Graphic designEye blog
Today Are you sitting comfortably? 70 different ways to get children to Sit Down at the Museum of Childhoo- Left to themselves, children settling down with a book will almost always drape, wedge, lean, sprawl or up-end themselves, rather than sit nicely on chairs, writes Sally Jeffery. Sit Down is a record of several centuries' worth of attempted interventions in this unruliness,via means which include trundling about on wheels, free-form lounging, and undisguised restraint. It's been argued that children have to fling themselves about all day for their proper physical and cognitive development. Mico... (more)
- Yesterday Comfort zone. Do these pictures of abandoned sofas bring calm to urban chaos?
- I started photographing abandoned sofas a few years ago, writes Christine Donnier-Valentin. The sofa is an object of comfort in a home, filled with memories of conversations, laughter, tears, play, books, food. And then it is discarded, taken outside and left next to the bins. I'm interested in the way they occupy the street spatially, face-down or lying sideways. Often the aesthetic style of the sofa matches the architecture it used to be housed in. I don't touch or re-arrange them, and I wai... (more)
- Athens snapshots: pi6.'Chaos can be very inspiring - Athens is like work in progress'
- After a whistle-stop tour of Athens at this year's Design Walk, Eye decided to catch up with some Greek designers at a more leisurely pace, writes John Ridpath. First up are communication design agency pi6, founded in 2005 by Rena Chrysikopoulou and Michael David Ochs. Chrysikopoulou is half-German half-Greek, grew up in Greece, studied and worked in Germany, and then returned to Athens. Ochs is half-Spanish half-German, grew up in Lebanon and Germany, and also studied and worked in Germany befo... (more)
- LA logo attack. H5's 'highly caffeinated' Logorama wins the Oscar for best short film
- Earlier this week, H5's Logorama won the Academy Award for best animated short. Here's the film, followed by Matt Soar's review from the current issue of Eye. Logorama Directed by Hervé de Crécy, Ludovic Houpain and Francois Alaux, H5 Reviewed by Matt Soar An entirely troubling aspect of debates about product placement (an egregious and underhand marketing practice that has already clogged up certain genres of Hollywood movies) is the industry claim that it boils down to a need for more real... (more)
- Fit to print. Newspaper Club shows what we can do with tomorrow's papers
- Newspaper Club didn't think they had a hope of following Shepard Fairey's Obama poster and winning the Graphics category at the Brit Insurance Design of the Year 2010, writes Chloë King. It was always going be a tough choice for the judging panel: how to follow a campaign that became perhaps the decade's most definitive image? But their selection was smart. Instead of choosing a single work, they commended the realisation of a system that helps amateurs and professionals publish good-looking p... (more)
- Ms Understood in Whitechapel. Eye looks back at 1970s campaign posters on International Women's Day
- These campaign posters may never have been widely seen, but they should be, writes Sally Jeffery. They are up on the walls again now for 'Ms Understood', an exhibition at the Women's Library in Whitechapel, London now extended until 17 April. The show charts the launch and exuberant growth of the Women's Liberation movement in Britain, through photographs, press-cuttings, posters, books, first-hand accounts and even dresses. Above: 'Y B A wife', poster for a campaign for women's legal and finan... (more)
- Grease is the Word. The chipboard lexicon of London's latest literary festival
- Eye visited The Chip Shop run by the Henningham Family Press at the launch of the London Word Festival, which started on Sunday 7 March 2010. Looking like a full size chippy, The Chip Shop is a fully functioning screen-printing workshop that serves up screen printed words on chipboard for the price of a bag of chips! Watch and wait while your chosen word is prepared, screened, inked and dried, then wrapped in paper ready to go. All words submitted will form the basis -- the lexicon -- of an o... (more)
- Up in the Cloud? Editors and designers huddle together for 'What's on your iPad?'
- The sold-out 'What's On Your iPad' event, organised jointly by the BSME (British Society of Magazine Editors) and the EDO (Editorial Design Organisation), attracted a broad mix of editors, publishers, designers and art directors, all curious to speculate about what the future might bring, and what their colleagues, rivals, advertisers and publishers might be doing. And where our current jobs might end up, if anywhere. Were we the equivalent of dot.com entrepreneurs, checking out the potential of... (more)
Typeradio
- David Schrigley 1/1
- Glasgow-based artist David Shrigley works in various media, but is best known for his slightly bizarre and humourous illustrations. David enjoys his artistic freedom, he considers himself lucky. He talks about humour, how he is perceived, his DJ-ing and taste in music. He sometimes says he’s not really good at it, but drawing does come naturally to him. 30 sheets of paper every day, he tries to put a lot of variety in his drawing. There are lots of people he admires, but he contemplates ab... (more)
- Annelys de Vet 1/1
- Annelys de Vet is head of the design department of the Sandberg Institute in Amsterdam. She tells us how she became a graphic designer, and why. Spending her time between Brussels and Amsterdam, she talks about the differences and boundaries between art and design, and Belgium and Holland. She thinks design should be service minded and functional. Annelys always tells her students to question their approach, to see design in a bigger context, and the role of design in society. She talks about he... (more)
- Büro Destruct 1/1
- Büro Destruct is a graphic artists’ collective based in Bern, Switzerland, comprising of four members. Lopetz and HeiWid share their thoughts about swimming, fonts, heroes, their fascination with Japan, the similarities between Swiss and Japanese design, Amiga and Commodore computers. And finally the answer to what happens to designers after the age of sixty. Büro Destruct :: Büro Destruct III book :: BD fonts :: BD shop :: Lopet... (more)
- Bob van Dijk 1/1
- Going out to bars and cafés is Bob’s ritual, and this social interest plays a part in his design work. He talks about why he became a graphic designer. The most important lesson he learned is not to take design too seriously, there are many different ways to approach it. His work is changing a lot over the years, but in general he likes different layers, stories within stories. Bob talks about his former The Hague studio NLXL and his life after closing it down, making drawings with hi... (more)
- David Crow 1/1
- Professor David Crow is Head of the Art and Design faculty at the Manchester University. He discusses his motivation for his move from design to teaching, and his eventual move into being an academic manager. He reveals his experiences as a teacher and the importance of encouraging cross-disciplinary education. Crow talks about his initial interest in typography, his later work with semiotics and theory and the specifics of Manchester and British graphic design. Recorded at the 33pt conference 2... (more)
- Sven Ehmann 1/1
- Sven Ehmann is editor at Die Gestalten publishers in Berlin. He talks about his working process and how he juggles multiple projects. He moves on to discussing the origins of the book Dataflow at Die Gestalten and talks about the field of design publishing and his personal motivations in making books. Recorded at the 33pt conference 2009 in Dortmund. Die Gestalten :: Etc publications :: File Download (22:55 min / 32 MB)... (more)
- Von B und C 1/1
- Barbara Hahn and Christine Zimmermann are Von B und C, a design studio in Bern, Switzerland. They start by explaining how they got interested in infographics, visualising data as their graduation project, and how they work together (of coarse their collaboration can be best viewed in their self-designed ‘collaboration visualisation’). Analysis and visualisation is a much more complicated and time consuming process than design. They don’t have a preference for either, form and c... (more)
- Autobahn 1/1
- Jeroen Breen, Rob Stolte and Maarten Dullemeijer are Autobahn, design collective from Utrecht, The Netherlands. They first describe the special project they did for their presentation at 33pt in Dortmund, they tell us how they met and how they got interested in typography. They elaborate on their typographic experiments, and how they collaborate. Do they have specialities? Heroes? We finally hear about their big dream. Recorded at the 33pt conference in Dortmund. Autobahn :: F... (more)
information aesthetics
- Today US Department of State Visualizes Your Opinion about Foreign Affairs
- Opinion Space [state.gov] is a innovative online tool that uses data visualization and statistical analysis to provide all participants with an equal opportunity to have their opinions heard and to vote on the ideas of others in the context of US foreign policy. Developed by a collaboration between U.S. Department of State and the Center for New Media at UC Berkeley, a shared opinion-based visualization is created based on the personal ratings of 5 different questions. Every partic... (more)
- Yesterday Paris Captured in 26 Gigapixels Worth of High-Rez Photos
- Paris 26 Gigapixels [paris-26-gigapixels.com] is a stitching of 2,346 single photos showing a world-record breaking, very high-resolution panoramic view of the French capital (354,159x75,570 px). One can zoom in on famous monuments of the French capital, such as the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, the Beaubourg and the Notre Dame de Paris. See also Gigapixel Photography, Colossal Images, PhotoSynth, Obama's Inauguration Photo and Chris Jordan Infographic Art. ... (more)
- Yesterday Logorama: Best Animated Short Film Award
- The movie Logorama [logorama-themovie.com] is a 17-minute animated film made by the French collectibe H5. The film depicts events in a stylized Los Angeles, and is told entirely through the use of more than 2,500 contemporary and historical logos and mascots. The film won the Prix Kodak at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival and the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film at the 82nd Academy Awards. Logorama explores the extent to which logos are embedded in our daily existence. "Logor... (more)
- Doodling Funny Infographics with Google Maps
- The always surprising and refreshing Abstract City blog at New York Times Online, which regularly features visual pearls like New York in Lego and Subway Map Bathroom Tiling, has just posted a nice collection of graphical depictions [niemann.blogs.nytimes.com] that mimic the visual style of Google Maps. However, where I first assumed they were real outtakes or crops without any major alterations, some, if not all, seem to be newly created. On each image, the captions have been changed ... (more)
- Visualizing the Issues behind Food Dependence: How to Feed the World?
- If you appreciated the depth and level of detail of the now classic infographically animated The Credit of Crisis - Visualized, you will probably also like the following! "How to Feed the World?" [dvanw.com] explains in more than 8 minutes the intrinsic issues involved with international food dependence and the existing regional differences of food intake, in both quantity as quality. For instance, in Europe, people have access to a varied, large diet, while the available (affordab... (more)
- Google Public Data Explorer
- Google Public Data Explorer [google.com] is yet the latest entry in the ongoing race to democratize data access and its representation for lay people. Similar to Many Eyes, Swivel, Tableau Public and many others, Google Public aims to make large datasets easy to explore, visualize and communicate. As a unique feature, the charts and maps are able to animate over time, so that any meaningful time-varying data changes become easier to understand. The goal is for students, journalists, po... (more)
- Obama Loves Infographic Movies (and Edward Tufte)
- Yesterday, I tweeted the quite surprising news that information graphics guru Edward Tufte will be joining the Recovery Independent Advisory Panel [edwardtufte.com], which aims to track and explain $787 billion in recovery stimulus funds in the US. I was convinced this news event had been given sufficient attention. Little did I know. I just discovered the Obama campaign actually loves infographics so much, they recently have featured an infographic-style movie on their official web... (more)
- Tim Berners-Lee: The Year Open Data Went Worldwide (TED Talk)
- The very short TED talk by internet pioneer Tim Berners-Lee shows a few of the interesting results where open data gets mashed up in various compelling data visualizations. The talk includes many examples the avid infosthetics reader should already know, including Where Does my Money Go?, California Stimulus Map, data.gov.uk Newspaper and OpenStreetMap Edits. Other projects, not blogged about before on this site, include Making Water a Matter of Race [time.com], Afghanistan Election... (more)
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grain edit
- Today Emily Forgot
- London designer and illustrator Emily Alston, better known by her moniker Emily Forgot, takes us on quite the journey in this illustration for Design Week. She features a cascade of chairs, lamps, and other household accessories layered upon each other to create a surreal environment. The colors in this piece play with light, with its soft tints of cyan and salmon juxtaposed against a dark chocolate background. The really sparse patterns hidden intermittently within the shapes are a real treat ... (more)
- Yesterday Ronald Clyne at Folkways
- Being an avid collector of records, I’m looking forward to getting my hands on Unit Editions most recent release. From the website:” Ronald Clyne at Folkways is a 64 page 'newspaper' devoted to designer Ronald Clyne's record covers for the Folkways label. Ronald Clyne (1925 -- 2006) designed over 500 album covers for Folkways and is largely responsible for the famous label's striking visual appearance. His distinctive use of two-color printing on matte paper and his deft use of mod... (more)
- Philippe Nicolas
- Aerial wonder! These birds-eye illustrations from Philippe Nicolas are pretty fun. Simple, colorful, and oblique--I love how angular and well composed these pieces are. In addition to the Ground series, Phillipe also has a nice collection of typographic and design work. His portly-weighted font, bang-bang, makes an appearance in a tasty series entitled N.Y. Foods. Check out his site, and view his Behance. No TagsShare This ... (more)
- It's the day of the show y'all
- It all goes down tonight. The fun starts at 7pm. More info here. -------- Also worth checking: House Industries interview. Not signed up for the Grain Edit RSS Feed yet? Give it a try. Its free and yummy. -------- No TagsShare This Vintage kids book Mi Diccionario is in the Grain Edit Shop ... (more)
- Mi Diccionario Ilustrado in the Shop
- Mi Diccionario Ilustrado - Illustrations by Acosta Moro Mi Diccionario Ilustrado is a fun little dictionary for kids. Each page is filled with colorful illustrations of animals, musical instruments and various modes of transportation. I was able to get my hands on a couple copies of this hard to find book from the 1970s. If your interested in purchasing a copy, stop by the grain edit shop. -------- Also worth checking: Miroslav Sasek - This is the United Nations Not signed up for the G... (more)
- La Boca Design
- La Boca is a London based design firm specializing in transporting its viewers to places of the future by means of the past. This record sleeve, created for Arcadion, has a nice composition with the symmetry of the two magnetic looking objects on the edge of what seems like a portal into space. The warm gradient behind the bold text nicely juxtaposes the cool waves of the galactic landscape. This is where I’d like to be today. In addition to creating record sleeves, La Boca has a... (more)
- Frank Eidlitz Posters for Shell
- Awesome collection of posters for Shell Oil Company dating back to 1964. The series was created by Australian designer Frank Eidlitz. (via The Silver Lining via Re:collection) ---- Also worth checking: Vintage Porsche Posters Not signed up for the Grain Edit RSS Feed yet? Give it a try. Its free and yummy. ---- No TagsShare This Vintage kids ... (more)
- Go Faster: The Graphic Design of Racing Cars
- This video provides a very interesting look at the design of racing cars in 70s. The graphics on these care are incredible -- very minimal and nothing at all like the logo-plastered cars of NASCAR. From the Gestalten.tv website: “You’d never guess it, but these big toys for big boys were at the height of their design during the 1970s -- by sheer chance. Mechanics and team members -- not designers or marketing strategists -- adorned racecars with all of those flashy stripes, logos, ... (more)
NewsDesigner.com
- Kind Of a Personal Question, Isn't It?*
- Update:...... (more)
- Judging The Best of Newspaper Design
- I'm in Syracuse assisting with the judging of the Society for News Design’s Best of Newspaper Design competition through Monday. There’s comprehensive live blog coverage, as well as Twittering and Flickring....... (more)
- New York Times Sells First Front-Page Display Ad
- The New York Times will sell display ads on its front page and, in fact, already has, as you can see in the above image of Monday’s front page. The Times would not disclose the rates it charges for...... (more)
- Save NewsPageDesigner
- NewsPageDesigner, the venerable newspaper design portfolio site, is in need of new servers and programming to redesign the site from the ground up. And they need to do it soon so they don't lose the thousands of portfolios that are...... (more)
- Election Front Pages
- Here are the front pages from the top U.S. papers this morning. I’ll add some smaller papers and international ones as they reflect the results in Thursday’s editions. Update: I’ve added a few more pages, including some international pages....... (more)
- Chicago Tribune Redesign
- The Chicago Tribune launched its long-awaited redesign today. A bunch more pages after the jump. The SND site has a look into the project in slideshow and video form, and Poynter has a Q&A with Design Director Jonathon Berlin....... (more)
- SND Vegas Backchannel
- The aforementioned SND Vegas workshop begins Sunday, and I've hacked together a page that collects some of the online conversations generated by the workshop. Content from blogs, Twitter, Flickr, etc., should show up on the page in a timely...... (more)
- Sarah Who?
- The Society for News Design annual workshop is about to kickoff in Las Vegas, and the online polling stations are open for members to vote for officers. But before you discharge that most sacred duty, the Concerned Union of Designers...... (more)
Voice: AIGA Journal of Design
- The Ins and Outs of Working In-house
- Being part of a design department has its pros and cons. Björk ponders the upside of health care versus the bummers of cubicles and conformity.... (more)
- AIGA Austin partners with SXSW to recognize excellence in film design
- AIGA Austin, the Austin Museum of Art and the SXSW Film Festival have teamed up to honor design excellence in film and television, as noted in The New York Times this week. If you’ll be in the area for the festival, make plans to visit the exhibition of finalists’ work!... (more)
- The Measure of a Designer
- Are designers artists or engineers? Inspired by matters of the heart, Collins considers the value design brings to the human experience.... (more)
- Don't miss your golden opportunity
- March 26 is the late-entry deadline for AIGA’s annual design competitions. Enter now for your chance to take your place in design history!... (more)
- AIGA partners with F+W Media's Design Community
- AIGA and F+W Media have announced a partnership to advance the concept of design thinking, the relevance of design in problem solving and the leadership role designers play in our society.... (more)
- For Your Appropriation: An Interview with Rick Prelinger
- Heller takes stock of the Prelinger Library, which provides public access to historical media to enable new authorship.... (more)
- Case Study: Yearbook Yourself
- A back-to-school campaign for Taubman shopping malls, Colle+McVoy’s Yearbook Yourself website and app scored top grades.... (more)
- It's All Greek to Me
- Athens’ fourth annual Design Walk placed Greek graphic designers on the map. Vienne found a few bright stars in this fledgling scene.... (more)
Vitamin
- Today Join the Carsonified Affiliates Program
- Regular readers of Think Vitamin may know that Carsonified, the company behind the blog, also run a number of web related events in Europe and the USA. We thought you might like to know that we recently launched our free to join event affiliate program. Here’s how we describe it on the web site: The Carsonified Affiliate Program allows you to earn money. Every time a ticket to an event is purchased thanks to someone clicking on your affiliate link or banner we pay you £20. Sell five ti... (more)
- Yesterday Are you Wasting 50% of your Time?
- In today’s constant-distraction-and-huge-todo-list culture, it’s extremely easy to get sidetracked by things that aren’t vital to achieving your goals. Here are some simple tips for making sure you’re not wasting a large percentage of your time on things that don’t matter. #1 Gather Your Todos I use Remember the Milk to record all my todos. I group them by projects and then assign due dates and priorities. They also have a great iPhone app which syncs automatically... (more)
- Somewhere, Superficial, & So Much More: Designing for Conversion Experiences
- Lead gen pages are often misunderstood as standalone, single-page designs. There’s a science behind A/B testing and optimizing lead gen pages, but there’s also a component of creative user experience that should not be overlooked as you drill deeply into what drives your users through your conversion funnel. Some user behaviors make clear sense, while others can confound your expectations. Overall, however, designing a complete experience around a conversion page is best understood t... (more)
- Strategy Basics: It's Really all about having a Plan
- Strategy. You hear about it all the time. One must have a strategy/work on a strategy/follow a strategy and so on. Business types like to say “strategy” a lot as it sounds big, complicated and important. And it is important, but there is no need for it to be complicated. Quite the opposite. At the heart of it all “strategy” is just about having a plan for the thing you are working on. Or as Wikipedia puts it “a strategy is a plan of action designed to achieve a par... (more)
- Setting rather than Resetting Default Styling
- Editors Note: In his first article for Think Vitamin Thierry Koblentz discusses the issue of “resetting” your CSS. “base.css” versus “reset.css” For a long time, the very first line in my styles sheets was: * {padding:0;margin:0;} This simple rule was very convenient as it leveled margin and padding values of all elements across browsers. This “hard reset” was short and simple and it had the advantage of belonging to the main styles sheet rather t... (more)
- Freelancing Together
- Editors Note: In his first article for Think Vitamin Matthew Smith, Principal Designer at Squared Eye Design, discusses the benefits, risks and infrastructure required to work effectively with fellow freelancers. Working Alone Working alone can be great. There's a pleasant autonomy of knowing exactly what you're doing and when. There are few unknowns. You work directly with the client and don't have to worry about managing others. In the past I've done everything from branding, strategy, IA, ... (more)
- Getting Started with Yahoo! GeoPlanet Explorer
- Where are you and what is around you? Geolocation is a hot topic. Google just got the patent on geolocated advertising, mobile phones allow us to pinpoint ourselves on the planet and find things nearby and with augmented reality applications we can even find our way by filming our surrounding and finding hidden treasures by moving our mobile around. Using geolocation as a developer is quite easy, you can do a few things: If you are building something in a social network, you can get the geogra... (more)
- Future of Web Apps Highlights Video
- Our friends Jim and Nick at Doctype recently attended Future of Web Apps Miami along with their camera gear. They kindly put together a highlight reel of the day including interviews and clips from the main stage sessions. They will be releasing full length interviews over on their Facebook page shortly. Just as a quick heads up the full length videos from the event will be made available shortly here on Think Vitamin. Useful Links Doctype Future of Web Apps episode: http://doctype.tv/fowa Twit... (more)