Feltron 2009 Annual Report

It is one of my favorite times of the year... time for Nicholas Feltron's Annual Report.

Most designers will be well aware of Feltron's tradition, as his reports are an annual source of graphic and information design inspiration. If you have not heard of them, the Annual Reports are a summary of graphic designer, Nicholas Feltron's year. They cover the places he has been, the foods he has eaten, the fluctuations in his mood, etc, etc. They are not only ridiculously pleasant to look at, but amusing to read. If you are interested in collecting your own annual data, check out one of Feltron's other projects, Daytum.

I Organ Donation

Ha! I [heart] organ donation.

Cardon Copy

Cardon Copy is an ongoing endeavor to show the power of good design and to beautify the streets. Designer Cardon Webb "hijacks" handmade fliers from the streets, redesigns them and replaces the originals with his upgrades.

Brilliant idea, that deserves to become a movement. I'm adding this to my To Do list. (Found through Sub-Studio).

The Tan Man

Earlier this year, idiot er... design student, James Titterton offered his body up as a canvas. He ran a design contest to offer his skin "as a light sensitive material, upon which I am willing to have appropriate visual content 'developed' as a suntan". The winning design was submitted by Finnish graphic designer, Janine Rewell. James documented the stenciling, tanning and exhibition process on his Tan Man blog. Oh dear.

Dear American Airlines

"Dear American Airlines, I (Dustin Curtis) redesigned your website's front page, and I'd like to get your opinion. I’m a user interface designer. I travel sometimes. Recently, I had the horrific displeasure of booking a flight on your website, aa.com. The experience was so bad that I vowed never to fly your airline again. But before we part ways, I have a couple questions and three suggestions for you."

Ha! I admire the thinking and motivation behind Dustin's Dear American Airlines website. Designers 1, American Airlines 0.

Microsocope

Microscope is the self-reflective, senior project of design student, Matt Convente. He uses a series of posters to put himself under a microscope and express his thoughts, fears and desires. The posters have pleasant, simple graphics that enhance the sentiment of the text. Some of the images are direct representation of the thoughts, while others are meant as clarification to the true meaning.

My favorite part about this project is the categories. Matt has arranged his posters in categories of x10, x100, and x1000. The categories are intended to represent the level of magnification, or depth, that the poster reveals about him.

Food Celebrity Postcards

I'm a sucker for a cheesy pun. They always make me giggle. So, I got a lot of enjoyment out of these pun-tastic food celebrity postcards from Harvey Nichols. The graphics were designed by Ruan Milborrow and Mark Nightingale of Mr.H. Above are just a few examples, there are so many more. (Found through Creative Review)

Keep Calm Poster Variations

If you are an appreciator of the Keep Calm and Carry On posters, then don't miss the Keep Calm Flickr pool. It features all sorts of variations on the poster. Two of my favorites are shown above.

Judge a Book by its Cover

Come on designers, you know you judge a book by its cover. But just how accurate are you? Test your skills on Judgeby.com, a website that allows you to guess a book's Amazon rating just by looking at its cover.

I was pretty actuate at this. Which makes me think one of two things: A well designed cover reflects well on a book OR people who write good books are smart enough to appreciate a well designed cover. More thoughts? (Found through A Collective Knot).

Slagsmalsklubben

Back to the topic of digital storytelling (a growing obsession of mine). Swedish design student, Tomas Nilssons has created this smile worthy digital interpretation of Little Red Riding Hood, as part of a school project. The animation was inspired by the Royksopp Remind Me video, and borrows heavily on the style and format. Despite the me-too aspect, I greatly enjoyed the twist on the Little Red Riding Hood story. Another great example of a classic story reinterpreted to a digital story.

Thank You (So Much) Card

I think a "thank you" is much more valuable if you truly mean it. That is what appeals to me about these Thank You (So Much) Cards from The Design Office. You can choose just how much you appreciate someone or something.

The World of 100

Toby Ng set out to simplify his world view by imagining the global population was a village of just 100 people. From this minimalized perspective, he was able to create a set of beautiful and effective posters to visualize global statistics.

51 Japanese Characters

51 Japanese Characters is a collection of characters based on archetypes within Japanese society. Designer Peter Machat, created the characters while living in Japan. Each character has a name and insightful description. Oh, and did I mention the super cute caricatures? You can purchase a poster or postcard set of all 51 characters on Peter's website. Even if you are not planning on purchasing anything, take the time to visit the website. It is done in an impressively stunning, minimalistic style. (Found through Josh Spear).

ASDA Lunch Boxes

These lunch boxes are a great example of packaging design by Emma Smart. Each sandwich box opens up into an image of a place setting. There are three different lunch box themes (Satisfying, Healthy and Children's), each with an appropriate design. I would be so thrilled if I opened my lunch box to find this. It shows how much emotional enjoyment design can add to an experience. Emma created these lunch boxes for ASDA as part of a student project a few years ago.

Listen and Record

Listen and Record Wallpaper is part of Ihas Fotopoulos' Series Two wallpaper collection. The whole collection was influenced by dots and lines from unexpected sources. the Listen and Record patterns are based on braille. They also have a fascinating story associated with them. The story, by Juro Osawa, is about recording his voice every night before bed and then listening to the recording exactly one year later. He's been doing the every day for 11 years! I can't do the story justice, so make sure to look it up on the website yourself. I'm not entirely sure how the story relates to the wallpaper, but it kind of doesn't matter because the story is so good.

Daytum

Daytum is a site that lets you collect and graph any sort of data you want. It is currently in private beta, but I can't wait until it goes public. Users each get their own site to display whatever type of data they are tracking. The current examples are pleasantly mundane: The cat's I've seen; The websites I visited this week; The amount of times I used technology this week; Meals I've made for dinner. The graphic design of the data is fresh and simple. Just one more example of why I'm changing my opinions about charts and graphs.

History of Crayola Crayons

Graphic Designer, Alison Haigh, has created this smile-worthy chart depicting the history of Crayola crayon colours. It shows how the original colours were added to over time. The chart has no timeline but you can almost fill in the gaps based on the new colour additions or the colour cuts. Fantastic representation of some colour history.

Helvetica Monopoly

This Monopoly board, by french designer Florent Guerlain, is a contemporary reinterpretation of the classic board. It features the same competitive Monopoly content, just with sleeker, more minimalistic graphics and utilizing Helvetica fonts. I believe this is just a concept. Too bad... I would buy one.

hahahahah

Ha! Accurate breakdown of a laugh.

You Autocomplete Me

Nerd love and more in Shaderlab's I Like Your Face photo set on Flickr. This one is my favorite, followed in close second by the similar themed: "You had me at bacon wrapped..."

The Journal of Urban Typography

Bryan Collins is the curator or a Tumblr site called The Journal of Urban Typography. The image collection is 'dedicated to the documentation and study of signs, word fragments, and typography created with utilitarian intent in urban environments'. (Found through Hip Young Thing).

Look Up

Alex Ostrowski's Look Up business cards are atypical. Sure, they are standard business card size and contain his email address... but that is where the traditional aspects stop. The rest of his card is devoted to making people happy - and why not? The front of the card depicts some chimneys and the back of the card contains text about looking at chimneys when you are feeling down (complete with some explanation about why you should take such crazy/good advice).

Pop Art Pumas

I saw these styln' Pop Art kicks at the Puma store the other day. The graphic design used on the shoe was created by Eba Akamatsu, inspired by the work of American pop artist Roy Lichtenstein. Lichtenstein's style is borrowed from comic books, know for its thick outlines, Benday dots, and bold black, yellow, blue, & red colors.

FontStruct

And speaking of fonts... I just came across this great font building software called FontStruct. It allows you to build, share and download fonts for free. The gallery of designed fonts is very inspiring. (Discovered through Springwise).

Font Conference

If you are someone who works with fonts on a daily basis, you will definitely appreciate this Font Conference video from CollegeHumor. It is a brilliant comedic video that personifies fonts. It's full of fantastic typography jokes. My favorite character is Wingding... "Mailbox! Open Mailbox!". (Found through ComputerLove).

The Shape of Family

I stumbled across the stunning information graphics of Christina Van Vleck today. I was particularly drawn to her Shape of Family project (shown above). It's a series of 5 graphics that depicts the family lines of herself and her 4 sets of grandparents. This is a nice, clean way of depicting a family tree. The circular shape takes lends itself to the expanding shape of the generations. Very nice.

Glashaus

Online portfolios are a really hard thing to create. I'm always thinking of the next revision of mine and looking for good examples to take inspiration from. I came across this gorgeous one today. It's called Glashaus (Glasshouse) and it's the online portfolio of German graphic designer/illustrator Peter Hoffmann. It's elegant and minimal, allowing the work to be the main focus. Peter has some excellent content as well, including packaging design, logos, sketches and illustrations.

Positive

Positive is a conceptual project created by Stephen Woowat, a British graphic designer. The concept is a Negativity Refuse Bag to throw out physical items that have emotional baggage attached to them. The bags encourage you to "Throw away that photo of the ex, or that poor performance report and forget about it". This is a smart, well executed, idea with a lot of thinking behind it. My favorite part of the bag is the instructions for use which include: Dispose of bag in nearest trash receptacle; Close eyes; Take a deep breath; Think positive thoughts.

Borders

Borders is an interesting approach to a world map. It features countries represented by blocks, sized and arranged to show bordering land or water masses. Although it's technically still a map, what it shows almost more of a political statement then a geographical one. This map was created by the inspiring young graphic artist and thinker Robin Howie.

Christmas Cheat Sheets

If you have been dropping hints to your loved ones about all the fabulous clothes you would like for Christmas, maybe you should follow it up with this sizing cheat sheet. Created by Made in England by Gentlemen, this is a pretty ingenious piece of holiday graphic art that allows you to write down all your clothing sizes as a cheat sheet for the people buying you gifts. Available in a boys and girls version. (Found through Swissmiss).

Custom 52

Custom 52 is kind of like Treadless, but for playing cards. Anyone can submit a graphic design for a card's face. The card number and suit is up to you, but the design you submit has to reflect that choice. Submitted designs are voted on by fellow visitors to the site. The winning designs are made into a purchasable deck.

Planet Earth - Directions for Use

'Planet Earth - Directions for Use' was Angie Rattay's entry for the Designboom 'Love Your Earth' graphic design competition. It is a series of four instructional pamphlets designed to resemble medical directions packed into a small prescription style box. Each manual focuses on a different part of the Earth; the atmosphere, the biosphere, the hydrosphere, and the lithosphere/pedosphere. Each set of 'directions' includes information about its relative part of the Earth and instructions on how readers can reduce their impact on that area. I would love a copy of this. It seems incredibly well thought out and executed.