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.

Enter CoverFlow, an ingenious visual navigation system for your iTunes library. After only one day of use, I was absolutely amazed by how much I preferred it to the text only iTunes alternative. The user interface is simple yet highly effective for finding artists or albums by name, but allows for a more explorative selection of music. Searching through 50 albums is easier with CoverFlow, because it allows you to actually “scrub”[1] through an extensive collection of music in seconds and recognize each cover as you pass them. By browsing, you find albums you’ve neglected because of their spatial relation to other albums.

Browsing by album art is truly a far better system of navigation.

I urge you all to go and download the free application. Use it for one day and see if it doesn’t turn you back into a visual browser again.

[1] Video editing term, where one can fast-forward or reverse through a video quickly with use of a jog-shuttle.

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