hkuo

The author fails to make an important distinction about the people that created the logo.

It's one thing to say that a design agency came in and designed a logo in a weekend. It's another thing to say an internal design team bared down to create a logo in a "weekend" (in quotes, because Marissa may simply be using the term to mean done in a short timespan).

I've worked on both the agency and client side, and the huge difference is that an agency comes in and has to learn very quickly about the client's business (more often than not getting it wrong the first time around) while the people working at the company live and breathe the company culture day in and out. At an agency, you're often jumping between a few clients, but unless you've been the agency of record for a number of years, it is simply not possible for you to have the depth of understanding that an internal marketing team will have. What an agency CAN bring is some fresh outsider thinking not colored by the company's history, but there's no reason the right people within the company can do so as well.

Perhaps the issue is that there is this expectation that everyone should know how to "use" a computer. We forgive older generations, because it's something they never grew up with while being appalled at younger generations because they're not using computers to do technical stuff. News flash: computers are not the end all be all of the world. It's simply an aspect of it, and while some kids won't give a crap about how computers work, others will be wildly passionate about it. Some kids will grow up to be doctors, lawyers, scientists, teachers, artists, philosophers, and excelling in their domains does not come with a requirement of knowing how to connect to a wifi network.

You seem pretty intent on drawing a negative picture of people who can do both design and code, labeling them the worst designers you've ever worked with or a jack of all trades whose ultimate route is some idiot manager role.

There's nothing but benefit for a designer to also pick up some coding skills or a developer gaining an appreciation of design and interaction. And I see no reason someone can't excel at both if they truly desire.

Perhaps the worst designers you've worked with did both, but don't let bad logic lead you to think that the best designers do not.

You may want to check out a program called Divvy. You can set key commands to set the position and size of any window. There's other programs similar to it, but this is my favorite one.

The lowest brightness you can achieve by the standard Mac controls is equal to the halfway mark of this brightness app. So this app adds a huge level of control between that lowest setting and pure black.

I'm often unsatisfied with the lowest brightness setting when in a dark room, and this solves that perfectly. I just downlaoded it right now and tried it out and it works perfectly. I'd recommend you do the same as it's free before making judgment on it.

Edit: I just saw your edit, and I think you have it incorrect. Try clicking the brightness app menu bar icon, and then use your keyboard brightness keys to adjust, and you'll see at the lowest setting, it goes to the halfway mark.

In my experience, I would tend to agree that customer service from the government is generally better than corporations, from the DMV (though states my vary), County Clerk Recorders, Passport offices and even the IRS, and they generally seem happier than customer service folk at corporations who read verbatim from support guide trees and are incentivized to do what's in the best interests of the company rather than you.

If you use jquery, I wrote this really simple snippet that I use for quick down and dirty debugging.

var logit = function(x){$('body').append('<div id=logit></div>');$('#logit').css({'background':'#000','position':'fixed','bottom':0,'right':0,'color':'#fff','padding':5,'font-family':'arial','font-size':'9px','z-index':9999});$('#logit').append(x+'<br>');};

It could very easily be adjusted for non-jquery too.

Then just call it like: logit(whateverYouWantToDisplay);

But what are we gonna use then to open the germy bathroom doors, for the 95-ish% of us who use the paper towel we dry out hands with to also open the door and then drop in a bin next to it?

I imagine Microsoft could have a very lenient policy with its employees speaking on behalf of the company's interests, but its very dangerous territory if you don't approach it with respect and sensitivity. Personally I think it's simply best to not speak publicly on behalf of the company you work for unless its your job to do so.

It seems from the abstract that they're not looking for causation between those two but what other factors are involved that can explain the correlation.