2014 National Design Awards Winners

The National Design Awards program celebrates design as a vital humanistic tool in shaping the world, and seeks to increase national awareness of design by educating the public and promoting excellence, innovation, and lasting achievement.

Congratulations to the winners.

100 years of type in design

Interest in type, typefaces, typography and fonts has grown far beyond the graphic design community, yet few truly understand how and why these vital components of design are created and applied. This exhibition, organized by Monotype and designed by AIGA Medalist and Pentagram partner Abbott Miller for the AIGA National Design Center, celebrates 100 years of type as a constant influence in the world around us.

[Via Khoi Vinh]

Apple’s new retail chief gets $68 million in stock

Apple Inc granted its new retail chief 113,334 restricted stock units, the company said in a regulatory filing on Monday, valued at $68.1 million based on Monday’s closing share price.

Good people cost money. If Apple is convinced she is worth it, then pay up and let her do her job.

Samsung to appeal Apple verdict, wants damages reduced to zero

Samsung will ask the trial judge and an appeals court, if necessary, to reduce the damages awarded by the jury May 2 and yesterday to zero, John Quinn, a lawyer for the maker of Galaxy smartphones, said in a statement.

This slimy company is just unbelievable.

Zakk Wylde’s custom guitar recovered

A custom-made, $10,000 guitar stolen in March from heavy metal rocker Zakk Wylde’s tour bus outside The Chicago Theatre has been recovered after being sold to a Chicago pawn shop, Wylde’s manager confirmed Saturday.

I can’t imagine how devastating it would be to lose a guitar like that. I’m glad to hear Zakk got it back.

PDFpen Scan+ from Smile: Scan and OCR directly from your iPhone or iPad camera [Sponsor]

PDFpen Scan+ 1.3 offers a redesigned user interface to make scanning simpler. Cropping is fast and precise. Bulk scanning is quicker with post-process image editing. OCR and preview the results, then copy the text for use elsewhere. Share your scanned PDF, with embedded OCR text, by email or via your favorite cloud service. PDFpen Scan+ is universal for iPad and iPhone and is available on the App Store.

CSS shapes

Rectangles inside other rectangles: this is what our webpages have always been made of. We’ve long tried to break free from their restrictions by using CSS to create geometric shapes, but those shapes have never affected the content inside the shaped element, or how the element is seen by other elements on the page.

How Google forces Android phone makers to use its apps

The Mobile Application Distribution Agreement, or MADA, is a deal that applies to phone and tablet makers that want to use Android applications such as YouTube or Gmail. Among other things, the MADA requires phone makers that want one of the Google apps to install all of them.

It’s all or nothing.

New Relic

Many thanks to New Relic for sponsoring The Loop’s RSS this this week. At New Relic, we make it super easy to build faster and better performing mobile applications. Is using New Relic really that easy? Yes, yes it is. We know you’re busy coding (and reading The Loop), that’s why in just five minutes you can deploy New Relic and be looking at game-changing data. Our first-of-its-kind SaaS mobile app monitoring solution pinpoints problems quickly in your mobile app. Spend less time troubleshooting, get more positive reviews and focus your time where it matters – on developing new features and growing your user base. Use New Relic to track your app performance across devices and networks and get full end-to-end visibility. The people using your app will thank you for it.

Samsung’s viral payola

John Biggs:

If you’ve ever wondered how some videos get popular while others languish in obscurity (or, on the flipside, if you’d like to know how to get some sweet views), look no further than an individual Samsung hired to push their video of a little, walking (Samsung-branded) SD card to social. I’ll refrain from linking to the video as it’s not very exciting.

I really do hate that company.

Social writing

It would be difficult to choose just one quote from this article. I really enjoyed it.

Luxury retail design

You don’t need to pack a retail store from floor to ceiling to sell products. I really like the experience, as well.

Playing cards for developers

code:deck is a standard playing card deck sporting a stylish modern design. Each individual card features a code excerpt describing it in one of many programming languages.

These are just great.

Kaleidoscope 2.1

Kaleidoscope is one of the world’s best tools for spotting differences in images and text, and now it supports the ignoring of leading, trailing and line-ending whitespace too. Kaleidoscope integrates directly with Git, Subversion, Mercurial, P4, and Bazaar to fit perfectly in your workflow.

Recording myths

I usually keep my levels at -6db to -10db as well. It’s going to fluctuate during the recording, but I like to leave some headroom.

Sony slashes earnings outlook again

Sony Corp slashed its earnings guidance for the third time in a year on Thursday to barely 10 percent of its initial outlook as further losses from its PC exit cast a pall over its struggling electronics division.

Harsh.

Interesting Mac apps

James Dempsey rounds up a few apps that he really likes on the Mac. I hadn’t heard of a few of these.

Zuni Hotel in Kilkenny, Ireland

Every once in a while in my travels, I come across a place I just have to share with people. I spent the last week in Kilkenny, Ireland, much of it at the Zuni Hotel. This is a quaint place in the center of Kilkenny, close to all of the major sites, pubs and restaurants. The rooms were clean and modern, the restaurant superb, but the friendly, helpful staff really made my stay something to write about—they couldn’t do enough to try and make me comfortable and happy. If you ever go to Kilkenny, do yourself a favor and stay at Zuni.

Amazon hate

Gerry Conway:

This is a very big deal, because it strikes to the heart of what made Comixology’s app a near-perfect venue for discovering and falling in love with new comics, a venue creators and publishers have been searching for since the collapse of mainstream newsstand distribution in the late 1970s-early ’80s: it destroys the casual reader’s easy access to an impulse purchase. And that’s a terrible development for the future of comics.

There are so many good parts of this article I could have quoted.

What design means

Marcin Treder:

Design is not principally measured by a product’s visual appeal; its aesthetic qualities.

It’s also measured by how it was planned and articulated, how it was built, how it functions. It’s about the design’s ability to improve upon the current reality.

It seems to me that it’s the function part that many people often leave out. It matters, a lot.

Clear for iOS and Mac updated

Clear is the revolutionary to-do and reminders app that makes you more productive. It’s as easy to use as pen and paper, and once you start organizing your life with Clear you’ll wonder how you ever managed without it.

You can download the iOS and Mac versions today.

New Relic [Sponsor]

At New Relic, we make it super easy to build faster and better performing mobile applications. Is using New Relic really that easy? Yes, yes it is. We know you’re busy coding (and reading The Loop), that’s why in just five minutes you can deploy New Relic and be looking at game-changing data. Our first-of-its-kind SaaS mobile app monitoring solution pinpoints problems quickly in your mobile app. Spend less time troubleshooting, get more positive reviews and focus your time where it matters – on developing new features and growing your user base. Use New Relic to track your app performance across devices and networks and get full end-to-end visibility. The people using your app will thank you for it.

x2y 3.0

x2y is a beautifully simple aspect ratio calculator for the iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch. Built for designers and web developers who need to resize images and videos in code, x2y calculates dimensions for you automatically. Just choose the original aspect ratio or size, enter one of the new desired dimensions, and the missing dimension will be calculated instantly.

This is a cool app.