I initially interviewed Marcelo Marfil back in 2010. I decided to catch up with him recently to see what’s new – here’s what he had to say:

Tell us a bit about yourself. What are your hobbies? Where have you traveled to?

Hello, I’m a 27 year old visual designer from Brazil. When not working, I study english, read some books and watch lots of TV shows and movies. I recently visited Portugal and loved it. I’ve been there before but this time it was completely different, I was with my newlywed wife and we had time to visit some beautiful places and discovered some delicious food.

What was your first job? First freelance gig?

Voices app from Taptivate. That was a really fun project to be part of, and fortunately, it was a huge success in sales and critics judging by the feedback I’ve had from press and users.

How’d you get into graphic and user interface design?

Well, long story short, I’ve worked as graphic designer for 6 years in a number of advertising agencies in Sao Paulo, Brazil (which is where I’m from). Some day, I woke up and I had a feeling that I wasn’t being honest with myself, I was doing something that gave me no pleasure. When the first gen iPhone was released, I bought one, in that moment it sparkled my interest for Interface and Iconography even more. So I started designing my own app icons and customizing some bits of the apps I used, and then when I realized this, I was into this market designing apps. I think, the difference between designing for advertising agencies and designing for software companies is very huge though. It’s so good when you see someone having fun with an app you helped create, when you see a smile in their face you can call that a day. 

Any formal training, or mostly self taught?

I did some design training when I was in the University but mostly I’ve learned by myself. I’ve always liked to deeply explore software, and that helped me a lot to develop my skills. I still am learning something new every single day and maybe that’s the reason I like what I do.

Are there a lot of Mac users in Brazil? How’s the design scene over there?

It has increased significantly nowadays. I think the iPhone, the iTunes Store, the Apple Store Online and the local retails are helping a lot in this process. Also, Brazilian’s economy has expanded a lot in the past couple years and it has been possible to afford Apple products but they still very expensive here though.

Regarding the design scene, there are a plenty of talented designers here. I just hope it keeps growing, specially the software market.

Which do you find more challenging – designing for Mac or iOS? Any preference between the two?

I honestly don’t mind which OS I’m gonna work on, or which is more challenging. I’m a Mac user since 2001 and iOS user since the beginning. I think both are equally challenging to me.

Do you have a favourite project that you’ve worked on?

Well, the one I’m working on right now? … haha. I always try to be better today than I was yesterday. This is what keeps me motivated. Very cliche, I know, but it’s true.

What do you enjoy reading?

I’ll list my favorites:

Blogs:

• The Big Picture
• The Loop
• The Verge
• Apartment Therapy
• io9

Books and Magazines:

• Being Peacy by Tgich Nhat Hanh
• Simplify Your Work Life by Elaine St. James
• Focus by Leo Babauta

If you had to pick one person as being the most influential person in your life, who would that be, and why?

Sorry, I can’t pick just one. I’d say my parents and my wife. They’ve always trusted and supported me in everything. I’m really proud to have them near to me.

What’s your hardware/software setup look like? Any favourite applications?

My weapons of choice are a 27-inch, Mid 2011 i7 iMac powered with a Vertex 3 SSD and an Intuous 4 Wacom tablet.

Overextending about the whole computer usage my favorites are:

• Apple Mail
• Billings
• Byword
• Espresso
• Fontcase
• Notational Velocity

And lastly, if you had to pick another career, totally out of the design realm, what would it be?

I really love music and movies. I can’t live without it. Anything related to any of these two would be great.

You can follow Marcelo on Twitter or check out some of his awesome work on his personal website.

There’s been lots of discussion about how the iPhone’s mute switch should behave. It all spurred from a NY Times piece about someone’s iPhone marimba ring interrupting a symphony performance.

John Gruber examines this and concludes that Apple’s current behaviour is correct:

I think the current behavior of the iPhone mute switch is correct. You can’t design around every single edge case, and a new iPhone user who makes the reasonable but mistaken assumption that the mute switch silences everything, with an alarm set that he wasn’t aware of, and who is sitting in the front row of the New York Philharmonic when the accidental alarm goes off, is a pretty good example of an edge case.

Whereas if the mute switch silenced everything, there’d be thousands of people oversleeping every single day because they went to bed the night before unaware that the phone was still in silent mode.

Andy Ihnatko then weighed in on the discussion with the philosophy that the mute switch should mute everything, no matter what app, what context, etc. He suggests that it’s essentially up to the user to be aware of this and if their alarm doesn’t go off because they forgot to un-mute their phone, that’s their mistake.

If screwups are inevitable, then the iPhone should choose to screw up in a way where the user feels like he understands what went wrong, takes responsibility for that mistake, and knows how to avoid repeating it. I shouldn’t be forced to consult a little laminated wallet card every time I slide a two-state “Mute” switch, to remind myself of all of the iPhone’s independent exceptions to the concept of “silence.” I can’t review all pending alerts and notifications to anticipate future problems.

No. I should slide the switch to “Mute,” and then the phone goes SILENT. If I miss an appointment because I did that, it’s completely on me. If my phone disrupts a performance despite the fact that I took clear and deliberate action to prevent that from happening…that’s the result of sloppy design. Or arrogant design, which is harder to forgive.

I tend to agree with Gruber, for the same reasons Dr. Richard Gaywood mentions:

Consider this scenario: the iPhone mute switch does, as Ihnatko wants, silence everything. I want to use it as an alarm clock with the phone on charge on my bedside table (a not-uncommon desire, I believe). I’ve done this with every cell phone I’ve had, back to 2000 or so.

So: if Ihnatko has his way, I cannot mute the phone or my alarm will not sound. I am forced to leave the phone’s sound on and be woken up multiple times a night by beeps and gurgles as I receive Twitter messages or spam emails and what have you. That’s clearly not what I want, and as it’s not how any cell phone I’ve ever used has behaved, it’s also not what I expect.

I’d say Apple has it just right in the current implementation.

BUT, there is one other idea; Profiles for iPhone.

Remember those old Nokia phones that had “ringtone profiles”?

For those of you that don’t remember, it was that phone you played Snake on (which is still better than any iPhone game I’ve ever played).

Profiles were great. They were a simple way to setup “blueprints” for various settings on your cellphone, so that the phone would behave a certain way when (and where) you wanted it to.

In order for some to realize the benefits of this, I’ve noted a few scenarios where Profiles would come in handy.

You could set one up called “Work” that would also have silent keytones, but wouldn’t even vibrate (which can be very disruptive in an enclosed meeting room).

You could setup a Profile for your phone called “Movie”. Your phone would only vibrate when it rings, and the keys would be silent.

You’d set one up called “Party” that would blow all the sounds and whistles. You’d be able to hear your phone ringing over the crowd on full volume (or feel the vibration if that fails), and you’d get the audible feedback when pressing buttons – assurance you may need after a few drinks.

You’d have another Profile called “Bedtime” that would have silent keynotes, and the ringtone volume turned way down. Perhaps you’d also choose a more soothing ringtone in place of your classic Old Phone or Marimba ringtone. That way you can hear your phone ringing in case an important call comes through, but you won’t be shell-shocked during your precious sleep. And of course you wouldn’t have to hear your Twitter push-notifications go off. Vibrate would also be off, because really, what’s more annoying than your phone sliding off your night table as you desperately try to grab it while your eyes are covered in morning goop.

These are the settings Nokia offered on the 3310 back in the day:

*Taken from Nokia’s manual for the 3310 handset

• Ringing tone: Sets the ringing tone for voice calls.
• Ringing volume: Sets the volume level for the ringing and message alert tones.
• Incoming call alert: Defines how the phone notifies you of incoming voice calls.
• Message alert tone: Sets the call alert for text messages.
• Keypad tones: Sets the volume level for keypad tones.
• Warning tones: Sets the phone to sound a warning tone, for example when the battery is running out of power.
• Vibrating alert: Sets the phone to vibrate when you receive a voice call or a text message.
• Screen saver: Sets the picture that is displayed in standby mode after a selected period of time (called ’timeout’).

So why doesn’t iPhone have Profiles? Probably because it over complicates the user experience.  

I can definitely see the complexity a profile feature would bring, but I can also see the benefits. In either case, constantly having to adjust my ringer volume and toggle the mute switch on/off can prove to be a bit annoying.

Imagine Profiles with location-based settings.

Your iPhone would know when you’re home, when you’re in the office, or when you’re at work. You’d be able to specify Profiles by location, time, or manually.

It could even do things beyond volume settings – it could turn your passcode lock on when you leave your home, or turn your screen brightness down in the morning so your eyes don’t bleed when you look at the screen when you first wakeup.

In writing this post it’s evident why it’s not there – it’s just too complicated. It wouldn’t have to be something enabled (and pushed to the user to setup) by default, or something heavily marketed by Apple. 

I’d be interested in hearing other people’s opinions on this, so feel free to get in touch with your thoughts. 

I stumbled upon this the other day by accident when browsing through Calendar on my iPhone:

If you tap and hold on a particular date in Calendar for iPhone, the box will flash blue twice and a new event will be created. 

Saves you from having to scroll through the date picker – especially handy when dealing far into the future.

I put a page together to showcase the tools I use.

The page provides a bit of insight into the hardware and software I use on a regular basis, as well as the different atmospheres in which I work.

If you have any questions about anything I’m using, feel free to drop me a line.

Thanks to Chris Bowler’s latest site refresh for the idea!

Why are images saved from Mail and Safari (or screenshots taken on the device) placed into the Camera Roll in iOS?

The Camera Roll album in the Photos application should contain the photos of people, places, and things you’ve photographed – not images saved from within the device (especially the screenshots taken with it).

With iOS 5 you can create albums on the device for images you save, or screenshots you take, but they’ll still show up in the Camera Roll.

It’s a bit annoying that the screenshots I take for work purposes (often containing sensitive information) show up in the camera roll that I jump to when showing a friend a photo I’ve taken.

I recently had the pleasure of interviewing Aaron Mahnke, a designer, writer, and the curator of Read & Trust

Tell us a bit about yourself. We know you love writing and design – care to share a bit more about your personal side?

First and foremost I’m a husband and father. I’m pretty lucky to have an amazing wife who encourages me to pursue my dreams and try new things. She’s my sounding board and my biggest fan. And my two little girls are my biggest source of inspiration and drive; it’s up to me to build a life for them that fosters creativity and exploration, strength and courage.

Aside from family, design and writing, I fill my “spare” time with reading and creating. About a decade ago I taught myself how to bind books, and though it’s been a while since I’ve tackled a new project, those are very relaxing, almost meditative moments. And I love reading. Interestingly enough, I read more non-fiction than fiction. Perhaps it’s my way of gathering ideas and information for the fiction that I write. So I tend to read books on history, culture, language and forgotten worlds.

On the lifestyle side of things (if anyone cares), my family follows the pale diet fairly closely, and we work out at a local CrossFit to make sure we are taking care of our health and well-being. And I’ve got to say, watching my wife dead-lift more than her own body weight is a sight to behold!

What was your first job growing up?

I was barely sixteen when my mom’s good friend gave me a job at the auto-parts store she and her husband ran in my hometown. I was this fresh, innocent little kid spending long shifts with gruff mechanics and even worse customers. But my primary job was to drive the deliveries to the various garages around the town that had ordered parts and paint.

I learned to drive standard transmission in that job. Bogey was the old delivery guy, an ancient man seemingly carved from nicotine and hatred, and I had apparently been hired to take over his role. So he took me out to the delivery truck, directed me to the driver’s seat, and told me to drive. I learned to drive a stick quickly that day, though not happily.

How’d you get into writing and design? Which came first?

Writing came first. Grade school, in fact. I had one of those fifth grade teachers that thought the best way for us to perfect our handwriting and grammar was to write story after story after story. She encouraged us to make things up, write them down and even sketch illustrations to accompany them. I sadly don’t remember that teacher’s name, but she changed my life.

I have a powerful memory of being in my family van one day as a ten-year old kid. My mom and her friend were going shopping out of town, and they brought me and her daughter along. Cindy, the girl, looked over at me at some point and asked, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” I remember holding up a wrinkled and bend bundle of notebook paper with my illegible chicken scratch on it and replying, “A writer!”

Art was there for a long time as well; drawing, building, creating things I had imagined. But it wasn’t until college that I discovered design. My great-grandmother was an amazing oil painter, but try as I might, I was never able to do it. It was too messy, too unruly. So when I encountered design, my inner OCD rejoiced. Here was something I could get behind: clean, simple art that used space and form to communicate messages and ideas. I was hooked.

Do you have any formal design training, or are you mostly self-taught?

I’m all self-taught, baby! My design training in college was pre-computers (93-97), so I learned to paint color swatted in perfect grids with a paint brush. Computers opened up a world of possibilities for designers. But thankfully, I’m a natural student, always trying to pick up something new. So when I need to know a skill for a project, I learn it.

Do you prefer to design for print or the web?

Well, that’s tricky. I’m not a developer, so for me, design is design. Tell me what size it should be, and I’ll design the art to fit, whether the space is 960px x 1000px, or 4”x6”, I don’t really think it matters. The key is understanding the place your art is going to be, and designing the layout to work in that medium. A postcard requires a different set of standards and rules for communicating than a website does.

So I’m not sure I distinguish the two. Are there output differences? Sure, and not understanding those is dangerous. But I understand – and enjoy – both. For me, the distribution of passion is more about types of design work. I personally love branding design, creating a culture and system around an idea. It’s my favorite type of project to take on.

What do you find most rewarding about your work?

It’s easy for a designer to take for granted their ability to take a concept or idea and give it a shape and form on the page. Not everyone can do that (or they’d all be designers too), so for me, helping non-visual people give their visions life is incredibly rewarding. It can be a tough road, and sometimes painful, but it’s worth it.

What’s the hardest part about freelancing?

That’s a toss-up between the loneliness of working by myself and the lack of having an in-house coach and mentor. So to help with these weak-spots, I’ve made huge efforts to build a network of friends online, and to seek out people farther down the road than I am to guide me and give me advice. Having regular, daily contacts for banter and dialogue, as well as having a small group of people to lean on for advice and direction is essential.

Who has been influential to your writing career? Your design career?

Hmm. Good question. That’s easier to answer for the writing side of my career. I grew up reading J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis after my 6th grade teacher suggested them to my mother. From there I started to read anything I could find. Most of it was good, but a few gems floated to the top and helped form my style and vision. Tad Williams is one of them. Check out his Memory, Sorrow and Thorn trilogy if you love fantasy. So incredibly epic and well done.

For design I’ve tended to blaze my own trail. I definitely lean toward the less-is-more style, and stay as minimal as possible. Design isn’t crazy fancy layouts and intricate textures. At least not to me. Design, to me, is communication. And so I aim to be clear, simple and understandable. That’s probably why I do my best work in the branding realm, rather than responsive web design or 300-page catalog design ;)

Tell us a bit about the Read & Trust network. Where’d the idea come from? How are things going so far? Any tips for someone looking to be invited?

The short explanation is that I started to notice a network of connections among a large group of online writers. They would link to each other’s posts, build conversations that spanned multiple sites and posts, and push each other toward better writing. And each of them had their own set of readers/subscribers. I remembered how hard it was in the early days to locate great online writing, and knew it would be helpful to say to someone, “Hey, you love that guy’s stuff? Well, he loves to read these other writers…maybe you should check them out too.”

The key idea behind membership is that this core group or writers already interacts with you. For an up-and-coming blogger, the best advice is to write great content, share it with R&T members, and hope that they feel it’s something they want to share with their readers. If they do that enough, over time there’s a large amount of trust built up. They read you more regularly, recommend you often. And then all of a sudden you wake up one day and realize that you’re kind of in the group already.

My job is to notice when those relationships blossom, and make sure there’s a consensus among the members, and then extend an invitation. Stephen Hackett is a great example. He’s our most recent addition, but if you thought about him and his site, you’d probably assume he has belonged all along. That’s the idea.

How has the premium newsletter approach worked thus far?

The newsletter is great for a couple of reasons. First, most of these people write in their spare time, between projects at work or in the evenings. They love doing what they do, but outside of maybe a tiny bit of ad revenue, these people write for free. So the premium newsletter allows me to pay them for the awesome stuff they write. Honestly, that’s the best feeling in the world.

The newsletter is also great because we can offer original, exclusive posts…stuff that Shawn Blanc or Patrick Rhone won’t ever post on their own sites…to whoever wants it. You just have to pay for it. Sometimes the posts are short. I get complaints about that, but the length of a written piece says nothing about quality. I’ve read 100k word novels that are absolute crap, and 3-page short stories that blew my mind. Word count is pointless. These writers bring talent and power to the table.

What’s your hardware/software setup look like?

I divide my time between a 27” iMac and a 13” MacBook Air. I run Lion on both, and have to say that I feel much more productive and flexible on the Air than I ever have on the iMac. The only benefit to the iMac is the additional storage and the larger screen, but I could learn to get by without that if I had to. I have an iPhone 4 with me at all times, and an iPad, though I refer to it as my OmniFocusPad, because that’s basically all I use it for these days.

I do most of my work inside Adobe’s Create Suite (v3 for me), and of those apps, most of my time is spent in Illustrator. I sync notes and scraps of text between Notational Velocity on my Macs and PlainText on my iPhone. and most people don’t know this, but PlainText syncs with Scrivener, my writing app of choice. Scrivener is amazing for people like me who write and publish on their own. I am able to build one manuscript and then export the various file types I need to make my fiction available on as many devices as possible. It’s built with a ton of great aids and tools that can help any type of writer too. I love it.

If you could spend a few hours over dinner with anyone in the world, who would it be and why?

Neil Gaiman. Hands-down, that man is one of my favorite authors, and his work drips with depth, creativity and fearlessness. I don’t know of any other author who has explored so many genres and reading levels. And from what I can tell, he’s a fantastic gentleman, fun to hang out with and full of mischief. And what dinner couldn’t use a bit of mischief, right?

And lastly, if you could do anything with your time (if money was no object), what would it be? 

Read and write. Honestly. I love design, and it has allowed me to take care of my family for many years. And people even say I’m really good at it. But my first and deepest love is for the written word. Give me free time and I gravitate like a heat-seeking missile toward stories – either of my own creation or someone else’s.

And travel would come in at second place. We’ve love to live abroad once the girls are a bit older, and having a portable job allows that. But if money were no object we would be seeing a lot more of the world right now.