The other day I dropped by Bookbuyers in Mountain View and picked up a real gem.  I got a sweet copy of ‘More Altair Design’ from 1974.  The cover is pretty seductive, with swirling kaleidoscopic fractal looking designs on the cover.  My interest continues to shift from the early and mid-century modern design I loved as a New Yorker to a later, funkier, 70s diggable California treehousish thing.  I suppose it was just a matter of time: art deco chrome furniture looks pretty terrible in a mountain cabin, and the humidity doesn’t treat the chrome well.  Time to find a high-end beanbag chair for the living room.

This book is wonderful as a metaphor for the design of extensible web platforms today.  I can’t pretend to have all the knowledge to build out an API or an extensible web platform of any kind all by myself, and likewise I can’t claim a deep understanding of the math behind the Altair templates.  But I’ve spent many hours digging through old piles of design books in used book stores and found countless volumes compiling easy-to-rip images of everything from victorian trim to 17th century sea monsters, all of which are predecessors to the modern day clip art library, and I do believe this Altair design system offers a little something different.  These templates are generative platforms for unique ideas; they are springboards from which the designer can develop their own interfaces, their own templates, their own vision, particularly if one is inspired to extend the grids beyond the constraints of the rather small book pages.  The Altair templates create architecture for imaginative builders or ‘interior designers’ to embellish upon.

I’ve reproduced a few of the pages in the Altair book and I’ve added a single entry of color in each of those featured below so that I don’t violate copyright.  I’d suggest surfing eBay and grabbing one of these books to play with for inspiration, you won’t regret it.