AuthaGraph Map by Hajime Narukawa

Hajime Narukawa is a Tokyo-based architect and artist. He has developed the authagraphing mapping projection method that was selected as the official mapping tool by the Japanese National Museum of Emerging Science and innovation. This map falls into the sensational category of the “most accurate world map” that occasionally makes the rounds on social media…

Physics Engines and Visual Effects

As we move onto exploring the intersection of code and design through processing, I was reminded of a lecture I once attended about the advances in physics engines used for generating visual effects. This article provides a fun overview of the topic! I think the most interesting part of the physics engines is the shift…

Electoral Map: One Big Hug

I saw this animation on Reddit this weekend, and thought it was a super effective 5 second video. The overall “jiggle” of the forms keeps the animation dynamic and keeps the attention of the audience well – and definitely conveys the main message in a clear way. I imagine this animation is a fun combination…

Subliminal Messaging on Candy Labels

For this blog post, I wanted to explore how typefaces impact marketing decisions, and stumbled across this article about “neuromarketing” (also known as “sensory marketing”) on candy labels. The article begins with an observation: notice how “Airheads thick, round, and bubbly typeface, resembles the writing on a kid’s graphic novel”, communication an expectation of a…

Animated Icons: Usage and Style

Connecting the current theme of loading animations with icons that we looked at before, I found this neat article about animated icons and the stylistic characteristics they have. As I was reading through, I found myself reflecting about how we take many of these small animations for granted but they communicate such a different feel…

Ira Ivanova – Slow Bounce

Browsing through the themovingposter.com website, I came across this neat poster. I love looking at it because of this simple, but direct physical motion it shows. It’s also interesting to analyze what goal does the movement have – in many examples we saw in class the movement accented or highlighted part of the poster, but…

Abstracting Motion through Technogym Routine Covers

While this piece is just one frame of an animation, I really enjoy observing the interplay between the background image and the lines of motion in the foreground. The lines seem to be abstracting a layer away from the image, and serving as a representation of the dynamic motion in the picture, almost like a…

Jeremy Reiss: Twitter Iconography

I found this set of icon conventions while reading through an article about the design choices used in Twitter icons. What stood out to me was how icon elements such as stroke, corner style, padding area play a role in setting up a recognizable style and characteristic for the product. It strengthens the representation not…

Observing Trader Joe’s design choices

A few weeks ago, I had purchased two differently priced types of Trader Joe’s granola bars – one for an average cost of $1/bar and the other at $0.50/bar. And while the flavors of both were fairly similar, I found myself preferring the more expensive one more often, only realizing after last class that the…

Rachel Whiteread: Untitled (Notre-Dame)

Inspired by our discussion on Rachel Whiteread last class, I found another artwork of hers that stood out to me. These pieces are part of an exhibition at Gagosian, Paris, organized to raise funds for the reconstruction of the Notre-Dame, and are made by the artist by strategically punching out holes in Parisian postcards. It…