Design Language News

A lenticular map of NYC by Christopher Cannon. Isotope...

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 11:51:00 -0500

A lenticular map of NYC by Christopher Cannon. Isotope 221’s website has a nice description of the project. (Via Raffertyesque)

Build Your Own Museum

Mon, 20 Feb 2012 13:09:04 -0500

Build Your Own Museum:

The Tokyo Ito Museum of Architecture has made a paper craft diagram available for download that will let you recreate the building at 1:150 scale. (Via Things Magazine)

Boy Scout Hydration Chart

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 11:00:00 -0500

Boy Scout Hydration Chart:

“Optimal” is an interesting choice to describe urine. And not that we need to be scientific about this, but wouldn’t the color be dependent on how much water is in the toilet? (Via)

Susan Kare's Icons

Wed, 23 Nov 2011 13:00:45 -0500

Susan Kare's Icons :

Good article by Steve Silberman on the woman behind Apple’s first icons, including some great concept sketches. (Via)

Occupy George

Fri, 21 Oct 2011 12:34:41 -0400

Occupy George:

This endeavor aims to educate through Infographics stamped on dollar bills.

Racial Divisions

Fri, 21 Oct 2011 11:53:23 -0400

Racial Divisions:

Jim Valandingham animates the racial divide in cities using census data of their black and white populations. (Via)

Worldwide Animal Sounds

Tue, 11 Oct 2011 11:50:19 -0400

Worldwide Animal Sounds:

I went to the Talk To Me exhibit at MoMA this past weekend and I highly recommend it. There are too many great pieces to link, but one that’s viewable online is a project cataloging different animal sounds made by children around the world. They are surprisingly different, but mostly all recognizable. They’re also absurdly cute.

jmak: Thanks, Steve. Posting designs like this one makes me...

Thu, 06 Oct 2011 12:52:15 -0400

jmak:

Thanks, Steve.

Posting designs like this one makes me paranoid, because I can’t shake the feeling that it’s not original. I enjoyed the process regardless, but please let me know if somebody else beat me to the idea!

Thoughts?

Fairy Tale Posters

Fri, 23 Sep 2011 09:29:11 -0400

Fairy Tale Posters:

These minimalist posters by Christian Jackson each represent a familiar children’s story. (from Papertastebuds, via @rosegarsch)

The American Day, Remixed

Thu, 22 Sep 2011 11:02:00 -0400

The American Day, Remixed:

Nathan Yau of Flowing Data remixes this New York Times interactive graphic about how americans spend their day. His version breaks up the activity categories so they can be compared side-by-side. The original survey data can be found here.

The Art of Clean Up

Thu, 01 Sep 2011 13:41:00 -0400

The Art of Clean Up:

In his new book, Ursus Wehrli takes the disorder of everyday life and organizes it. (Via Kottke)

Entry for a competition to rethink the food label. My main gripe...

Mon, 18 Jul 2011 12:01:00 -0400

Entry for a competition to rethink the food label. My main gripe with the current label design is that it assumes you will remember the percentages of nutrients you eat throughout an entire day. This design attempts to show percentages per meal (with three meals a day) to make a food’s value more clear. To demonstrate, which value seems like a healthier percentage of calories: 40% daily value or 120% meal value? They are the same, but 40% daily value doesn’t seem as that bad. Other entries in this competition can be seen here.

Apologies

Thu, 07 Jul 2011 23:23:00 -0400

Due to some domain issues, I’ll need to relink many of the images on this site. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Update: Everything should be squared away now.

One Size Fits Nobody

Thu, 28 Apr 2011 11:35:00 -0400

One Size Fits Nobody:

A good illustration and article in the New York Times addressing the variation in women’s dress sizes (via Flowing Data).

This is my attempt at a radiation dosage chart in response to a...

Thu, 21 Apr 2011 14:25:00 -0400

This is my attempt at a radiation dosage chart in response to a couple others that have been posted recently.

Randall Munroe of XKCD posted the widely circulated chart below. In it, the relationships within each section are very clear: you can easily see how eating a banana compares to a cross-country flight (two blue boxes vs. 320 blue boxes). However, in order to compare eating a banana to severe radiation poisoning, that relationship isn’t as direct. You must follow the size conversions from blue boxes to green boxes to red boxes since there is no immediate relationship.

(click to enlarge)

David McCandless of Information is Beautiful also created a radiation dosage chart, shown below. Visually it is easier to navigate, as it lists each dosage vertically in sequence. The tradeoff here is that there isn’t an accurate visual relationship between the numbers. There is as much space between .4 microsieverts to 1 microsievert as there is between 50 millisieverts to 100 millisieverts. The color shifts also vary in their relationship to dosage. In the space of .9 microsieverts, the color shifts from yellow to green. A similar shift in color from blue to purple though, spans 90 millisieverts.

(click to enlarge)

In my version (top), the goal was to show a clear relationship between the smallest and largest dosage. In order for that chart to fit on one screen/page, I needed to visualize doses using volume. I also aimed to make the color relationships consistent. To do this I used a gradient from yellow to red and plotted all the points from zero to 8,000 millisieverts. As a result, there is minimal color shift between the smaller doses, and significant jumps between the larger ones. I had to make tradeoffs as well. It was a struggle to find a size that kept all the doses at least somewhat visible while aiming to fit the whole image (or most of it) on one large screen. This affected how the captions were displayed and how many dosage examples I could show.

Notes: All my data was aggregated from David and Randall’s charts, with the addition of the TSA blog. Keep in mind there is some controversy (via DF) about the backscatter emission tests.

van Gogh Pie

Mon, 07 Mar 2011 15:31:38 -0500

van Gogh Pie:

Arthur Buxton’s beautiful piece shows Vincent van Gogh paintings as pie charts based on the most prominent colors used in them. (Via Flowing Data)

Pizzicato Trains

Mon, 31 Jan 2011 18:55:00 -0500

Pizzicato Trains:

Alexander Chen animates New York City’s subway system as if it’s a string ensemble. (Via Kottke)

Charting Dexter

Fri, 28 Jan 2011 14:36:00 -0500

Charting Dexter:

This graphic created by Dehahs, a member at Deviantart, tracks all the deaths that Dexter is responsible for. There are obviously spoilers in this chart, so if you haven’t seen the show and plan to, then don’t click the image. (Via Flowing Data)

Visualizing Slavery

Thu, 30 Dec 2010 18:23:00 -0500

Visualizing Slavery:

The New York Times has a piece about this map from 1860. It’s the last visual record showing slavery from census data. (Via Flowing Data)

Chained Melody

Fri, 03 Dec 2010 10:40:00 -0500

I had been playing with alternative (and possibly inaccessible) ways to visualize music notation, and came up with this. Theoretically, someone could play the melody from this single line if they knew the first note, though reading the subtle differences in radius would be a challenge. I may experiment with other songs in the future, but here is one for the holidays: