mapping

it never ceases to amaze me how the map can always be re-invented.

london map made of type

a small design shop in london created this gem you design anglophiles can order

nyc subway map proposal

and i have to say the simplification of the NYC subway map is great. i have always been able to read the past 30 years of subway maps, but i think i am in the minority even amoung nyc'ers on that.

annual web design survey

well, a list apart is having their annual web design survey - a great way to spend 10 minutes and hopefully further our understanding of the industry.

tip o' the hat to david shaw.

grandfathered brands

Slate has a great little slideshow on racist brands that have been "grandfathered" into the popular culture, spurred on by the "promotion" of Uncle Ben to, uh, CEO?

update: more on the New Uncle Ben here.

UX meets Politics

obviously there are many intersections of the above, but thanks to a applying a standard web pattern - the tag cloud - to political event, standard...um...evasive patterns emerge.

the Gonzales Testimony tag cloud is possible thanks to the folks at IBM's ManyEyes project, an experimental site that allows users to upload data sets to be defined with advanced visualizations. There is endless cool content up here: use it to make a point about allmost any subject, including of course, your own.(On a Mac, though, use Safari. Firefox doesnt play nice with the Java.)

the Gonzales user cheated a little with adding "i_" to "don't" to make it a single word... which i think was unnecessary to make the point. not a lot of recollection going on there by the "attorney general" of the "united states".

Tip o' the hat to Jared Spool.

helvetica

Well, though Comic Sans has a whole movement against it, Helvetica seems to be a bit more popular.


It's everywhere.

Helvetica the font is now featured in an independent film about typography,
graphic design and global visual culture. It looks at the
proliferation of one typeface as part of a larger conversation about the way type affects our lives.

More about the film...

morphing definitions

so i've been doing a lot of reading lately on what exactly it is i do, because as usual the internet professional community has reached critical mass on the term "interaction designer" as i am beginning to see it for the first time in headlines for job postings.

it's nice to have someone keeping up to define it for us.