Why the Rant?

Well, Interaction Design has been around for quite some time but it was Microsoft’s Vision of Tomorrow that gave the term its necessary fame. I am not sure if we can call it a vision or stupidity but it surely was interesting. Since then Interaction Design has faced many critics, some of those actually ripped apart the actual vision itself. I won’t count Bret Victor in the category of critics who rip apart the concept of Interaction Design, but he was quite close. Before we move on, I want you to get the feel of Interaction Design. See the video below:

To summarize Victor’s article, if Interaction Design was to be our future then the nerves on our finger tips will become jobless. Yeah, he did a great job of explaining how we forget that it is a work of art when we can use our hands turn a page of the book and remind our brain that we actually turned two pages instead of one. Its art when you drink water, pick a bag, use a phone and all those other daily tasks. True. But does that mean we give up on technology that makes our life overly easy just because we want to feel the number of pages we flipped? I mean, come on, isn’t that old school? If that was the case, why did the world go mad for the iPad? Just because it was Steve’s vision? No. Really. It is because they love the ease of use. Get it?

Let me quote a comment from Reddit to support my thought:

Hands are so yesteryear. The future in interaction is through voice and mind. Hands are just an intermediary between your mind and the outside world. As the author of the article said, without feeling you’re paralyzed in a wheelchair solving quantum mechanics problems but YOU’RE STILL WORKING AND INTERACTING BECAUSE OF YOUR BRAIN!!

The future of human interaction is for technology to try and figure out what you actually want to do as opposed to what you can just figure out how to do by sliding your finger around on a device. This is where stuff like Siri comes in. Google has been working on this for years as well.

The author himself has a woefully outdated vision of future interfaces, since future interfaces will be no interface at all. You’ll just speak to a machine or plug in and it will give you what you’re looking for without figuring out where some UI menu is.

Why it isn’t about touch only

You know, I still prefer a BlackBerry Bold over an iPhone just because the Bold has a physical keypad and my work involves a lot of writing. My typing speed somehow decreases if it is a touch phone though the difference has started to blur. I know that someday I will move on towards the iPhone because of its rich features. The Bold does lag behind and we all are aware of this fact. But, the point is I don’t use the BlackBerry keypad due to the touchy feel of it. It is just that, for now, I feel that it is comfortable to type using a real keypad instead of a touchscreen keypad. Moreover, I know that tomorrow I will not think like this. The transition has to occur because it is for good only.

What Victor forgot was the added features that come with Interaction Design. See how the lady has been introduced with the place of her next day’s meeting? I’ll love it when Interaction Design Technology introduces me to the hotel building where I will be enjoying my honeymoon in a matter of few minutes. Will it be different? The vision of my destination itself? I agree that my hands won’t be able to tell me about the fact that I flipped three pages instead of one, but the technology will, so why care so much? Interaction Design Technology isn’t kicking away the prospects of human-to-human touch anyways. It is just feeding on our thirst for comfort and pushing it to the next level.

Here is another situation. The guy in the picture never had to open the refrigerator to find out what was in there. He saved a few seconds and didn’t even transfer the few thousand germs that his finger tips were carrying. Isn’t that interesting? Why taste milk to see if it is still good? I would rather let the technology tell me the same. If our technology can be as good as that then what is the problem with merging the same with Interaction Design?

Those are just two examples of what Interaction Design can do for us in future. I agree that we will lose the real-touch feeling when such tools take control of our lives, but that will be for the best (most of the times.)

Another comment on Reddit hails my thoughts:

While the author is right that these interfaces may not be truly revolutionary objects, he kind of misses the point. The real revolution of many of these future videos is that computing will become ubiquitous and interconnected. It’s not just that I have a fancy phone, but that my phone talks to the arrival gate kiosk so it knows I am at the airport and can automatically hail me a cab. The cab itself has a computer and display mounted into the windows that talks to my phone and can point out my local destinations as I drive by. While we are making small strides towards realizing these goals, the vision is that all of this will be seamless and effortless. The idea is not to create a novel vision of the computer, but instead create a vision of how we will do computing.

Far-Fetched Alternatives

Remember Iron Man? District 9? What do these two movies have in common? My God, did you just say “the iron suits”? Please! I was pointing towards the 3D style of computing which was used in both these Hollywood flicks. Of course they are far from real but isn’t almost everything that we discussed above also far-from-real? Still, the buzz is with these ideas. Then, why not the ideas that were pictured in Iron Man? Touch. Feel. Play…live inside the system. It is about how close these machines come to reality and now far we go with our imagination. Also, an Iron Man-like display will surely help Victor reconsider his rants against the loss-of-touch-styled-interactive-designs!

Lastly, this write-up wouldn’t be complete without the mention of Apple’s overrated Siri. I agree that Siri could well be the first step towards Artificial Intelligence but that will be it. There is a lot to come in terms of Artificial Intelligence and I would love to live till the times when an Iron Man-like Artificial Intelligence becomes part of my daily life. God, are you listening?

Conclusion

Well, the topic of this debate is neverending still I think the end result is more or less clear already. We will be moving towards Interaction Design Technology at some point of the time. Time will tell if humans are able to gel with it or continue to criticize the losings of human touch. See, I am not against the idea of human touch. I will still want to feel my mom’s hand instead of touching it over a glass screen but that doesn’t mean that I don’t want an iPad like technology in my kitchen via which my mom helps me cook my dinner. It is fun and it is almost real. Agree with me? I hope my grandpa agrees with my thoughts!

If you are looking for some great free minimalist fonts you came to the right place. In this collection you will find many fonts you will want to download immediately, I assure you!

1. BonvenoCF

2. Existence Light

3. Aurulent Sans

4. Vegur

5. Comfortaa

6. Sansation

7. Salaryman

8. Greyscale Basic

9. Lane

10. Raleway

11. Aaargh

12. CartoGothic Std

13. Mentone

14. Aller

15. Bitstream Vera Sans

16. Bebas

17. Caviar Dreams

18. Cicle

19. Colaborate

20. COM4t Sans Medium

21. District Thin

22. DISCO

23. DejaVu Sans

24. Droid Sans

25. Dustismo

26. Eau

27. Expressway

28. Lacuna Regular

29. Liberation Sans

30. Gnuolane

31. New Cicle

32. Nevis

33. Museo Sans

34. Luxi Sans

35. Sonrisa

36. Puritan

37. Print Clearly

38. Perspective Sans

39. Tuffy

40. Quicksand

Further Free Fonts Resources:

• Dafont.com
• 1001 Free Fonts
  
• FontSpace
  
• Font Squirrel
  
• UrbanFonts.com
  
• Fonts on deviantART
  

Do you know some more great minimalistic fonts? Share with us your favorite!

1.See how fast You can type!

At first just check Your skills – test Your typing speed just typing the text in the list. You can see my results, with 5 typing mistakes, 70,5 words per minute and 295,8 characters per minute. Check out how good are You!

2. A Guide To Typing Basics

Now I found this great article to get the basics and recommendations, how to type faster. Check this out before starting.

3. MyTypeSpeed

At this place You can learn how to type faster – starting from beginning – you learn how to position your hands on the keyboard and using the first five keys that a typer should learn: A,S,D, and F, and backspace until very advanced techniques – 8 lessons together. Also You can participate later in typing challenges with other users like You!

4. TypingWeb

Just signup – and You can train Your skills there completely for free. Only software You’ll ever need to learn to type fast and accurately – and this is one of the places where You can learn it!  Choose different skill levels and even content You write while practicing is engaging to keep things interested.

5. Keybr

Good looking typing software, unfortunately to get chart, custom text or text from website/blog, You must purchase premium account for 7$. Anyway as designer myself I loved this clean and light design an how letters are going black or red giving You clear overview about Your speed, errors and gives satisfaction. I surely recommend this one!

6. Fingerjig Typing Game

Fingerjig is a 6 minute game that tests your typing ability. Words are randomly chosen from a dictionary of over 70,000. You must try to type the words as quickly and accurately as you can! This game gives strange satisfaction feeling with cute design, based on flash with nice animation effects while typing.

7. Speedtest

Check out how many words and characters You can type per minute. Also scroll down and read the article learning how to decide for yourself which keyboard supports you typing the best.

8. QWERTY warriors

If You want to get more fun out of learning process, You can try this game – “shoot” the enemies typing their name, detonate them, get Your health back – I couldn’t stop playing this one for a while, game keeps forcing You to type faster and shoot more and more enemies! Fun and training – 2 in 1!

9. Typeracer

Huh, and maybe You know – I like to save the best resources to the end..:) Are You ready for competing online with other typers? I couldn’t stop playing this for an hour – I was so excited to get the first place and stay better writing real texts from movies, books, shows etc. and it’s really exciting. After the race check Your place, speed ( words per minute) and register to see all Your previous “races” and compare Your skill improvement. Return to this resource regularly and be master. My best race for now is 72 wpm and average speed is 64 wpm. Huh, sounds pretty exciting am I right? And how good are You? If this game is too hard for You then just go to previous resources and learn from the basics and don’t stop until You get master typing grade ( comparing to this game – You are megaracer if You type at least 55+ words per minute.

And now I cant wait to see Your results in the comments! This could be pretty interesting!!

Also if You know more cool games or resources to help us improve our typing skills – please share with us improving our community!

There are 3 kinds of typefaces :

1.Sans-serif

More modern look, without any serifs. More minimal, elegant – often used in fashion companies and

2.Serif

Serif is visually more appealing type than sans-serif adding more  elegant, sophisticated look.

If You don’t know the difference, image below will explain it better than I can say with words:

Compare sans-serif with serif ( I used Times New Roman for this example) and I hope You see the difference. And the name “serif” is pretty self explaining.

3.Script

Convey more friendly feel with handwriting fonts, if You are good at handwriting try to create Your own calligraphy on Your tablet or scan Your handwriting – why do that? If You use typeface – every letter will be the same using those, but creating something Your own , You can create really unique touch.

There are lot of possibilities to create unique logo using just these variations – all caps, spacing, uppercase, lowercase, size, different colors, different weighting (bold, thin, roman.. etc.), transparency, 3D look or just create combination of these ways.

a) Just using font ( Delicious font for this example) lowercase with no spacing:

b) all caps:

c)spacing:

d) size:

e) different colors:

f) different weighting ( roman, italic, bold):

g) transparency:

This is too complex example by the way, but it’s ok for You to get the point.

h) 3D look:

If You use Adobe Illustrator, You can extrude&bevel in this way – Effect –>3D –> Extrude&Bevel.
You might consider using rotation, distortion, perspective tools too.

Done using Illustrator’s Revolve tool ( Effect–>3D–>Revolve):

Tip:

Keep in mind trying to create logotype “square” form type if You consider printing it on different posters, brochures – then You won’t got any problems with resizing and keeping it good looking.

And don’t forget about millions of different fonts You can choose from!  While choosing the right typeface – compare them, just adding below each other copies and variants – try to look over repeating, more elegant letters and bits of those to get Your vision and inspiration going – to create successful logotype sometimes You need to just add one accent changing one thing in the typeface describing companies business activities, goals in eye catching way and remember to keep it simple! If You haven’t got inspiration or ideas what to do, how to do, there are also different  roundups and sites summarizing different logs and ideas.

I often use logopond.com – there are huge amount of professional logotypes there, giving You great inspiration!!

brandsoftheworld.com is another handy resource with advanced search options using – brand name, description, author, uploader, url, category, country.

And one more time, use free font resources and their great online testing features!

Since previous article 38 Beautiful 3D typography works : Inspiration got really good results I decided to dig again even deeper and deliver even more amazing works and here You have -  huge inspiration blast going to Your side!! Here is so much different and great techniques to look after, especially I liked that I found only one typography stuff with numbers “29″ – it was great accent and showed that not only letters have  their expression forms. Maybe this stuff is simple, but I found it important. Okay, enjoy the stuff and get inspired!!!

Endemo (nickname) / Germany

Ashlee / UK

Pablo / Argentina

Flisk (nickname) / Australia

Nicolas Alexander

KKDS Design Studio

Teis Albers

Myaki design

Hampus Olsson

Theo Aartsma

Alex Trochnut

Erkan Kerti

Félix Ajenjo

Loic Sattler

Cheong Hoe Yi

Craig Sheilds

Arial G

Karol Kolodzinski

Caio Calderari

Guido Martini

Adam Tickle

Saturized studio

Maciej Hajnrich

Craig Ward

Mike Campau

Jeff Finley

Andreas Kalpakidis

Francesco Muzzi

Tomás Gouveia

Felipe Oliveira

Dann Petty

Renaud Futterer

Faisal Saeed

Marc-André De Guire

Christian San Jose

Jonathan Wong

Tony Ariawan

Marian Rupp

Vezeto (nickname) / Mexico

Stefan Chinof

Enric Boix

Disturbet (nickname) / Mexico

Nossan (nickname) / Guam

Shebid ( nickname) / United States

Phatdesign (nickname) / United States

Mikey / United States

Archann (nickname) / Indie

I know that many of those works are not really resembling with 3D typography, but this is great inspirational stuff. I felt so good searching for all those amazing works, and hopefully You’ll just evaluate my work and maybe got inspired to create some great stuff for Yourself!