Scans of an article from Design magazine on the creation of the 1976 Olympic logo for Montreal. I knew that the logo’s symbolism was multi-faceted, but never realized quite how structured and grid-based the design was.
Month: May 2009
Luxury and socialism in Europe
Two articles by Americans who are finding that European socialism isn’t all that bad. In Going Dutch, Russell Shorto is initially perplexed by an odd dichotomy of welfare state and one of the world’s first free market economies, but has come to appreciate it. Trevor Corson examines the Finnish luxury of time and solace over that of material objects.
Arial is everywhere
Sander Baumann documents the ubiquity of Arial in real-world practice. Most of his photos come from Amsterdam, the heart of a culture known from its design prowess.
International Design Workers Federation
The latest episode of Layer Tennis between James Draplin and Chris Glass was one of the best I’ve seen in awhile, it borders on a conceptual exercise in the evolutionary developement of a brand. I now await the rise of the IDWF, so I may obtain my membership card and ironic t-shirt.
Update: The domain has been registered, but it just links to the match for now.
Improving your web typography
Antonio Carusone offers eight simple steps for improving your typography. It’s fairly standard for the most part, but he provides some good CSS examples for web developers.
Photos from NASA
Pretty much all of the media produced by NASA is public domain. That means you can do almost anything you want with the wealth of images available at NASA Images. In other news, efforts are being made to recover high-resolution images from the Lunar Orbiter program that was tasked with mapping the lunar surface before the Apollo missions. The ongoing recovery program is based out of an abandoned McDonald’s.
Type for the road
Here’s a short NYT slideshow about the development of new signage typography for American roadways. Reminds me of a lecture that I attended concerning Jock Kinneir’s Transport typeface and some of the testing that went into its development. Personally, I prefer Transport to Clearview, but any improvement in legibility for drivers is a good thing.
Visualizing the Grid
The NPR has an interesting data visualization of the US electrical grid, detailing transmission lines, types of power used by state, and proposed infrastructure.