Design Chatter

I’m starting to realize all my postings are infographics and typography lately. They are all just so pretty. Here’s another one… Maps of historic journeys (via GOOD)

Back in May in 2007, was announced that advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi had been awarded the I Love New York campaign run by The Empire State Development Corporation with an alloted budget of approximately $17 million — budget that goes into the production and media buys, not into Saatchi’s pocket as some people have misunderstood — to promote tourism for the state of New York. The first set of print ads came earlier this year and the now infamous logo with a squirrel on it has been popping up regularly. (via underconsideration)

A chronicle of logos of the brands and products a designer interacts with everyday has been taken and arranged in a 24-hour clock. (via fill/stroke)

Often overlooked, the favicon is a key brand area for a web site. It’s a big design challenge for a little space. A 16×16 pixel square that appears next the the web address in your browser. Designing for such a tiny space can be tricky. It can even be controversial. (via designassembly)

Back in June of 2008, Google changed its Favicon after what seemed like years of use of the original uppercase G, and given Google’s sparse branding, this small change was remarkably big, as if it had changed its logo. So it’s quite surprising to see Google change the Favicon once again, less than a year, which in branding time is like one week of building brand equity. It’s also surprising that, well, it’s terrible. The “g” is barely readable, the aliasing (jaggedy eges) on the rounded corners is crude and the overall feel is pretty pedestrian. This is perhaps too harsh a criticism for something as small as 16×16 pixels, but when it comes to Google every detail counts. The new Favicon is also the result of a weird call for entries encouraged boy Google to create a new one, and the design is based on one specific submission (which is better than the final one) and inspired by a few others (which are also better than the final one). (via under consideration)

Web safe Typography: CSSType lets you preview your css text as you modify it, and generates the code for you immediately. (via supbr)

Whether a steadfast Republican, staunch Libertarian, or proud member of the Pirate Party (it’s real!), there’s one thing we can all agree on during this last day of the Bush presidency: Obama-branded merchandise is selling like hotcakes.

The medium is the message at Danziger Projects, where tomorrow’s exhibition launch, Can & Did, will showcase the already iconic design pieces of our president-elect. (via dailycandy)

Type Trumps, a play on Top Trumps, is a game in which different typefaces are attributed numerical values. These figures are then used to enable the cards to be won or lost using same of the tried and tested “Top Trumps” rules. I’m really just posting this because I think it would be a great gift for ….. well for me!) (via face37)

Climate change: The carbon atlas
New figures confirm that China has overtaken the US as the largest emitter of CO2. This interactive emissions map shows how the rest of the world compares. Global C02 emissions totalled 29,195m tonnes in 2006 – up 2.4% on 2005 (via guardian.co.uk)

Since my education didn’t seem to help me learn the metric system, I found a handy cheat sheet. (via xkcd)

Pretty Loaded - a preloader museum (via Big Spaceship)

What a fun tshirt, for a designer!!! (hmm… if only I knew one…..) (via threadless t-shirts)

A paradoy of 15 corporate logos. It’s so depressing you have to laugh. (via businesspundit.com)

Helvetica is the official typeface of the MTA today, but it was not the typeface specified by Unimark International when it created a new signage system at the end of the 1960s. (via AIGA)

White text on a black background is hard to read… no matter what the client says. (via iconsans)

The three-trillion-dollar war costs infographic (via good magazine)