Published on | Prototyping: From UX to Front End — Medium Dakota Berg

I’m going to tell you a secret, I’ve never been much of a ‘reader’… a book reader that is. But yet I still find myself reading on my phone and laptop. Maybe it’s the convenience that I stumble across short reads on my devices that make me actually consume the content. I love books, but I don’t really have the time to sit down and read them generally. Because of this, I figured there were other people out there like me that might appreciate a list of helpful videos rather than a bunch of books to go read. The videos range from 12 minutes to an hour and a half.

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1) Helvetica

Helvetica is one of the most popular films about design of all time. It also happened to be the first “design-focused” film I had ever seen. It is an independent film directed by Gary Hustwit about graphic design, typography and visual culture. The film is named after the widely used swiss typeface Helvetica, which was designed by Swiss typeface designer Max Miedinger. The film looks at the global proliferation of Helvetica and how type affects our daily lives. The film includes interviews and discussions with renowned designers such as Massimo Vignelli, Stefan Sagmeister, Michael Bierut, David Carson and Pentagram’s Paula Scher.

<a href="https://medium.com/media/b6562b93e15c0a161da6f6859d4e0391/href">https://medium.com/media/b6562b93e15c0a161da6f6859d4e0391/href</a>

2) John Maeda: Designing for Simplicity

John Maeda is an American executive, designer and technologist. His work explores the area where business, design, and technology merge. He grew up in Seattle, but had the opposite introduction into design as me. He started in computer science before discovering design later in his life. John is highly intellectual, observant and creative. In this talk, he explores the human relationship between simplicity and complexity.

“Simplicity is about living life with more enjoyment and less pain.” — John Maeda

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3) Aaron Draplin: Logo Design Challenge

To start with, I’m a big fan of Aaron Draplin. I met him once at the Bartlett in Spokane and he’s a really rad guy. His book, Pretty Much Everything, was one of the only books that I’ve read cover to cover. I’ve always found Aaron’s personality and straight forwardness to be unique and it certainly caught my attention. In this Lynda video, he takes on a logo design challenge for a fake company and you get to see the progression happen. Watching Aaron’s process in this video, it helped me understand how to think about where to start on a logomark, its personality, its construction and its relation to the text.

“You’re sort of drunk on white space… rarely will you see it that way.” — Aaron Draplin

<a href="https://medium.com/media/2dd4ae01ecd56f25bb9b5609e0fccfc9/href">https://medium.com/media/2dd4ae01ecd56f25bb9b5609e0fccfc9/href</a>

4) Tony Fadell: The First Secret of Design is Noticing

Tony Fadell is a Lebanese-American inventor, designer, entrepreneur, and angel investor, known by many for his work at Apple on the iPod and Nest. During this TED Talk, Tony talks about noticing the little things at Apple. He points out the inspiration behind why most new products no longer need to be “charged before use”. Tony also discusses habituation and the need for designers to notice the little things and find solutions.

“It’s seeing the invisible problem, not just the obvious problem that’s important.” — Tony Fadell

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5) Margaret Gould Stewart: How Giant Websites Design For You

Margaret Gould Stewart is an influential designer at Facebook, previously at YouTube and Google. In this discussion, Margaret discusses how redesigning small elements at scale like Facebook’s ‘Like’ button can have a major impact on millions of people. Although hard to grasp, she says that the ‘Like’ button is seen over 22 billion times a day on over 7.5 million websites (this talk was in 2014) and it’s one of the most viewed design elements ever created. Margaret talks about how Facebook uses it’s vast amounts of data to make informed design decisions that create better experiences for it’s users. She points out that designing at scale is both art and science and because people care intensely about these products, you have to introduce change carefully. Although this seems obvious, you must know who you’re designing for and you have to design for where people are, not where you are.

“it’s not about you or your portfolio, it’s about the people that you’re designing for and how your work just might help them live better lives.” — Margaret Gould Stewart

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6) Steve Jobs: Commencement Address

This video is less design-focused than the previous ones, but features one of the best designers of our time. During his 2005 Stanford Commencement Address, Steve tells the story of his upbringing. He talks about his biological parents, his adopted parents and his own education. Steve talks about how he dropped out of college and chose to still drop in on courses that would later shape his design philosophy for Apple and Apple products. He also discusses love and loss.

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.” – Steve Jobs

<a href="https://medium.com/media/ee8b78f14fad57f5186f421962742e6b/href">https://medium.com/media/ee8b78f14fad57f5186f421962742e6b/href</a>

7) Joe Gebbia: How Airbnb Designs for Trust

In this talk Joe Gebbia, co-founder and Chief Product Officer of Airbnb, examines the creation, growth and small moments that made a big impact on the future of the travel industry. Did you know that when Airbnb first launched, it was just blowup airbeds in people’s living rooms? Joe talks about designing for trust and creating a culture where it felt safe to invite strangers to sleep in your most intimate spaces. He points out that they didn’t get the reputation features correct the first time and had to make small changes that had a big impact on the way people interacted with the Airbnb community.

“The only thing more personal than your phone is your home.” — Joe Gebbia

<a href="https://medium.com/media/a8d4b08e557b8dd8fcec1776ab2f28b0/href">https://medium.com/media/a8d4b08e557b8dd8fcec1776ab2f28b0/href</a>

8) Neri Oxman: Design At The Intersection of Technology and Biology

This TED Talk was my first introduction to Neri. Her and her students work with nature, biology and technology to create things like nothing else I’ve seen before. Neri shows some of her work with synthetic biology called microfluidics, where they explore making clothing for interplanetary exploration. She shows how they made a 100% natural and biodegradable plastic-like material made from Chitin, ground up shrimp shells. They researched how silkworms create complex, uniform cocoons from a single thread of silk and how their cocoon is directly influenced by the environment around them. Neri found that they were able to sustainably and humanely influence 6,500 silkworms to help spin a complex dome-like structure at an architectural scale.

“and that demands of us for the first time, that we mother nature.” — Neri Oxman

<a href="https://medium.com/media/8863ad4cae8d61538a215dcf221026cb/href">https://medium.com/media/8863ad4cae8d61538a215dcf221026cb/href</a>

9) RIP: A Remix Manifesto

This one is a little unexpected. This video covers the culture and legality surrounding remixing and mashing up music. Narrated by web activist Brett Gaylor, it follows musician Greg Gillis, better known as Girl Talk, a popular DJ and musician that mashes up 1,000s of the most popular songs of all time into new songs. Musicians like Girl Talk are constantly being pursued for using songs owned by labels. The labels want to control the music that their artists create by threatening to sue anybody that uses any portion of their library in their own work. Although music isn’t the same industry as design, I found the topic to be extremely interesting and complex.

“Culture always builds on the past.” —Brett Gaylor

About the author

Dakota is an entrepreneur & designer from the Pacific Northwest. Founder of DKTB Design, Partner at Black Hatchet & Lead Designer at SportsCastr.

9 Videos That Had An Impact On The Way I Think About Design was originally published in prototypr on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

9 Videos That Had An Impact On The Way I Think About Design

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