#DesignStory

Story, design and startups.

Updated collection of posts on story, design and startups.

Top Stories

1. Human Experience Design. Pixels and the Human Condition
2. Story Maps: A story map is a new type of design document that shows the big idea of your product experience at a glance.
3. Towards Exceptional Content Transform the mysterious art of content into a repeatable and measurable process.
4. How to Create a Color Story. Apply cinematic color theory to your app, product, or startup.
5. Inside Sequoia’s Creative Lab. Join me for short-term, fast-paced, one-on-one, hands-0n projects as a Visiting Designer at Sequoia.
6. Four types of business stories. Your business needs four different types of stories, each with a very different function. Learn how to write all four.
7. The Happiness Trick. Happiness comes from meaningfulness—but only if you can articulate why your work is meaningful to your team, company and the planet. Optimize for meaning and watch your team elevate.
8. Start with a pencil. Think first. Sketch second. Polish third.
9. Put it away, junior. Something marvelous happens when you treat your phone as punctuation, rather than a metronome.
10. The Semiotician’s Oath and three invisible machines.

#Startups

1. Human Experience Design. Pixels and the Human Condition
2. Story Maps: A story map is a new type of design document that shows the big idea of your product experience at a glance.
3. How to Create a Color Story. Apply cinematic color theory to your app, product, or startup.
4. Teleporting through the emphasis economy. Art history and the future of apps.
5. I sneezed on the beat and the beat got sicker. Everything I know about launching a product I learned from Beyoncé
6. Hello stories, goodbye ads. Content marketing in the post-search era
7. The Ogre’s new clothes. Creative systems at scale.
8. Don’t say yes to bad ideas. Startup lessons from Madagascar
9. The Happiness Trick. Happiness comes from meaningfulness—but only if you can articulate why your work is meaningful to your team, company and the planet. Optimize for meaning and watch your team elevate.
10. The quality rebellion. Hunt for excellence and you’ll find it everywhere
11. Great job, you’re fired. How start-up gunners avoid the competence trap and self-assign their way to victory
12. Thanks vs. MOAR. Put the social back in social media
13. Put it away, junior. Something marvelous happens when you treat your phone as punctuation, rather than a metronome.

Your job is story

1. Towards Exceptional Content Transform the mysterious art of content into a repeatable and measurable process.
2. Your job is story. Whether you are a CEO, an entrepreneur, a product manager, a designer, a consultant or a freelancer—story is your job.
3. The Semiotician’s Oath and three invisible machines.
4. Tell a four-word story. Forget the elevator pitch. You only get four words.
5. Four types of business stories. Your business needs four different types of stories, each with a very different function. Learn how to write all four.
6. Three act structure. At the most basic level, story transforms its subject from an initial state to a changed state. Think of this as your beginning and your end. Once upon a time…happily ever after. But what happens in the middle?
7. Tiny Machines. Story structure put to work.
8. Articulate an idea to instigate change. A business, a brand, a love-affair, a pop song, an aria, a novel, an insurgency, a product, a pitch, a campaign, a policy, a problem, a hypothesis, an opportunity, an answer to a question you never knew you had: this is story.
9. Write your own headlines. Before you write a line of code, write the headlines for the day after your product ships. What did the press think and what did they say?
10. Is it #shareworthy? Niche bloggers, big brands, start-ups, and thought-leaders listen up: Every time you tweet or post, ask yourself if your audience will want to pass it along.
11. Make every story tell. If you have been entrusted with telling the story of a company, focus on the people who use your service, not the product.
12. Ice-cream for editors. Learn from your favorite editors and re-write your text once you’ve finished to start with your conclusion.

#DesignStory

Story-driven design for design-driven products.

1. Human Experience Design. Pixels and the Human Condition
2. How to Create a Color Story. Apply cinematic color theory to your app, product, or startup.
3. Inside Sequoia’s Creative Lab. Join me for short-term, fast-paced, one-on-one, hands-0n projects as a Visiting Designer at Sequoia.
4. Draw together. You’ll build better products and form stronger partnerships across teams when you learn to draw together.
5. Start with a pencil. Think first. Sketch second. Polish third.
6. Four iterations. Take an object. Do something to it. Do something else to it.
   Do something else to it.
7. Create an emphasis hierarchy.
8. What you say and how you say it.
9. What’s most important?
10. Give your audience something to share. It doesn’t matter what you say, or what someone hears, the only thing that matters is what your audience repeats.