David Ogilvy, in a memo to one of his partners, thirty-three years after starting his first ad agency:

Will Any Agency Hire This Man?

He is 38, and unemployed. He dropped out of college.
He has been a cook, a salesman, a diplomatist and a farmer.
He knows nothing about marketing and had never written any copy.
He professes to be interested in advertising as a career (at the age of 38!) and is ready to go to work for $5,000 a year.

I doubt if any American agency will hire him.

However, a London agency did hire him. Three years later he became the most famous copywriter in the world, and in due course built the tenth biggest agency in the world.

The moral: it sometimes pays an agency to be imaginative and unorthodox in hiring.

He was, of course, talking about himself. It reminds me of how revolutions of industries rarely, if ever, comes from the inside. It happens when people from the outside create products with a new completely new view, not bound or affected by those already in existence.

Via @tor.

Philip Newton, Director of Audiovisual for Samsung Australia:

When Steve Jobs talked about he’s ‘cracked it’, he’s talking about connectivity – so we’ve had that in the market already for 12 months, it’s nothing new, it was new for them because they didn’t play in the space. It’s old news as far as the traditional players are concerned and we have broadened that with things like voice control and touch control; the remote control for these TVs has a touch pad.

Hmm. Phones did exist before the iPhone, no? That could connect to the internet? And that had apps on them? You could call, send messages and listen to music. Yes, I think that was possible.

Samsung, and many companies like it, just doesn’t get Apple. If my mind serves me correctly, Microsoft and Nokia showed this exact type of ignorance back when rumors about an Apple-phone started to float around. And they even did so after Apple had their unveiling. How did that end again?

Tom Preston-Werner, one of GitHub’s three co-founders:

In the end, just as Indiana Jones could never turn down the opportunity to search for the Holy Grail, I could no less turn down the chance to work for myself on something I truly love, no matter how safe the alternative might be. When I’m old and dying, I plan to look back on my life and say “wow, that was an adventure,” not “wow, I sure felt safe.”

A good and interesting read about how GitHub got started. What really stuck with me though, is that last sentence in the excerpt above. When I’m old and dying, I plan to look back on my life and say “wow, that was an adventure,” not “wow, I sure felt safe.”. Hell yes, I definitively plan on doing the same.

Via @aral.

Garry Tan for Inc. Magazine:

It’s no mistake that this is very much the sort of thing that is most valued within the most effective software teams in Silicon Valley. Let’s call it “the designer who codes.” This is the sort of person can build exactly what he knows people need, with an aesthetic that compliments its use, with no back-and-forth.

Silicon Valley start-up Quora does it this way to great effect. They take the process simplicity to the next level. Every person on lead designer Rebekah Cox’s team is also an engineer. The design doesn’t happen in Photoshop. It happens in the text editor, in code.

Great article about the new breed of designers, that doesn’t just live in Photoshop all day, but can, and do, design just as much directly in code. For interface design, it’s just nothing that can match it. Facebook, and especially Quora, are excellent at this. The experience is stellar.

The article also tell’s a fun little story about Steve Jobs and the first calculator on a mac.

Bill Scott, former Director of UI Engineering at Netflix, on the 23:10 mark:

A lot of people think Netflix is better than it is, is what I would always say. Because they get a movie recommend to them, they like the movie, and they have a great experience with the movie, and they transfer that love back to the site. And if you can create a service like that, it’s golden. Because all you really do is to get out of the way.

Think about the invoicing application when you see much money you’ve earned, or Google Analytics when your site goes viral. Great, positive content often equals a great user experience. As software designers, we should be more aware of that, and try to highlight the positive content in our apps that make people happy.

Jason Fried from 37signals:

In all this work, and all the usage, and all the trials, and all the tweaks, I’ve spotted a pattern. Things that look good at the end of the day often don’t look good the next morning.

The end of the day has a way of convincing you what you’ve done is good. The next morning has a way of telling the you truth.

Definitively. I also often look at a design every day after one another, and the more days I open it and still like it, the bigger the chance I’m on to something good.

About three months ago, I woke up to the news of Steve Jobs’ death. It put me in shock, striking a chord that made me incredibly sad. I never thought I’d cry, but so I did. Steve Jobs inspired my life in so many ways. He inspired me to do what I do today, and to do it better.

For a very long time, I’ve had the following sentence in the bottom of my dekstop wallpaper; “Steve Jobs changed the world. What have you done?”. Each and every time I sit down next to my iMac to work, I read it and it reminds me of the quality he stands for and the work he’s done. It inspires me and motivates me to keeping creating the best possible things I can.

Steve Jobs in December 1982, at his home in California. Photo by Diana Walker.

I’ve always, in a strange way, thought I would meet Steve Jobs. But it wouldn’t happend before I had done something substantial in life, worthy of Steve’s time. It would be a day when what I had created was of the utmost quality, and had made an impact on the world. It would have met Steve’s standards. He would know who I was, and we would have a conversation, not fan-to-icon, but man-to-icon.

It might sound strange, and it most likely never would have happened, but I’ve still worked towards it and in some weird way looked forward to it. It’s been some kind of a life goal. And knowing that there isn’t even the slightest possibility to meet and chat with the greatest visionary the world has seen in modern time? That saddens me very, very much.

It’s a selfish reason to be sad for, but a reason none-the-less, and only one of many.

Thank you, Steven P. Jobs. For the impact you’ve had on me, and for the impact you’ve had, and will have for many coming years, on the world.