Arteliance

Newsdesigner.com | Bhutto Front Pages

Fascinating collection of International and U.S. newspaper front pages on the Benazir Bhutto assassination.

The Globe and Mail:

tech ronin: Leopard on iMac 24 2.8 - Bliss

This is my first iMac. Who knew I would love the integration and simplicity? I am beginning to see things Steve’s way on this. It’s so easy. So elegant. Sometimes options are more trouble than they are worth. That’s the religion you get with the iPhone…. I’m being corrupted but perhaps for my own good.

redhat.com | Intro to design thinking

David Burney: Design thinking is a term being used today to define a way of thinking that produces transformative innovation. While the term feels trendy, the way of thinking is hardly new. One can think of the cave painters in Lascaux 25,000 years ago as design thinkers— they first began to collect data about the world they experienced, express that data by creating visual stories, document those stories in a way that could be shared into the future, and use that data to create new and innovative ways to solve their problems. The creation of alphabets thousands of years later is an example of design thinking.

Blast from the past? Coldest winter in 15 years, Environment Canada says

Environment Canada senior climatologist David Phillips said the trend in recent years of uncharacteristically warm, short winters will be wiped out by a chilly reminder of what a real Canadian winter feels like.

Armin Vit (before he was so soundly trounced by Marian Bantjes in Layer Tennis) started a worthwhile and far-reaching debate on what makes a web design great:

Speak Up › Landmark Web Sites, Where Art Thou?

Design solutions that, in their consistent use as exemplary cases of execution, concept and process, don’t even need to be shown anymore and that, for better or worse, (almost) everyone acknowledges as being seminal works that reflect the goals that graphic design strives for: A visual solution that not only enables, but also transcends, the message to become memorable in the eyes and minds of viewers. Whether these projects are indeed as amazing, relevant and enviable as we have built them up to be is cause for a separate discussion but it’s safe to say that, as far as designs recognized around the profession, there are a certain few that invariably make the list, usually without question. Myself, I could list projects in every category from logos, to annual reports, to magazine covers, to packaging, to typefaces, to opening titles that could be considered landmark projects… But when it comes to web sites, I can’t think of a single www that could be comparable — in gravitas, praise, or memorability — as any of the few projects I just mentioned. Could this be?

To which some really thoughtful responses have been posted:

• Do Canonical Web Designs Exist? - Bokardo
• Subtraction: Something’s Missing in Web Design
• A List Apart: Articles: Understanding Web Design

By injecting the idea of an historical perspective into a field noted for its lack of history, Armin gives web design the very things he questions—gravitas, praise and memorability.

I’m trying to direct folks to view ‘design’ in the sense of something much grander—an approach to framing problems and devising solutions. An approach that works with imperfect data and produces multiple options. An approach that shows empathy for people involved. Design is about so much more than ‘making things look pretty. poetpainter: In Defense of Eye Candy

I am often taken aback by the number of business people who are completely unable to think strategically. That is, to figure out what they want to say, why they want to say it, who they want to say it to, and how they want to say it. As designers we take our own ability to do this for granted, assume “everyone can do that”, and sell ourselves short in the process.

An exercise to gain insight into blog design, colour, and structure based on this fascinating full-size, 374-page reproduction of the entire 2007 IKEA catalogue reduced & abstracted to only averaged color & lay-out structure.

Core77’s Hack-2-School Guide: Classroom

To be a better design researcher, hone your ability to observe the world around you. Keep a regular log that you add to at least weekly (daily would be ideal). Document the strange, the curious, the weird, the awesome and the funny. Learn to keep a close eye on the artifacts, signs, designs, behaviors, products and experiences that you encounter in your everyday life.

Today’s observation: The controls on my mom’s television. I was away for the weekend and when I got home her tv remote and the digital cable box no longer functioned together and the solution had her flummoxed. It was just a matter of turning the tv on and pushing the cable button and then turning the digital box on - why isn’t that easier to figure out?

Rick Poynor on the end of Emigre

I heard Rudy VanderLans speak at ACAD many years ago. Rudy said something to the effect that if you didn’t design the typeface you used, can you really say you designed the [at the time, printed] piece?

This morning started out with a simple question: What are the font variants after some of the font names in Font Book on Tiger e.g. Lucida Grande CY and CE? This led me on a fascinating journey through the  Apple  Human Interface Guidelines; onto a sort of strange but complete and nicely designed listing of resources by Luc Devroye; then naturally the Mac OS X 10.4: Fonts list; and perhaps most inspiring, a simple and informative discussion of the entire Lucida family of harmonized typefaces from the font designers themselves, Charles Bigelow and Kris Holmes Notes on Lucida designs; and finally, a sidetrack onto the code style font sampler. The web can be like that sometimes - taking one on unexpected and fascinating adventures.

Fascinating material and a lot to think about the next time you’re reading a web page. BTW, CY is a font that contains Cyrillic characters for Eastern European Slavic languages.

Citrus theme by minimanjapan

kuler colour theme generator. One of the joys of my new computer is getting to try out lots of new (to me) applications.

The Canadian Design Resource