March 9, 2010 at 5:23 pm
Filed under Color, Graphic Design, Humor

“Two artists have been playing pretty games with the UK Royal Mail’s automated sorting offices. 

It seems the machines simply read the colour of stamps to check whether the correct postage has been used, so maybe it doesn’t matter what shape they are.

Kim Rugg creates tentacled monsters, fireworks and beach scenes using only postage stamp fragments, while ShakesMyTeeth sends vintage postcard collages worldwide.” (Thanks to Neatorama for the blurb!) — A.M.

Logorama honored by Oscar

March 8, 2010 at 10:31 am
Filed under Documentary, Graphic Design, Humor, Signage

This short film features about 2500 corporate logos twining throughout several plot lines.  Last night it won the Academy Award for Short Film (Animated).  

Said the winner, “Good evening. It doesn’t look like, but it’s a French film. Sorry about the accent. I’m the producer of the film, so I have to thank the 3,000 non-official sponsors that appear in the film. And I have to assure them that no logos were harmed in the making of the project.” — A.M.

Neatness is not accidental

March 2, 2010 at 5:24 pm
Filed under Graphic Design

SEGD Fellow David Vanden-Eynden is visiting the past with this page of tips about mechanical drawing. No hair oil, no sweating, no rubbing, no rolling; mechanical drawing is exhausting. (Thanks to Grace Woo, who has the same page DVE sent us on her blog.) — A.M.

Braille in decline

February 27, 2010 at 10:38 am
Filed under Accessibility, Graphic Design, Regulatory information, Social Issues, Symbols, Wayfinding

“A report released last year by the National Federation of the Blind, an advocacy group with 50,000 members, said that less than 10 percent of the 1.3 million legally blind Americans read Braille. Whereas roughly half of all blind children learned Braille in the 1950s, today that number is as low as 1 in 10, according to the report…Braille literacy has been waning for some time, even among the most intellectually capable, and the report has inspired a fervent movement to change the way blind people read.” — A.M.

Smells Like [aaaarrrgghh!] Teen Spirit

February 18, 2010 at 11:09 am
Filed under Architecture, Graphic Design, Placemaking

Working on the large-scale renovation of Kansas City’s Piper High School, architects DLR Group wanted to create a dramatic entry statement that would also support the project’s sustainability goals. The solution is a 520-sq.-ft stainless steel mesh facade element that provides shade but allows daylight to enter, eliminating the need for artificial lighting in the commons area.

The facade, made by GKD-USA of its Omega 1510 mesh, also provides a memorable branding moment. Etched into the mesh, the school’s pirate mascot is unmistakable during the day and glows like a lantern at night.  –P.M.K.

Photos: Alistair Tutton Photography

Happy Valentine’s Day!

February 13, 2010 at 6:42 pm
Filed under Graphic Design

SEGD valentine Nazie Dana found the response to Studio 360’s challenge to redesign Valentine’s Day. — A.M.

NSFW but funny (don’t say you weren’t warned)

February 12, 2010 at 10:57 am
Filed under Architecture, Fashion Design, Graphic Design, Industrial Design, Interior Design, Landscape Architecture

Someone named mentaldesigner has created a series of videos on the designer-client relationship.  How can robots talking in a monotone not be funny? — A.M.

Vanity barcodes

February 10, 2010 at 10:03 am
Filed under Graphic Design, Symbols

“A vanity barcode is a product UPC barcode that’s been turned into a decorative design, yet still scans like a regular barcode.  They’re a powerful marketing tool that can transform a boring, space-hogging barcode into a terrific brand asset.” — A.M.

Easy = True

February 6, 2010 at 10:57 am
Filed under Communication, Graphic Design, Typography

“One of the hottest topics in psychology today is something called ‘cognitive fluency.’ Cognitive fluency is simply a measure of how easy it is to think about something, and it turns out that people prefer things that are easy to think about to those that are hard. On the face of it, it’s a rather intuitive idea. But psychologists are only beginning to uncover the surprising extent to which fluency guides our thinking, and in situations where we have no idea it is at work.

One thing that fools us, for example, is font. When people read something in a difficult-to-read font, they unwittingly transfer that sense of difficulty onto the topic they’re reading about. Schwarz and his former student Hyunjin Song have found that when people read about an exercise regimen or a recipe in a less legible font, they tend to rate the exercise regimen more difficult and the recipe more complicated than if they read about them in a clearer font.” — A.M.

NYC subway Modernist passes away

January 25, 2010 at 9:01 pm
Filed under Graphic Design, Signage, Symbols, Transportaton, Wayfinding

“Bob Noorda, an internationally known graphic designer who helped introduce a Modernist look to advertising posters, corporate logos and, in the 1960s, the entire New York City subway system, died on Jan. 11 in Milan, his adopted city. He was 82…Mr. Noorda’s best-known work in the United States was for the Metropolitan Transit Authority, which in 1966 commissioned his firm, Unimark International, to modernize and unify the look of the subway system’s signs.” — A.M.