1. Launchbar
I used to be a big point-and-click guy but years of AutoCad command line shortcuts cured me of that habit. now, if there’s a way to do something as a keyboard shortcut, I’ll learn it. I have elaborate keystrokes for all of my apps. Launchbar is an app that allows you to do everything else (outside of apps) with keyboard shortcuts. This is one of those apps that’s difficult to explain, but people consistently ask “how did you do that so fast?” My answer: Launchbar. I can invoke the shortcut with command-space, and in a few keystokes open recent documents, search email, search google or wikipedia, resize a folder of images and send them; the possibilities are endless.

2. TextWrangler
Textwrangler is the free little brother to BBedit, which anyone who writes code will tell you is the best text editor. I only know enough code to be dangerous, but occasionally I need to roll up my sleeves and fix an HTML or CSS file. TW has a great search and replace function with hidden characters (like tabs, spaces and returns) and wildcards, but it also will open two documents side-by-side and compare the lines that have changed, allowing you to migrate changes either direction. It is plain-text only, but colors your text depending on the code that it recognizes. Bonus, it has FTP built in, so you can make changes to web code live.

3. Chronosync
Macs have a built-in backup program, called “time machine”, which works if you don’t care about filling a huge hard drive with 10 old versions of every file you create. I wanted smarter backups, with versioning for only certain file types (like photoshop files), which I can program and control, so I use Chronosync. It is programmed to recognize when I have plugged in my backup drive and run a certain style of backup, ignoring filetypes, or specific files that I have told it to. It can also be scheduled to do regular backups overnight, when I’m not trying to access the files themselves.

4. Chicken (of the VNC)
I live a life of multiple computers, it’s just the way it is, and when I need to quickly change a setting, or update the software on the “media center” computer, I use Chicken of the VNC. It’s simple and inelegant, but free.

5. Shiftit
Windows Vista forward has allowed you to snap windows to the side of the screen, but there is no such functionality for Mac. When you need to compare to web pages side-by-side in split screen, or keep your finder windows tamed, Shiftit does the trick. There are many paid programs out there, but this is a very simple app hosted on Google Code.

6. Day One
I’m not a todo list fan, and I see them causing more stress than they reduce. I see the whole GTD craze as a huge time-suck. Whatever happened to “Just-Do-It”; don’t “write it down, file it, tag it, cross-reference it and then do it”. That being said, I like looking back at the end of the day to review what I have accomplished. This is a more powerful motivator for me, because successes begat successes, or some such proverb. DayOne is a simple journal that syncs with my phone (I wrote this article on the phone via DayOne)

7. Teleport
This is one of those truly magical pieces of software that you have to see to believe. I use my laptop next to the desktop in the studio, and keep most communications, like email on the laptop. When I’m parked in front of the desktop, I can simply slide my mouse to across the screen and suddenly I’m controlling my laptop, without switching. I can also drag files from one desktop to the other… neat!

8. Renamer4Mac
Renamer is a simple app that can change the names of a list of files. It can add prefixes, suffixes, renumber, search and replace. I recently had to rename over 4000 images to a numbered list with a prefix for a stop-motion project. Renamer performed the task in about 10 seconds.

9. Notational Velocity
As previously stated, I’m not a big todo list fan, but sometimes you need to make a list, or a note. I’m now keeping those snippets in Notational Velocity which quickly searches for topics, and if it doesn’t find the search, it will create a new note It will also sync the files with…

10. Dropbox
Many of these little apps use Dropbox to make them more functional. I use the free service to keep my current projects up-to-date regardless of which computer I’m using. The best part of Dropbox, is that it’s a simple folder that resides on your computer, and syncs in the background. I don’t have to think about it, but if I end up running to a client’s office, I know the file I have on my laptop is the most current. It also makes sharing large files a breeze.

Honourable Mentions
These aren’t free, or even cheap, but I tend to use them everyday.

11. Leap/Fresh/Deep
I have a veritable boatload of digital assets, and I need to search them visually and quickly, to get a project done. Adobe Bridge provides a similar function, but I find that Leap works better with all of the file types I need, wether CAD, vector, photoshop, fonts, or 3D models. I can quickly drill down to find the inspiration, or file I’m looking for. Deep searches for files by color, and Fresh keeps a list of recent files close at hand.

12. Adobe Acrobat
Acrobat makes it possible for me to function with clients all over the world. Different languages, different software, different computers – this would be a nightmare if PDF wasn’t a universal file format. I often request PDF files, in leu of CAD files of various versions and types, allowing me to start working without sifting through complicated layer structures and drawing styles.

#1 Mae West in “She Done Him Wrong” 1933
Technically, this isn’t the “Wild West”, but you can’t do a list like this without including at least one Mae West movie. This is a short film that is the first to feature her famous: “Why don’t you come up and see me sometime?”

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#2 Allyn McLerie (and Dick Wesson) in “Calamity Jane” 1953

Here’s a two-for-one! First you have Francis Fryer (Wesson) impersonating a woman in order to keep the men of the saloon entertained.

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#2.1 Later in the same film, you have Katie Brown(McLerie) impersonating Adelaide Adams to the dudes in Deadwood, South Dakota.

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#3 Dorothy Provine in “The Great Race” 1965

Again, not a Western per se, but the race makes an unexpected extended stay in the frontier when the car breaks down, and we get to see this raucous number.

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#4 Debby Reynolds in “The Unsinkable Molly Brown” 1964
Here’s Molly, with no seductive schooling, attempting to learn a thing-er-two from a true lady.

#5 Angela Lansbury
Before Murder She Wrote ruined her career, Mrs. Lansbury apparently did a bunch of other stuff. She was briefly considered a looker – that is, before she was typecast as America’s distant aunt. I don’t think she’s singing here, though.

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#6 Madeline Kahn in “Blazing Saddles” 1974

This is the best and my favorite, because it’s just a great movie. Here Lily Von Schtupp is sending up the greatest saloon performer of them all.

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#7 Marlene Dietrich in “Destry Rides Again” 1939

And here she is, Queen of the saloon singers, even though most of her films are actually in some kind of jazz club, or cabaret. This is what get’s parodied.

I think Ice would’ve been an off-the-hook CAD operator. Those window details would be perfect, no red-marks, no need to “Check Yo Sill, Before You Wreck Yo Sill”. (see what I did there?)

But honestly, isn’t this the kind of impact every architect aspires to?

The concept of “time” becomes the greatest wedge between the two professions, and there are four distinct ways in which this becomes clear. Working back from the completed project, to the design process itself, I will attempt to elucidate the differences.

The time of impact (advantage architects)

Production designers know that their work is fleeting. For the stage, anything above one-hundred performances of a Broadway show is considered not only respectable, but lucky. For film and television, few works are remembered, and fewer are remembered for their design. Production designers are notoriously terrible at archiving their ideas, because the final product is so transient.

Architects deal in permanence. They shape communities and generations. Their ideas are important and debated in the public realm, and get published in books and discussed for centuries.

The time of observation (advantage production designers)

Production designers have a captive audience for an hour or more. Details get noticed by the audience, trim is discussed and a basket can make the difference between the success or failure of a project. If a production is bad, or boring, the design becomes even more important because the audience has nothing to do but to observe the details.

Architects are lucky if they get their work published in a book where the public is forced to stop and peruse the details. Otherwise, our built environment is something that we pass through with barely a nod of recognition as to how it affects our lives. We wander along sidewalks, rarely looking up at the beautiful design around us. The impact is measured in minutes, if not seconds.

The time of design (advantage architects)

Production designers appreciate decay. They’re not as interested in how something looked when it was new, but how it looks after decades, or centuries of humanity and nature have taken their toll on the design. The importance of line becomes subverted as edges round-off and erode. The importance of color and texture are less pronounced as things begin to patina, rust, and generally dissolve deeper into earthen tones.

Architects have the benefit of using the purist and simplest fundamentals of design to convey their strongest ideas. Sharp, strong lines, clean, bright surfaces, and perfect forms help convey their ideas, and the shiny, newness of the building is a beacon to the principles underlying the design decisions.

The time of ideas (advantage production designers)

Architects measure their projects in years. You may think that this is an advantage, but it is not. All of this extra time on projects creates complacency. Design decisions in architecture are second-guessed frequently, simply because there is more time to question one’s choices. Architects fret over their decisions, even though their initial responses are often the truest and most succinct.

Production designer measure their projects in weeks. The pace of the business is far more frenetic. On stage and film sets, choices must be made rapidly, and designers must rely on their instincts, training and experience. This forces production designers to amass an enormous mental and physical research library to pull from, filled with historical details and a bag of design tricks.

Time, the fourth dimension, becomes more important than any other dimension in the comparison. Ultimately, the advantages work out to be a tie, and that’s why I love both production design and architecture. Each vocation is a vacation from the other when I need it, so long as I am able to shift my perception of time when working in each discipline. My architecture clients appreciate that I’m able to generate ideas and concepts much faster due to my experience in stage and film. My entertainment clients often note that my ideas are more thoughtful, subtle, clean and structural, because of my experience in architecture.

Dystopia dys·to·pi·a/disˈtōpēə/
Noun:

An imagined place or state in which everything is unpleasant or bad, typically a totalitarian or environmentally degraded one.

I fear for the future of our built environment. Not because of neglect, but because of a lack of design optimism.

In one of my recent classes, I asked groups of students students to compile a triptych of a landscape in the past present and future. The goal of this project was to develop their sense of collaborative perspective, being able to subvert their individual styles for the overall objective of the team.

To an alarming degree, the third panels, or “future panels”, are filled with despair and discord. These panels show a world of derelict buildings, vacant streets, landfills and trash-ridden seas. Several of them depict alien invasions and the enslavement of the human race. Only 10% of my students envisioned a future of promise and harmony.

This is a western psychological problem; one that my generation thought was caused by cold war propaganda, but has nevertheless continued into the minds of future designers. Where are the possibilities inherent in the novels of H.G. Wells or the universal simplicity of Arthur C. Clark?

Perhaps these young designers have yet to see the bottom, enabling them to look up to a new future. This was the case after the great Chicago fire, when designers had nothing to lose, a clean canvas and a sense of urgency. Similarly, after the great depression and subsequent world war, when designers were ready to forge a new modernist aesthetic.

How can we regain our optimism in the future? I think we can start by reversing our course, and tuning out, turning off, and dropping in. Too much stimulus, and not enough synthesis, keeps us encumbered by the limits of our perceptions. Our understanding of how the universe works, at a quantum level, is just starting to take shape, and how will we shape our world from this new building block?

My Dad was a mechanical engineer. He contributed his unrecognized skills to Aerospace and Industry on far flung projects, just as many unsung men and women did during the cold war; mankind’s great technological race toward oblivion. He fostered in me a desire to create, design and detail things, and shape the world around me with deliberation and forethought. I learned to draw, and detail objects, not as they were, but as they could be.

He was left without the use of his index finger on his left hand, his drawing hand. This would be a minor impediment at his work, which had long been using CAD workstations, and my dad simply adapted to typing terminal commands and coordinates without the use of a left index finger. At home, however, the drafting board sat idle, save for a few of my doodles and projects, and dad was itching to use this as an excuse to introduce a new appliance to our household.

Meanwhile, in school, I had been selected in school to be hurried off to the computer room for several hours a day to learn basic programming languages on a handful of Apple ][ computers with green or gold monochrome screens. We made the computers do some fun things, but my imagination would soon drift off toward art class. I understood that this was the future, but the future seemed dull and boring, if this was the visual interactions I would be forced to endure with technology. Who could’ve foreseen that my livelihood would owe so much to the ability of such devices to create and render visuals designs.

Ours came in a box, not a bag, as some floor models had shown, and when he set it up and turned it on, our family was huddled around this beige box, the grey screen glowed and it went “bwong” as he flipped the toggle switch on the back.
This was something new, it was… Macintosh, and it would change my life’s trajectory in ways I can still hardly imagine. He added a handful of software disks to his purchase, including visicalc and some kind of typing application. The first software that you used, as per its instructions, would be the tutorial on how to use this “mouse” to move an “arrow” around the screen. We followed the tutorial and learned a new way of interacting with a computer, a paradigm that I would cling to until 4 years ago, when I got my first iPhone.

Two of the software titles that sent me off in a new direction were MacDraft and MacPaint. I would spend hours creating pixel-perfect representations of objects, detailed trains and cars and planes. I would create artwork for letterhead and stationary. I also, on occasion, wrote a term paper for school, although not with nearly the same fervor or aplomb, oh but the fonts I was able to choose… what a rush! I was the Maurice Chevalier of Drop-Caps.

I would owe much of my livelihood and artistic endeavors to the crazed determination and blinding perfectionism of one man, Steve Jobs, for creating that new household appliance. I wouldn’t recognize his genius for another decade, when he returned to Apple, after its management had nearly bankrupt an innovative company in his seven year absence. In 1996, he would return, and usher in a new wave of lateral thinking in design, sending me on entirely new journeys; with my Lime iMac, Titanium Powerbook, and right now, my Aluminum Macbook. Of course these journeys would be accompanied by the soundtrack playing on my iPod.

So it came, a revolution of thinking for me and the way I express myself, with just the dulling sound of a ShopSmith motor on a crisp Colorado afternoon. Mr. Jobs’ creation would create a link between a tool of one generation to a tool of the next, allowing me to pursue a creative career and have a livelihood, unforeseen to me or my colleagues.

Namaste, Steve… Namaste

These are original drawings from Fosters + Partners, which is Apple’s go-to architect for retail and office space.

Below are the links to the PDFs:

Intro

Rendering

Site

Plans

It’s quite unsettling, however, when you see this play out in a different environment. Here is a video of Steve pitching a design for a new campus to the city of Cupertino at last night’s city council meeting. Sit through as much as you can stand.

The whole thing has an incredibly staged feel to it, as though Apple’s marketing department had their hands all over it, perhaps planning the entire event. The bitter taste left in my mouth after watching this wasn’t directed at Apple – kudos to them for making a city council meeting seem like a trade show presentation – but toward the city council themselves.

Perhaps the council simply set this event up for the community P.R. as well, but they really come off looking like stooges. I’ve been to many of these meetings and I’ve never seen a council so snowed by the lack of information presented. Some concerns should have been raised to be addressed at a planning board meeting, but nonetheless.

So many problems with this design were simply hinted at:

• When you go from site has multiple points if entry to a single point of entry, you create a 50% increase in the traffic load before the additional 20% of employees.
• The tensile stresses of curved glass creates significant seismic concerns.
• The shape of the building creates wind currents on the interior perimeter of the building.
• How is the power generated at the on-site power plant?
• The bottleneck of waste infrastructure on a more consolidated building will be a major problem to solve.
• What are the security protocols on the perimeter of the campus and what will these look like?
• Will public traffic be allowed and, if not, will this building create have it’s own impact on the community from tech-tourism and archi-tourism?

I’m sure that they thought they were being firm, by asking the obvious question about what Apple’s new campus would bring to Cupertino, but, “can we have free w-fi”? This is very hard to watch.

My takeaway from this is that, much like Las Vegas, it would be awful to live in Cupertino, but great fun to design a building there.

Full disclosure, I started writing this article on my iPhone and finished it on my MacBook. (Steve, I know you’re reading this, and the answer is: yes, I can be bought)

1. formative, creative (plastic forces in nature)
2. capable of being molded or modeled or capable of adapting to varying conditions : pliable
3. capable of being deformed continuously and permanently in any direction without rupture.
4. sculptural

Computers allow us to experiment with architectural and sculptural forms that would be unheard of only 20 years ago. Add to that the ability to compute the tessellated structures required with an infinite number of unique polygons, that would make Bucky Fuller’s ears bleed.

This raises the question: how to we validate these new shapes? How to pursue shape-finding exercises in a digital/sculptural environment and then test and analyze the results, both visually and mechanically?

I am working on a series of shape-finding videos that will illustrate how this can be done quickly and efficiently. But until then, let me inspire you with this common household product that resides plainly in a compositional state between liquid and solid; “there’s always room for Jello!”