“A Complete History Of The Soviet Union Through The Eyes Of A Humble Worker, Arranged To The Melody Of Tetris” (2010) by “Pig With The Face Of A Boy”
The food on your plate; now belongs to the state
Brilliant visuals.
Monthly Archives: May 2015
A daily photo project by JK Keller (1998–2014)
The project began out of spite. I had just purchased a digital camera (Nikon CoolPix 900), and it was rather expensive. My girlfriend at the time asked me why I bought it and what I was going to do with it. I explained. She seemed unconvinced and asked if I was “going to use it every day” with sarcastic inflection. I told her yes, and resolved to do so. Inception! (From the FAQ)
In his time working for Facebook (2008–2014), Ben Barry did a lot of really nice design work for the company. Luckily for us, he has posted it on his website. Below I’ve selected just some of my favourite examples.
Facebook’s Little Red Book
“As the company of Facebook grew, we faced a lot of challenges. One of them was explaining our company’s mission, history, and culture to new employees. We wanted to try to package a lot of those stories and ideas in one place to give to all employees.”
The Next Web: Here’s our first peek inside the little red book Facebook gives to employees
Barry and Everett Katigbak co-founded Facebook’s Analog Research Lab , a print studio that is near Facebook’s original Menlo Park building. In his time at Facebook, Barry was famous for his focus on the company’s brand, even to the point that he was dubbed the company’s “propaganda minister” internally.
Facebook Visual Identity
This page features a wealth of design concepts, including this revision to the famous wordmark which Facebook approved but have not (yet) implemented.
“Facebook as a product and organization evolves very fast, and it was a challenge trying to design a system that was flexible across many mediums and contexts. Separate from the visual design work, there was the incredible task of creating awareness, gaining support, and ultimately creating a cross-functional team to approve and implement these changes.”
Facebook Analog Research Laboratory
The Facebook Analog Research Laboratory is a printing studio and workshop. Its primary mission is to produce work that reinforces the values of Facebook.
Facebook Posters & Ephemera
Finally, there are these posters and other miscellaneous designs produced by Barry, usually for internal hackathons.
Lovely, lovely work, all of it.
See also: A Facebook board game!
Facebook design
About Ben Barry: “One of the first communication designers to join Facebook’s team in California, his focus was on developing Facebook’s internal culture, voice and brand. Most notably, he cofounded the Facebook Analog Research Laboratory, an internal print studio and art program.”
The Flag of Planet Earth
Oskar Pernefeldt’s graduation project at Beckmans College of Design is a flag for our world, “to remind the people of Earth that we share this planet, no matter of national boundaries”.
Centered in the flag, seven rings form a flower – a symbol of the life on Earth. The rings are linked to each other, which represents how everything on our planet, directly or indirectly, are linked. The blue field represents water which is essential for life – also as the oceans cover most of our planet’s surface. The flower’s outer rings form a circle which could be seen as a symbol of Earth as a planet and the blue surface could represent the universe.
Construction animation of The International Flag of Planet Earth by Johan Fredriksson
Inspired by this work, Wired has taken a look at other alternative flags for Earth as designed by visionaries and hippies
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- James Cadle’s Earth flag
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- John McConnell’s Earth flag
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- United Nations flag
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- International Flag of Planet Earth
I particularly like this design by redditor ‘thefreck’ who designed an extensible flag that can be updated as humans colonise other planets…
Finally, Roman Mars gave a great TED talk recently based on an episode of his radio show/podcast 99% Invisible about flags: Why city flags may be the worst-designed thing you’ve never noticed
In this surprising and hilarious talk about vexillology — the study of flags — Mars reveals the five basic principles of flag design and shows why he believes they can be applied to just about anything.
Give him a few minutes to warm up as it turns into a great talk.
1929: Ohio – People walk through stands at a Loundonville fair.
1929: Columbus, Ohio – A view of the high street in Columbus’ business district.
c. 1929: A woman sits outside the doorway of the Absinthe House in New Orleans.
1927: Montana – Three men stand in front of a plane on the Crow Reservation.
c. 1929: New Orleans, Louisiana – A boy sits on a barrel outside a brewery in the French Quarter.
1929: Hopi Indian Reservation – Two men stand by a car in a field looking at the nearby canyons.
1930: Washington, D.C. – A woman looks at fruit from a vendor in front of the U.S. Capital.
1927: Montana – A chief on the Crow Indian Reservation.
1930: New Orleans, Louisiana – Five boys sit together, eating large watermelon slices.
1929: New York City – A view of Washington Square at Fifth Avenue.
c. 1929: Fort Worth, Texas – A cowgirl shows her sister how to handle the ropes.
These photographs were taken by National Geographic Society photographers using early Autochrome, the first commercially available color photographic process.
See also
- Police mugshots of the 1920s
- A vivid colour photograph of New York from 1944
- The Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project (LOIRP) is a project to digitise the original analog data tapes from the five Lunar Orbiter spacecraft that were sent to the Moon in 1966 and 1967.
American Autochromes: Early 20th century colour photography
National Geographic Society photographers eventually moved on to other slightly more advanced photographic processes and finally to Kodachrome by 1938, but not before amassing a collection of more than 12,000 Autochromes.
EightByEight magazine looks at the ‘cheat sheets’ of two sports commentators:
BBC’s Nick Barnes and NBC’s Arlo White.
BBC’s Nick Barnes and NBC’s Arlo White.
Barnes creates a detailed two-page spread for each match he commentates for BBC Radio Newcastle. The notes are divided into two color-coded segments: The left-hand page contains background information on Sunderland’s opposition—the club’s starting XI from its last fixture, previous results, and stadium details—while the right-hand side is updated in real time as the action happens.
NBC Sports’s lead football commentator Arlo White devised his system of note-taking from watching other commentators in action. He cites legendary commentator Barry Davies as a personal hero—and his notes, which White was once shown at Wembley Stadium, as an inspiration. “They were beautifully handwritten, detailed and meticulous,” he said.
The art of sports commentary
“Behind every great football match is a great commentator, and in front of every commentator is a set of notes. BBC Radio Newcastle’s Nick Barnes and NBC Sports’ Arlo White have some of the best—and most unique—in the business.” – EightByEight magazine
Pixel artist renounces pixel art
“While they look a bit pixelated, the character models look quite good” –IGN review of KOF XIII
“Quite good”
This sprite is not “quite good.” It’s among the best 2D animation ever made in a video game. However good it is, it’s good in spite of it being “pixelated” according to many.
Blake Reynolds of Dinofarm Games was a pixel art purist. In this post he explains his recent change of heart.
The challenge was always in conveying to a lay person how lower fidelity artwork can be of higher quality than the apparently superior new product…
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- The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening for the original Gameboy
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- Bubsy for SNES
[…] it is easy to explain that the second image has a higher level of technology. Some may even be so taken with the spectacle of added color and resolution that they might mistakenly think Bubsy has the better artwork.
I could write you an entire book on why that is absolutely not the case, but that’s the thing – it’s not the audience’s responsibility to read that book. It’s my responsibility deliver them quality in a language they understand.
As for the future, I’m planning to shed purism and do my best to mature. I plan to embrace the medium, whatever that may be, and make the best art I possibly can.
Working in high resolution doesn’t prevent us from making great game art. The things that made pixel art great are the same things that make “HD” art great. Artists must make the decisions, not computers.
Untranslatable Words by Marija Tiurina
Selected from a series of illustrations by artist Marija Tiurina of “Untranslatable Words” containing fourteen detailed illustrations that convey moments and ideas which no single English word can describe.
See also: Artist Interview: Catching Up with Marija Tiurina
“There are certain viral “lists” that are fun to illustrate, they create a base for a nice and fun set of images. I just wanted to take a fun theme that people always have interest in when browsing the web, and illustrate my own vision of these untranslatable concepts.”
Untranslatable words
“One million, twenty five thousand, one hundred and nine, a number so huge, it is one of a kind! It’s the number of words in the language of English, one for every person, place, animal, and trinket. But there are certain words, which here don’t exist…”
Winston Churchill on free speech
“Everyone is in favor of free speech. Hardly a day passes without its being extolled, but some people’s idea of it is that they are free to say what they like, but if anyone else says anything back, that is an outrage.” — Winston Churchill
PaPiRus: ePaper screen for Raspberry Pi
This seems like it could be the perfect screen for any number of Raspberry Pi projects. It’s a shame they don’t show any pictures of the display actually working, but Pi Supply have a good Kickstarter track record, so I wouldn’t be overly concerned.
Kickstarter: PaPiRus – the ePaper Screen HAT for your Raspberry Pi
PaPiRus is a versatile ePaper display HAT for the Raspberry Pi with screens ranging from 1.44″ to 2.7″ in size.
ePaper is a display technology that mimics the appearance of ink on paper. Unlike conventional displays, ePaper reflects light – just like ordinary paper – and is capable of holding text and images indefinitely, even without electricity.
Because of this, ePaper displays and Raspberry Pi’s are a match made in heaven as together they use a very small amount of power whilst still bringing a display to your project.
See also: Other posts tagged ‘Raspberry Pi’
Mind Wizards – The Mystical Universe of Magic: The Gathering
Wizards, demons and goblins collide in the world’s first trading card game Magic: The Gathering, affectionately dubbed “cardboard crack” by its 10+ million diehard obsessives. From dank, wood-paneled basements to international big money pro tournaments, Magic continues to flourish since its phenomenal debut in 1993.
Magic is one of those things that theoretically I think I would love, but I’ve never gotten into.
z-x-x.org – an experimental typeface designed by Sang Mun to raise awareness of surveillance issues.
The name ZXX comes from the Library of Congress’ Alpha-3 ISO 639-2 — codes for the representation of names of languages. ZXX is used to declare No linguistic content; Not applicable.
“Just like the animals we need to start adopting new ways to conceal ourselves from the autocratic predators, in this case governments and corporations.”
See also:
ZXX: A typeface to open up governments
“Over the course of a year, I researched and created ZXX, a disruptive typeface. I drew six different cuts (Sans, Bold, Camo, False, Noise and Xed) to generate endless permutations, each font designed to thwart machine intelligences in a different way. I offered the typeface as a free download in hopes that as many people as possible would use it.” – Sang Mun
The Fermi Paradox — Where Are All The Aliens?
The universe is unbelievably big – trillions of stars and even more planets. Soo… there just has to be life out there, right? But where is it? Why don’t we see any aliens? Where are they? And more importantly, what does this tell us about our own fate in this gigantic and scary universe?
Pigeons are gross. They’re also wildly underrated.
Vox: Sure, there are bad things about these birds (like the way they deface statues of our own species’ great leaders). But over the centuries, their unique abilities to be trained and to find their way home have been used in interesting and surprising ways (that almost make up for their constant cooing).
Museum quality
Playing to the Gallery: Helping contemporary art in its struggle to be understood
Artist action figure
Hyperallergic: The book is structured after Perry’s lectures, with each chapter exploring a different theme. “Democracy Has Bad Taste” charts the power players of the art world (curators, dealers, critics, etc). “Beating the Bounds” and “Nice Rebellion, Welcome In!” examine shock tactics, the avant-garde, and the market’s co-option of rebellion. The final chapter, “I Found Myself in the Art World,” is a personal account of the artist’s creative principles, as well as a celebration of art education.
Zoe
Gallery gift shop
Changing tastes
Tate
“It’s easy to feel insecure around art and its appreciation, as though we cannot enjoy certain artworks if we don’t have a lot of academic and historical knowledge. But if there’s one message that I want you to take away it’s that anybody can enjoy art and anybody can have a life in the arts – even me! For even I, an Essex transvestite potter, have been let in by the artworld mafia.”
Grayson Perry
Playing to the Gallery: Helping contemporary art in its struggle to be understood
“Accompanied by 35 David Shrigley–esque illustrations by Perry, the book is presented as a beginner’s guide to the machinations of the art world.” — Hyperallergic
Dominik M. Schwarz is my kind of geek.
“It’s easy to print something large. It’s easy to print something very detailed. The combination though is difficult, especially if you ask the printing shop for only one copy.”
Printing a wall-sized world map, a guide
A wonderful process post from Dominik M. Schwarz detailing how he made a detailed 300dpi 3×2 meter wall map. “I envisioned a gigantic poster that would show the smallest villages, the most detailed coast lines and the highest level of information density possible.”
