How The New York Times covered LeBron James’s decision to return to the Cleveland Cavaliers on the front page of the sports section. I love this. (via Khoi Vinh)

Nice experiments in reducing and minimizing product packaging. Went a bit too far in some instances, but cool project! 

Part 1 and Part 2

(via Kottke)

The Design of Threes

“We were hiding the game under all these layers,” Vollmer said. At one point veteran game designer Zach Gage sent them a “sobering” e-mail that said the art wasn’t working, and this acted as a wake-up call. What if the game didn’t need anything else?

“It looks like the entire time we were striving for simplicity and minimalism, and that’s not true at all,” Wohlwend said. “That’s just where we ended up going. The game resisted complexity because it was such a small game, it was four by four grid, and numbers, and just the four directions. It always wanted to be simple.”

Threes is a fantastic new iOS game. It reminds me in some ways of my favorite iOS puzzle game of all time, Drop7. It makes you feel like a smarty-pants if you are able to forecast several moves in advance. 

Also, their tagline is perfect: a tiny puzzle that grows on you. 

"Over the last decade, my rule as a creator — be it as a programmer, writer, designer or photographer — has been to use the simplest possible tool for the job. Use the simplest tool until you breach its potential. If you think you’re using the simplest tool and find one simpler yet, switch to that."

Craig Mod, in another excellent piece, this time about photography in a smartphone world. 

Earlier this week, we launched a brand new redesign of the Glif. It represents over a year in development, and I’m really proud of how it turned out. 

When we designed the original Glif, we wanted it to be as dead simple and easy to manufacture as possible, so one of the design decisions we made was to have it only fit a naked iPhone 4. This allowed for the Glif to be a single piece of molded plastic with no moving parts. This was crucial, as it was our first time to ever manufacture something, and any added complexity would have surely tripped as up. 

As we’ve grown and learned new things over the past 3 years, we wanted to tackle the idea of making an adjustable Glif, without losing the simplicity and ease of use of the original. I’ll leave that to you to judge if we achieved that, but I’m happy with the result. 

You can check out the new Glif here. 

How Square Cash Was Designed

Jack [Dorsey] is very much into how can you take something and simplify it down to its essence.

I’ve used Square Cash a few times since it’s launched; it really is incredibly simple. 

I liked this one.

"I’ve said this before, but simplicity is, well, it goes back to …you’re trying to define the essence of something and come up with a solution that seems utterly inevitable and obvious. I think a lot of people see simplicity as the lack of clutter. And that’s not the case at all. True simplicity is, well, you just keep on going and going until you get to the point where you go, ‘Yeah, well, of course.’ Where there’s no rational alternative."

Jony Ive

Neat Ice Kit

Tom and I are pretty pumped to announce our new Kickstarter project today for the Neat Ice Kit. What is the Neat Ice Kit, you ask? Well, it’s a set of tools for creating beautifully clear ice for a variety of cocktails, right at home. The included tools allow you to create three distinct types of ice, which will cover the gamut of different cocktails. 

The Kickstarter project page and video should help explain everything!

We’ve been working on this project for over 9 months. It started as a vague notion of a direction we wanted to dabble in, and after countless iterations, we arrived at the Neat Ice Kit. Obviously this is a new direction for Studio Neat, but we are excited to see where this takes us. 

As always, your support is very much appreciated. And, if you have a friend or family member who you think this project is perfect for, please pass along the link to our Kickstarter page!

"Affordances are the baby to skeuomorphism’s bathwater."

Dan Wineman

"I think there is a profound and enduring beauty in simplicity, in clarity, in efficiency. True simplicity is derived from so much more than just the absence of clutter and ornamentation, it’s about bringing order to complexity."

Jony Ive

"People who use software fall into two camps: those who appreciate simplicity, and those who don’t yet realize they appreciate simplicity."

Daniel Jalkut