Submitted by Kendall Henderson
For the love of Tokyo
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‘The Design Deck’ is a set of 52 cards with essential graphic design terms, design principles and concepts, strategies for good design and quotes by famous designers.
A noble proposition to redesign the boarding pass
Episode 84- Ladislav Sutnar + Trading Places with Planet Money
We divided this episode into two parts because each part is so different.
A- Ode to Ladislav Sutnar
This is an ode to an information designer who made life a little bit easier for millions and millions of people: Ladislav Sutnar, the man who put parentheses around area codes.
Sutnar was one of the first people to be called an information designer. His work from the mid-20th Century still looks quite modern–and he still looks like a badass.
The internal Bell sample book of fake business letterhead.
An infographic by Ladislav Sutnar.
Thanks to listener Matt McInterney who tipped us off to Sutnar last August.
Matt also has his own design podcast, called On The Grid, which he hosts with Andy Mangold (the designer of our Kickstarter notebooks). Thanks Matt!
B- Trading Places with Planet Money
99% Invisible and Planet Money team up and we talk to commodities traders to answer one of the most important questions in finance: What actually happens at the end of the 1983 movie Trading Places?
We know something crazy happens on the trading floor. We know that Eddie Murphy and Dan Aykroyd get rich and the Duke brothers lose everything. But how does it all happen? And could it happen in the real world?
Also on the show: The “Eddie Murphy Rule” that wound up in the the big financial overhaul law Congress passed in 2010.
Episode 54- The Colour of Money
US paper currency is so ubiquitous that to really look at its graphic design with fresh eyes requires some deliberate and focused attention. So pull out a greenback from your wallet (or look at a picture online) and really take it in. All the fonts, the busy filigree, the micro patterns…it’s just dreadful.
Even though paper currency itself, just idea of money, is a massive, world changing technology, the look and feel of US paper money is very stagnant. Richard Smith is the founder of the Dollar ReDe$ign Project and in an article in the New York Times, he pointed out five major areas where the design of US currency could improve: color, size, functionality, composition, and symbolism.
The worst aspects of the design of the greenback are illustrated in this video by Blind Film Critic Tommy Edison.
It just so happens that Australian currency addresses each and every one of the points made by Richard Smith. Tristan Cooke and Tom Nelson of the blog Humans in Design are big fans of all the design innovations in Australian money. Aussie polymer notes are varied in color, get larger with each denomination, are more durable and are generally considered better and easier to use than US currency.
But there are some interesting reasons why the greenback is the way it is. David Wolman, author of The End of Money, explains that the legacy features that make US paper money look stale and anachronistic are meant to convey stability and timelessness. Since the US economy is so important in the world economy, why mess with it? Some fear that changing the design of the currency significantly (or eliminating the penny) could undermine the faith in the federal reserve note.
Even though Tristan and Tom are fans of the Australian polymer bills, they share Wolman’s view that the more interesting future innovations are not going to have anything to do with physical cash. Clever user interfaces that help us manage our money better, while providing even greater convenience, are getting more refined and accepted. So that ugly $20 in your wallet may never actually get prettier and more functional, it’ll just be gone.
Extra: Below is the 2010 winner of Richard Smith’s Dollar ReDe$ign Project, submitted by Dowling Duncan.
Episode 33- A Cheer for Samuel Plimsoll
(Press Play Above)
If you look at the outer hull of commercial ships, you might find a painted circle bisected with a long horizontal line. This marking is called the load line, or as I prefer, the Plimsoll line. This simple graphic design has saved thousands of lives. The Plimsoll line shows the maximum loading point of the ship and lets a third party know, plainly and clearly, when a vessel is overloaded and at risk of sinking in rough seas. If you see that horizontal line above the water, you’re good, if you don’t, you could be sunk.
The load line was named after the crusading British MP Samuel Plimsoll. The advent of insurance in the 19th century, created an incentive for ship owners to purposely sink their own ships and collect the insurance money. This grim practice became so widespread, and killed so many merchant seamen, that the over-insured, overloaded vessels became known as “coffin ships.” Samuel Plimsoll (“the sailors friend”) fought for sweeping merchant shipping regulation that led to the adoption of the load marking that bears his name.
Tristan Cooke, a human factors engineer and creator of a great blog called Humans in Design, tells us the history of the Plimsoll line and explains why it’s one of his favorite examples of design. I predict you will being hearing more from Tristan and his partner at Humans in Design, Tom Nelson, on this site and on the program. Every entry on their blog could serve as the basis of an episode. You should also follow them on twitter @humansindesign. Fun stuff.
Above: The evolution of the Plimsoll mark to include different water types and loads.
Including:
TF – Tropical Fresh Water
F – Fresh Water
T – Tropical Seawater
S – Summer Temperate Seawater
W – Winter Temperate Seawater
WNA – Winter North Atlantic
L - Lumber
Below: Our hero, Samuel Plimsoll
Interesting side note:
When rubber sole shoes with canvas tops were introduced in the 1920’s they became known as “Plimsolls” because the line that divided the sole and upper canvas resembled the Plimsoll line. If water gets above the line, your foot gets wet.
Hey, web designers! We’re hiring!
99% Invisible is looking for an awesome WordPress design and development company or team to collaboratively redesign and rebuild 99percentinvisible.org.
The ideal candidate(s) will be detail-oriented, have strong design sensibilities and up-to-date knowledge of the WordPress ecosystem, including extensive experience customizing themes and utilizing plugins. Discovery and usability experience a plus. Selected candidate(s) will work with 99% Invisible’s Digital Director located in Oakland. Key features include:
- Responsive, mobile-first layout emphasizing content and increased engagement
- Site-specific content solutions for embedded media, citations and sponsors
- Link structure reform with permanent redirects, category and navigation changes
- Advertising integration with custom criteria using Google DFP and AdSense
- Integrated social sharing and automated social posting (plugins welcome)
- Robust and load-capable, third-party hosting solution, including caching and CDN
New site should go live 10 to 12 weeks from contract start date on a mutually-agreed schedule. Yes: we need to get this done! Additional support contract to follow. Interested parties should submit a brief (in-email) cover letter and link to portfolio of completed work with supporting information as appropriate. A more detailed RFP will be made available to interested and qualified parties for budgeting purposes.
INQUIRIES WILL BE CONSIDERED ON A ROLLING BASIS, so contact us as soon as possible via kurt@99pi.org with “Remake” in the subject line.
“A great box starts with a great structure. So before you jump right into thinking about awesome show-stopping graphics, consider first the performance of the box and all of its functions.
The box should:
- Protect the product; transport the product through the entire distribution system
- Communicate at retail what the brand stands for and its promise to consumers.
- Embody the environmental message of the brand
- Educate the consumer; in-store and maybe at home, too
- Keep the product secure or be "tamper evident"
- Potentially be repurposed after purchase
- Possibly dispense the product
The carton’s retail shelf presence might mean the difference between getting sold or not. Some brands say that the package should stop a shopper in 2 seconds at 10 feet. Yikes.
Oh, and don’t forget the ever-present budget.
Ready for the challenge?”
We just so happen to work inside of Arcsine, an architecture firm that has an official entry into the Restaurant and Bar Design Awards. They did a pretty great job with Duende in downtown Oakland.