.com/ )

Having a bit of fun with Qype job posting for a devops engineer:...

Wed, 17 Aug 2011 19:58:57 +0200

Having a bit of fun with Qype job posting for a devops engineer: in the style of an Apple Terminal.

"[Designers] are in the business of selling ideas"

Tue, 28 Jun 2011 11:56:00 +0200

“Unfortunately, an ugly mockup of a brilliant idea is often overlooked for a beautiful mockup of a derivative idea. To compete, you need to learn how to be an adequate graphic designer.” http://www.azarask.in/blog/post/be-a-designer/

So why do investors like Mark Suster totally leave out the designer role from a “dream team” ? http://www.quora.com/Startups/What-would-the-ideal-web-technology-start-up-team-be-composed-of

Although I always wondered whether the true test of a product is to remove the aesthetic and see if people still fall in love with it. I think they made a film about that, Shallow Hal

Interesting interface for a music player. Love it when people...

Tue, 17 May 2011 10:45:51 +0200

Interesting interface for a music player. Love it when people get whacky with this shit.

Design and Emotion - Don Norman

Sat, 23 Apr 2011 10:37:00 +0200

Don Norman talks about 3 ways good design makes you happy.

"Success is going from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm"

Thu, 14 Apr 2011 22:59:36 +0200

“Success is going from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm”

- Winston Churchill

Eat your own dog food

Thu, 14 Apr 2011 22:56:43 +0200

And at last I’m in. I’ve been working on SoopSee for about 18 months and in that time I’ve only supported Etsy and Blogs… neither of which I use. All of my feedback was coming directly from the very awesome SoopSee people. However, that has changed today. SoopSee started to support Dribbble a few days ago, so I threw some of my work up there. I also took the plunge and started this blog.

Anyway, turns out SoopSee is pretty good! Here’s my site www.edlea.com

Push handle on a pull door

Thu, 14 Apr 2011 19:19:28 +0200

I have a few doors myself at home. Most of them are open all the time, but others are opened and closed on a regular basis (like the kitchen). Unsurprisingly, I don’t have the word PULL or PUSH plastered over the handle, I know which way they open. You might say that’s because I live there, well true, but then visitors to my house don’t have a problem either.

(img by rustman)

So why do large public buildings feel the need to label the action of a door? Most of the time this is because they have a push handle on a pull door or vice-versa. Wouldn’t it just be simpler to have a flat pushing panel on a push door and a stick-y out handle on a pull door?

The same applies to user interfaces. If there are devices that people recognise, then don’t be afraid to use them. Don’t try to be different just because you’re bored or want to appear original. I don’t care, I just want to get in or out of the fucking building!

"The auto industry is $1.6 trillion, and you want to fuck with bars and restaurants?! [in reference..."

Fri, 08 Apr 2011 16:25:00 +0200

“The auto industry is $1.6 trillion, and you want to fuck with bars and restaurants?! [in reference to location based services]”

- Venture Capitalist Mark Suster via 11 Quotes about Entrepreneurs

Finally I’m getting my stuff on to Dribbble

Fri, 08 Apr 2011 15:55:58 +0200

Finally I’m getting my stuff on to Dribbble

That. Fucking. Simple.

Thu, 31 Mar 2011 17:39:44 +0200

So you’ve been running your site for 18 months, there’s no hockey stick in sight, you’re a little dry on ideas, what do you do? Chances are you look at a successful site and put their success down to some feature or other and you think “I got to have it”, you spend your spare time coding it up, you commit it to your site, tweet it, share to your 137 followers on facebook and … nada.

It’s so easy to fall into this trap, but there’s an easy way out. Swearing. Yeah, that’s fucking right. Actually, not some bout of turrets, but just put a swear word in the description of what your project does. For example:

Facebook.com - I just want to fucking see what my friends are doing

Flickr - I just want to share some fucking photos

ebay - I got all this shit that I want to get rid of but I can’t be arsed with a garage sale

Try it, feels good right. Now ask yourself if what you are working on right does nothing but enhance and strengthen to your new (private) tagline. No? Well stop fucking doing it!