Whitehouse & Company

Remember the days when you’d long to listen to music by the album? You went over to your shelves and looked at the album artwork to find the music you wanted to listen to. With the invention of MP3s and digital music players, the concept of album covers as navigational aids got lost (along with shelves full of records). Suddenly looking for a song meant you had to know the artist, album, or song name. As a visual thinker, I can easily tell you what any album in my music collection looks like from memory, but have a real problem with knowing what album a given song is on.

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Netflix and the Netflix logo are copyright 1997–2005 Netflix, Inc. All rights reserved.

When you love Netflix, as much as we do, it can be a real nuisance when you arrive at work having forgotten to post your viewed Netflix DVD envelopes. You curse your eyes for missing the mail box and hope you remember the envelopes on your way home… but then you forget… again… and the cycle continues.

A vicious cycle.

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I’m sure it’s happened to you at some point, you visit a website that you registered with, maybe your company’s healthcare provider, but you’ve totally forgotten your username and password. If you’re anything like me, you have a few usernames you’ve used over the years and a few passwords you might have used, but which ones are they? A few minutes of trying and I usually give up and ask for my username and password to be e-mailed to me.

This scenario happens to me over and over again and I never seem to get used to it. Is there another way? Are usernames really the best method for registering users?

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As a graphic designer living in New York on a limited budget, I am constantly looking into catalogs and magazines, and drooling over the well designed objects I might someday afford. The Aalto vases, the Eames lounge chairs with ottomans, the Akari Noguchi paper lamps — all these items ignite my interest, but their prices bring up every designers biggest dilemma — design or Dinner?

One such object is the famous Solari Cifra 3 table clock. Manufactured by Solari in 1965 and designed by the flip (or flap depending on your preference) clock master Gino Valle, the Cifra 3 is often referred to as the “museum clock” as it was sold exclusively by MoMA. Gino Valle was an accomplished designer in his own right designing numerous flip clocks for Airport terminals, most notably his Monumental flip clock at TWA terminal.

Unfortunately, the Cifra 3’s, while still produced, sell for well over $200, which is a little out of my budget. Solution — make your mac (or PC) into a Solari Cifra 3 clock for free in approximately 2 minutes with an elegant little screen saver from 9031.com

The screensaver turns your idling computer into a wonderful timepiece. The only thing this clock doesn’t do, which is a real pity, is make a flapping sound as time passes. The Cifra 3 makes a small “flap” with each passing minute and a large “chunk” every hour as every flipper turns over simultaneously to display the new hour… although that might drive some folks crazy.

For more design hacks visit Twart Design’s Design w/o Reach for some low tech answers to high design.

Lezioni Design biography – translated
Artnet Biography of Gino Valle
Solari’s Story
Design Addict’s profile on the Cifra 3

As designers, I think we have a problem letting go. Designs become like children and we, as loving parents, can’t help but want to pack bagged lunches for the little tikes. On their way out the door, we follow along, cleaning unkempt kerning, spitting in our hankies to clean off the dirty for placement only images we had neglected to delete, and warning our little dears to stay away from Pantone chips they don’t recognize.

The issue worsens in the households of web designers, whose children never leave, and endlessly come home with problems such as letters from their teachers explaining that “your Div (Webspeak) doesn’t want to play with anybody in his class and even refuses to listen to !important (More webspeak) announcements”.

That’s where we come in. Whitehouse & Company has decided to launch a new website with as much fanfare as a new gas station. (well, we kind of forgot to get those flappy streamers, so let me rephrase that — with even less fanfare than a new gas station). The idea with this site is to have something up and running now, and then to perfect it later.

We want to create a forum for design and ideas and to talk to each other: to ask questions about life that, while seemingly unrelated, connect us all creatively. Design is not just about knowing the new features of Illustrator CS2, it’s about life, pop culture, the arts, politics, music, films, and occasionally tips on webdesign.

Design should be fun, Right?

As this is a work in progress, you might notice a few rough edges. That is to be expected. Parts of the website may not match and other parts may not work as intended. We apologize in advance for any discomfort this may cause.