Design is intelligence made visible.
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filed under © 画面
The two characters combine to form the word 画面 “image” or “scene”, but taken separately 画 means “to draw” “to paint” and 面 can mean “noodles”.
Insanely beautiful packaging for Ramen noodles by a brand called 画面. I don’t think I’ve ever seen any even remotely comparatively aesthetical packaging for instant food in our local supermarket. Especially given the price of around 3€.
(via reddit.com)
filed under © Krista Kim / Times Square (via YouTube)
Synchronized across 90 electronic billboards, a slowly shifting gradient of color washes over Times Square, creating a moment of calm amidst one of the most visually kinetic places in the world.
Kim’s peaceful digital reflection takes over Times Square as the world persists through a pandemic that has disrupted and transformed our everyday lives, mental health, and collective well-being for almost two full years. Using the technology of our times, she creates a communal space that allows viewers to decompress.
In February ‘Continuum‘ by artist Krista Kim turns the billboards throughout Times Square into a huge vibrant colorscape at midnight for an art series called ‘Midnight Moment’. What an absolutely magnificent way to use all of this screen estate.
timessquarenyc.org/whats-happening/midnight-moment-continuum
filed under For decades now, designers have been taught to consider human needs in their work — only human needs. But design that is good only for people, without looking at the well-being of our planet as a whole, has gotten us into trouble.
As mentioned casually in another context before, I admire the work of Space10 a lot. The Swedish research and design lab is funded by IKEA on its mission to “create a better everyday life for people and the planet”.
There are a bunch of great projects –including two wonderful books about ‘Future Food‘ and ‘Urban Futures‘– and an online journal full of interesting essays to discover, but for any creative, I recommend starting with this plea to move beyond human-centered design towards a “people-planet approach” published last year.
filed under Welcome to our library of original guides to the world of typography, which the Google Fonts team is producing in collaboration with typographic experts from around the world. Google Fonts Knowledge enables designers and developers of all skill sets to choose and use type with purpose.
— from Google Fonts Knowledge
I’ve been an admirer of the great (typographic) work¹ of Elliot Jay Stock for quite a while already, so I was thrilled to learn about his recent collaboration on Google Fonts Knowledge. After consulting his blog –like the article series on ‘Advanced web typography’– for years now, this might become my new go-to resource when it comes to web typography.
¹ Amongst other things he created the beautifully designed magazine Lagom, which unfortunately was discontinued after ten issues. I still browse my copies from time to time –not only for the interesting content and the beautiful photography but particularly for layout and typographical inspiration. Even though the Lagom store is offline nowadays, there are apparently still back issues available to buy: There’s a dedicated contact button for this purpose on the about page of elliotjaystocks.com.
Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know it’s normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.
filed under © Nippon Design Center
© Nippon Design Center
Experience Japan Pictograms are a novel set of visual symbols developed for people of all cultures and ages to enhance their tourism experience in Japan. These uniquely simple and easy-to-understand pictograms are designed under the key concept of “second encounter with Japan” to invite visitors to explore and enjoy Japan a little deeper than before.
The studio of renowned graphic designer Kenya Hara, the Nippon Design Center, has released a free set with more than 250 pictograms primarily intended for the tourism sector in Japan. Even though the collection naturally has multiple rather specific icons, there’re some nice basic and universally applicable ones among them, too. Definitely worth a glance.