Observed | September 22
City Monitor is part of
New Statesman Media Group’s innovative new data journalism division, which will provide essential business intelligence across topics such as energy, cities, banking, media, and technology, among others.
Follow them here. [JH]
Nicolas Heller is helping
save New York City, one Instagram post at a time. [BV]
Observed | September 21
Help support this
monumental public messaging campaign promoting the patriotism of science, religion and voting from Class Action Collective. [BV]
Observed | September 17
The strange, uninspired history of
Spotify’s bland logo. [BV]
Observed | September 16
Behold:
Calamityware! (Via Kim Baer.) [JH]
Observed | September 01
Got a Very Serious Book to sell about the dangers of radical right-wing overreach? In book publishing,
this is the summer of the Sith Lord design palette. (via Blake Eskin) [BV]
Observed | August 20
Design criticism is everywhere. Why are we still looking for it?
A must-read essay from Jarrett Fuller. [MB]
Goodbye mosh pits, hello “personal platforms.”
A new music venue in the UK was designed for socially distant concerts. [BV]
Observed | August 18
Contactless filming: design for never leaving home. [JH]
Observed | August 17
No books were harmed in the testing of these animals. [JH]
Observed | August 14
How do activism slideshows go viral on Instagram? By co-opting
popular design aesthetics from brands. (via Blake Eskin) [BV]
Observed | August 13
Can you identify the city in which each picture was taken?
A visual quiz. [JH]
Observed | August 06
On the power (and ephemerality) of
street art. [JH]
The UX of
LEGO interface panels. (via
James I. Bowie) [BV]
Observed | August 03
Antica is a new type family designed by Ale Paul & the Sudtipos team. [JH]
Observed | July 31
Branding a pandemic. (via Kim Baer.) [JH]
Observed | July 28
Why do
these Apple ads, from a company that takes such pride in design, feature four people who are clearly not trained designers, designing? [BV]
Observed | July 27
Communicative efficiency is not the same as communicative empathy, and one of the truly gut-punching limits of social media is how poorly it corresponds to the individual experience of human grief.
A primer by Jason Fields. [JH]
Observed | July 22
Futurefeed is an online space where writers, artists, and thinkers are invited to experiment + explore ideas that are important to them over an extended period of time. [JH]
Observed | July 21
Open a new
window somewhere in the world. [BV]
The X-Prize Mask Challenge is looking for a face mask that is attractive, innovative, and achieves the filtration efficacy on par with a surgical mask. PS: You also have to be under 25 years old to enter. (Via Kim Baer.) [JH]
Observed | July 16
How Mexico City
crowdsourced a map of its riotous informal bus system. [BV]
The atlas of surveillance. (Yes, you read that right.) [JH]
Observed | July 15
Social Matter, Social Design challenges the way we look at, think of, and interact with the social world by emphasizing the role of materiality. [JH]
When governors are graphic designers:
a continuing story. [JH]
Observed | July 14
Design For America, the World Design Organization, and IBM team up to launch the
COVID Design Challenge. [JH]
A national reckoning: why It is falling to individuals to become their own
interim museums and archives. [JH]
Observed | July 10
Together again for the very first time, Microsoft
ditches backgrounds for foregrounds—like simulated office desks. [JH]
A new, coronavirus-inspired concoction at Alinea, one of the world’s most famous restaurants, is
spurring backlash online. (via Blake Eskin) [BV]
Observed | July 08
A look inside
the typography of the Biden campaign, by Hoefler & Co. [JH]
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. 
