This link came through my twitter feed this morning: http://hackdesign.org/
The offer is this:
Receive a design lesson in your inbox each week, hand crafted by a design pro. Learn at your own pace, and apply it to your real life work – no fake projects here.
Design is an area that’s like music: everyone in the world thinks that they’re an expert just by the sheer dint of their existence, and almost everyone has no idea what they’re talking about or has any real basis for making the value judgements that they spout off. Perhaps you’ve had a client like that at one point.
The list of designers that are providing instruction have some very heavy credentials, and I’ve signed up, hoping to learn something here.
The first lesson is a pointer to watch the recent documentary “Objectified,” which talks about issues in product design and interviews most of the obvious people (David Kelley, Dieter Rams, Jonathan Ives, Karim Rashid). Product design is an area that I’ve always been aware of — my dad worked as a mechanical engineer his whole career, designing things like GE’s ‘Great Awakenings’ clock radio in the 80s:
(photo from http://www.inherentmirth.com/index.php/ge-great-awakenings-and-sony)
When I was a kid, he would bring home these awesome transparent prototypes and let me play with them for a few weeks, maybe assuming that if a kid could figure them out, then anyone could.
I’m looking forward to receiving the upcoming lessons from this. Do check it out.
