Posts Tagged: magazine

example — Comments Off
13
Aug 11

All about Bloomberg Business Week

If I had a pound for every time someone’s recommended Bloomberg Business Week recently I’d be £5 better off. Which I could have put towards buying the latest issue of Eye in which Simon Esterson interviews BBW’s creative director Richard Turley. (Of course I bought it anyway.)

Graphic timeline for the rise of cloud computing, art directed by Jennifer Daniel

Bloomberg Business Week is another magazine that knows when and how to use an infographic. They completely absorb them into the layouts. They are the layout.

How do they do it? Editorial and design staff sit together, they talk, they share. It helps being well resourced too. Richard Turley uses all the words that you hear when people involved with good infographics elaborate on their approach: integration, narration, collaboration as well as strength of ideas.

They seem to have jumped headlong into motion graphics too. Their stated aim is a good one: “It’s one thing to stay up to date with news, data and information. It’s another entirely to dig past the surface, make meaningful connections and generate insights. Let us show you what others miss.” However they’ve still some way to go before cracking this medium in the same way they have done in the magazine. Judge for yourself.

PS It’s rumoured next EDO event is Richard Turley. Watch out for it here.

example — 1 Comment
9
Jun 11

China

Media magazine (Haymarket), February 2007

Who hasn’t done a graphic – or ten – on China in some capacity or other? There are masses out there.

China is exactly where I’m off to imminently (and Hong Kong) and I’m wondering and hoping I’ll see as many graphics in China as there are graphics about China here.

To be continued…

…see comments

example / opinion — Comments Off
27
Jan 11

And one more great moment…

The 'Above ground' Piccadilly line poster was created in 1996 by the in-house design team at LondonTown.com, known then as Globalvision, art directed by Steven Potter, designer Stuart Cannon. The underlying map of London landmarks was a giant oil painting (8ft x 3ft in size) which was photographed before digitally applying the tube network. It was commissioned by London Underground and designed specifically to sit in the recess by the door of the then new trains.

Further to Eye magazine’s Winter 2010 issue featuring a series of ‘great moments in information design’ I’ve contributed this map as a piece of work I’ve long admired. Read why on Eye’s blog.

(Other contenders on my short list were Ordnance Survey’s 1:25,000 maps, crystallographic point groups, materials selection charts, the yellow pages, paris/barcelona metro’s direction-of-travel light bulbs. I’ve already written about the latter. I dare say the others will put in appearance on this blog at a not-too-distant point in the future.)

opinion — Comments Off
24
Jan 11

Great moments in information design

I’ve mentioned before that while infographics are my thing I still have a healthy regard for and interest in information design.

(For anyone thinking ‘Huh? But aren’t they the same thing?’ I took a stab at explaining here).

But, to the point, get the latest issue of Eye – the beautiful and intelligent international review of graphic design – in which you’ll find many ‘great moments in information design’.

example / opinion — 4 Comments
23
Jan 11

Eureka: Integrated infographics

I went back to my parents for Christmas and an unexpected delight was to find – stacked tidily in the corner of my bedroom – a pile of ‘Eureka’, The Times’ monthly supplement about Science. Life. The Planet.

It launched in autumn 2009, and amid rumours of abundant infographics, exciting editorial design and content dedicated to science – all factors which have played an integral part in my background – I needed to get hold of a copy.

Unsure of the exact launch date but knowing my parents read The Times, I’d asked them to look out for, and put aside, the first issue for me. Little did I realise they were still doing it. (I did visit home on many other occasions between autumn 2009 and last Christmas I hasten to add, it’s just the magazines must have been accumulating somewhere out of my line of vision until recently!)

I like it for lots of reasons, but why I mention it here is because of its design. If you want a good example of editorial design, this is one. It has pace, character and confidence. It’s original, playful and surprising. And while I have a bias to any publication that champions infographics, Eureka is better than others being a showcase of how to integrate them both into the page and the flow of the whole publication whether they fill a whole spread or just add a small illustrated detail. It all hangs together as one beautiful, successful, flowing, coherent, whole. This is tough to achieve and a rare pleasure. (And the more frequent lack of it is a pet annoyance of mine).

You can see some of their work in the first issue here, though now it’s behind the paywall. It’s published on the first Thursday of every month.

I believe the original team were design editor Jon Hill, art director Matt Curtis, deputy design editor Matt Brown, graphics by Matt Swift and designer/illustrator David Lowe.

example — Comments Off
31
Mar 10

Sizing up China

No maps, no icons, no cliches, no decoration, just one clever use of colour. I like this graphic because it is confident in its simplicity. It tells its story clearly.

example — Comments Off
20
Jun 09

Find your global opposite

With half of my family in New Zealand it wasn’t uncommon for us, as children, to want to dig a deep hole down through the garden until we got to New Zealand. Turns out I’d have been better doing that somewhere in the Atlantic just north west of Spain.

This isn’t a necessary graphic, but it is simple, original and rewarding, the kind of graphic that comes about by someone having a quirky idea that, well executed, can be enjoyed and appreciated by others too.

← Older Entries