want to get mugged on holiday?
Then go out and buy yourself one of these.
Filed under: Brands | Leave a Comment
Alumni Magazine
Mag Culture reviewed the latest offering from Luke Hayman: The Harvard Alumni magazine. Since it never made it to press, the only way to see it is online here Jeremy didn’t show much of the insides so here are a few really great spreads showing how impactful illustration really can be.
Filed under: Illustration | Leave a Comment
Tags: Illustration, Luke Hayman, Magazine Design, Magazines, Pentagram
The world’s hippest seminary
Andres Jaque Arquitectos has just completed a seminary renovation that would inspire envy among any rock star or nightclub owner.
The seminary of the Plasencia Diocese in Spain had been operating out of two buildings, from the 15th and 19th century. But as the community services of the diocese has grown, they’ve found themselves pinched for space. And the old architecture itself was geared to keeping priests and students apart from the communities they served–there weren’t spaces to provide a more neutral middle ground. So Andres Jaque Arquitectos responded not by scrapping the old digs, but joined them up, with a new 12,500 square foot extension. The new building now has a combined 57,000 square feet, including gardens on the ground level on the roof, 21 apartments for the priests and seminarians, and a slew of meeting rooms and recreation areas to serve the flock.
Check out Arch Daily for more pictures.
Filed under: Architecture | Leave a Comment
Tags: Andres Jaqu, Andres Jaque Arquitectos, Architecture, Church Design, Design, Europe, Innovation, interior design, Peter Zumthor, Religious Design, Spain, Technology, Vatican
David McCandless, an information designer based in London, was flummoxed by all the talk being bandied about, over government programs running into the billions. So he created a chart of the entire mess. As he writes over at Information is Beautiful:
This image arose out of a frustration with the reporting of billion dollar amounts in the media. That is, they’re reported as self-evident facts, when, in fact, they’re mind-boggling and near incomprehensible without context. But they can start to be understood visually and relatively, IMHO.
Below is a resized version of the full-size chart, that you’ll want to click on for legibility. It’s an excellent visual supplement to the news we’re swimming in everyday.
But there is one huge caveat that should be made about the data: The graph is dominated by $7.8 trillion supposedly spent by the U.S. government on bailouts in the present financial crisis. But that number isn’t like the others–as The New York Times reports, that massive figure is actually a hypothetical estimate of what the government might be on the hook for if the financial system actually collapses. The actual budgeted cost of the bailout program is around $2 trillion–which is obviously enormous, but is actually a trillion less than what’s been spent on the Iraq war.
Filed under: Global Issues | Leave a Comment
Tags: bailout, data visualization, David McCandless, Design, financial crisis, Info Graphics, Information is Beautiful, Innovation, Iraq, London, TARP, Technology, The New York Times Company, United States
Michael Bosanko
Beautiful Light Sculptures created by Photographer Michael Bosanko.
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Tags: abstract, light, photography
Advertisements can also be an excellent source of design inspiration in part because of the creativity that many ads exhibit. If you would like to find more inspiration from advertisements, the sites featured in this post will provide you with a great start.
Ads of the World is a showcase of advertisements. There is a lot of great work to be seen on the site, and it also includes a blog and forum.
The Adland blog features advertisements, including a lot of video. The archives are categorized so you can browse through print, radio, television commercials, and more.
Adverbox is a popular advertising blog that reaches over 9,000 subscribers.
The Inspiration Room Daily frequently posts inspiration from design, print, commercials, music videos and more.
Design You Trust showcases user-submitted design. The advertising category is a great place to get some inspiration.
AdForum contains 90,000 ads and provides information on 20,000 advertising agencies. Ads can be search by media type, date range, country, ad agency, and more.
The Behance Network provides designers and creatives with a place to display their work. You can browse the Advertising category to see inspirational work from Behance members.
The Advertising Archives is a searchable database of 50,000 print ads. You’ll need to register to view ads full size.
The Ad*Access project is part of the Duke University Library. It maintains a database of over 7,000 advertisements from 1911 to 1955.
Adflip is a database of print ads. You can browse by decade, category, what’s hot, or you can search by keyword.
Coloribus includes more than 2,000,000 ads in its database. You can search by keyword or browse by category, brand, country, or agency.
Adaholic is a searchable database of magazine ads. The ads can also be browsed by category and prints can be purchased.
The Ad Feed is a gallery site that showcases excellent advertisements in print and video. The site hasn’t been updated in a few months but the archives contain some interesting and inspiring work.
adverlicio.us is a blog that showcases ads of differnt kinds. The archives can be browsed industry, brand, celebrity, or size
I Believe in Advertising is a blog the features various advertisements. The site has been around since 2006 and has a lot in the archives.
AdGoodness has not been updated in a few months, but the archives include inspiration from commercials, film, animation and more.
Filed under: Advertising | Leave a Comment
Tags: advertisement, Design, inspiration
Greengaged 2009
London Design Festival’s sustainable design hub – Greengaged is making a big return for 2009. Co-designed with thomas.matthews and web designer Daniel Howells, I’m pleased to announce the launch of the brand new Greengaged website!
Filed under: Creative Ideas | Leave a Comment
Tags: daniel howells, Greengaged, sophie thomas, thomas matthews
There’s been much hand-wringing about the PS3′s price and the fact it needed a cheap revamp ever since it launched in 2006. But here’s the thing–Sony didn’t drag its feet on the issue at all, especially if you look at the PS2′s history. Until yesterday, Sony’s PlayStation 3 was the most expensive console on the market (that spot is now held by the Xbox 360 Elite, but probably not for long) and it was a huge clunky beast. Now it’s a sprightly, skinny, quiet little number sporting a few less facilities (third party OSs for example) but also a nicely trimmed unit price: $299 for a 120GB version. It’s a welcome move, it’ll undoubtedly bump sales of the machine, and it’s a very definite answer to the online clamor begging for something like this to happen for years.
But maybe we shouldn’t have expected it quite as soon as it has arrived. Take the PS2 for example–due to manufacturing issues, so few units were released initially that it was hard to find on the shelves for months after its early 2000 debut. It was also expensive, and a much clunkier box than the previous PS1. Most of the issues to do with its price were centered on the device’s revolutionary Emotion Engine chip, so incredibly complex that there were worries it could be used to steer guided missiles–the console’s 128-bit encryption meant it was also briefly export-controlled under Japanese law. It took Sony until 2004 to rejig the complex hardware into a smaller box, thinner and quieter than the original, ditching some of the facilities of the older machine (mainly the internal hard drive option) to achieve a new, lower, price tag. Sony’s been quietly tweaking the design ever since, simplifying the mainboard and removing unneeded facilities to shave the cost of making PS2s–it’s now in revised version 17, and will cost you a scant $99.
And that’s the old PlayStation 2–in comparison to which the technology that makes the PS3 work is magical. Its Cell processor is even more revolutionary, in its way, than the Emotion Engine was on the PS2–it’s even powerful enough to be networked into a cheap supercomputer, and some suggest it could become the most important microprocessor invented this decade. The inclusion of a Blu-ray drive (a tech Sony also helped develop) as the PS3′s main game storage system meant it was one of the first Blu-ray players on sale, and for a long time it was among the most affordable. The Cell chip and Blu-ray meant it cost Sony some $800-odd to make the first generation of PS3s, which it sold at a $250 loss per unit. Blu-ray part shortages even meant its European launch was delayed until March 2007.
And now, some two and a half years later, Sony’s managed to shave 70% off the build costs for the PS3. It’s revised and polished the Cell chip design, also moving it to a 45nm fab process (originally it was a 90nm, then a 65nm component) so that the chip is now 34% smaller, and eats 40% less electrical power. Now that BR has won the HD video disc war, economies of scale mean optical components for the BR drive are cheaper too. Hard drive tech also means including a 120GB drive in the PS3 Slim doesn’t add much to the price (and remember it debuted with a 20GB one!). And another big saving has come by ditching the Emotion Engine chip internally, along with software support of the PS2.
Basically Sony took four years to revamp the PS2, and less than three to makeover the PS3–a much, much more complex machine. It’s been a speedy, speedy process, despite what Sony’s detractors may say. Hats-off to Sony’s engineering team, I say.
[via Engadget]
Filed under: Brands | Leave a Comment
Tags: cell chip, Culture and Lifestyle, Design, Games, games console, gaming, Innovation, playstation, PlayStation 2, PS2, PS3 Slim, sony, Sony Corporation, Sony PlayStation2, Sony PlayStation3, Technology
“Wow! I’ve never seen anything like it!”
Well, where business cards are concerned, there’s normally a very good reason for that.
One idea might, on the surface, seem to be innovative and unique, but sometimes the designer forgets about functionality, and where the card is going to end up.
The image above, showing a design for Eduard Cehovin, is a wooden clothes peg with the contact details printed on. Yes, it’s a novel idea, and some people would think it great if used for a dry cleaner, or laundry service etc., although there’s no functionality. No-one will carry a clothes peg around, nor can they file it or keep it in a business card holder.
Here’s a business card that sprouts vegetation when watered, by Jamie Wieck. It was designed to be kept on your table, but I’m curious, would you really leave a bunch of cress growing on your desktop? Besides, where do you think the card will go when the cress dies?
This rubber business card, created by Chris Hirsch for personal trainer Poul Nielsen, is another unique idea, but without very much functionality. Poul only had 10 of the items made, but last I heard was planning for a reprint, with his tagline on the reverse. Notice how you have to use both hands to read the telephone number? That makes it a two person job to give Poul a call.
In saying all this, these designs prompt people to talk about them. They generate interest. If they were more subtle in appearance I wouldn’t have written this blog post. So are there different functions to a business card? Is a business card used for more than just conveying information?
Have your say
What is the purpose of these designs? Are they supposed to be discarded soon after you receive them or has the designer missed the point? Should conventions be challenged where business cards are concerned? I’d love to know your thoughts.
Filed under: Business Cards, Creative Ideas | Leave a Comment
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