minimalsites.com - Minimal Web Design Gallery and Minimalist Community

From the folks that develop BusyCal (my favorite Calendar application) comes BusyToDo a new, iPhone task app:

BusyToDo is a simple, elegant To Do list manager for iOS that syncs tasks with iCal and BusyCal wirelessly through MobileMe. All you need is a MobileMe account. Syncing is automatic and happens in real-time as you make changes on your Mac or iOS device.

In 1971, graphic design firm Chermayeff & Geismar made these beautiful posters for Pan Am World Airways.

It’s interesting to see how the designers have been able to create the desired effect with just one image. The MoMA site says it beautifully:

… Cultural fantasies and ideals are projected through monumental imagery, presenting people and environments as distant objects of beauty.

All images courtesy of Milton Glaser Design Study Center and Archives.

Seedling [Sponsor]:

I’m very happy to welcome Seedling as this week’s RSS Feed Sponsor. I’ve had a sneak peek and you are going to love it. Seedling is a curated gallery of online content, meant to help you find new sites that you should be reading.

Wondering what sites others are reading? Know about a little-known blog (perhaps your own) that you’d like to share with the world? Want to find a new site to read, and a new author to connect with? You’ll love Seedling.

They’ve created an ever-expanding, hand-curated gallery of great sources of writing and media across the internet, organized into categories. Some of the sites in the gallery you’ll undoubtedly be familiar with, while others might be new. If you think we’re missing something, they encourage you to submit new sites - even your own - and contribute to the gallery.

What would happen if fuel prices suddenly became not just expensive but ridiculous? What if gas shot up to $20 per gallon?

The notion of driving everywhere would suddenly seem crazy. We drive far wide and often because gas is relatively cheap. But if it were costly we’d walk and bike more. We’d take transit and car-share. We’d work and shop and eat and visit people near our homes. We’d be healthier because we drove less. And we’d have to work less to support our driving.

The notion of shipping everything everywhere would also seem crazy. Today we get packages shipped to us all the time. Food and goods get shipped all over the world several times over. But that requires a lot of fuel — and if fuel were costly we’d give that practice up. Instead we’d get our food and goods locally. We might even start growing our food ourselves — it’s not that far-fetched a notion when you consider how many people are starting to grow their own food these days in cities and suburbs.

The notion of heating and cooling the entirety of our (huge) houses would also become crazy. Today we heat 100% of our houses when it’s cold even if we only occupy a small percentage of the heated area. But what if we took the Japanese idea of having a small heater with a blanket that families sit around to get warm? Or a family bath that’s heated instead of the entire home? There are many ideas we’d come up with for heating locally and more efficiently.

Alternative energies would become more important. People would travel less and start to get to know their local areas more. People would begin walking their neighborhoods and getting to know their communities. Imagine that.

Here’s the kicker: fuel already is incredibly expensive — we just don’t pay the entire price at the pump. We pay for it later through costs to our health our communities our environment. We’re going to pay for it later as the rising cost of polluting our earth and heating up our climate comes to collect its toll.

Minimalism can be reduced to one word: Helvetica. Italian-born designer, Massimo Vignelli, is a passionate advocate for the Helvetica typeface rational style. He claims that one of the virtues of Helvetica is the spaces that frame the letters.

The austere Helvetica typeface might not be your favorite choice. Some of us, typeface aficionados, have different degrees of affection for it—our pared down sans serif of choice. Others barely notice it. Our lives would be pretty fuzzy without a neutral typeface that sterilizes any word or phrase it touches.

Alegre Industrial, an industrial design agency from Spain, feels Helvetica has enough personality. Helvetica coat hanger, their Helvetica-inspired product makes us think about the Swissness of Helvetica. The “? + {“ hanger concept is designed for shirts; the “? + { + ]“ hanger concept for pants.

Helvetica’s glam factor? Its Swissness modern attitude. It was designed to not stand out and I think that’s inspiring. Perhaps intentionally, text should say something without any interference from the font style—font nerdiness. Don’t start me on Times Roman… (not necessarily a bad thing).

Further Narrow Down Duplicates in iTunes with the Option Key:

To see all Exact Duplicates in iTunes, Click File from the iTunes menu and then hold down the Option key. Display Duplicates should now change to Display Exact Duplicates, which should result in a shorter list of duplicates.

Bonus “Tip”: Holding down the Option key while clicking on almost any menu in Mac OS X might reveal something that will BLOW YOUR MIND!