"“Some people thrive on clutter and mess and other people can’t stand it,” says designer Massimo Vignelli in his Italian accent, still thick even after several decades of living in New York. “I like to start the day fresh. If I start the day with things left over, it’s like starting dinner with leftovers — it kills your appetite.” So, even though during a working day, detritus may build up on his desk’s surface, at the end of each day Vignelli clears it away leaving only his laptop, mouse, black Tizio lamp and some white paper and a pencil to calmly greet him the next morning."

"I lay part of the blame squarely at the feet of the technical book publishing industry:

1. Most programming books suck. The barrier to being a book author, as near as I can tell, is virtually nonexistent. The signal to noise of book publishing is arguably not a heck of a lot better than what you'll find on the wilds of the internet. Of the hundreds of programming books released every year, perhaps two are three are truly worth the time investment.
2. Programming books sold by weight, not by volume. There seems to be an inverse relationship between the size of a programming book and its quality. The bigger the book, somehow, the less useful information it will contain. What is the point of these giant wanna-be reference tomes? How do you find anything in it, much less lift the damn things?
3. Quick-fix programming books oriented towards novices. I have nothing against novices entering the programming field. But I continue to believe the "Learn [Insert Language Here] in 24 hours!" variety of books are doing our profession a disservice. The monomaniacal focus on right now and the fastest, easiest possible way to do things leads beginners down the wrong path – or as I like to call it, "PHP". I kid! I kid!
4. Programming book pornography. The idea that having a pile of thick, important-looking programming books sitting on your shelf, largely unread, will somehow make you a better programmer. As David Poole once related to me in email, "I'd never get to do that in real life" seems to be the theme of the programming book porn pile. This is why I considered, and rejected, buying Knuth's Art of Computer Programming. Try to purchase practical books you'll actually read, and more importantly, put into action."

"There are objects that are timeless in design. You can’t improve much upon simple tools like a spoon or a compass. Brands can do this too—Dieter Rams designs for Braun fit in almost any decade and it is hard to imagine much by Muji looking dated. But a digital device is not an alarm clock or a shelving unit. It will grow obsolete very quickly. Which makes the atemporal look of electronics by Apple more uncanny, more rarefied. The personal computer as Holly Golightly's little black dress... The iPhone in particular seems born out of years of science fiction fantasies of handheld gadgets with boundless capabilities. It appears to have arrived not from China, but from just a few years ahead of time. A little piece of the future we were lucky enough to receive early... There are two prevailing science fictional design aesthetics. One is a worn, rusty, lived-in-looking future. It is the junkyards in Philip K Dick novels and the dust collecting on Star Wars flight control interfaces. Then, there’s the world of tomorrow imagined as a sterile place of white and translucent surfaces... A willingness to try Apple products at all suggests appreciation for, if not commitment to its value of simplicity over ornamentation. Design asceticism was a way of life for the company’s founder... To return the favor, some Apple consumers practice a kind of Western interpretation of Shintoism, valuing and caring for the products as if they were living creatures. They respect the objects — their painstaking craftsmanship, and the promise of a better, less dirty, less vapid world —by keeping them in just-unboxed condition."

"How a small, unremarkable country came to dominate the world of beermaking."

"Presenting here a beginning of my recently founded collection of typographic mastery covering 5 countries for now (Austria, Italy, Romania, France & Hungary)"

"The final conversation was about microclimates. Master Nishioka was describing to me how important it was to match a tree to its structural use in the building, based on where on the hillside it grew. "Valley trees are too wet for most uses, trees at the top of the hill sprout a lot of branches because they don't have to compete and are very knotty, but trees from the middle slopes compete with others and have long trunks with branches clustered toward their crowns. Those make the best beams, because they're straight and fairly free of knots." He went on to describe how trees from the north face differ from those found on the south, and so on."

A series about people and their passions.

"Part One of an ongoing series that documents our search for the ultimate tastemakers. We begin in Venice, California over a coffee grinder…"