Challenging the Standard Format of Modern Communication

Yes! This is exactly it! Check out these remarkable information design pieces. As I have been working on my own theories of design in my college studies, I cant help but recognize an excellent example of how design can remove the 'visio-rhetorical subtext' from something as commonplace as the news.

While I was drifting in the blogosphere I happened to stumble upon university student David Bowker's website, Designing the News. He has taken the text of various newspapers, dissected them, and reinterpereted them as the visual content of his designs.

I think this is a innovative way of thinking about distributing information. He has interpreted the text of one full week of the guardian and based a series of visuals and information graphics. I think this piece is an excellent example of how challenging the standard format of modern communication can produce such provocative and inspired designs.

Type Search Engine?

Have you ever been looking for just the right typeface, but having no idea where to start looking, ended up using helvetica again? I recently found another useful tool for designers that will make an excellent addition to anyones typographic arsenal.

With Esperfonto, you can indicate what you need the typeface to communicate, what style you need(serif, sans and script), and even what other typefaces it needs to be used with.

Compiled by Will Harris, a writer and designer who has also provided a ton of type suggestions. While this should never be the end of a designer's search for the best faunt for the job, it should provide an excellent place to start.

Design Resources: Design Float

One of the skills I think is extremely important to any designer, is being resourceful. Fortunately for me, ever since I got my Macbook Pro I can just pop in an address when it's mentioned in class and bookmark it to check out later. This has allowed me to find a ton of valuable stuff, from free stock art to tutorials, brushes, typefaces, and a ton of excellent inspiration.

Nowadays it seems that the only hobby I really invest any time in is meandering through the blogosphere. My favorite place to go on any good website is the links page. I can trace a path through 5 or 6 pages and forget where it was that I started. Today for instance I started on Design Float, followed a few links, and ended up with 3900 vector logo's that I have no idea who I downloaded them from.

I have been slowly circulating this link to a few people but here it is for the rest of ya'







Its a 'DIGG' style social media site that people contribute posts to from all over the net. theres tons of resources and inspiration posted on an hourly basis.

Alternate Perspectives

I recently found some work while meandering through the blogosphere that runs somewhat parrallel to the "Design is..." question that I have been engaged in answering.


























The above piece is an excellent example of the painful search for what design means to us as designers. It is directly reflective of my personal attempt to narrow down all of the possible answers as to what design really is.





























I found these and a variety of other examples of excellent type thinking and design here.

Letterpress typography

I was recently accumulating resources for a future blog entry and fell into a graphic designer's links page which led me on a strange journey through one fantastic site after another.

I eventually settled into the letterpress typography of Hammerpress, you may or may not recall seeing one of their designs in the TDC show this year; a concert poster for Sigur Ros.

I was taken by the design when I saw it the first time but had no expectations as to what other work the company had done. They have managed to layer colors and text in such a way as to create a retro-modern sort of appeal. I think that this sort of typography is dynamic in its playful composition. Here are some samples

The Blogosphere is a daunting place

I recently found some interesting work on the blog of a Cranbrook university student named JK Keller. He created an Illustrator Script he calls the Slitscan Type Generator that takes one character from every typeface on your computer and slices them all together.
This piece really interests me because I've always been a big fan of collage work. It's funny to be comparing this to traditional collage but in a sense its the same only he has replaced the scissors with a computer code that can do the job in a fraction of the time.

I find it really interesting now that I'm posting on my own blog to see what else is out there, its nice to see that tons of design students post their work on their blogs and get a considerable amount of traffic from people that want to see it.