Marcel Müller blog

Beethoven

Marcel Müller — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 19:16:53 +0000

“Oh, it seemed to me impossible to leave the world until I had forth all that I felt was within me.”

Around 1796, Ludwig van Beethoven began suffering from a loss of hearing. By 1814, one of the greatest composers of the 19th century—and perhaps of all time—-was completely deaf.

Imagine yourself in his position: You’re quickly gaining fame as a virtuoso pianist and an accomplished composer. But in public conversations, you, whose hearing is critical to your craft, can hardly hear what the person next to you is saying. It was this very social paradox that led Beethoven to withdraw from society towards the end of the 18th century.

At the recommendation of friends and medical practitioners, Beethoven retreated to rural Heiligenstadt, Austria, where distance from city life (and noise) was believed to a means of remedying his loss of hearing. It didn’t work. In fact, isolation might have only increased despair about his condition and about life in general. He contemplated suicide in earnest, but fortunately for all of us, he eventually rejected the notion.

It was during his stay in Heiligenstadt that Beethoven composed, in my opinion, one of the greatest “works” of his career. It came in the form of a letter written to his brothers Carl and Johann, and has since become known as the Heiligenstadt Testament. Penned in 1802, about halfway through his life at age 31, the letter was found in his room after his death in 1827.

Among other things, his letter addresses reasoning for withdrawing from society, as painfully evidenced by these examples:

“[W]hat a humiliation for me when someone standing next to me heard a flute in the distance and I heard nothing… Such incidents drove me almost to despair; a little more of that and I would have ended me life—it was only my art that held me back.”

And then Beethoven writes the following, which unequivocally manifests a yearning to produce all that he had the capacity—not just capability—to produce, in whatever amount of time his life would lend, and irrespective of his deficiencies; a yearning I think we all have the capacity to achieve:

“Ah, it seemed to me impossible to leave the world until I had brought forth all that I felt was within me. So I endured this wretched existence—truly wretched for so susceptible a body, which can be thrown by a sudden change from the best condition to the very worst…. Perhaps I shall get better, perhaps not; I am ready.”

And strive Beethoven did. Two of his greatest works, Symphony No. 5 (1808) and Symphony No. 9 (1824), were composed in the years following Heiligenstadt, even as he was nearing complete deafness. Which leaves one asking just one question: What do I have yet to bring and have the capacity of bringing forth before leaving
this world?

From Cameron Moll’s brilliant Good Design vs. Great Design

Why Pixar is Pixar

Marcel Müller — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 19:23:22 +0000

Pixar movies are amazing, we all know. But that’s because there are amazing people behind them. People that inspire. Why I’m saying this? Well, imagine yourself writing a letter to someone you admire. Someone you would like to work with/for. Most of the time you would expect nothing more than an autograph or a short note… but that’s not what happened with Adam. Read it, it’s worth.

CSS3: The Little Known font-size-adjust

Marcel Müller — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 13:01:54 +0000

Being a CSS3 enthusiast myself, I can’t help but share this great article by the CSS3 genius girl Inayaili de León, where she talks about font-size-adjust CSS3 property. Very useful.

The power of dreams

Marcel Müller — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 13:07:42 +0000

Commercial photography by Tim MacPherson

One in a million

Marcel Müller — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 13:00:29 +0000

is what I’ve been playing lately,

although I’m pretty bad – my highest score was 13500 on my favourite stage: Molar Madness.

One in a million

There’s a lot of games in AppStore. Tons of them. They make the bigger part in top grossing, top sold and top downloaded lists.

From farts to sticky fighters, all the iPhone games have to fight against the abandoning-by-boredom curve. Most rely only on the it’s funny factor. Others create an captivating atmosphere with simple elements – the case of Ramp Champ.

Released in 2009 by The Iconfactory and DS Media Labs, Ramp Champ caught the eye of many because of its beautiful graphics in addition to a simple purpose: flick your finger to roll balls, hit targets, earn tickets and redeem prizes. What makes this game so unique isn’t its formula, but how it is made.
Beautiful sound & graphic

The first thing you notice when playing Ramp Champ is the graphic awesomeness. Designed by the very talented folks at The Iconfactory, each stage has its own custom ramp, ball and targets, all beautifully crafted.

The prizes are also beautiful. Pack it all up with a great interface and you have one of the most pleasing to the eye game out there. I consider it a lecture about graphics to mobile screens.

Only that would be enough to make it worth playing, but there’s a cherry atop: the music. It’s beautiful and immersive. You can feel that they didn’t make it random. Iconfactory’s co-founder Gedeon made a blog post about that – it’s worth reading.
The power of details

But what really got me was the details. I love easter eggs and kind of crossover references. To my happiness, Ramp Champ offers many of them!

The funniest (in my opinion) are located in the loot area, like the Maneki Neko at the right. Many of us don’t have the habit of paying attention to descriptions and text in games, but if you do, you will be delighted with the engrish within all the japanese-related loots.

Ramp Champ made me think about what I’ve already said on later posts: work with soul, with purpose. It’s the thought and care put into it that makes it so special.

We can learn a lot from it, whether we’re designers or developers.

No fear of scrollbars

Marcel Müller — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 20:55:12 +0000

Hello and welcome! As my blog is also one of my experiments, this time I decided to try something new: redesign it, adding custom posts and horizontal navigation. Now all the entries are divided in three categories: quick notes (for short thoughts, videos, images and etcetera), notes (not really an article, but too long for a tweet) and chapters (posts with custom css, related to the subject).

The front page will not list *all* the entries. If you want to see them, head to the – also rebuilt – archives.

Some observations:

CSS3 and HTML5 are being heavily experimented here, so I decided to make this version non-IE. Not even 8. I have nothing personal IE users – its just for the sake of free and painless experimentation. Also, TypeKit is being used. There’s a badge at the bottom right – it means I’m using the free plan, but I’ll upgrade very soon – it’s worth it.

Ah, inspiraton. These great guys inspired me in many ways: Panic blog, Tim Van Damme, Elliot Jay Stocks, Dustin Curtis and Trent Walton.

That’s it. I hope you enjoy your stay. And oh, there are some easter eggs here and there. ;-)

Something with purpose

Marcel Müller — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 00:14:21 +0000

Reading this post in Carsonified’s blog remembered me of the power of graphic elements within everything that comes to our senses. Kat Neville points out – not with these words – that sometimes we do something that looks good but has no life. In websites, web designers rely on the sense of trending elements to make the viewer think it looks good, and end up making replicas of what’s seen on the huge load of roundup sites. The result is a soulless work.

I’m not saying that we shouldn’t use gradients or grained textures anymore, nor that we shouldn’t put our navigation links on the top right anymore. My point is: use it if you know what you are doing and what’s the purpose of it. Put thought into your work. Otherwise you’ll end up with a good-looking but – as said before – soulless result. It makes the all the difference – even in the serious-approach companies websites, where you have a more strict guideline to follow.

Jumping from websites to games, I’ve spotted a nice game that made me think about how details and thought are important. The name is Little Red Riding Hood, and it’s a classic find-the-differences game. As you find the differences, you help the little girl – thus moving on with the story. What caught my attention is that the game has no dialogs nor narration, just nice illustrations. The nature of the game makes you pay attention to details, and consequently get immersed into its atmosphere.

This is only possible because of the thought put into the illustrations. The main objects of each image have their own reason to be there, and most of the little ones too. And they tell the story by themselves with the collaboration of the player.

It’s as the greatly talented David Lanham says: My artwork is made to be fun and enjoyable as well as a bit open-ended to invite the viewer to add their own story to the imagery.

Portfolio redesigned

Marcel Müller — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 12:09:48 +0000

So, January’s gone and we’re at the second month of the year. How’s your resolutions? Well, one of mine was to entirely redesign my portfolio. I was looking for something clean where I could put some little graphic features here and there, and also make use of some CSS3 features. The result:

The test tubes have animated bubbles powered by jQuery, and I played a bit with CSS3 and Opacity for the footer social links.

Check it out – all cool things made with care. And oh, there’s an easter egg there. Can you find it?

iPad

Marcel Müller — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 12:24:42 +0000

Sorry, this entry is only available in Brazilian Portuguese.

App tip: LiveView Screencaster

Marcel Müller — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 12:03:58 +0000

Everyday tons of apps are submitted to AppStore. Everyday tons of links are posted on Twitter, sites, blogs et al. We can’t filter it all, and because of that we end up missing some gems in the process: that’s what happened with me and LiveView Screencaster.

Released in 2008 (!) by Nicholas Zambetti, LiveView for iPhone is a free tool that allows you to select a portion of your screen, which will appear immediately in your iPhone or iPod touch.

The difference between this and a VNC app is that LiveView displays the selected portion of the screen as it really would look on the iPhone display, so you can make detailed prototypes and polish your design with a more accurate preview.

All you have to do is install the app on your iPhone or iPod touch, download the Liveview screencaster and start both, assuming that your Mac and iPhone are connected to the same WiFi network.

Marcel Müller blog

Beethoven

“Oh, it seemed to me impossible to leave the world until I had forth all that I felt was within me.”

Why Pixar is Pixar

CSS3: The Little Known font-size-adjust

The power of dreams

One in a million

is what I’ve been playing lately,

although I’m pretty bad – my highest score was 13500 on my favourite stage: Molar Madness.

One in a million

Beautiful sound & graphic

The power of details

No fear of scrollbars

Something with purpose

Portfolio redesigned

iPad

App tip: LiveView Screencaster