The Cosmonauts

This one made me laugh.

(We love I Love Charts)

Jamie Bolton artwork and movie posters

FFFFOUND! | Solar Eclipse on Flickr - Photo Sharing!

Designing Design - Kenya Hara — The Designer’s Review of Books

A few quotes on design by our admired Massimo Vignelli:

I don’t think that type should be expressive at all. I can write the word ‘dog’ with any typeface and it doesn’t have to look like a dog. But there are people that [think that] when they write ‘dog’ it should bark.

Creativity needs the support of knowledge to be able to perform at its best.

There are no hierarchies when it comes to quality. Quality is there or is not there, and if is not there we have lost our time.

Any color works if you push it to the extreme.

There is no design without discipline, there is no discipline without intelligence.

We detest the demand of temporary solutions, the waste of energies and capital for the sake of novelty.

I like design to be semantically correct, syntactically consistent, pragmatically understandable.

I like it to be visually powerful, intellectually elegant, and above all timeless.

It’s not important to develop your own style but your own approach.

And finally a couple of videos of him, one explaining his hated/admired NYC Subway map of 1972 and the second one on his appearance on Helvetica (with Spanish subtitles):

This video just sums up to my obsession about form, figure and background in interterface design. Check it out, it’s plain amazing:

(via Ilustrae)

I read at infograficaymas that the CNN used this inphographic video to explain how the Mexican drug cartels operate in the US:

It makes me think about the convergence between video and data in new storytelling formats. These narratives jump from analytical (narrative details ordered in a lineal fashion) to synthetic (big picture view, more visual) communication styles back and forth, which kind of maps how people learn.

It’s interesting to see that this new format, which is kinda popular for explaining new internet products and services, jumps to the mas media and merges with old style things such as the anchor’s voice.

Do you think it’s just another import made by the old media from the internet (just as when they use Google Earth) or we are in front of somehting bigger? What’s your take?

Have you ever wondered who designs those cool (and sometimes impossible) user interfaces that appear in sci-fi movies. Well, it’s companies like OOOii.

They designed the exhausting multi-touch interface for Minority Report and more recently the intensive data panels at the last Star Trek movie. There is a very interesting interview to the guys in charge at the Flash Blog (Adobe). Yes, they do almost everything in Flash :)

I wonder how the specs are decided:

• realistic vs. futuristic
• intuitive vs. cryptic (hacker-style command line)
• resemble something existing vs. completely innovative
• real data (from the movie) vs. fake content (and data in small type so nobody can read it)
• user executes commands vs. user dialogues with an artificial entity (HAL)
• …

How many movies do you recall where interesting user interfaces appear? Would you help me make a list (and then make a collaborative post out of it)? Ok, here I go with the first that come to my mind:

• Minority Report (multitouch)
• Red Planet (augmented reality devices)
• Star Trek (intensive data displays)
• 2001 (HAL, natural language interaction)

More?

Approach A

A lot of designers want to increase the line height or padding in order to make the interface “breathe.” We deliberately don’t do that. We want to squeeze in as much information as possible above the fold. We recognize that information density is part of what makes the experience great and efficient. Our goal is to get users in and out really quickly. All our design decisions are based on that strategy.

Irene Au, User Interface Director at Google

Approach B

Yes, it’s true that a team at Google couldn’t decide between two blues, so they’re testing 41 shades between each blue to see which one performs better. I had a recent debate over whether a border should be 3, 4 or 5 pixels wide, and was asked to prove my case. I can’t operate in an environment like that. I’ve grown tired of debating such minuscule design decisions.

Douglas Bowman, Former Head of Visual Design at Google

Which one would you take?

(thanks, Missha)

The guys from Röyksopp seem to be totally commited to awesomeness through amazing and delicious videos. You should check this new one, especially if you enjoy space invaders pixelart:

This is the old “Remind me” one, an infographics bacchanal created by Ludovic Houplan & Hervé de Crécy:

I’ve spent most of my time to study the basic shapes, this in order to focus on those meaningful details which give meaning to those qualities we live our daily lives with and —somehow— help define ourselves too.

The Context of Form is a short (therefore very good) essay by De Gregorio on how form can be function. Please, read it.

Jorge Correa (one of my favorite designers) just released a small set of super-cute weather icons free to use. This is what they look like:

They come just in time for something we have in mind at Planetaki. Thanks, Jorge!!

This is what happens when you take client feedback too seriously: