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Walking to work today I thought these two posters almost side by side were worth noting if for no other reason than to show the state of posters on the sidewalk of NYC. Whether you love or hate American Apparel ads and for what they stand for, they’re certainly standing out from everything else out there. On the flip side Diesel has been getting a lot of attention for their tagline of Be Stupid, not so much for their visuals though something tells me that things could change in that category.
Unexpected Narratives and Creating the Right Conditions
Last Thursday I traveled from NYC to Dallas to Arlington to hang with the AIGA Dallas Fort Worth Chapter and present a talk I titled Unexpected Narratives and Creating the Right Conditions. Jimmy Ball and the the Chapter treated me extremely well and made the experience great for me. I’ve attached the deck and made note below of all the posts that were covered in the talk.
1. STORY LINES
Walking to work in 60 Seconds, my 20/20 at #makethink AIGA Design Conference 2009
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Watching the sun interact with design
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New York City Colour Study Before the Crop
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36 days of New York Sky: January 16th 2008 - February 20th 2008
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New York City Colour Study Timeline
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New York City Colour Study – Time when photo was taken graph
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A Couple More New York City Colour Study Experiments – the old school animated .gif and weekly view
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Starting the #walkingtoworktoday photo project
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Experimenting with Fragmented Medias while #walkingtoworktoday
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Unexpected Narratives and Creating the Right Conditions
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My M.O.
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Five reasons why I blog
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Deborah Adler ClearRx Interview
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An interview with John Gargiulo, owner of Swich in NYC
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The Person behind Nooka: an interview with Matthew Waldman
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Alissia Melka-Teichroew (@alissiamt) Interview: designer, founder of byAMT, curator, and maker
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QuadCamera and ToyCamera Interview with Takayuki Fukatsu, creator of iPhone Apps
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A great conversation with Swissmiss (Tina Roth Eisenberg)
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REVIEW COPY: Look Both Ways by Debbie Millman
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REVIEW COPY: I Miss My Pencil by Martin Bone and Kara Johnson
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Banksy at work in NYC: Broadway & Howard St.
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My walking experience with the AIGA NY ALPHABET/CITY: A WALKING TOUR WITH TOBIAS FRERE-JONES
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The Flo in Florent
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My Link Drop Process
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Link Drop Today Release Notes
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2. AGILE
Video on Agile Design from my Creative Mornings talk is up
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Daylife
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Working on Getty Images SmartGalleries by Daylife
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3. HYBRID GRAPHIC DESIGN
What is the logo worth?
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Face pics are the new logo
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Company Deal Announcements
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Branding Issues: Flickr + Yahoo + Microsoft
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Lean Pocket Info Fail
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Confusing MTA Subway Turnstiles
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the Locksmith’s Business Card
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Flexing scale, marks and other consistent things that brands could be
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Branding abstraction in the real world (at least in NoLita)
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Design Sale
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Quotes to remember as a designer
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4. CONTENT IS THE NEW UI
My News Flow on Flight 1549
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Web actions du’jour
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What Graphic Designers need to understand
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How my iPhone evolved how I tell stories
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Sketching out a blog post loop
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Thinking about twitter feeding facebook status
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More buy and vote on demand, and distributing things in digital
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Talking Sticker
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Podcasts are now magazines, magazines are what newspapers used to be, and music files are now…
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24hr music app for the iPhone
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Showing Competitors on a Product Site
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Inside Out with Invader in NYC
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Still photography and video evolution
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Saw the above Google Commercial during today’s Superbowl – made me smile. Refreshingly simple and effective.
I think these custom mugs win the award for the coolest custom gift ever. Would love a set of our little family.
I keep discovering the most amazing social innovation work using social media being done by Parsons students. Check out this use of simple SMS technology, available in many African villages, to track medicine inventories at the local level.
One of the big problems in preventing and managing illness in Africa is the failure of governments to get medicines they have bought or received from outside agencies down to the village level. Sometimes the reason is simple inefficiency. Sometimes it is corruption. Villagers can complain but can't prove they haven't received what is promised. "Stock-outs" of medicines for malaria, TB, HIV and other diseases at local public health clinics is common.
In May of 2009, Oxfam and Health Action International (HAI) Africa convened 30 civil society organizations (CSOs) and policy-makers in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia to examine strategies for reducing stock-outs of medicines in Africa. Using Google Maps and SMS, the students were able to track 10 key medicines in four African countries.
The students who created this initiative-- Claudio Midolo and Michael Ballard-- belonged to the Parsons Open Society Institute and the CDT--Communication Design Technology program. Check out this video. And think about how we can use SMS in the US to make healthcare and wellness better.
Last year’s 99% conference was hands-down the most inspiring and impressive conference day I have ever attended. With the exception of only one speaker all of the presentations were absolutely fantastic. I can’t remember walking away from a conference with such a positive impression ever before. Other conferences should definitely learn from Behance’s style of getting the speaker to focus on talking on an overall topic. Every speaker was asked to incorporate their views and ideas on how they get things done, how they make sure ideas are being executed. Having this ‘red thread’, as we say in german, throughout each presentation really tied the day together. It forces the presenter to share their work philosophies and go beyond the usual ‘here’s what I’ve done’ spiel.
If there’s one conference I would recommend going to, it’s the 99% in April, here in NYC. Check out the currently confirmed speakers: Jack Dorsey (Twitter), Stefan Sagmeister (Sagmeister Inc) Fred Wilson (Union Square Ventures), Eve Blossom (Lulan Artisans), John Maeda (Rhode Island School of Design) and Jay O’Callahan (Storyteller).
See you April 15-16?
Late last week I received this sweet one colour letter pressed print titled Google Before You Tweet is the New Think Before You Speak by Joe Newton. While the text and illustration speak for themselves, I should mention that the texture of the paper and indent of the paper that isn’t really shown on the photo adds a lot of visual punch in person. Davin Kuntze at Woodside Press in Brooklyn printed it while the typeface used Olduvai by Randy Jones.
This week’s Link Drop is smaller than usual because of my late week travels to Dallas for a talk. With that said there were a couple distinctions between technology and the surrounding area of NYC. Leading up to flying out of NYC most of the stuff I was being drawn to had to do with visualization and data. Once I got back yesterday most of the links were somewhat related to the city—go figure.
Love Me the street marking that I’ve seen for year(s) is now a poster. I’ve seen the mark in all sorts of sizes and even mused a while back about a shirt. While there doesn’t seem to be a shirt yet the post is actually a smarter thing to have. The poster also comes in black and costs $60.
CNN Magic Wall Makes Twitter Breakthrough (Maybe?)
While HuffPo makes an attention worthy note about CNN and Twitter, the bigger deal that I didn’t read about in CNN Magic Wall Makes Twitter Breakthrough was how they analyzed all those tweets. CNN broke it up into a number of different sections but didn’t really go much further with the numbers of people that tweeted that feel into each category. Looking at it a bit closer there’s no real break down of how a tweet with the hash tag of #SOTU would fall into any of those categories.
365 Days of Happiness from JAGDA
I found a great iPhone app via Snow Magazine that displays design work from the JAGDA. Lots of nice work to check out. Here’s some more info from the app page (^_^)365(O_O) JAGDA × HEIDELBERG.
A lot of diagrams these days look interesting until they’re looked at closer to reveal that they’re just an illustration. What’s compelling about the diagram posted at Junk Charts about the amount of CO2 emissions by country, both in aggregate and per capita is the relationship in scale. Some countries hold steady while others literally explode. While the minute detail is lost, the shapes make for some fascinating growth images. via Reuters: Felix Salmon
Kathryn Bigelow interviewed on Charlie Rose
This set of interviews from Charlie Rose was pretty good from last year. The people include Kelefa Sanneh, Quincy Jones, L.A. Reid, Roger Cohen and Kathryn Bigelow. While if you have an hour to spare I’d watch the whole thing, I’m pointing to the interview with Kathryn Bigelow whom directed the Hurt Locker. Starting around the 31st minute she def. brought me into the story. I don’t see a lot of films but when the Hurt Locker became available to pay and watch digitally I wanted to see it right away. Her interview stuck in my mind.
Could A Graphic Language For Touch Help Educate Mobile Users?
Mobile Behavior in their post Could A Graphic Language For Touch Help Educate Mobile Users? points to the above icon set as a means for visualize different interactions between information and physical objects or spaces. While trying to make one set of standard icons just like Bluetooth or USB symbols that are recognized, I’m not a huge fan of standardizing other interactions. Things are still evolving and while common patterns are helpful I wonder if the exercise is a bit of a never ending loop. 100% cognition for something that needs to have instructions is going to be difficult to attain.
One Floor Up found a great iPhone app called The Extraordinaries. Essentially it’s a directory of very quick volunteer opportunities that a person can do. The app is easy to navigate with a couple options between popular activities, groups to follow, browsing, and search. Once a person finish’s a quick activity that is noted in the app. While the catalog of items isn’t that large at the moment, I suspect as more organizations find out about this app they will create micro activities that fit the format. It’s a great idea to get people involved in a non committal way. Once a person has started to get involve with a small project there’s a likely chance that they will move on to bigger things.
Scouting NY has created a great post on their observations of building titled Scouting Red Hook II. There’s a ton of contradictory signs surrounding the building which leads them to wonder “what the hell is going on insideâ€.
My crash course in programming
Sometimes process diagrams don’t need to be that complicated as this image from Brendan Dawes shows.
Toward the Virtual City and The Crisis of Place
After reading the review of Toward the Virtual City and The Crisis of Place from Walking Off the Big Apple, I think it will be the next book I read on my goal of reading 52 book in 52 weeks. At the end of the review there’s an interesting take on tech. today in the city.
Location-based mobile applications, computer simulations, geo-tagging programs, Street View maps, and other forms of augmented reality threaten to turn the city into a computer game, replacing our traditional bonds of place with strategic plans to conquer them. Special places that once upon a time may have had some personal meaning become winning check-in points for someone else’s venture capital. Engaging with strangers in simulated reality, walking to meetups while texting or talking or consulting the glowing GPS to locate oneself, may open exciting avenues for sociability and connection, but we may lose the city in the process.
That’s something interesting to consider as I tap away on my iPhone as I walk on my way…
Hey Brooklyn Interview Podcast Site
Considering how cold it is today I’m not going to venture anywhere. If the weather near you isn’t that great either and am looking for something to listen to while doing something else, Hey Brooklyn might be a site to check out. While all the interviews are based on creative people in Brooklyn, the more interesting thing for me is that each of the people being interviewed can carry on a conversation. A couple people that I’ve listened to include a stylist, the guy behind casual cookoffs known as the takedown, and a a photgrapher…
The list dilemma: to do, done, stop doing or none?
January is finished and now that we’re into February its time to get to business. While everyone in January is considering resolutions now is the time to put them into action. With that said there’s a lot of different ways to keep track of things—i.e. the List. In the post The list dilemma: to do, done, stop doing or none? Zaana Howard lists off a couple lists that might give you pause. There’s the Stop Doing List, the Mistakes List and the more traditional Done List and To Do List. Each has a couple thoughts about their effectiveness.
On my way home from JFK this afternoon I noticed the above poster. I was only away for a day and a half yet it feels good to be back.
Slide your photographs in these “Polaroid Frames” and stick ‘em to pretty much any metal surface – the fridge, a cabinet, a locker… you get the picture. Fab idea!
Pardon the surge in baby related posts, but as you can tell, I am coming out of my denial: In about 10 days we will indeed have a newborn in our house. Time to get ready!
So I just discovered this cool and unique looking baby tub for the sink. Wonder how practical it really is but it sure looks smartly designed. I love the fact that it stores flat! (Totally wouldn’t work with our square modern sinks though, I assume)
I love this modern and whimsycal approach to a bottle drying rack. Not sure how practical it would be in day to day use but it sure is cool-looking and doesn’t visually take up much counter-space. Grass Roots Drying Rack.
Whenever I open Google Analytics my brain seems to go into freeze mode. Sure, I know how to see where my traffic is coming from and how much traffic I get overall but it pretty much stops right there. I find the interface everything but intuitive. I tweeted my frustration and got this recommendation: The Missing Google Analytics Manual Thank you @JeffChasin!
Thank you for procrastinating, Jessica, and sharing this Evolution of Type Taste Chart from Grade School to present with us here in the studio! I am glad to see I was not the only one going through a Courier and Typewriter phase. (Please note this is Jessica’s personal evolution of Type Taste.)
Our little Ella Joy would fully approve of this Charlie and Lola Puzzle. Not familiar with Charlie and Lola, check them out on youtube.
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