Sage with Design

 Adobe Firefly Text to Image had a boost in image quality, image details, customizable settings and shareability with Creative Cloud apps. Here's a list of everything new and upcoming with Adobe Firefly from today's, October 10th, 2023, Adobe MAX conference. Text to image Higher quality More accurate, high-frequency details, better colors, better dynamic range and more realistic people.  Longer prompts Be more detailed and specific with what you want. More knowledgeable Recognizes more symbols and real world landmarks. Auto stylizing Automagically selects appropriate stylizing settings based on your prompt. Generative match Insert your photo as a style reference for a text-generated image. Photo Settings Change aperture, shutter speed and field of view of a generated photo. Prompt suggestions Offers to expand your prompt with detailed ideas. Negative prompts Specify up to 100 attributes to avoid certain colors, shapes and other details. Save to cloud Save to Creative Cloud Lib...

  Apple Vision Pro digital iPad drawing in Procreate in 2023. Persistence is a skill and a choice. Anyone can get better at drawing so long as you persist and think critically. Don't let anyone ever tell you it's easy. Pinning up bad drawings in front of classmates and teachers never feels good, even when you distance yourself from your ego. I was terrible at drawing for a long time, particularly before getting into design college. I even worried that I wouldn't be good enough at drawing to be a good designer. It wasn't until my second year in school where I felt like I was improving. Of course, I'm still not where I want to be. Leaning on digital media makes it easier, but I feel it's cheating compared to pen and paper. I do throw lines instead of relying on line assist which helps to keep me thinking about where each line is going, as if I were drawing on paper. More than anything, the more frequently I draw, the more improvement there is. Persistence beats mo...

Image credit: drobotdean on Freepik No matter how well you oil and heat your pan, the first pancake is never as good as the second or third one.  That doesn't prevent you from making pancakes, you expect the first one to be a dud.  The role of first pancake is to show you what to do next.  Do you adjust the heat? Add more oil? Use the same amount of batter? Flip it sooner? There are people who can make a perfect first pancake, but how common is this? Like the designer who sketches a beautiful concept without needing revisions. The actor who gives the performance of a lifetime in a single take. The orator who can move a crowd with impromptu words.  No doubt, it wasn't their first time ever drawing, performing or speaking. It's rare to get it right the first time. There's always experience behind the ones who do.  Try, then make it better.

  Dieter Rams' 10 Principles of Good Design are a good place to start in a broad sense. “Everything interacts with, and is dependent on, other things. We must think more thoroughly about what we are doing, how we are doing it and why we are doing it.” -Dieter Rams in Rams , 2018 Rams' influence is remarkable and his principles are considered design dogma. Anyone who went to a product design school has studied them already, but it never hurts to brush up on fundamentals. Good design… is innovative. Staying close to innovative technology is often thought of first. But innovation happens when someone introduces a new method or idea. The technology needed to make an  electric car was available for 100 years before they were presented in innovative ways by Toyota and Tesla. makes a product useful. Perhaps the greatest differentiator between art and design. Art has potential to be useful, for design it is mandatory.  is aesthetic. How something looks can change how we feel ...

Image credit: Freepik 2018 was without a doubt the year of the electric scooter. Bird started this trend. It was a unicorn among unicorns, being the first company to reach a $1 billion evaluation in a year. It took off because they're a sustainable and cheap way for people to get around town faster. They're as convenient and fun as they are annoying and dangerous. Some people even destroy them .  I used e-scooters a few times when I was running late for class in college. It seemed a little dangerous but that's part of the fun. That following year on campus, I saw someone run into an automatic car barrier gate on an e-scooter and was flown from it. Aside from scraping up his hands and arm, he was fine. So was the scooter. There are a lot of horror stories and lawsuits over them.  Despite all this, the e-scooter industry keeps growing. Maybe there are opportunities to make them safer with low-profile helmets, haptic feedback in the handles or something else to keep riders sa...

Image credit: zinkevych on Freepik If you can't tell whether to push or pull to open a door, it's called a Norman Door. Norman Door = Bad Design The term was coined by a renowned designer, Don Norman, who wrote a linchpin book in the design world, "The Design of Every Day Things." Vertical handles on either side of a door are the common culprit. They may look aesthetically good but they're confusing to use correctly the first time. "The design of a door should indicate how to work it without any need for signs, certainly without any need for trial and error." -Don Norman Unintuitive design isn't limited to doors.  USBs never go in the correct way on the first attempt. My iPad Pro doesn't power off by holding down the power button. I need to hold the power button and a volume button. A row of identical light switches is impossible to figure out until you try each one.  There are a plethora of examples out there. I'm sure you have one in mind. ...

  Image credit: Freepik I don't know a world without personal computers.  I was born in 1995, right at the cusp between Gen Y and Gen Z. The same year Microsoft changed how people interact with software with the Windows 95 operating system. It was only a few years prior to the iMac G3, which revolutionized the way we interact with computers.  Technology has evolved rapidly since then. Different generations grow up with different types of exposure to tech which influences their expectations of electronics.  Generational changes are not easy to argue because there are so many exceptions. Even finding consistent timespans of each generation is difficult. These differences really are a reflection of technological advancements, cultural values, world events and life experiences. This is only a glimpse of info through a product design lens. Gen X (The Forgotten Generation, 1965-1979) may have the best perspective on life before and after the internet. They had to adapt to...

Image credit: Freepik There's no other option. Maybe you keep ideas to yourself because you don't want to appear naïve.  You can't afford to keep creative ideas to yourself. We all have creative ideas and we all have potential to create meaning. A complicated LEGO build always begins with a single block. Find your block, go all in and find others like you. All four of a horses feet make the same sound. Powerful change is only possible when we work together and put all our abilities to use.

Image credit: rawpixel.com on Freepik It's easy to get stuck in the analysis-paralysis cycle. We want to make sure a design is perfect before shipping it, but no product has ever been perfect. Even revolutionary universal designs have pain points.  Wheelchairs come close to perfection, but it can be difficult for anyone to propel themselves in a wheelchair.  Accessible restrooms can be poorly maintained or break down. Premium hearing aids still screech feedback or run out of battery at inopportune times. The best way to learn what works and what doesn't is to ship your design and to get feedback again and again. Start small, put yourself out there and learn to fail. "Perfect is the enemy of good," because good is the ally of progress.

Image credit: jannoon028 on Freepik "Step, Jump, Leap" can be a useful way to develop new and innovative ideas. It's a flexible innovation management framework that uses a 3-step iteration process. It follows the idea that the best way to come up with a great idea is to start small and to build on larger and more ambitious jumps and leaps to discovery. Step: Take a small step away from an existing solution on the market or an idea concept. This creates iterations that develop through small deviations. Materials and form should be similar to the original idea. Jump: Think outside the box, but core elements of an existing idea remain intact. Appeal to the same or a similar market without deviating from the problem you're trying to solve. Form is different, function is similar. Leap: Brainstorm radical ideas that could appeal to indirect markets and may not resemble the original idea. Your ultimate solution may not be a leap, but you may generate inspirational forms a...