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1. How to get the best out of photo apps on your smartphone

Dan Rubin, editor-at-large of the Photographic Journal and an early Instagram adopter, takes a tour of London to test some of the best smartphone photography apps. [...] – and offers some cool tips and tricks of what you can do with those shots afterwards

2. Where the Twin Towers Stood

The September 11 memorial and museum’s location at ground zero in Lower Manhattan is one of its most notable features, according to Steven M. Davis, a partner at Davis Brody Bond, the lead architects for the museum. “If you think about the notion of a traditional museum as an icon which contains exhibits, here we have the inverse,” Davis says. “These are exhibits that are in fact the icon.”

3. Design Is About Intent

Intent means purpose; something highly designed was crafted with intention in every creative decision. Frank Lloyd Wright explained that intent drives design with the credo “form follows function“; P&G calls this being “purpose-built.” The designer is the person who answers the question “How should it be?”

Overarching intent is easy. The hard part is driving that conscious decision-making throughout every little choice in the creative process. Good designers have a clear sense of the overall purpose of their creation; great designers can say, “This is why we made that decision” about a thousand details.

4. The Best Commencement Speeches, Ever

5. Can These $20,000 Houses Save the American Dream?

Our goal was to design a market-rate model house that could be built by a contractor for $20,000 ($12,000 for materials and $8,000 for labor and profit)—the 20K House, a house for everybody and everyone. We chose $20,000 because it would be the most expensive mortgage a person receiving today’s median Social Security check of $758 a month can realistically repay.

And a quote for the weekend:

Don't bend; don't water it down; don't try to make it logical; don't edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.

— Franz Kafka