Gregory Raiz’s Proposed Kindle Redesign

The Kindle’s new hardware design is clearly better than the original’s, but my first impression is that it’s still way too noisy. Why are the side buttons labeled with text? And why is there a huge “Amazon Kindle” logo at the top of the device? The front face of the Kindle is effectively white space surrounding the text of each page you read — so it’s like reading a real book where the publisher has stamped a two-inch logo at the top of each page and printed “turn here” in left and right margins of each page. The iPhone gets it right: no logos on the front face, no text on hardware buttons.

Gregory Raiz’s proposed redesign is much better. I disagree with Raiz that a color screen is essential, but I’m completely on board with his central premise: reducing the visual clutter.

★ Wednesday, 18 February 2009