Graphic Design
Muji Chronotebook is a new dayplanner that uses an analog “clock” metaphor, with each page arranged around a circular center. The left page is AM and the right page is PM.
So, my first reaction was really positive. We desperately need more design that grounds our daily experience in the physical, and this appears to be beautifully expressive of circadian rhythms and the subjective experience of time, but…
… is it really so natural? Looking at the layout, I feel pretty uncomfortable. Sure, our experience of a sequence of days is cyclical, but I think our experience of the flow of a single day is much more linear.
I also wonder about writing around a circle. Maybe this works better for character-based languages, but it seems awkward for, say, english.
(Please note that I haven’t actually used the thing. Maybe it’s awesome ;)
This will surely come in handy: Blasting the Myth of the Fold.
I was checking out exactitudes (well worth the click if you haven’t seen it before) and, stumbling around google, found a hidden pdf from some class on typologies: check it out (though you’ve probably seen many of the photos before).
Remember how you stopped using italics because they looked so bad on web pages, but then when the operating systems started anti-aliasing you started using them again? Well, think again, my friend. They’re worse than ever on the small screen:
Dear web 2.0 design community: Please stop using so many gradients.
Thanks,
Nadav.
Kottke linked to flickr photos tagged “comic sans” and I was thinking it’d be interesting to see the geographic distribution of something like that. Unfortunately mappr is US-only and only one photo showed up, which, I assure you, doesn’t indicate any US superiority in typeface usage.
I had no idea that Air Conditioning was so critical to the history of printing. That’s cool.
A collection of instructions and art from late-midcentury Monster Model kits. (via)
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Amazon has a new tab style:
Dirt Style 101 is a now-outdated response to the apparently not-quite-slick enough (to escape satire) web design of 2002.
The Designers Toolbox is a somewhat eclectic (i.e. random) assortment of helpful information, templates, and links for web and print designers, including a “greek” generator, standard envelope sizes, and some basic CSS info. (via)
If you’ve never read Ellen Lupton and Abbott Miller, you’re in for a treat, and I just noticed that they have a web site with a whole buncha essays. Poke around and you’ll find gems like this: “Typography is an interface to the alphabet…Readers usually ignore the typographic interface, gliding comfortably along literacy’s habitual groove. Sometimes, however, the interface should be allowed to fail.”
Patterns is “A series of professional observations about package design practices within specific product categories.” (including Energy Drinks, Sliced Bread, and Coffee). A formalization of how you attack a graphic design problem in a crowded field. Nice. (via)
Even the spam is cuter in Japan:
Went to see Chip Kidd last night at CCA. He’s an extremely entertaining speaker; go see him if you have a chance. Highlights (quotes not exact):
“A photograph can be interesting or not. But if you turn it on its side it’s more interesting (sometimes a lot, sometimes a little)…. and if all else fails, turn it upside down.”
and
“Asparagus… toothbrush! Pear… lightbulb! Meat…. sock!”
Lovely images from Japanese children’s books from the 1920s. (via)
Coudal Partners - MoOM (Museum of Online Museums)
The Decline of Fashion Photography | An argument in pictures is an excellent bit of design criticism, beautifully presented! (thanks to wendy for the link)
Everything you ever wanted to know (and more) about Fibonacci numbers and the Golden section, all presented in stunningly beautiful HTML.
Now that CMCD is live, I can link to that ubiquitous TV set. Now you’ll see it everywhere.
Peter gives props (with illustrations) to the National Park Service design program. The NPS “Unigrid” system, developed by Massimo Vignelli back before everyone was a graphic designer, was designed to take advantage of the cost savings of purchasing paper in bulk while offering the usual advantages of a grid-based design system (coherence with flexibility). It’s also a great design success story.
Old, old news (like 1999, dude), and just a “little bit” self-conscious, but who doesn’t like the combination of voyeurism and exhibitionism that happens in a gallery of computer desktops: Kaliber10000 :. On Display,
The Eyes Have It is a “blog devoted (mainly) to visual communications in the pharmaceutical, biotech and healthcare sectors” … and there’s some great general graphic design posting going on as well, like an excerpt of Paula Scher explaining how to explain graphic design.
I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned this here, but I absolutely love the work Matt Jones (and company) have done with the BBC home page. I have no idea how successful it’s been with users, but I find myself citing it as a wonderful example of two things: 1) It’s the beginning of an antidote to what I call the End of the Artifact (that feeling one gets that nothing can be touched anymore, that it’s all ephemeral); and 2) It demonstrates the power of visual design and interaction design joined in a healthy, funcitonal way to create something greater than either (which seems as good a definition of “experience design” as anything). Bravo!
Heh… The perils of royalty-free stock art: Model Linux Geek an MS User Too?
Map Resources sells all sorts of maps as layered Illustrator and Photoshop files.
How Do People Evaluate a Web Site’s Credibility?
“When evaluating the credibility of a Web site, participants commented on the design look of the site more often than any other Web site feature.”Take that you usability hardliners!
To be fair, the study also found that “After Design Look, the next category that people commented on in assessing credibility was the structure of the site’s information.” (thanks, Susannah)
Funny comic about graphic designers, kindly sent me by kirsten.
More photos of signs. (via lines&splines&signs)
I love Mark Eastman’s Visible Signs, especially as a longtime San Franciscan. Which reminds me that I keep meaning to photograph the Oasis Inn. (via lines and splines)
I think this poster by Armin Hoffman is clever and beautiful:
I think this week’s New Yorker cover by Art Spiegelman—depicting the twin towers in black on black—is really beautiful design.
Not sure if I’ve logged this before, but… Intended as an introduction for visual designers new to the web, Web page design for designers is an excellent overall resource for all things visual design for the web, from typography to iconic symbolism.
From the brilliant hipsters at Move Design comes the n_Gen Design Machine. Is it a tongue-in-cheek parody of creative convergence or is it a serious attempt to algorithmatize design? Either way, it’s both instructive and fun.
License plates of the world. (thanks, kirsten)
Nice thoughts on simplicity in design (and the apparent common preference for complexity) on brushstroke.tv. I tend to think of this in Paul Rand’s terms of appropriateness:
Personal preferences, prejudices and stereotypes often dictate what a logo [or web site] looks like, but it is needs, not wants, ideas, not type styles which determine what its form should be.And..
The implication that you do things willy-nilly just because you want to have a certain look, as far as I’m concerned, is nonsense. I think that everything you [design] has to make sense, and has to have a practical aspect, because it’s a practical problem.By the way, Paul Rand rules.
The Getty has a sweet online catalog from an El Lissitzky retrospective: Monuments of the Future. Forget that last ooh-aah-Flash portfolio you saw, this is eye candy.
Wendy just showed me coolhomepages.com, the “only known cure for designer’s block.” Sounds cheesy, but it’s super-duper useful.
I like a good form-follows-function, minimalist design as much as the next chap, but sometimes you just have to crank the volume and step on the gas like these dudes: burodestruct.
This Zeldman piece, “Style vs. Design”, must surely have made the rounds already. I like it. It echoes a clever phrase taylor used to say: “An interface is not a rave.” I also like it because Zeldman doesn’t just say “Flash is Evil”.. he understands that usability is not something different from design. (thanks to Winnie for the link)
Patrick Lynch: Visual Design for the User Interface. (via xblog)
It’s funny, if you actually read Usability Is Not Graphic Design, and can get past the first few paragraphs where the author sets up this really bizzarre straw man of graphic design as “wowing the user,” then you see that the whole article is about how design is usability. Which is absolutely true.
I ran across this article about creating a UI “blueprint” and I think there’s definitely value to this sort of formal approach. But, I don’t like the tendency in many HCI discussions (and indeed in quite a few Web shops) to separate interface from visual design. In my view, “graphic design” that isn’t about how people will interact with it is simply illustration. So, here’s the pithy, oversimplified formula: Design == Interaction Design.