Design Quotes Display.
Monday, February 1st, 2010
Bring inspiring, insightful and thought provoking design quotes to your workplace, home or anywhere you have a computer.
They say that as a designer you should surround yourself with things that inspire you, whether they are books, posters, music, magazines etc.
A few days ago while going about my daily browsing and came across a beautiful quote:
“Design is an opportunity to continue telling the story, not just to sum everything up.”
— Tate Linden
I quickly found myself searching for more quotes about design, there are tons of really good ones out there. After a while I started thinking, wouldn’t it be great if we could display these quotes on our computers in fullscreen mode? maybe as a screensaver or an interactive slideshow?
I’m all about surrounding myself with things that inspire me, things that help set a mood and get you thinking. Over at the nclud studio we have a set of LCD screens where we display client work during meetings or sometimes use to play Mario Kart. When not in use the screensavers come on and I figured, let me setup a system that allows us to display these inspiring quotes in full screen mode, as a screensaver. What better to get you in the mood when designing than reading design quotes from some of the great minds of past times and our time?
Enter Design Quotes
Head over to http://neography.com/designquotes/ and take a look for yourself.
It is a web page where quotes appear one after another at random, I accumulated just under 200 quotes and with the help of a WP plugin and a bit of jQuery I was able to put the visualzation together.
How to set it up as a screensaver
Mac users can use IdleWeb, a nice little app that allows you to set up any webpage as your screensaver. Just make sure you set it up in “kiosk” mode within the screensaver options.
- Download IdleWeb Snow Leopard compatible: IdleWeb 2.1
- If you are not on Snow Leopard yet, you can download an older version here: IdleWeb 2.0 or use WebSaver.
There are similar options for windows users, although I haven’t tested any of them.
Another option is to use browser plugins to set the browser window in fullscreen mode, again I haven’t tried yet, but I’m sure it’ll work just fine.
Features & improvements to come:
- More Quotes
- Ambient Sound
- Prev/Next links
- An RSS Feed
- iPhone optimized version
- Color Schemes
So there you have it, enjoy and if you have any comments or suggestions feel free to let me know.
24 Comments
Cool, an animated version of http://quotesondesign.com/
@Dan initially I wanted to use http://quotesondesign.com but I couldn’t get their API to work the way I wanted, also I wasn’t too crazy at some of the quotes they serve so I opted to build my own system.
@Alex ..ah, that’s a shame, there’s some good quotes on QoD. On a side note, liking your comments layout — kinda groovy too.
@Dan I plan on adding more quotes as I go and I might setup a quote submission page so that people like you can suggest certain quotes :)
Oh, and thanks for the nice comment about the comments layout.
This is so nice and inspiring.
Great idea! This is perfect for a conference room screen saver. If you’re using idleweb, it’s worth noting that you have to set it to Kiosk to prevent it from scrolling. Thanks for the tip, Alex!
@Jason That’s exactly how I envisioned it being used. Awesome.
Great idea. Maybe you could create a little book too.
nice work and fun inspiration. great to use before a presentation to client.
i still have not upgraded to leopard and the 2.0 version at idelweb is not available…
any suggestions?
@John You can use WebSaver http://www.brock-family.org/gavin/macosx/websaver.html
Nice! It could be useful with a permalink to each quote, to save and share.
Good job, I like it a lot. Hope to see you add more quotes. I’ve featured about it in my blog with a link back here.
Glad i found this, real nice job.
Be sure to check out “401 Design Meditations: Wisdom, Insights, and Intriguing Thoughts from 150 Leading Designers ~ Catharine Fishel — a great source of design quotes.
je suis un apprenand en informtique je voudrait recevoir un cours sur la conception des jeux et ecran des veille. s’il vous plait voler à mon secours.
This is great! It would be cool to have facebook/twitter buttons so you can share one you like.
Brilliant, works really well as screensaver :) thanks.
Great solution for presenting quotes.
My browser has bugs with text when it become transparent (colour artifacts on edges).
This is really great, Alex. IdleWeb didn’t work for me but WebSaver did. Maybe because I have 2 screens? Anyway, now I get a different quote on each screen. Love it.
Your comment area is great :)) your little screen saver too… congrats..
This is a great solution. Having them large will seem so much more inspirational and have much more meaning to them. I think everybody should have a quote on their desktop and it should change everyday! The layout is very clean, you could do something even my typography based on this idea but I quite like how simple it is! Keep us all updated on your development on this.
Used to work great on my old Macbook Pro with idleweb but my new Unibody never seems to display right. Idleweb either shows nothing or too big text, and websaver shows nothing but the info bar the beginning… Help would be great! adam at adamschoales dot com
For those of you on Max OS Leopard or newer, I’ve created a native screensaver you can download here:
http://bit.ly/dqsaver
Contrary to rumor, I’m not some dead 19th century artist.
I’m pleased that my quote got you motivated to create something meaningful. Bravo! (Just found it now, so… better late than never.
Feel free to link to my name to my 21st century @thingnamer twitter account if you wish.
Cheers!
Got something on your mind?