This photo shows a walled garden:

It is the Portland Japanese Garden, a city landmark that should be on any visitor’s shortlist. It’s beautiful, peaceful, clean, and well visited. Some consider it the most authentic Japanese garden worldwide (outside of Japan).

The garden is also walled off. Literally. It is run by a private, nonprofit organization, and it’s funded solely by admission earnings and donations. Adults pay $9.50 to get in. Once you’re in, you can’t smoke, you can’t use a cell phone, you can’t have a snack - you can’t even buy a snack on premises. No pets, no professional photography, no weddings.

This is because the garden is meant to create and foster a certain tranquil mindset, a contemplative mood of oneness with Nature. You may find this corny or old-fashioned; if so, you’re better off seeing other city sights. If you buy into the garden’s premise, however, it’s a rewarding and unique experience.

Neven deconstructs the App-Store-as-a-walled-garden metaphor into something worth pondering.

Closed doesn’t mean imprisoned. It doesn’t mean evil. It doesn’t mean dictatorial.

Closed means closed.

People frequently screw up names in the same ways.

Mac often becomes “MAC”. I don’t know why. Names of other computer-related products aren’t usually accidentally capitalized. Nobody says ITUNES or EXCEL.

The iPod Touch¹ gets hit hard, too, by people calling it the “iTouch”.

I’ve been complaining about the “iTouch” thing forever. Good to know I’m not alone.

Let’s say you’re working on an icon for an iOS app. The app is universal, so it should run on all iPhones (and iPod touches), and on the iPad. As a designer, you’re used to drawing icons at various sizes; this is a big part of what “icon design” is (as opposed to other types of illustration).

…

It’s simply not possible to create excellent, detailed icons which can be arbitrarily scaled to very small dimensions while preserving clarity. Small icons are caricatures: they exaggerate some features, drop others, and align shapes to a sharp grid.

Great article on resolution independence and icon creation for iOS apps.

This has inspired me to simplify the iPhone app I’m designing. Plus, that means it’ll be done faster!