This is Signal vs. Noise, a weblog by 37signals about entrepreneurship, design, experience, simplicity, constraints, pop culture, our products, products we like, and more. Established 1999 in Chicago.

Luis 20 Apr 06

Um, aerial view of skirt, or nether view?

The perv in me needs to know.

Rick 20 Apr 06

The top two remind me a bit of shiitake mushroom caps.

Daniel 20 Apr 06

Flowers, or eyes …

http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/users/jgd1000/iriscollage.jpg

Stumbled over those photos a year ago. So beautiful, and a little scary, I think. Taken by John Daugman in his work on iris recognition.

Timothy 20 Apr 06

The promotional materials were designed by 2x4. They also did the Herbarium promotional material for Vitra. You can see more of their portfolio at http://twoxfour.net/

Gayle 20 Apr 06

Possibly not the exact forum for this question, but this reminds of something I think of every time I read a pile of posts here:

I wonder how many regular SVN readers are women? At a guess from the names of posters, this place is skewed highly male.

I just always feel in the minority, is all, in geekland.

Luis 20 Apr 06

Possibly not the exact forum for this question, but this reminds of something I think of every time I read a pile of posts here:

I wonder how many regular SVN readers are women? At a guess from the names of posters, this place is skewed highly male.

I just always feel in the minority, is all, in geekland.

I apologize for any offence I caused….just trying ot be funny.

sham 21 Apr 06

regular reader, no penis. i always feel welcome in geekland and i don’t bother feeling like a minority, even if i am. i don’t usually post because i’m shy.

i do like the pictures. i need skirt number three.but it better not be right to the knee…either above or below is okay.

Spike 21 Apr 06

omg there are GURLS here lets all sex0r.

I didn’t think people felt anything about gender on the internet anymore. Its a pretty gender-blind place usually, I think.*

*Possibly because I’m male and therefore immune.

Gayle 21 Apr 06

No offense at all, it was kinda funny :)

Being a girl and a feminist who works in tech/design, I always think about gender. Lack of gender parity makes me crazy. I was the only girl who graduated from my multimedia/design class (there were others but they dropped out). 9/10 of my 3D students are male. Most of the names I see in the comments in places like here and Videogamey are either male or neutral.

Just makes me feel - not unwelcome, just… lonely!

Spike 21 Apr 06

I’d like a 2D student, I’d call him Horace and slide him under doors so he could open them from the other side from me. He’d be like a little paper butler.

Kieran 21 Apr 06

Am I going mad or am I seeing lot’s of similar designs on many related sites. I was just on campaignmonitor.com and while looking at the screenshots:

http://www.campaignmonitor.com/features/popups/14.html

Thought for a minute I was looking at basecamp.

I’ve seen this many times, is it just all on big company ;)

Has anyone else noticed this?

K

Gayle 21 Apr 06

HA! Horace is funny.

I guess what I’m really trying to get at is this: men and women interact with the world - including technology - differently. So while I know 37s is building their software for people like themselves, and I applaud that - in some way, I also feel left out.

For instance - IN GENERAL (and I know all generalisations are false, heh) women tend to multi-task better than men. So to me, that would affect the way software is designed. But then, y’all are designing for yourselves anyway… and .. oh, I don’t know. This stuff goes in circles in my head.

I’m not criticising, just hoping to raise discussion, btw. I’d really like to hear the opinion of 37s on this one.

Gayle 21 Apr 06

Oh, excellent, thank you! I guess maybe I haven’t been far back enough in your archives.

Glad to see you’ve noticed it, too :)

Kathleen Fasanella 21 Apr 06

Another chica here, comfortable in geekdom, only dated geeks, married one etc. However, I *do* feel out of place here because I work in “fashion” and everybody has the idea that people in the fashion industry are prima-donna artist types. Sorry, no. Fashion = manufacturing = engineering. To whit, (the fellas should like this), I posted an article entitled “anatomy of a camel toe pt.1” which explains how inappropriately used technology has created the popular/reviled fitting defect known as “camel toe”. It’s not due to fat chicks wearing too-tight pants; camel toe is an engineering defect from the sewing factory floor.