Instead of working on visualization a different idea, I wanted to flush this one out more. I realized from some of the comments that I received that the graphic was probably too simplified for anyone who was not familiar with the subject to understand the scope of the issue. So with the idea of brushing up on my flash knowledge, I decided to turn this into an interactive graphic. I like this concept of an infographic that can be explored deeper. This is what I have come up with so far. I am working to add some pictures and other features to make the idea even clearer. Keep posted.

Click here to view fullsize.

BaseNow comes up with a thoughtfully redesigned image for NASA.

Many times, I find myself thinking about what the numbers actually are when reading about environmental claims. I’ve decided to start making information graphics illustrating answers to these questions. Here is the first in, hopefully, a series of many. It follows the trail of industrially produced nitrogen and the inefficiencies in the process.

If you have anything questions you would like visualized, please let me know in the comments!

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.

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

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

Darren Firth. Modern swiss style design at its best.

]]> http://www.dualaesthetic.com/2009/11/17/darren-firth/feed/ 0 http://www.dualaesthetic.com/2009/11/15/make-something-cool-everyday/ http://www.dualaesthetic.com/2009/11/15/make-something-cool-everyday/#comments Sun, 15 Nov 2009 19:41:55 +0000 norris http://www.dualaesthetic.com/?p=401

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.

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.

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.

The Ivy Film Festival is the largest student-run film festival in the world. Every year, they receive hundreds of film and screenplay submissions from undergraduate and graduate students from around the world. The Festival has also featured prominent and acclaimed speakers such as Martin Scorsese, Jack Nicholson, Adrian Brody, and Oliver Stone.

In 2009 and my senior year of college, I was contacted by the festival and asked if I would do them the honor of imagining a visual theme that year’s festival.  Given the popularity of festival as well as my own interest in cinema, I graciously accepted.

After learning that the keynote event to be about the difference between current Hollywood and Hollywood during the golden years, I wanted to pick a theme that could represent both eras. Keeping in mind that the marketing should also be hip, trendy, and attract a college-aged crowd, I decided on a visual campaign inspired by Saul Bass.

Saul Bass is a graphic designer stemming from the fifties who made an influential mark on the visual identity of Hollywood – particularly film title sequences. His style was very minimal yet raw and humorous. Some of his major works include title sequences for Vertigo(1958) and Man with the Golden Arm(1955), yet his work continues into the present day for films like Goodfellas(1991) and Casino(1995). Undoubtedly, his long and consistence presence in Hollywood has inspired many other film visuals such as those for Catch Me If You Can(2002) and Burn After Reading(2008).

I intensely studied Saul Bass’ use of color, typography, and minimalism in order to recreate the feel of his title sequences while creating my designs from scratch. Another interesting concept I tried in some of the posters was to capture the motion of title-sequences in a single shot (see the posters for “Getting it Written” and “Student Film Screenings”).

I met regularly with the festival director and publicity team to make sure they were satisfied with my work. There were definitely times when my design sense would conflict with what they wanted, but we woud also discuss through our problems and pick the solution that would create the most effective advertisement campaign. After weeks of strenuous sketching, designing, and meetings (also in midst of writing my senior thesis), I created a set of 4 posters, a festival t-shirt, and other publicity items for the Ivy Film Festival. I felt a tremendous sense of accomplishment when everyone in the festival told me how excited they were with my work and, especially, when I received a personal complement from the CEO of Paramount.

Back in the days when I was a student at Brown, I always used to look forward to reading the Brown Daily Herald. One reason was because my friend, Dustin Foley, had his own daily column called “Enigma Twist.” Enigma Twist was ambitious project to come up with a new type of puzzle every day but somehow he pulled it off for my entire senior year.

Recently, Dustin has decided to make Enigma Twist into its own website. He asked me to help him to make a logo and I was eager to help. When sketching out ideas, I wanted to make something that would embody the attitude of his puzzles. The puzzles were really more about being fun and clever than looking fancy or professional. His puzzles and his website seemed to fit right in with the comic culture that seems to be evolving with today’s youth. Think dinosaur comics or xkcd.  I decided, instead of trying “professionalize” enigma twist, I should embrace this new interesting style.

If Enigma Twist is all about new and clever games, why not turn the logo into a puzzle itself? Here was the result.

The main logo is a simple solvable maze. I wanted to keep the look as do-it-yourself and retro as possible.

In case legibility was a concern, here was an alternate logo that could be used that incorporates the same style.

Also, check out Enigma Twist on Twitter for daily word puzzles.

I spent my entire weekend this week volunteering and sitting in at events for the Brown/RISD joint conference, A Better World by Design and, I have to say, I enjoyed every moment of it. Not often enough have I felt this sense of community where everybody was on the exact same page and here to discuss the same issues.

I love design but I often think about to utility of its service. It is so easy to get lost in the mess of commercial product design and feel that design only perpetuates this colossal consumer culture. Perhaps because I have drowned in this sentiment so often, it was invigorating to hear what inspired people and organizations had to say about what they were doing to help the world – from Project H’s redesign of the Hippo Roller to Ken Banks’ open-source FrontlineSMS project. In addition to specific projects, it was also simple refreshing to see and meet so many professionals and students that felt the same way I did about design and were compelled to change the status quo. It gave me hope for the future of design in our world.

Considering this was only the second year for the conference and many of my classmates were involved in putting it together, I feel very proud of how well it turned out. Congratulations!

I have often recalled this one moment in class and I think I have finally distilled how intricate this one bit of advice is. Intrigued by this discussion, I went to try and fully understand what Aristotle’s philosophy of design was. Unfortunately, a initial google search brought nothing up on the matter – Aristotle never did have a stance on visual design. After a little bit of research, the closest literature I could find on the matter was an essay that Aristotle wrote on literary aesthetics.

His essay Poetics was the first essay written on literary theory. In it, he defines art – in all its modes, be it song, dance, or poetry – as imitations of nature. In terms of poetry, he distinguishes between Comedies, Tragedies, and Epics. In this essay, he focuses on the mechanics of a tragedy. One particular feature that struck me in the context of design was the idea of Catharsis. Catharsis is the idea of an intense release of emotion or an emotional purging that should result after an audience views a tragedy. Likely, this was what my professor had been referring to and it was certainly an interesting stretch to view this in the context of the visual design of information.

To Aristotle, a tragedy composed of six parts: plot, character, diction, thought, spectacle, and song. Because tragedies are the imitations of the actions of men and not men themselves, the plot was considered “the soul of a tragedy.” Characters, therefore, came second to plot. This parallel can again be drawn to information design. A good design tells a story. The design of the data (or characters) is important but it is secondary to the design of the story the information tells. In this sense, information design at its best has a singular thesis or story; at its worst, it is a data dump with too many stories to comprehend or no story at all.

Here is another interesting quote from the essay:

Again, a beautiful object, whether it be a living organism or any whole composed of parts, must not only have an orderly arrangement of parts, but must also be of a certain magnitude; for beauty depends on magnitude and order. Hence a very small animal organism cannot be beautiful; for the view of it is confused, the object being seen in an almost imperceptible moment of time. Nor, again, can one of vast size be beautiful; for as the eye cannot take it all in at once, the unity and sense of the whole is lost for the spectator; as for instance if there were one a thousand miles long.

He uses this metaphor to understand the organization and magnitude of a plot but, again, there is a direct corollary to design. Design and detail of the information is important but it one has to be wary of that including unimportant details of the information can take away from the overall message of the picture. Removing too many details, however, can make the design boring and unconvincing.

How well all of this actually applies to all types of information design is hard to say but this was certainly an interesting and different perspective on design implying that designers should not only have a creative eye but a creative tongue as well. A good designer, then, can learn a lot from the art of good storytelling.