Ah, design is becoming so democratic! Free market! Even your grandma can do it!

Objectified is a feature-length independent documentary about industrial design. It’s a look at the creativity at work behind everything from toothbrushes to tech gadgets. It’s about the people who re-examine, re-evaluate and re-invent our manufactured environment on a daily basis. It’s about personal expression, identity, consumerism, and sustainability. It’s about our relationship to mass-produced objects and, by extension, the people who design them.

Through vérité footage and in-depth conversations, the film documents the creative processes of some of the world’s most influential designers, and looks at how the things they make impact our lives. What can we learn about who we are, and who we want to be, from the objects with which we surround ourselves?

Read Hustwit’s post about the film.

The New York Times reports on Serious Sans, the not-so-funny sibling to Comic Sans. The typeface is obviously different, but surprisingly shares some of the feel of its counterpart, just without the extreme goofiness.

Staff picks:

Jutta Schickore, The Microscope and the Eye: A History of Reflections
Tod Lippy, Esopus
Alix Lambert, Crime
Alberto Manguel, The Library at Night
Mel Bochner, Solar System & Rest Rooms: Writings and Interviews
Indi Young, Mental Models
Luke Wroblewski, Web Form Design: Filling in the Blanks
Tom Vanderbilt, Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do

Bonus!: ESOPUS Magazine has a stream of the mix CDs that came with the first seven issues. Artists range from A to Z, and the themes for each mix are fantastic. (e.g., CD #2 is “Musician-couples wrote a song inspired by the Craig’s List “Missed Connection” personal ad of their choice.”)

This is the WASHINGTON Post, right? So where’s the news about Washington? We just got pounded by a nasty storm — but it’s not homepage worthy.

Despite his initial difficulty in finding information on his first go, he did later find it in the Metro section, but not before heading to Google and getting it there. A few readers lambasted Karp in the comments for being a “stupid user”, but Karp makes a good point in a rejoinder post.

Here’s the problem — my failure to find the information I wanted is not MY problem, because I went to Google and found it. I succeeded. The failure is the site’s problem, because I abandoned it and went instead to a site that would help me succeed without having to be smarter.

Basically, the solution to Karp’s difficulty finding information on the Post website is logging in (or digging deeper through the website). He logs in, customizes his homepage, and bam! local news is the first thing he sees. But who cares about how smart users navigate? If any users are leaving your website to find information that is ON YOUR WEBSITE, something is wrong.

Karp addresses his criticisms to the newspaper industry, but it is hard to not to generalize them to any type of website. The web is a new beast, and users are expecting more-and-more to find information nonlinearly (or, you know…hyperlinearly). Having navigation that forces users to traverse the website as if it were comprised of sequential pages is wrong. This isn’t print.

So what is the solution? It differs on a case-by-case basis, of course, but the bottom-line is that newspapers (specifically) need to bring more focus to their web-only content, while still allowing easy access to the traditional news that is their bread and butter. Basically, as Karp says, good content is no longer enough. Websites also need to make that content accessible to users at all levels.

I’ll sign off by saying Karp has a lot of good ideas in the above links, but they are drowned beneath nitpicking and cat-calling. Kidiot.

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