Alex Gopher visualises typographically new york city in this highly creative video The Child. It is crafted superbly and is wonderful modern concrete poetry animated. It was directed by H5 who I first noticed in Quentin Newark's What is Graphic Design?.
I came accross The Child when viewing another typographic experiment when I discovered the blog TextVis Recherche 3 featuring Graphic City. It is a pure typography animation which involved the exploration of typography and also the personal feeling of the modern cities. This blog captured a huge range of typographic animations, experiments that are in circa. Great Blog and wonderful text visuals.Life Map
Excellant visualisation of user ritwikdev for work on Information Design course at Parsons.
He charts his life between ages 6 and 24 with a revealing honesty of family. Great work looking at the self with the varying rainbow colours changing in scale on the top in these warm vibrant colours of his creative side each colour representing a discipline Drawing, Reading, Singing and further progressing in his Academic studies to Graphic Design, 3d modelling, then to MFA Advertising, Print, Ambient Music.
Then the subtle gradaution creating sublime salience of light blue to dark in the 'Non Academic' of Mechanics, Physics progressing to Code Art probably influenced by John Maeda no doubt, Info Viz.
The very bottom has a good reflection of life mentioning joining Boy Scouts, School Captain, Troop Leader, Mothers Illness, Relationships.
The Very Top if all this wasnt enough he has room to slip in more info of his geographic location over these years. But dont forget there is still room on the right to add to his life from now onwards...
Brilliant Multiple Subjective Map.
He charts his life between ages 6 and 24 with a revealing honesty of family. Great work looking at the self with the varying rainbow colours changing in scale on the top in these warm vibrant colours of his creative side each colour representing a discipline Drawing, Reading, Singing and further progressing in his Academic studies to Graphic Design, 3d modelling, then to MFA Advertising, Print, Ambient Music.
Then the subtle gradaution creating sublime salience of light blue to dark in the 'Non Academic' of Mechanics, Physics progressing to Code Art probably influenced by John Maeda no doubt, Info Viz.
The very bottom has a good reflection of life mentioning joining Boy Scouts, School Captain, Troop Leader, Mothers Illness, Relationships.
The Very Top if all this wasnt enough he has room to slip in more info of his geographic location over these years. But dont forget there is still room on the right to add to his life from now onwards...
Brilliant Multiple Subjective Map.
Eustace Tilley Subway by Alberto Forero (2008)
Eustace Tilley Subway by Alberto Forero (2008)
Originally uploaded by pantufla
This popular underground map style created by Harry Beck subverted into another context. Since Simon Patterson subverted the underground map style in The Great Bear 1992 i think it has ignited many more styled.
New York Times Key Magazine Cover
Note that I dont have an obsession with New York at the moment, but with such great art foundations of Rauschenberg, DeKooning & Pollock its no surprise of its creative vein. Today technology is the key that has fused creativity & opened boundaries to allow interdisciplinary practice.
The New York Times real estate magazine Key started with the cover design concept of hiring people that are brilliant to do personal interpretations of what a key means to them & their lives. The 1st cover in the Fall 2006 by Carin Goldberg featured all the places she lived at using the font Dynamoe (green & black thumbnail) & spring 2007 (yellow & purple thumbnail) was designed by new york design studio 2x4.
In dialogue with John Maeda (author of Creative Code: Aesthetics + Computation) art director Dick Barnett looked at some of Maeda's sketches and replied to him saying how he's 'loving #3 Google Mappish Mondrian' (3rd thumbnail along) idea and how he might 'think of a way to make it more personal to [maeda's] life'. Maeda responded utilising Boston, he states how he 'thinks of the world as a sort of map of cities', a topographic territory, he 'mined the internet for all the cities with an airport' & made a simple diagram and then drew some 'fluid like curves [framing] to connect into the centre of the keyhole' (4th thumbnail), (Centaur Publication, 2007, p. nov – 42).
Maeda wanted to concentrate on the background rather than the foreground & after some design processing (problem solving) such as replacing fonts used to that of Key magazines T-Star, it was finished. The design is brilliant, although probably not that easy a task to create without access/stroke knowledge of computer science functionality but excellant aesthetics. The overall white stands out from the blue (a colour normally percieved as depiciting sea in maps) causing a slight incongruity on part of the viewer, map reader/user. Boston being the epicentre of travel in this map providing the key access to other cities and the viral red linking lines spidering the topgraphic locations.
Excellant Map utilising technology to visualise data functionality mentioned upon with Bradford Paley, in the heart of its design.
'John Maeda is an artist and a computer scientist, and he views the computer not as a substitute for brush and paint but as an artistic medium in its own right. His mission is to foster the growth of what he calls 'humanist technologists'- people that are capable of articulating future culture through informed understanding of the technologies they use' (http://www.designboom.com/eng/interview/maeda.html, 2008, p. john maeda interview).
More examples of the stages of Maeda's Key Cover design here, http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2007/09/06/realestate/keymagazine/20070909_KEY_COV_SS_index.html
Creative Review. New York. Centaur Publication, 2007, p. nov – 42).
A Texas Designer's Map of the World
The fabulous design agency Pentagram based in New York with partners like Angus Hyland (co-author of many excellant design/illustration books, The Picture Book: Contemporary Illustration & Paula Scher (AIGA medalists, notorius mapper, will feature soon), ....at the worlds leading multi-disciplinary design consultancy, feature an excellant map that Scher would be proud of. The partner DJ Stout has created a “Texas Designer’s Map of the World” as a part of a promotion for Sappi Fine Paper. Based on the concept of a Texas Brag Map, the poster elucidates the worldview that everything is bigger and better in the Lone Star State. “It’s part of our Texas heritage and our collective sense of humor,” explains Stout. “My apologies to the other smaller, less interesting states on the map.”' (pentagram, 2008, p.new). He divides a map of the U.S. into six parts and assigns each section to a graphic designer who resides within the region. When all six posters are put together, they form a giant map of the United States, “of course I was given the Southwest,” says Stout (pentagram, 2008, p.new). Its composition is bolshy, beautifully layered (as you notice opening the pdf on a sluggish computer), with Piet Zwart/H. N. Werkman letters treatment surrounded by soft pastel triadic harmony of red, blue, yellow. Yet still its not too disparaging with the these surreal, fluctuating sized elements like The World's biggest Jack Rabbit, it has Swiss grounding in neat, clean, precise, even grids of text J.M.Brockmann would be proud of, creating a salient [1] contrast. It also treats word (type) as image that crow [2], and concrete poets of appollinaire to mallarme would adore. The other participants include Art Chantry, Rick Valicenti, Paul Sahre, Clive Piercy and Tim Hussey. Brilliant. Download the large version image here. http://blog.pentagram.com/2008/02/new-work-sappi.php [1] Kress & Van leeuwen [2] Left to Right: The Cultural Shift from Word to Image