The New York Times wows again with an impressive organic visualization of the national emotional response to the death of Bin Laden.

American Rustic. Even though this style goes completely against my general design principles, I feel that there is definitely a place for these types of objects in the world. Functional design makes the world run – but this type of design gives the world character.

Chartwell font by TK Type. An innovative way to quickly build infographic charts using font ligatures. I particularly love the stylings of their bar graphs.

BaseNow comes up with a thoughtfully redesigned image for NASA.

Will more people take the stairs if they act as a giant piano? Will more people use public recycling bins if it also becomes an arcade game? Fun Theory shows that you can make the world better and have more fun at the same time.

Abigail Uhteg brings us through the process of handmaking her own book in this delightful stop-motion video and reminds us how much thought can go into a process that we rarely stop to think about.

Understanding why it takes so long to produce and distribute vaccines on a national level.

2. How different risk factors, demographics, and diseases correlate to each other:

3. The chances of that you will get a certain disease:

Art that speaks to the subconscious.

Definitely one of the most intriguing items to come out of the 80′s were the Choose Your Own Adventure books. As tacky as they were, it was a very interesting effort to make books more “interactive.”As a kid, they offered countless hours of entertainment. I would read them over and over again so that I could figure out every possible ending. Recently, Christian Swineheart put together a very elegant visualization and analysis of the beloved CYOA books.

Statistics can be boring. It’s crucial that we have them in news articles to put facts behind the story but I always though reciting numbers in a paragraph is such a waste. Statistical data takes a lot of work to generate but when you just list the numbers, it’s a bore to readers who view the data more as a necessity than part of the story. The New York Times shows us again that the numbers themselves can be the story.

Update: Find how people like you have been affected by the recession.

Back Forty is a restaurant in New York that strives to provide local and sustainable meats. In this video, the chef, Shanna Pacifico, demonstrates how she tries to use every part of an animal in her cuisine. I have always been very fascinated in how different parts of animals turn into different types of food. I admire that she is so knowledgeable about the entire food process and not just the preparation. That is a quality all great chefs should have.

For those of you who always wanted to learn some biology but were intimidated, Learn.Genetics from the University of Utah is full of great educational multimedia. Go get your hands dirty!

It is said that a good design/idea is often the simplest one – but they also have to be simple in implementation.

10/GUI is a proposal for a new type of human computer interface that has been getting a lot of publicity on design blogs recently. It offers a unique perspective on both the hardware and software of future computer interaction.

I think that it elegantly solves the problem of body/neck strain that would undoubtedly exist with minority report types of touch interfaces. I am not as convinced by the software solution even though it is creative. It seems that expose on Macs seems to solve all the problems that they present already. Luckily, the hardware and software proposals can easily be separated.

I also couldn’t help but think that that Apple’s recently released magic mouse is definite a step towards this direction.

David McCandless is a “data and visual journalist” based in London. I think he makes some very compelling visualizations. More often than not, I see information designs that dress up the information but don’t particularly make a concept any clearer or easy to understand. McCandless has really done a great job to clearly illustrate a particular point with his work. I especially like his graphic about the safety of the HPV vaccine.

Wes Anderson is the master of set design (and awkward humor). I can’t wait until this comes out.

It has always been said that the key to good typography is the ability to deftly design white space. Here’s some great examples of white space design in logos. This one also reminds me of my Enigma Twist logo. Sweet.

A primer by AIGA on graphic design and sustainability. It was a major issue at this year’s Better By Design Conference and here it is again. I’m really glad that the design community is embracing these ideals. I hope someday my work will revolved centrally around this theme.