Observed | August 19
Visual identity for Re:publica rebels against digital culture with reams of text. Fertig Design has created a visual identity for the Re:publica conference that uses lengthy passages of text and typography instead of conventional graphics to pay “homage to the written word”. [LY]
This is the world’s worst UI—and it speaks volumes about design today. The Antwerp design agency Bagaar built an impossible form for you to fill out—and it puts all your design assumptions to the test. [LY]
Observed | August 15
Roger Ballen revisits his never-before-published Woodstock photos. The internationally renowned artist was just 19 when he took his trusty Nikon to the festival. Only one was ever published—till now. [LY]
Google has a secret design library. The company’s industrial design team shares a handful of titles from its studio library, which is curated by team members.
Here are 35 of its best books. [LY]
Morphosis is designing
LA’s Korean American National Museum. The museum will incorporate elements of traditional Korean houses and lots of greenery. [LY]
Observed | August 14
‘
Be water’ The Hong Kong protest mantra encourages fluidity and adaptability to any situation influences how art is designed and distributed. [LY]
London design agency OMSE has created an
augmented reality campaign for cultural venue Printworks London that transforms static typography into immersive three-dimensional animations. [LY]
Observed | August 12
Why are all
recreational vehicles covered in swirls and swooshes? (via
James I. Bowie) [LY]
Observed | August 08
New York knows
its arts organizations have a diversity problem. The city asked cultural institutions, including museums and performing arts centers, to draw up plans to make their staff and board members more diverse. [LY]
The Ellen MacArthur Foundation aims to make circular design “the new normal” by
persuading 20 million designers to help transform the global economy from a linear to a circular model. [LY]
Observed | August 07
Domino’s Pizza is locked in a legal battle over the future of web design. The pizza company has petitioned the Supreme Court to hear a three-year-old case that deals with whether Domino’s is legally required to make its websites and apps accessible to all users. [LY]
Observed | August 06
Zeyu Cai and Sibei Li win The Peoples Notre-Dame Design Competition. The competition aimed to create a new vision for the future of the iconic cathedral after the Notre Dame fire in April this year. Called
Paris Heartbeat, the winning design creates a literal heartbeat for the city. [LY]
Imran Chaudhri, one of six designers who created the interface of the very first iPhone, left Apple to start his own company Humane. He now wants to use A.I., machine learning, and computer vision technology
to improve our relationships with our devices. [LY]
Observed | August 05
To mark 100 years since women were given the right to vote in the United States,
Baltimore Museum of Art has announced its whole year of exhibitions will be dedicated to artists who identify as female. [BV]
The Aspen Institute center devoted to
Bauhaus artist Herbert Bayer will open in 2022 and will have galleries and educational programs and study Bayer’s work. [BV]
“We may not have designed the systems or the community, but I do believe
we have a responsibility to redesign them.” — Hugh Webber on talking to design communities all over the country. [BV]
Observed | August 01
The
boundary-breaking women of New York’s graffiti scene. [BV]
Observed | July 31
When Ellen Lupton said typography was the common currency of graphic design, she wasn’t kidding.
Legendary type foundry Monotype sold to private equity firm for $825 million. [JH]
Time seems to go from past to future, not in reverse.
Matt Farr asks: What if time doesn’t even have a direction? [BV]
Observed | July 30
“I like work that just feels a bit wrong.”
An interview with Richard Turley. [MB]
Disruption—a dressed-up version of scab-ism—
does not make the world a better place. [JH]
We live in an environment where there are moving images constantly around us....But in 1897, this was startling and new and completely revolutionary.
MOMA film curator Dave Kehr narrates a different way of looking at early films. [BV]
Observed | July 29
Scientists in Germany have developed an actual, intradermal
tattoo that can change colour in response to changing levels of glucose, albumin, or pH. [BV]
Observed | July 25
Learning from Breezewood, Pennsylvania; Or, A Significance for Meme Culture, Peak Oil, Highway Engineering, Local Politics, Fine Art Photography, Urban Planning, and Taco Bell. It‘s official:
Amanda Kolson Hurley has written the design essay of the year. [MB]
The utopian ‘
feminist apartment hotels’ of Charlotte Perkins Gilman were considered to be “the most dangerous enemy American domesticity has yet had to encounter”. [BV]
Observed | July 24
Sappi is celebrating the 20th anniversary of their
Ideas that Matter program and they want you to snap a picture of what inspires you to design for good and
share it with the hashtag #IdeasThatMatter. [BV]
“‘Imaginary’ universes are so much more beautiful
than this stupidly constructed ‘real’ one.” [MB]
Observed | July 23
Lisa Sanders has done something extraordinary: in a world spinning out of control,
this is what humanism looks like. [JH]
Observed | July 19
Today’s New York Times feature on the fire at Notre Dame has superb photography & dazzling interactive animations, but nothing is more mesmerizing than these sketches made at the scene by French firefighter Laurent Clerjeau. A landmark piece of visual journalism. [MB]
Everyone at
this new advertising agency has served time in prison. [BV]
Adrian Shaughnessy is a graphic designer and writer based in London. He is a senior tutor in Visual Communication at the Royal College of Art and a founding partner in Unit Editions a publishing company producing books on design and visual culture. Scratching the Surface, a collection of his journalism, has recently been published. 
