June 2 2010
June 2 2010
Our creative director, James Sanderson was featured in Creative Review’s 2010 Annual. He was interviewed among a panel of judges to critique four websites, utilizing new advancements in web-design. The critique focused on design in a choice driven medium and balancing user experience with design freedom. Pick up the 2010 annual to see our critique and some of the best visual communications work of the year.
May 5 2010
Expo 2010 officially kicked off on May 1st in Shanghai, China.
The exhibition will continue until October 31st and is the most expensive Expo in the history of the World’s Fairs.
This year’s theme “Better City—Better Life” signifies Shanghai’s status as the “next great world city” with more than 190 countries representing themselves (the most ever). As the originator of the World fair (in 1851), it’s only fitting that the UK pavillion boast one of the most impressive installations: an enormous, indescribable sculpture/building by Thomas Heatherwick.
See the video below:
The World’s Fair (AKA, Expo) has been hosted in numerous countries since it’s inauguration in 1851. Showcasing all that the world has to offer in every field (art, technology, culture and much more). It’s hosted by a new country in (approximate) 4 year intervals. Historically, the Expo’s have introduced the public to numerous advancements in society. Some highlights below:
1876 Philadelphia, United States
Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone
First typewriter
Heinz ketchup
First electric light
1889 Paris, France
Eiffel tower was built as an entrance for this Expo
1900 Paris, France
First talking films
Escalators
Campbells soup
First diesel engine
1904 St. Louis, United States
First waffle ice cream cones
Peanut butter
Iced tea
Cotton candy
1915 San Francisco, United States
First steam locomotive
First trans-atlantic telephone lines (linking New York to Paris)
1929 Seville, Spain
Electric refrigerators
1939 New York, United States
GM presents ‘the highway’
Color photography
Nylon
Air conditioning
1970 Osaka, Japan
Moon rock
First IMAX movie
Early mobile phones
1982 Knoxville, United States
First touch screen display
Boxed milk
cherry coke
March 26 2010
People love to speculate on technology.
These days it seems that there’s an endless parade of articles claiming to predict the future impact and/or failure of Apple’s iPad.
Whether it becomes successful or not, web-programmers have taken note of the iPad’s lack of Flash support. Flash is the web technology that allows animation, video and other features not supported on the web’s default infrastructure: HTML.
Steve jobs doesn’t seem impressed by the features Flash can provide. When asked about the omission on the iPhone and iPad he responded:
“We don’t spend a lot of energy on old technology.”
Perhaps Jobs has seen how HTML programmers have duplicated Flash functionality using tricks like Javascript. Or maybe he’s seen HTML5, the new version (currently in beta) that allows Flash-like features. More likely he’s not inclined to support a power-hungry program that would reduce the iPad’s 10 hour battery life to 1.5 hours.
Whatever his reasons, as we’ve pointed out before, Steve Jobs’ speculations on technology often hold real insight on what’s to come.
More on this topic from the NYTimes, CNN and isflashdeadyet.com
March 1 2010
Sometimes connecting our history to our present day is a challenge, especially with such fast paced change. A new flickr set provides a smart way to look at this challenge. Simply by overlaying and old photo with a current environment, the viewer is faced with such contrast and sometimes eerie similarities.
The type of car in this photo has always occupied a historic place in my mind: somewhere in ‘the olden days’. After seeing this image, it doesn’t seem that far off in history (and really never was). It’s also interesting to note the size difference in the vehicles!
The set is relatively small (only 33 images), but is only a week old and anyone can contribute. You can take a look at it here.
February 5 2010
Wednesday night, AIGA NY hosted a discussion of the NYC subway signage system. It featured a panel of great designers, including Massimo Vignelli (who originally designed the system). Tom Geismar, Lance Wyman, Michael Hertz, Doris Halle and Peter Joseph who were responsible for later revisions.
Vignelli, passionate and outspoken, openly criticized the MTA (and the designers sitting next to him) for taking his simple, clean signage system and cluttering it up. Other flaws in the current system were pointed out and attributed to corporate beurocracy and “design-by-committee.”
above: Where’s the Orange on the train? New trains have lost their color coding. Why? Because LED technology has only amber and red lights available. Maybe there are other design solutions?
above: Note the direction of this arrow.
Massimo Vignelli’s original subway map was simple. Over the years, vested interests wanted to be included in the map (busses, parks departments, neighborhood societies…etc). Today, it holds much more than subway information.
Above: Click to see the comparison
Above: Click to see other city subway maps
Personally, I like clean, simple and modern. However as a newcomer to NYC, I have to admit, I find myself relying on the current MTA map’s additional information despite all the clutter.
Kick off the conversation in our comments: is Less really more?
January 22 2010
The world’s simplest website, a little simpler:
Here’s a lovely interface that allows you to search Google, twitter, Wikipedia and YouTube. We found it a little while ago and it’s been making the rounds in our office as the default browser page. A great solution for a quiet, ‘breath-of-fresh-air’, while browsing through the clutter that exists online.
January 20 2010
A 2-minute video circa 1993 has recently surfaced on YouTube:
Steve Jobs discusses working with Paul Rand (legendary identity-designer for IBM, UPS, ABC..etc) and sheds light on a fascinating process and theology:
Steve Jobs (discussing logo designs): “Will you provide me some options?”
Paul Rand: “No. I will solve your problem for you. Use it or not, that’s up to you, but you’ll pay me.”
January 15 2010
Welcome to our blog experiment.
Plaid is a branding agency in Soho, NYC. We are also a collaborative crew of creative artists and thinkers, focused on innovative ideas, branding, design, media, arts, culture and much more.
We weren’t sure at first why it would make sense for us to do a blog. It’s difficult to create an original blog. So we tested the waters by creating an internal blog for just ourselves–an uncensored, common space we could all contribute to.
We happily discovered that the variety of individuals at Plaid led to a far-reaching collection of trends, trivia, graphics, documented “firsts,” some awesome nonsense and timewasters and more than just a few cultural observations that inspired us. And since we like it, we thought others might too.
So here it is. For our first week of posts, we’re each sharing our top three entries from 2009.
We hope you’ll enjoy our finds in 2010. Let us know what you think.
The Plaid team
Carol, James, Patricia, Natalie, Tom, Josh and Hilary
January 13 2010
Usability experts are from Mars
Graphic designers are from Venus
With more (all) creative industries breaking into the digital space, a struggle is cropping up between rigid online-usability rules and creatives desperate to break them.
In this ‘left brain’ vs ‘right brain’ debate, a perceived advantage is held by technical minds because they have data to back up their claims, where creatives have more intuitive, subjective reasoning and less history in the space. This article sheds some light on the issue.
Further illustration of this divide is Jakob Nielson’s website. He is the #1 usability expert. His rules for web design are religiously followed by many web-designers, but his own website design might shock a creative designer new to this debate.
January 13 2010
Fearful cries about the ‘death-of-print’ have been all the rage this year. 2009 saw many magazine closures and newspapers worried about the shift to digital. This shock to the industry has caused print-based companies to quickly innovate, often relying on their old friend: The Designer.
In a TED talk (below), Polish designer Jacek Utko explains his dramatic redesign for several Eastern European newspapers. The result? Readership went up by as much as 100%.
Though the following project didn’t see the light of day, Information Architects explain their thoughtful concept to revolutionize newspaper design. How? By taking all the learning from websites and translating it back to print.
*Note the blue highlighted keywords that allow you to read the entire front page in just 20 seconds.
