Oscar Ceremony Design Work

I loved the design of the 87th Academy Awards ceremony last night, and it looks like I wasn’t the only one. Bloomberg Business reported that the design work was done by Henry Hobson, a live action director and graphic designer. It turns out that I’ve seen some of his work before in a few other title sequences, such as the one from The Walking Dead.

Oscars Sound Editing Title

I particularly loved the typography used throughout the Oscars. One other little detail I really liked was how the titles used for the best sound editing nominees looked like an audio timeline.

You can see more of Henry Hobson’s work by checking out his website or by following him on Twitter.

Update: Art of the Title has a much better writeup of the 87th Academy Awards, along with an interview with Henry Hobson.

The Problem With E-mail Apps

A few weeks ago I ran across an article on The Verge titled “The best Gmail app for the iPhone is now made by Microsoft”. The article talks a lot about the new Microsoft Outlook app (a rebranding of the recently purchased Acompli app), but there was one quote that really stuck out to me:

…nobody wants to just give me an email client for my phone: everyone’s gunning to reinvent the entire experience and revolutionize the speed and efficiency of my communications.

That quote really summarizes my frustration with all these new e-mail apps. I don’t need someone to “reinvent” my e-mail experience. I don’t want to turn my e-mail into a to-do list. I just need someone to make an e-mail app that does e-mail well.

I did end up trying the new Outlook app for iPhone and still found it to be lacking in one major area: it seems to only be able to add one label per message, much like standard folders. The whole point of Gmail having labels instead of folders is so that messages can have multiple labels and thus can be found in multiple locations. Oh well, the search for a good e-mail app continues.