Today's lunch started no differently to any other. Grab some food, open Internet Explorer (I know, it's not by choice...) and fire up theOldReader to chip away at the ever mounting pile in my inbox. I dipped into the Oatmeal and realised I have, once again, missed a Kickstarter for a product that I genuinely want. Read some interesting thoughts from Adactio, Dan Mall and UNSTOPPABLE ROBOT NINJA (now, sadly it seems, going by the far less awe inspiring Ethan Marcotte). And then I looked at my inbox and wondered if it was about time that I started removing some of the feeds which I'm no longer excited to read. Feeds like the one Zurb publishes.
Although I've been subscribed to Zurb's RSS for years now (possibly a decade) I struggle to think of a single article over the past six months that made me sit up and think: aha! Updates have been flowing as routinely as ever, but mostly they have focused on their internal business. Posts about new product updates or team members have been, seemingly, the core output for quite some time and whilst these do occasionally feature interesting anecdotes or clever imagery, ultimately they don't feel particularly relevant. So then, I thought, today I will catch up on what I haven't read and if nothing jumps out it's bye-bye Zurb.
I am, admittedly, a little behind on Zurb's feed so it was back to mid-October for a post titled The End of the Black Turtleneck, featuring a prominent image of Steve Jobs. As someone who laments the grasp Apple has on most of the industries I admire, a review of their glorious leader's preferential attire didn't exactly fill me with excitement. However, the old adages are true: you really shouldn't judge a book by its cover.
Far from being a humorous or anecdote laden parade of fanboyism or irrelevant commentary on how Zurb have learnt to design the 'Jobsian Way' (which is hopefully something I just made up, though I can believe somewhere out there a design agency has it engraved into the ceiling...), The End of the Black Turtleneck is filled with genuinely interesting incite and actually takes several shots across Apple's bow. In other words: things just got interesting!
I'm not going to say too much more on that article or the subsequent follow ups that were just as enjoyable and arguably more useful, except to highly recommend you go and read them yourself. If you're in any way interested in the struggles that the design industry faces or even just the issues inherent with casting false messiahs or getting engrained in past zeitgeists, they're definitely worth a read. I can't say everything I've caught up on so far has been riveting, vital content but The End of the Black Turtleneck and The Perversion of Beautiful Design, both written by Zurb's head honcho Bryan Zmijewski, are some of the most intriguing and thought provoking blogs I've read in a while. They're clear, well written and have valid criticisms at their core. Most importantly, they gel well with my own belief that design should be as much about aesthetics as it is functionality; that function = form and vice versa, with neither greater than the other.
Plus, I learnt that the term 'pixel' was coined to describe the picture elements of videos shot by probes around the Moon and Mars. That titbit came from The Mighty Pixel, which is also well worth a read. I guess there was a reason to stay subscribed to Zurb's feed* after all. In fact, it looks likely that there might be several.
* I wanted to link directly to Zurb's RSS feed here but I can't seem to find it anywhere. It clearly still works, but they obviously don't feel it's a feature any visitors want. So, I guess, there's at least one aspect of Zurb that I disagree with. Either that or I'm a moron...
