Category: Information Design
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In Defense of Graphic Design on the Web
At the Speak Up graphic design blog, Armin Vit laments the lack of “landmark” or canonical web designs. After giving several examples of iconic designs that are truly landmarks in the history of graphic design, from Paul Rand’s IBM logo in the 1950s to Paula Scher’s Public Theater posters in the 1990s, he writes: Myself,…
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Scrubbing the iPhone Scrubber
Apple discarded the iPod’s signature feature, the scroll wheel, in the iPhone and iPod touch. But the new scrubber bar is almost useless — it’s impossible to move the playhead any less than a few minutes per hop. So I thought I’d fix it.
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Designing the Bottle: Opening the Wine, Unboxing the Brand
In a recent interview, Michael Beirut noted that wine labels are one of the purest branding experiences: All wine bottles contain the same basic product (wine), so if you don’t know anything about a particular bottle of wine the graphic design of the label and the shape of the bottle are quite often the only…
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BIKEZ MY RIDIN / TRAIL RAIL UR ON I’M
Quick, what does this sign on the bike trail say? If you’re like me, you will probably initially read it as saying “XING ROAD”. Then, maybe after a fraction of a second, your brain kicked in and told you that maybe you should reverse the order. You do this mental correction because you’ve probably grown…
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Muddling Through eBay
The online auction site eBay recently redesigned their site, and (as it usually has in the past) the new design is being subjected to some pretty harsh critique. When critics bash eBay’s design, they usually focus on the site’s general visual design, or on the information design of individual pages. Even I have in the…
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Art Direction in the CSS Zen Garden
I was browsing through the CSS Zen Garden recently, and I was struck again at just how great it is. [If you’re not familiar with the CSS Zen Garden, go there and you’ll figure it out] I don’t mean to say that I think the designs are all excellent (more than a few of them…