Personal annual report, 2008
Nicholas Felton is back with his 2008 personal Annual Report. Always worth a look.
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kottke.org posts about design
Aquarium design
Photos from the 2008 International Aquatic Plant Layout Contest…AKA fancily decorated aquariums. (thx, dustin)
The Book Cover Archive
The Book Cover Archive is a new site dedicated to the “appreciation and categorization of excellence in book cover design”. They just launched but the site already includes 800 covers.
Obama campaign art exhibition
The Danziger Projects gallery in New York is running an exhibition called Can & Did, a collection of art, graphics, and photography from the Obama campaign. The opening party is on Inauguration night (Jan 20) and it runs through the end of February. All details in the press release.
Pig farming hacks
A Canadian pig farmer came up with an interesting solution for herding pigs. Instead of using heavy wooden “chase boards” to guide the pigs, she used a length of fabric of the same color, allowing a single person to do a job once done by many.
Trailer for Objectified
The trailer for Objectified, a new documentary film about industrial design by Gary Hustwit, who also made Helvetica.
Heart-shaped NYC subway map
A beautiful heart-shaped map of the NYC subway system is among the several such maps done by a pair of Korean graphic designers calling themselves Zero Per Zero.
A portable map version is available for sale, but the shipping cost from Korea to the US is a bit steep.
Designs of the year, 2008
Some design heavies — Paula Scher and Gary Hustwit among them — choose their design highlights of 2008.
The best conceived, designed, and expressed total idea, ever: Barack Obama’s entire campaign, each and every part of it, including Barack Obama.
Two designs I found interesting were the Surface Table (made of carbon fiber, it’s only 2mm thick for a 13-foot-long table!) and Boudicca Wode Perfume, which sprays on blue and fades to transparent over time. (via quips)
The Year in Ideas
The NY Times has posted their annual Year in Ideas collection for 2008, packaged this year in an “interactive feature”, which is Esperanto for “no permalinks”. A favorite so far in paging through is Tokujin Yoshioka’s Venus Natural Crystal Chair, a piece of furniture grown in mineral water.
Update: Permalinks are a go. I repeat, permalinks are a go. Here’s the one for the crystal chair. (thx, everyone)
Slightly uncomfortable chairs
How to keep your meetings short: use the Slightly Uncomfortable Chair Collection.
Designing the Obama logo
Great two-part video interview with Sol Sender about designing the logo for the Obama campaign. Includes some early design sketches and other designs that made it to the final phase. (via quips)
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.
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.
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