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Info Design
01.30.13: Rob Walker
Branding By NumbersEmblemetric backs its assessment of the American Airlines logo with "the data." Of course, that's open to interpretation.
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01.18.13: Rob Walker
What Are You Looking At?The maps of the future will tell you what to look at. Sometimes, you should look elsewhere.
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03.04.12: John Foster
Accidental Mysteries, 03.04.12Welcome to Accidental Mysteries, a weekly cabinet of visual curiosities set aside for your perusal and enlightenment. This week's focus is charts and diagrams.
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07.06.11: Rick Poynor
The Dictionary as Art ConceptA new Magritte exhibition catalogue is not the first to take the form of a dictionary. How important is originality when it comes to book design?
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05.07.11: Rick Poynor
Paul Stiff, the Reader's ChampionFor the late Paul Stiff, design educator, writer, editor and skeptic, typography must never neglect to serve the reader.
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01.20.11: Mark Lamster
Gerd Arntz: Design IconGerd Arntz: A design icon who designed icons.
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12.02.10: Alexandra Lange
Networks Before the InternetA new exhibit at the Noguchi Museum shows how small and intertwined were the worlds of mid-century art, design and architecture.
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09.14.10: Michael Bierut
Mr. Vignelli's MapVignelli Celebration: Massimo Vignelli's 1972 New York City subway map is a beautiful example of information design that was ultimately rejected by its users.
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09.21.09: Alexandra Lange
Nothing Runs Like A...A note about Deere & Company’s foray into the consumer market.
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09.22.08: Gong Szeto
Interview with Brian OakesIt’s not often that graphs and numbers take center stage in a popular film, but in the brilliant hands of graphic designer Brian Oakes, information design is not a backdrop but a main character in the recently released documentary I.O.U.S.A. Interview by Gong Szeto.
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05.24.08: KT Meaney
Greening the Grocery StoreIt turns out that the "recycling symbol" at the bottom of my yogurt container had nothing to do with its recyclability. So why was it there? My curiosity led to findings around which I built a design class.
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01.13.07: Michael Erard
Word Made FleshThe forgotten discipline of sentence diagramming forces the structure of language to wear the clothes of images. A sentence diagram is less a map than a portrait, and in this vaudeville language is painted, corsetted and trussed.
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08.14.06: William Drenttel
Threat Advisory Pandemic Alert System (TAPAS)How do we measure the danger level from the Avian Influenza A (H5N1) virus? What we lack is that one Tom Ridge-like bit of inspiration that would lend clarity to these confusing times. We took our cue from a certain John James Audubon. Herewith, one option for Homeland Security. Yes, we know: it's for the birds.
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04.30.06: Jessica Helfand
Disaster Relief 101: No Door Hanger Left BehindDoor hangers seem the perfect metaphor for FEMA's failure: they're one-dimensional, unnecessarily complicated, and basically useless.
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10.24.05: Michael Bierut
The Great Non-Amber-Colored HopeA student design for a prescription pill bottle takes a metoric rise to mass production and becomes an instant icon in the world of graphic design.
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07.08.05: Jessica Helfand
New Models for Design Efficiency: Introducing Ottoeniac Link http://www.newyorker.com/ http://www.library.upenn.edu/exhibits/rbm/mauchly/jwm8.html http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B0001NBMAS/ref=pd_sxp_f/002-9888674-0621611?v=glance&s=dvd
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05.30.05: William Drenttel
Maps of CyberspaceIt is the internet that has changed our perception of space, precisely because the sheer volume of interconnectivity is beyond our imagination, whether it be language-based, data-based, or community-based. Add black holes and photographs of asteroidal moons around Jupiter, and our world seems increasingly expansive. Yet, if we cannot map it, how can we understand it?
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04.22.05: Michael Bierut
Me and My PyramidThe redesign of the United States Department of Agriculture's Food Pyramid is neither satisfying nor nourishing from an information design point of view.
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02.18.05: Jessica Helfand
My Friend FlickrFlickr is a digital photo sharing website and web services suite that was developed by Ludicorp, a Vancouver, Canada company founded in 2002. It's a utopian oddity — a culture enabled by a technology that in turn enables a culture — and it's a brilliant example of socially networked software because it's free, its easy, and it makes sense.
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02.16.05: Jessica Helfand
The New Paper Chase: Cyberspace on The Auction BlockOn February 23, Christies in New York will auction more than 1,000 items dating as far back as the early 17th century, all of it tracing the history of cyberspace.
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11.03.04: Jessica Helfand
Am I BlueBumper stickers and lawn posters aside, Americans showed their concern on election day 2004 by standing in epic lines at polling centers around the nation, but also in certain subtle, discreetly visual ways. From dressing in all blue (or red) to wearing "I voted today" buttons, there has been a kind of silent visual communication effort steadily in play for the last 36 hours.
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06.16.04: Michael Bierut
The Idealistic CorporationAmerican corporations in the mid-twentieth century, such as IBM, Container Corporation, and General Dynamics, worked with designers like Charles and Ray Eames, Herbert Bayer and Erik Nitsche in the conviction that design was not only a tool for business, but an potent instrument for making the world a better place.
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05.05.04: William Drenttel
Learning from Las Vegas: The Book That (Still) Takes My Breath AwayREAD MORE
02.28.04: Michael Bierut
Information Design and the Placebo EffectIt turns out that New York City is filled with buttons for pedestrians to activitate "Walk" signals at busy intersections that have never worked. Does pressing these useless buttons provide us with a sense that at least we're doing something?
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02.05.04: William Drenttel
Call for Entries: Periodic Table of the ElementsJessica Helfand and I are building a collection of Periodic Tables and hope to publish a book on their scientific, visual and cultural history.
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02.04.04: William Drenttel
Uut, Uup and AwayWhat happens when we discover new elements, especially ones on the outer fringes of the periodic table? Where did Uut and Uup come from?
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12.17.03: Michael Bierut
Errol Morris Blows Up Spreadsheet, Thousands KilledErrol Morris's documentary "The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert McNamara" demonstrates his mastery of information design as a poetic narrative device.
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11.24.03: Michael Bierut
Mark Lombardi and the Ecstasy of ConspiracyArtist Mark Lombardi's intricate handdrawn diagrams describing the relationships behind contemporary political and financial scandals are both beautiful objects and extraordinary feats of information design.
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11.06.03: William Drenttel
Information ArchaeologyRuss Kick is "a self-described 'information archaeologist...'" The revealing of state secrets through deconstructing a PDF.
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11.06.03: William Drenttel
Edward Tufte: The Dispassionate Statistician IIMore on Edward Tufte and his critique of PowerPoint.
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