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John Gruber on the “Auteur Theory of Design” from Macworld 2009
- Groxx 17y agoAck. All real content is in a 16-minute video from MacWorld 2009, and no transcription. I don't typically want to wade through that much time to get to the meat of what's said. Anyone know of a transcript?
- aditya 17y ago18:21 <@swombat> trying to post "Excellent talk. Transcript or not, watch it."
- cookingrobot 17y agoWatched it - it was ok. Nice relaxing tone/pace. He basically argues that if one person is in charge (has final cut), the product will be as good as their taste. If no one is in charge and decisions are made by consensus / bureaucracy, then the result will be as bad as the worst persons taste. The test for whether you really have final cut is whether you'd get to release something that is crazy and no one else agrees with. Ex. the ending of the Sopranos. His advice is that if you don't have official final cut, but you know that you're right about something, you can "take" final cut by making your way the only viable option. Ex. Hitchcock planned meticulously and only filmed enough footage to make exactly the movie he wanted, with nothing extra that the studio could use to edit it and make it worse.
- aditya 17y agoSo, then the question becomes... how do you develop good taste? Is it even something that's developable at all? And, also there's a gap between having good taste and being able to make products that reflect it. Ira Glass touches upon it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hidvElQ0xE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hidvElQ0xE And so does _why, http://favstar.fm/users/_why/status/881768089 http://favstar.fm/users/_why/status/881768089 So, perhaps the answer (translated to web products) is, just keep releasing a bunch of work, keep trying to understand your market and keep learning from the work you're putting out to make future work better. Not quite sure this is the right answer, though.