http://www.flickr.com/photos/philgyford/4505748943/sizes/o/

quite a bit of truth in this unfortunately, with a lot of "infographic" work becoming more and more faddy

This is hectic! Jay Z worked with Droga5 and Bing to create this massive viral and ambient campaign for his new book "decoded", the lengths and detail they've gone to with this is pretty impressive, printing pages of the book in relevant settings (for the subject on said pages) from the bottom of a pool to the inside of a custom gucci jacket. you need to see all the examples to understand how big this project is. http://trendland.net/2010/11/24/jay-z-decoded-32-pages-revealed/#more-54034

some really cool type treatment by this guy http://www.thereis.co.uk/typography-one/cream/

http://www.tomfoulsham.co.uk/wiggletable/images/

very strange and interesting device!

Blog Rationale

When I received the brief to start a blog, I wasn't sure what to make of it. Although I understand the usefulness of having a space to record and link to online sources of inspiration and areas of interest, I wasn't really sure how to go about writing entries, as it was not going to be a personal record, but read by other students and lecturers. The difference between a critiquing blog of current design work, to be read by other designers (and anyone else), and a personal 'online sketchbook' of influences and interests, seems vast, and I wasn't sure which way to treat it. Not being able to treat it as personal, and so brief and pretty unexplanatory to anyone but me, led me to start writing long boring entries trying to explain and rationalise my posts, and I think this made my blog suffer, as I didn't enjoy it or feel that I was gaining much from it, and so didn't post regularly. But by now I think I've started to get into the habit of posting links to interesting ideas or design as soon as I see them, and am finding a balance between a personal record and a public display.

I wanted to see what fields of design my blog entries focused most on, and thought that over time this would become obvious, but also I probably consciously chose similar styles or areas in design, as I was scanning the internet for potential dissertation inspiration as well as my independent project. This process made me realise just how much writing and coverage design and the design community receives online, mostly by other designers, and how many useful resources there are, whether directly design related or not.

At the time of starting my blog I was becoming a little disenchanted with the graphic design and advertising industry/process as a whole, partly due to my experience of work placements, where I would be artworking or retouching, with no real creative input. Also, however, because I began to notice more and more design that seemed to me just 'pretty pictures', over designed and decorated, sometimes to follow trends, often nice work, but never very useful, or with any real meaning. I remember reading about 'designers being able to change the world' years ago, and, recognising that communicating things effectively was crucial to understanding them, really believing that design could help civilisations learn, grow, and progress. It was interesting that we received the 'shout about an issue' brief at the start of term, perhaps it was a way of our lecturers trying to show us that we as designers can still have a positive influence on the world if we do it right.

As a response to these feelings, I started to look at areas of design that I took to have more 'use', or practical application, after reading an article about 'the new wave of maps'. Data mapping, infographics, Infovis, all seemed like interesting and 'worthy' fields to work in, combining science and discovery with design and imaging, and I made an effort to learn more about these areas of design. Even these disciplines showed signs of over embellishment and aesthetic over emphasis, with lots of work being created to hang on a gallery wall, as data visualization continued to become a 'cool' subject in the design world. Even though these areas are widely covered by many different blogs and websites, and have become one of the hot areas of design today, the integrity and basic principles that attracted me are still clearly evident in most work from this field.

Having to differentiate between effective design and design I 'like' has been very useful for me, in highlighting the difference between aesthetically pleasing work,and work that actually communicates something of value effectively, and how this is achieved. I have become a lot more conscious of how often I add or use graphic elements that have no real purpose, and hope that my work will become a lot less decorative as a result. However, it is hard to keep any stylistic features completely from your work, and also to find a balance between boring or plain visuals and and the overly designed, especially when you have just started to notice and appreciate how important this balance is. I have certainly begun to appreciate a lot more the value of effective use of composition, negative space, line weight, and many other graphic elements that I had previously not given nearly enough thought.

Looking at this area of design has also opened my eyes to the highly social, almost anthropological aspect of some work in the field. With a massive increase in data availability in recent years, due in part to new laws about freedom of information, and also large scale data mining operations, governments, military organizations, political parties, and social networks have all been scrutinised, and looted, for their vast banks of data. This has led to many interesting analyses and depictions of previously unseen information, often documenting key events in modern history, or providing an overview of phenomena or recent developments. Being able to see this type of information visualized has helped many people understand what was previously unseen, unnoticed, or covered up. As most of this data is made publicly available, it also makes it easy for anyone to use it for any project they see fit, often throwing up surprising and interesting results.

Although perhaps not directly influencing my aims for my personal project, my blog has definitely broadened my horizons, and brought my attention to some of the most cutting edge applications of design today. I hope my work as a result will become more considered, relevant, and generally better at getting the message across.

http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/wikipedia-lamest-edit-wars/

This is hilarious. People have far to much time on their hands. Quite admire the dogged perseverance to stand up for what you believe is right though, even if it is ridiculously trivial and sad! another example of using publicly available data/information to create entertaining images.

http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/2010/peak-break-up-times-on-facebook/

A funny and very interesting bit of infographics here, that uses data from facebook to map frequency of relationship break ups across the year. Some interesting patterns are clearly visible, and some interesting observations about them! on a more serious note, the accessibility of this type of data is really driving this new wave of infographics, and I think its one of the most interesting areas of communication design right now. Such images have the potential to give brilliant insight into cultural and social phenomena and trends, and this access to data is opening up all sorts of opportunities to observe such trends in more detail.