variationsonnormal.com is such good humour and quirky visual thinking. I particular like the satirical look at website stats with the hugely necessary and important: Average visitor weight. Will regularly visit/be fed via google reader his other quirky inventions like a handle for biscuits to dunk.
'Website stats are an obsession for some people. How many visitors? What age
are they? How long do they spend on the site? The list goes on. Here is my
idea to take this statistical obsession one step further. A doorbell with
built in home visitor statistics display'. (C) Dominic Wilcox
http://variationsonnormal.com/2009/06/14/doorbell-with-inbuilt-visitor-statistics-display/
Published on 2009/07/15 10:30 pm.
Filed under: diaries, doodle, drawing, humour, ideas, illustration, playful, stats, visual thinking, visualisation, websites, white space
Olga surawski's website is clean and clear, and in her infographics section i believe her visual info biking visualisation has had quite a bit of publicity but i would like to see this one in more detail as it looks to be quite an innovative, creative, well hand made collage effect? but other life maps are no less creative and innovative life maps.
i wonder what data variables have been included? message her here Olga Surawska.
she her porfolio here: www.olgasurawska.com
Published on 2009/06/11 9:47 pm.
Filed under: collage, creative, design, graphic, information, playful
Not sure if harmoniser is a word, but i like that this tool lets you create a colour harmony form just point and click in the buttons under the wheel
mono, ocntrast, triadic, tetrad, analogical
Faber Birrren would love this, just like j m brockman would have loved
grid-designer-tool.
Creating instant colour hamrines for you in a second wasn't enough you can decide upon the subtle nuances of the triad, tetrad and analogical with the degrees between,
Will have to try see version 3 as it isn't supported on IE6 but version 2 is supported on IE6 which is the one shown.
I have seen other good colour pickers that give a scheme and the hex codes but the harmony buttons and subtle nuances so easily manipulable, god this is good, easy, simple.
Published on 2009/03/24 12:35 am.
Filed under: aesthetic, coding, colour, creative, design, dynamic, harmony, playful, tool
This visual map explores the relationships/characteristics of the many different typographers/fonts, artistic movements from 1950 - 2008 charting each decade. This is the second half of the type timeline. First half here: http://visualthinkmap.blogspot.com/2008/05/type-timeline-map.html
It was inspired from Stefan Thermerson 'Kurt Schwitters on a time Chart' featured in the brilliant Typographica NS no. 14, December, 1966 edited by Herbert Spencer (Typographica by Rick Poynor 2001).
Published on 2008/07/15 3:11 pm.
Filed under: architecture, art, composition, creative, designs, diagram, function, graphic, links, playful, poetry, time, typographic, visual thinking, visualisation, white space, writing
These visual chalk drawings are great illusions of depth in our environment. changing our perspectives, and here, providing us with some wonderful humour.
Julian Beever is an English artist who's famous for his art on the pavement of England, France, Germany, USA, Australia and Belgium . Beever gives to his drawings an amazing 3D illusion.
The second one it takes a second look to tell which ones real.
Fantastic.
Published on 2008/06/26 7:52 pm.
Filed under: 3d, abstract, composition, creative, framing, illusion, illustration, interpret, landscapes, perception, perspectives, playful, puzzle, visual, visual thinking
Having seen quite a few internet visualisations such as that of the Information Architects - web trend map in a Harry Beck style seen a few times & Opte Project in these spider web constellation style, it was great to see a more graphic impression of it.
I know it was made in 2006 by the artist group Eboy, mentioned in Viz Think 08 post, but Foo Bar is great visual thinking. I first saw their excellant intricatly detailed environments in Illustration Now! although probably aware of that style in circa.
With Myspace street or Blogger as a subway system it uses these popular visuals of internet brands and interprets these into imaginative chaos happening in downtown, urban, industrial setting with physical locations. There are even physical items included such as Ipod's as well as yahoo looking like it is being packed away.
I'm quite curious as to what lost fm is playing from its van but I'd love to assume that the literal interpretation of RSS feeds is represented as a Snack Bar, or maybe deli.icio.us could be or as a advertisement for food. Would be a great visual for feeding.
Either way this illustration is great for eliciting creative visual thinking as a student soon discovered after they had picked eboy as a fave for analysis, scary word.
Published on 2008/05/15 8:59 pm.
Filed under: 3d, abstract, creative, graphic, HCI, internet, landmarks, perception, perspectives, playful, representation, seeing, spatial, subway, visual thinking, web map
With these ideas of communication skills, problem solving & drawing being essential qualities needed to visually think & design - solve, Viz Think 08, what a wonderful way to visualise problem solving than with the brimming creativity, innovation flowing from the pours of Honda advertising.
This is a great video about the making of, design of the Problem Playground.Honda commercials are about finding out real truth that the company loves problems. They wanted to visualise their thinking strategy which led them to problem playground.
The use of large scale puzzles was to serve as a metaphor that a problem needs solving, and the size for spectacle. It is human nature to enjoy a puzzle. With a little help from Speed cubist david calcvo and others Honda create another brillant ad.
Published on 2008/05/03 2:41 pm.
Filed under: creative, designs, honda, how to, innovative, playful, problem, puzzle, solving, thoughts, visual thinking, visualisation
http://www.coo.kz/
This is the website Lauren Bugeja has created to house these beautiful visual maps. The visual equivalent of a thesis - work from her final semester in Visual Communications.
She calls these visual maps Recipics, good use of ambiguity in the word pun on recipes. These are great explorations of visually mapping information making it universally accessible. She still uses the paradigm of numbers & arrows, but what I like best is how she uses these & space to depict time & measurements fig. Depicting time in a similar tecnhique to Bradford Paley in Once more around the sun. She uses faded flames contrasted to full colour to depict gas mark, which is admirable technique removing the use of numbers.
She has great experiments between mimetic depictions of food, but creates great iconic characters to represent meats i.e. lamb=sheep, beef=cow & pork=pig, fig.
Bugeja acknowledges the occasional stumbling block: “The ingredients are still a work in progress,” she said. “For example, it’s hard to explain the difference between flour, baking powder, anthrax and cocaine without words.”
A clean sans serif font, & beautiful pastel colours really caps off a great, excellantly executed idea.
Her research map as she calls it, looks at the contrast of word & images, human factors with Human Information Processing with communication. In relation to interaction of the GUI (graphic user interface) she states the same as I have researched with engagement allowing greater playfulness through more challenge, presenter control, and variety in a game for browsing.
What’s most relevant here is the Information Architecture to ‘organise information to create meaning’ through ‘scheme & structure’ i.e. mental schemas and these visual map techniques of brainstorms, spider diagrams etc (Bugeja, 2008, p VC Major project). There are many more beautiful visual maps of all topics linked under diagram diaries on flickr.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/laurenbugeja/sets/72157594238802216/
Published on 2008/04/08 10:09 am.
Filed under: communication, diagram, engagement, GUI, HCI, iconic, information, mapping, meaning, mimetic, paradigms, playful, puns, spider, universal, visual maps, wordless, words
