the apple over the ages

It's so interesting that Apple wasn't very popular until it came up with the iMac in 1998. What's the oldest Apple product you owned?

gallery gala

Just yesterday I went to Santa Monica to see the many art galleries at Bergamot Station. I gotta say, some galleries were "meh" and a couple others were mind-boggling. The top three I enjoyed visiting were: The Gallery of Functional Art, Lois Lambert Gallery, and Mark Moore Gallery. All exhibited artworks that demonstrated out-of-the-box thinking and were very inspirational.

The Gallery of Functional Art features objects used in everyday life that each has a unique twist or interpretation from the artist.



The Lois Lambert Gallery features works of Nicole Gordon, a painter.



The Mark Moore Gallery is exhibiting Kiel Johnson's cool stuff... er art, I mean.

illustration + paper + collage = design

Recently I've been getting interested in incorporating the handmade into design. I'm tired of designing straight from the computer...
starting from:

sketching out ideas to
click... click... clickclickclickclick
printing it out to
Command+P... hmm not the right color... Command+P again
putting it together
snip snip... ow!
All that gets a bit tiring after a while.

But I've always admired design that incorporated hand drawings or something that came from the imperfect hand. I did a bit of searching and found a whole genre of designing with the handmade, whether it's with paper, illustrations, or a combination of both.

Enjoy

Christmas Cantata

Schedule in the making

Info graphics again. Hmm, I wonder if it's working or not?

The Winner's Circle

PRINT April 2008 issue
I was looking through a bunch of old Print magazines and ran across some pretty cool info graphics in the April 2008 issue. These are a breakdown of a group of nominated designer, who are under the age of 30 and competed in the "New Visual Artists competition."

Virtual Water

Do you want to know just how much water we use in everything we eat and do? Well, maybe not. But this site shows some very cool information graphics. You can see at a glance the amount of water for each product, country, etc.

www.traumkrieger.de/virtualwater/

The Obesity Epidemic

After reading Tufte's section on small multiples, I wanted to find more examples and ran across something pretty interesting. Below is a sample picture of an interactive visualization of the obesity trend in America, broken down by states. What's alarming is, to put it simply, Americans are getting fatter by the year. It's funny that although we're more health conscious these days, it doesn't seem to help the "obesity trend" (or rather crisis?) in the U.S.

www.visitmix.com

Trend Maps

I ran across some interesting maps. They're not your usual geographical maps.

Web Trend Map of 2008
Below is an online & paper-based map of the most influential & successful websites in 2008, pinned down to the greater Tokyo-area train map.
Check out the online clickable version at the link below!
[link: http://informationarchitects.jp/web-trend-map-2008-beta/]

Info graphics shown in motion

Micro / Macro Design

After reading on the section of micro/macro composition in Tufte's Envisioning Information, I got really curious and did some research on it.

I found a definition for micro/macro reading on wikiviz sayng, "Micro-macro reading is a method for presenting large quantities of data at high densities in a way that a broad overview of the data is given and yet immense amount of detail is provided (Ruddle et al., 2002)."

But enough words. I researched for visual samples to get a better idea of the concept.
So here are the results (click on image to zoom in!):

Geological Investigation of the Alluvial Valley of the Lower Mississippi River
http://www.flickr.com/photos/pruned/80699722/


New York subway map
Cancer deaths across the nation
Flight density during one week between international airports. From SD Magazine (Japan).
http://www.visualcomplexity.com/vc/project.cfm?id=67


I mostly found images of maps, which is convenient since the next project for class in information design is to redesign a map.

Calendars

I love looking at other designers' online portfolios.
This time I googled "calendars" and found some awsome designs.

Other than making it look pretty, I think there some innovative ways to design the layout of the calendars. Some are funky and totally impractical, while others and clear but boring (sometimes). Is there a happy medium where the information is clearly communicated yet interesting to look at?

www.coolhunting.com

www.fudgegraphics.com

www.happycavalier.com

www.heyjenn.com

Instruction Manual Mania

Have you ever had to install/put together/fix something and look at the instruction manual only to say "Huh?"

I do. Like, all the time.

That's why I like the manuals that have pictures. But seriously, it helps when there are figures that go along with the instructions, especially if it's presented clearly and simply. Color can play an important role in communicating information, like highlighting certain sections of a toaster or something.

Here are some examples:
Good example...

BAD example...

...and well, you can decide on this one. (Hint: It's a Baby User Manual)