Minimally Minimal

> I will never understand why Google has never come up with a viable marketing strategy for Android, to be fashionable in its own different way.

Disclaimer: ex-Google programmer, fine arts backgrounds.

Google's not really the place cool and edge art students want to go. It pays well, but most who care about design would take a paycut to work at Apple. If compensation was equal, there's a hundred other companies art students would rather work at. Lego, Ikea, Dyson. Much like the rest of Google's bureaucracies, the designers are Google are career designers and not necessarily students of the arts.

I feel like during the Marissa Meyer era Google had the opportunity to attract design talent. Now it's just a megacorp with MBAs and McKinsey style management. I remember during the early 2010s reading an article about how someone created a portfolio of stocks based on companies that innovated on UI designer and this outperformed the indices. At the time, it felt like an obvious choice for Google to included in this investment hypothesis. Imagine investing in IBM for their design.

What's interesting is that Microsoft managed to stay relevant. For instance, the person leading the design of the Xbox One was famed for running a blog on minimal industrial design: http://www.minimallyminimal.com/. It seemed like an "outside hire" in the sense that it was the tech industry hiring someone for their design talent (as opposed to years of experience as a tech designer), straight out of…

I'm glad all the MSFT research initiatives are getting attention and/or the development stage. There's so much new amazing things to make the future so shiny and great.

As Steve Jobs pointed out, MSFT's overall design and communications have and are still... astoundingly nerdy. Yet this new MSFT, one that notes they made something with WUV!, is such a departure from Micro$oft of yore.

This is almost... dare I say, embryonic of an earnest attempt at something new? Almost as if this new MSFT is a startup of a corporation in a landscape dominated by the most valuable corporation on earth (AAPL) and the most useful corporation on earth (GOOG) and the most cutthroat corporation on earth (AMZN).

I imagine in another year or two there will be a major overhaul of Microsoft's design process to bring about cohesion. I'm hoping the likes of hiring Andrew Kim (http://www.minimallyminimal.com/blog/2012/7/3/the-next-microsoft.html) and other young talents will greatly influence that as it is sorely needed, much like how Google invested much into Matías Duarte and Material design.

Wow, imagine that. When the old question was can Apple be Google faster than Google can be Apple and now it's can Microsoft be Google faster?

Yes, you might be right about the volume. I was looking at the buttons here [1] but the volume one looked more like a round push button than a dial. I guess it could be a dial

As to the ring around the number, well I'm more confused going back and looking at it again. Sometimes, like [2] it's a single colour, and others, like [3] it's divided into multiple segments. 12/14mph is slow, so I'd expect to see the ring extend not as far as it does. I'd expect it to extend that far around for speeds like 70mph

Another thought - the little mpg/regen graph is prominent but largely useless. However, if speed and acceleration were added it could be a very useful tool in working out which driving conditions give best economy

[1] http://www.minimallyminimal.com/storage/post-images/doko/d13.jpg?__SQUARESPACE_CACHEVERSION=1342992715606

[2] http://www.minimallyminimal.com/storage/post-images/doko/f07.jpg?__SQUARESPACE_CACHEVERSION=1342999131266

[3] http://www.minimallyminimal.com/storage/post-images/doko/d10.jpg?__SQUARESPACE_CACHEVERSION=1342992664587

How to market your design firm / you as a designer:

a) Be a good designer.

b) Passionately redesign objects that people use every day. Kim did cell phones, Coca-Cola bottles and voting ballots before ringing the "all of the internet" bell w/his Windows redesign (1).

c) Show people the work and fire it off to blogs along with a pre-baked headline "15 year old redesigns beautiful flip phone".

I remember watching 37signals employ this exact strategy years ago before they found their SAAS niche redesigning "a bank", FedEx, and others.

In fact their initial SAAS audience grew largely out of the design community that followed their blog.

Dustin Curtis's redesign of American Airlines is another fun example (3)

(1) http://www.minimallyminimal.com/2010/7/11/htc-1.html http://www.minimallyminimal.com/2010/3/15/ecocoke.html
http://www.minimallyminimal.com/blog/america-elect

(2) http://37signals.com/better.php

(3) http://dustincurtis.com/dear_american_airlines.html

What I particularly hate about MS branding right now is those stupid, unnecessary (TM) and (R)'s that follow names of their products... Just look at this picture for God's sake: http://www.minimallyminimal.com/storage/post-images/microsoft/m19.jpg?__SQUARESPACE_CACHEVERSION=1341179900853 or head over to their website: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/default.aspx

It's ridiculous. So "Windows" is a registered trademark of Microsoft. Big deal, but why put it after every single mentioning of the name?! Doesn't it bother you ( = MS marketing guys) to see little dots (they're so little that you can't even say if they're (tm) or (r)'s!) after product names? Isn't it ugly in your opinions?

Apple doesn't do it. Google doesn't either. Oracle does it too, however. Congrats, MS; you're as uncool as a database company.

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/microsoft/m10.jpg?__SQUARESPACE_CACHEVERSION=1341179600868

It appears that the single slate logo is Surface, the double slate logo is Windows, and the intersecting slates are Office.