Book cover contest
The challenge: create a fictitious book cover using an image from the Life magazine photo archive. Aside from the first few created in a rush, some of these are pretty good.
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kottke.org posts about design
Ways to dial a telephone
In 1960, just before the widespread release of push-button phones, AT&T tested a number of button configurations to see which ones offered the greatest speed and least confusion. The number pattern based on the numbers’ positions on the incumbent rotary dial did well but the company decided to go with the now-familiar 3x3+1 configuration instead.
The anti-branding of a fake French restaurant
Eat me daily rounds up a recent AIGA event about food. The most interesting tidbit came from Matteo Bologna’s speech. Bologna designs restaurants, most notably for Keith McNally (Pastis, Balthazar, Morandi, Schillers, etc.).
Really fascinating was what he and McNally did for Pastis — it doesn’t actually have a visual brand. McNally wanted the restaurant to look like it had been in the neighborhood for years, so Bologna constructed this narrative of a family that had maintained the restaurant for a century, and each generation some element gets updated or redesigned, but without going for consistency or even style. The result is completely different-looking signage, awnings, menus, wine lists, checks… everything uses a different palette, type set, but its essential Frenchiness ties everything together. It’s an anti-brand.
The name of the restaurant is thus a play on pastiche in addition to being named after the French aperitif. (via eater)
Only readable every 12 hours
Every twelve hours, these 500 clocks align to form a readable message. (via quips)
Short Peter Saville interview
Designer Peter Saville — you know, iconic Joy Division album cover, Factory Records, etc. — talks about his process a little bit in this video interview.
Learning and filing, learning and filing. Sounds familiar, yeah? (thx, paul)
Life lessons from designer Chris Pullman
Chris Pullman was the VP of Design at WGBH in Boston for 35 years.
Viewers of PBS will recognize Pullman’s work in the opening title sequences of “Masterpiece Theatre” and “Antiques Roadshow” and the WGBH animated on-air signature, which is used at the end of every program produced by the public broadcaster.
Pullman recently retired and shared ten lessons he’s learned over the years.
2 Work with people you like and respect.
Birds of a feather flock together. That is a natural thing. Most of the people here at WGBH are here (or certainly stay here) because of our mission. Certainly, my long tenure has been largely because of the people in this room with whom I’ve shared such personal and heart-warming recollections of our time together. Since April, when I first announced my intention to leave WGBH, the private expression of these feelings has been so gratifying, both personally and professionally, that I recently suggested that maybe we should institute the policy of encouraging individuals to make periodic “mock retirement” announcements, with the goal of releasing more regularly the flow of kind remarks for the nourishment of the individual, since we are otherwise so reticent to praise or encourage others in our busy, self-centered daily lives.
Best book cover design of 2008
The Book Design Review lists their favorite book covers for 2008. Go forth and drool.
Muji Award 2008 results
Results of the 2008 Muji Award design competition. Winning entries include a drinking straw made from straw, a garbage bag that stands up by itself (no can needed), and a stapler that gets that staple in the corner of the page every time. (thx, dj jacobs)
The Obama “O” designer
Steven Heller spoke with the designer Sol Sender about his iconic Obama “O” logo.
Well, the “O” was the identity for the Obama ‘08 campaign and the campaign is over. That doesn’t mean that the mark will be forgotten; I think the memorabilia from this campaign will have a long shelf life and will stand as a visible symbol of pride for people who supported the candidate and for those who see it as a representation of a watershed moment for our country. As far as having another life, I can’t say. Perhaps the 2012 campaign will hark back to it in some way.
Sender’s web site has a bit more info on the development of the Obama brand.
Ecommr
Ecommr is a collection of interface and design elements from ecommerce sites. I wish there were a bit more context around each screenshot (e.g. which interface element is the focus and what’s novel about it) but it’s a good start.
Challenged ballots
The ballots are being recounted in the Senate race in Minnesota between Norm Coleman and Al Franken because the initial tally was almost too close to call. MPR has a look at some of the ballots that are being challenged…it’s amazing how many weird ways people can mark a ballot that uses a simple fill-in-the-circle design.
Williams Poems
Inspired by Emmett Williams, a practitioner of concrete poetry, Rob Giampietro has written three poems: Wastebasket, Snowflakes, and Spraypaint.
Giampietro has put out a call for someone to develop a Williams Word Generator. Drop him a line if you can help out…shouldn’t be too much different than the many “words within words” generators scattered around the web.
Visual movie reviews
I enjoyed these visual movie reviews, especially There Will Be Blood (“this is just pretentious afterbirth”) and The Darjeeling Limited.
Quantum of Solace book design
Lovely design for Penguin’s book of Bond short stories, Quantum of Solace.
The book collects together all of Ian Fleming’s Bond short stories in a single volume for the first time and includes stories that inspired the Bond film classics From a View to a Kill, For Your Eyes Only, Octopussy, The Living Daylights and of course, Quantum of Solace, the latest in the series.
I love the Penguin logo incorporated into the 007 on the back cover.
Pictures of Numbers blog
Pictures of Numbers is infrequently updated, but the subject matter is timeless and the archives are worth a look.
Pictures of Numbers is a book-project-in-progress, consisting of practical tips and techniques for busy researchers on improving their data presentation.
Cool new Dutch coin
Matthew Dent’s new coinage for the UK was pretty great, but this Dutch commemorative coin is a fully contemporary chunk of wow.
On the front, the names of famous Dutch architects form an image of the queen while some Dutch architecture books on the back form an outline of The Netherlands. The design was done using free software running on Ubuntu/Debian. (via design observer)
Final update to election maps
I added 16 new maps to the 2008 Election Maps page in what is probably the final update. Big thanks to everyone who sent in maps.
More election maps
I added ten more maps to the 2008 Election Maps page, including one drawn on a dry erase board.
Election headlines
Both Michael Sippey and Kane Jamison collected screenshots of media sites as they declared Obama’s victory last night. Here are the front pages of all the newspapers today…I particularly enjoyed The Sun’s take on the historic night: One Giant Leap For Mankind. See also: the electoral maps.
Update: Electioneering ‘08 took screencaps of some of the big media sites throughout the evening. (thx, jason)
Update: Jim Ray also collected screencaps of media sites that night.
Update: Kristen Borchardt made an awesome video that takes a number of Nov 5th newspaper front pages and animates through them using each papers’ Obama photo as the focal point…very much like YTMND’s Paris Hilton doesn’t change facial expressions.
2008 election maps
Last night as the election results were coming in online, I took screenshots of a bunch of the now-familiar red/blue electoral maps being used by the larger media sites to show election results and posted them all on this page. (There are currently 25 maps…I’m adding more in a few minutes.)
Hit me on my burner if you run across any others. A couple of quick notes:
1. No one strayed from the red and blue. The red/blue combo is overwhelmingly symbolic but there are plenty of other colors in the crayon box; I would like to have seen someone try something different.
2. In the 2000 and 2004 elections, the red/blue map was the focal point of the media coverage. People were fixated by it. This time around, it didn’t matter so much. The maps were interesting for 3-4 hours until the overwhelming nature of Obama’s victory became apparent and then, not so much. By this morning, the maps are already shrinking or disappearing from the home pages of the Times, CNN, and the like.
3. Nate Silver and the rest of the 538 guys nailed it. They got Indiana wrong and there are a couple more states that are still too close to call, but they got the rest of the map right. Their final projection had Obama getting 348.6 electoral votes and they currently have him at 349.
Letterpress business cards on strange paper
The Virgil O. Stamps Letterpress Laboratory prints business cards on all sorts of papers and surfaces, including children’s coloring book pages, duct tape, old National Geographic pages, antique book pages, and any sort of cardboard scraps. Pretty cool.
The changing newspaper
Nice look at the evolution of the front page of the LA Times from 1881 to 2003.
I selected a front page from every other decade, starting with the very first edition of the paper in 1881. Note the shifting hierarchy of images (yellow), advertising (orange) and editorial content (blue). The small black arrows are links to related content elsewhere within the paper.
They also look at the front pages of the web site from 1996 - 2006.
New Pepsi logo
What do I think about the new Pepsi logo? Eh. Companies spend way too much time, effort, and money building up feelings about logos — like decades and billions of dollars — and then they just go and change it all. Of course the new logo and colors are similar to the old ones and it’s variations on a theme but the new designs feel like someone’s idea of what packaging is going to look like 10 years from now, an approach that never seems to work out well (see Back to the Future II). Coca-Cola had such success refreshing their brand with a simple take on their classic look and logo, why can’t Pepsi do the same with this classic look?
Stamps with beautiful typography
A collection of postage stamps designed by type designers. (via do)
Tall mountains, long rivers
BibliOdyssey has collected a number of charts which compare the heights of mountains and lengths of rivers by laying them all out next to each other. (Ok, kinda difficult to explain…just go take a look.) I had a chance to buy a copy of one of these maps a few years ago (not sure if it was an original print or what; it looked old) but passed it up because I didn’t have the money. Wish I would have bought it anyway. (via quips)
Indie Publishing
Someday I’m going to make my own book, from start to finish. It’s something that I’ve wanted to do for awhile, a physical parallel to building a web site from scratch. When I do, Ellen Lupton’s Indie Publishing will be my guide. At 170-some pages it’s not exhaustive, but the book does briefly touch all the bases: typography, cover design, binding types, and examples of several different types of books. There’s also a section on handmade books with hands-on directions for making your own book — folded books, stitched pamphlets, or stab bound — without having to visit the printer.
Truthful TV title cards
Truthful TV title cards. Heroes becomes No One Dies Ever, Mad Men is Drink Smoke Fuck, and Lost is Winging It.
London tube map video
Nice 25-minute documentary on the London Tube map, “the pinnacle of London Transport’s modernist design”.
Inspiration for graphic designers
Goodness blog asked a bunch of designers about books that they found helpful in their development as creative people, no graphic design books allowed.
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