all hail rich, guru of redesigns

One more thing about the redesign: Rich has asked that we send your feedback to a reddit.uservoice page for better analysis.

It's like a features.reddit that's been designed to be a features.reddit!

fuzzwich is like ytmnd 2.0 with style (and now a politics section)

FULL DISCLOSURE, to avoid PAA (Pulling An Arrington): I was a member of Y Combinator, as are the founders of Fuzzwich. I am not in any way invested in their startup or their success. Granted, I'd like them to succeed, just as I'd like any YC startup to succeed.

Except for Justin.tv, I really hate those guys. They still owe me a beer for their gorilla.

UPDATE: The last time I was in SF, the Justin.tv crew did indeed buy me a beer (2, in fact) as well as dinner. Fatwa over.

The concept of Fuzzwich is simple: easily build a quick and professional(enough)-looking animation, share with friends and family, bathe in their praise, repeat. Admittedly, despite how much I like the pixel art look of the site, I didn't quite get the concept at first.

It all made sense to me once I compared it to the 5 iconic letters of my Internet upbringing: YTMND.

"You're The Man Now, Dog" (long story) has always been a staple for finding quick n' dirty viral .gif animations, be they geeky, catchy, inappropriate -- or all three. This site single-handedly spawns (and/or beats to death) all kinds of Internet memes.

If Fuzzwich can become that source for anyone -- not just those of us who care about esoteric geek culture and don't mind reading that heinous WordArt-looking text -- who wants to create something cool to share, they'll be in a great place. I'm convinced that by flattening the learning curve so that such "creativity tools" were painless enough, even Steve could create some pretty neat things. And Fuzzwich does it with style, too.

But why does my spellcheck keep telling me "Fuzzwich" isn't a word?

To demonstrate the site's potential (and show off their recently created politics section -- take that, JibJab) I've created a minivid scientifically-proven to provoke any reddit user. It took me no more than 7 minutes; I had to get the song just right.

Hint: there's a Ron Paul figure included. No Mike Gravel character yet; I hope they can animate the rock toss. Or better yet, maybe they should add the reddit alien...

We all can't invest the time and energy of Andy Samberg and the SNL Digital Shorts crew, but it doesn't take much to create a viral online vid. Besides, Fuzzwich is about sharing creative works, not walling them in. We'll see how long this clip of "Iran So Far" (a tribute to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad) lasts on YouTube...

Oh, Mahmoud...

ask to steal my design, will you?

This email was a first for me:

May I steal your design?

Hey
I'm designing my personal website, and I really liked your page layout on http://www.alexisohanian.com. Is it chill if I more or less copy it? You would, of course, get cited in the page source. You can see my rendition at: [redacted] . The site isn't yet complete, and I still haven't made it index.html, so nobody's seen it yet.
Thanks,
[redacted]

I didn't even think people visited that website, let alone wanted to gank the design. He even had the courtesy to email to ask if it was OK. What's happened to the Internet lately?

So as you can imagine, here was my response:

Re: May I steal your design?

Who the fuck do you think you are emailing me? Don't you know who I am? Of course you can't use my design ideas. I invented them. I own them all.

That shade of green I use, #90EE90 -- that hexadecimal -- belongs to me. The line-spacing, the small caps, the background-color property on the hover, they're all the property of Alexis Ohanian.

What if everyone went around "getting inspired by" (i.e., stealing) other people's designs? Huh? Real creativity would die, that's what.

Thanks for putting a rusty shiv in the abdomen of creativity. Jerk.

UPDATE: Judging by the comments below, I see a few of you didn't realize this was a joke (and that I didn't actually send that reply). But thank you for articulating your thoughts. To reinforce my point and prove that I'm not in fact that much of a jerk, I've included my actual reply.

Re: May I steal your design?

hey [redacted],

By all means, gank away.

I do appreciate you letting me know, though. There's that cliche about imitation and flattery :) so I'm quite happy you've decided to borrow some of my ideas. It's totally chill.

-Alexis

mr. yuck, meet mr. chuck

Well, "Mr. OMFG MY HAND IS A BLOODY PULP OF GROUND CHUCK!" to be precise.

After my condemnation of the anti-teddy bear warning sticker on my paper shredder, a number of concerned parents emailed me for help. They had read my suggestion for a more effective warning label and wanted to see it created.

So in the style of the classic, yet fear-inducing "Mr. Yuck" (he never did marry), I brought Mr. Chuck to life.Some people have already gone so far as to call my contribution heroic, given the number of adorable kid fingers it will likely save.

I don't think of myself as a hero; I'm just a designer doing his job.

No word yet on when these will go into mass production.

judging a book by its cover

I enjoy local bookstores for the obvious reasons: the nerdy patrons, the chance to say that I support local bookstores, and to ogle book covers.

The last one is probably just pseudo-designer part of me that likes quietly judging these illustrations that the old adage demands we ignore.

A week ago, a particular book cover caught my eye: The World Without Us. It even appeared on reddit a few days ago and it's apparently been selling quite well (undoubtedly because of the slick cover). It turned out the stuff inside the book was pretty interesting, too, but I did really like the cover art.In fact, I liked this design so much that I bought a shirt with it about a year ago from Threadless. Well, kinda (mine is orange). Here's what it looks like.And now I'm confused.
What do you think? It could just be a coincidence (in fact, it probably is) and even if it's not, we all need inspiration, right?I just want to see André da Silva Cruz (the designer of the above shirt) get recognized for his labor (or maybe just some "props" for having come up with the general idea first) -- after all, today seems like an appropriate day for it.

Either way, at least now I finally have a matching shirt and book.


UPDATE: My intention was not to start a witch-hunt. I just hoped a few people would buy André's shirt (the aforementioned "props"). And maybe a few others would buy the book, too, since it goes so well with the shirt. Just try to finish the book within a few days or your friends/co-workers will start worrying about your hygiene.