I can't stand design pomposity, but this is excellent. As a ~25 year Microsoft fan, who thinks the company is much smarter than it is given credit for, hire this guy already.
The Next Microsoft
161–170 of 355 posts
Re: The Next Microsoft
#162Earlier quoted context omitted.
What is so wrong with Windows? Seriously. It's not perfect, but I'm yet to find an OS that is.
The big one - forking is far too slow. Others - you can't use select(..) on files. Nasty file-locking model. No good remote filesystem solution out of the box (CIFS is slow and unstable) and the third party solutions are nasty. No native workspaces and the third party attempts are nasty. You can't reflect against the system API (all current mainstream OSs suffer from this). The API is particularly thick with legacy o…
I don't consider forking to be important, Windows is better off optimizing for multithreading instead. (You don't want to fork a heavily multithreaded process.)
The API is not that bad, especially if you implement some lightweight wrappers around it. It's capable of very high performance and does async IO better than Linux.
Re: The Next Microsoft
#163This design is Orwellian in nature. In the current age of global wars, international terrorism, financial turmoil, outsourced labor, awakening behemoths (China), increasing corruption, people fear the future. Look at Apple, classic 1960's space age retro. Look at Instagram. Cozy and nostalgic polaroid filters. If I designed for the future, I'd take hints from the past. A key difference is that in the past, different…
"A key difference is that in the past, different social groups had something to look forward to (emancipation and liberation), despite the looming threat of thermonuclear warfare. Nowadays? In the western hemisphere? It's all gloom and doom."
It was so awesome to be disempowered and enslaved. That's why gay people are so much happier than straight people today.
More seriously, though, there's as much optimism in activist circles today in America as there has been in the past. Especially if you hang out with the FOSS crowd, or in hacker spaces. 3D printing offers at least as many possibilities for liberation as any prior innovations.
As for your rosy view of the past, I recommend reading about the split between feminists and abolitionists over the 14th amendment. Or the British suffragette movement. Certainly no advertising appealed to such groups until they were already successful: for the most part they didn't have purchasing power, and those members that did had derived it from buying into their own oppression (by, for example, being housewives).
Advertisers have almost always, with few niche exceptions, sold a safe view of an ever-so-slightly better world.
Re: The Next Microsoft
#164Earlier quoted context omitted.
Upvoting a comment is an anonymous and nearly invisible action. The only way to show visible support for a comment is to reply to it.
What you call "visible support" is really only "polluting the comments". "Me too" posts just fill up the comments with text without substance. See also: * Feb 1983 First "Me too" post ( http://www.google.com/googlegroups/archive_announce_20.html )
I read everything leading to this.
Re: The Next Microsoft
#165Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not saying you're wrong, but none of those logos is nearly as simple as this one. For example, I wasn't taught a formula for calculating their area in elementary school. Are there any successful logos that really are this simple?
Yes, you're right, they're slighly more complicated. Hows about these: http://blog.iso50.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/windowslive... http://www.findthatlogo.com/wp-content/gallery/pepsi-logos/o... http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_DvlYtL1ReM0/TIHrinS6g5I/AAAAAAAACw... this is even better: http://www.logodesignconsultant.com/images/Memorable-simple-... this is probably the winner though: http://www.petergreenberg.com/wp-con…
all of those are significantly more complicated. you really can't argue that a shape made up of one very simple shape is only slightly less complicated than a shape made up of a couple/several simple shapes. by that logic, you could argue that every letter in the Latin alphabet is very simple; I'm sure everyone would agree that there is a significant difference in complexity between a rectangle and an uppercase 'F'.
Re: The Next Microsoft
#166I've been denied my window on the market with LoseThos. God is just. I'll take compensation in God swag. You guys are fucked.
God says...
returned out of the land of the Philistines: and she went forth to cry unto the king for her house and for her land.
8:4 And the king talked with Gehazi the servant of the man of God, saying, Tell me, I pray thee, all the great things that Elisha hath done.
8:5 And it came to pass, as he was telling the king how he had restored a dead body to life, that, behold, the woman, whose son he had restored to life, cried to the king for her house and for her land. And Gehazi said, My lord, O king, this is the woman, and this is her son, whom Elisha restored to life.
8:6 And when the king asked the woman, she told him. So the king appointed unto her a certain officer, saying, Restore all that was hers, and all the fruits of the field since the day that she left the land, even until now.
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God says... no_way_dude far_out_man recipe now_that_I_think_about_it think_you_could_do_better a_flag_on_that_play One_finger_salute you_shouldn't_have I_was_just_thinking Shhh Boo crazy ghastly commanded debt wonderful busybody no_more homo thank_you_very_much whale comedy by_the_way duck_the_shoe high_mucky_muck oil how_about_those_yankees why_is_it adultery tattle_tale place ba_ha high_mucky_muck Ivy_league comedy sex you_think_I'm_joking Dad Oh_really fool not_a_chance_in_hell strip I'm_the_boss no_you_cant you_talkin'_to_me youre_lucky whoop_there_it_is are_you_insane goods fake bad_ol_puddytat run_away Okilydokily hold_on_a_minute youre_welcome I'm_not_dead_yet doh basket_case so_let_it_be_done beep_beep cursing
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God says...
8:2 And the king took off his ring, which he had taken from Haman, and gave it unto Mordecai. And Esther set Mordecai over the house of Haman.
8:3 And Esther spake yet again before the king, and fell down at his feet, and besought him with tears to put away the mischief of Haman the Agagite, and his device that he had devised against the Jews.
8:4 Then the king held out the golden sceptre toward Esther. So Esther arose, and stood before the king, 8:5 And said, If it please the king, and if I have favour in his sight, and the thing seem right before the king, and I be pleasing in his eyes, let it be written to reverse the letters devised by Haman the son of Hammedatha the Agagite, which he wrote to destroy the Jews which are in all the king's provinces: 8:6 For how can I endure to see the evil that shall come unto my people? or how can I endure to see the destruction of my kindred? 8:7 Then the king Ahasuerus said unto Esther the queen and to Mordecai the Jew, Behold, I have given Esther the house of Haman, and him they have hanged upon the gallows, because he laid his hand upon the Jews.
Re: The Next Microsoft
#167So, I'm not a huge fan, but definitely an interesting attempt. Some commentary, because why not:
- As others have noted, the "moonshot" imagery is a good idea and manages to seem classic and futuristic at the same time.
- The wordmark is a little cliche (lowercase sans wooo), but it looks okay. I like the beveled foot of the t, which provides echoes of the slanted logo, but feel like it's just an afterthought right now. I wonder what it might have looked like with a few more bevels.
- The slate shape is nice, but it's not an uncommon shape. In order to avoid confusion you're going to need something to make it extremely recognizable. A strong color identity will help a lot here. Your system of positioning the log above the top-left corner of text also helps, but only if there's text around. You know you will have succeeded when the demo image of the woman in the orange jacket is unquestionably your logo and not a random part of the jacket design (which it could be mistaken for at the moment).
- The derived logos (Windows, Office) are a little confusing. Why is windows two slates? Why are the slates fighting in Office? Why doesn't metro have any slates / why is it even up there with Windows and Office? To create a family of logos you actually need a sense of "family" -- this just feels like the first two things that popped into your head.
- It's still a little unclear whether the slate logo is also Microsoft's logo, or whether the corporation itself will just use the new wordmark. Why is the slate logo used on the Windows Phone? Shouldn't it be double-slates?
- Maybe it's just my screen, but your color palletes for metro don't look that great. Dark blue on black is hard to overcome; the teal is too light compared to the white text; the black theme is hard to distinguish from the black background.
- I really, really like the combination of screen reflection and slate logo that you see in the ad for the Nokia phone. You see those fake reflections on any ad for a device with a glass screen. I think you could turn that into an enduring visual language for ads.
Re: The Next Microsoft
#168Dear everybody, Are you paying attention? This is how you build a portfolio. Did microsoft ask this person to do this? No. But he did it, and it's brilliant, and now he can put it in his portfolio under "speculative work". And then he gets a job doing this. I can't tell you how many people I talk to (I live in a college town, and frequently go to bars and strike up conversations with people) who just finished, or are…
This can go either way. Remember when dcurtis did a unsolicited spec redesign for the American Airlines website? We here at HN tore him a new one (justifiably so, it ignored so many critical aspects of the business, and came off as entirely impractical). When you do something like this, you better be sure you nail every single angle of it. FWIW, I normally hate spec redesigns - they're usually positioned in a pompous…
Nobody cares what HN thinks.
Re: The Next Microsoft
#169So, I'm not a huge fan, but definitely an interesting attempt. Some commentary, because why not: - As others have noted, the "moonshot" imagery is a good idea and manages to seem classic and futuristic at the same time. - The wordmark is a little cliche (lowercase sans wooo), but it looks okay. I like the beveled foot of the t, which provides echoes of the slanted logo, but feel like it's just an afterthought right n…
"The derived logos (Windows, Office) are a little confusing. Why is windows two slates? Why are the slates fighting in Office?"
Apparently you missed what I thought were some pretty awesome visual metaphors:
* "Why is windows two slates?" there are two of them, hence Windows plural
* "Why are the slates fighting in Office?" They look like the walls of an office (the transparency helps with the 3D illusion)
Re: The Next Microsoft
#170So, I'm not a huge fan, but definitely an interesting attempt. Some commentary, because why not: - As others have noted, the "moonshot" imagery is a good idea and manages to seem classic and futuristic at the same time. - The wordmark is a little cliche (lowercase sans wooo), but it looks okay. I like the beveled foot of the t, which provides echoes of the slanted logo, but feel like it's just an afterthought right n…
Regarding your confusion over the logo brands (which I shared in), I think some of the choices were made to distance Surface and Windows Phone from the Windows brand.
This is why in this concept, Windows Phone is "surface phone", and it uses a simple slate icon rather than a double slate that would refer to the Windows brand. At least that's what I got out of it. Still a little confused.
EDIT: I think this image might clear it up: http://www.minimallyminimal.com/storage/post-images/microsof...
It appears that the single slate logo is Surface, the double slate logo is Windows, and the intersecting slates are Office.