How amazing is this wall? Change It! designed by Amirko aka Amirkhan Abdurakhmanov is a big wall of turn-triangles. Each of these triangles has different colours on them – white – black – and a colour palette shade. Where can I install one of these….

Looking forward to seeing the new BBC site designs after reading the design team’s approach to the project. Bronwyn van der Merwe, head of design and UE at BBC Future Media and Technology explains in a nice, simple way how they came up with the global visual language for the BBC website.

Read the blog post

Abigail Uhteg from Presse Janvier presents her video of an epic book printing project she completed over two months at the Women’s Studio Workshop in Rosendale, NY. See 35 hand-bound books come together in wonderful stop motion.

If you’re curious about the printing and binding processes you see in the video, read the start-to-finish details on Abigail’s website.

Very much respect. NOW, I have a press, I have two months free, now if I can just get that past my wife.
(via Veer)

People just can’t get enough of re-creating this image.

First in a Coffee makeover recently in Sydney, Australia, when eight people recreated her image using 3,604 cups of coffee and 564 pints of milk as part of an Aussie coffee festival.

And this one made out of motherboards! It decorates the headquarters of the computer maker Asus in Taipe.

I was watching the excellent series “Art Deco Icons” at the weekend. This week they followed the history of Transport for London. Visiting the wonderful 1930s headquaters at 55 Broadway – now the underground station for St.James Park. (You can catch it again on iPlayer before 18th Nov)

David Heathcote tours us around the above building and briefly pauses under a framed Underground map which was drawn before the rebrand of Transport for London. Its a sprawling mess of a poster but certainly depicts how London was rapidly increasing in size, with the center of London still being within easy commuting distance from outer London suburbs.

This poster (below) prompted me to do some digging and write this post.

The re-brand of Transport for London and the ‘tube’ logo is one of the finest examples of graphic communication ever produced. In fact I never even thought about the “rectangular carriage” going down the “circle of the tube” until watching the above show.

I’m sure most people reading this blog will know the famous re-draw of the London Underground map was produced by a 29-year old draughtsmans by the name of Harry Beck. There’s been a few reiterations over the last 75+ years but in essence it’s still as clear and concise to this day as it was when first introduced. Now being used by millions of underground travellers every day – at least once the traveller realizes the Thames does not in fact flow at right angles, sometimes walking is actually quicker than going underground and the map is purely a graphic representation and not geographically accurate!

From a designers point of view, the other great thing about the rebrand of Transport for London was the typeface used. “Johnston” created in 1916 by Edward Johnston was the typeface of choice for Mr Beck and to this day is still being used for all signage, livery and marketing communications.

You’d be forgiven if you mistook it for Eric Gill’s typeface “Gill Sans” which was designed between 1927-1930, roughly ten years after Johnston was publicly released. Edward Johnston, a teacher at Central School of Arts and Crafts at the time, remarked on seeing Gill’s work “I was caught unprepared. I did not know such beauties could exist”. A super quote for one of the most influential type designers/sculptors/stone cutters/print designers of the 20th Century.

It’s an iconic tale and a perfect example of a company rebrand that has stood the test of time and been adored by millions.

Found via Mike’s excellent blog

This morning my new MacBook Pro was working it’s daily duties. A lunchtime later and the hard drive was not booting. It’s completely dead and I’ve lost everything on the drive! Thankfully I was working off a server in the morning and the last time I backed up was yesterday.

So, ask yourself how much bother it would cause if suddenly your Mac or PC hard drive suddenly stopped working? If the answer is lots – then you’re not backing up correctly.

I’ve been using the wonderful ChronoSync for a few years now and it’s got me out of quite a few jams – including todays. Think of it as a iSync for huge amounts of data, you specify the folders you want to synchronise and ChronoSync simply keeps the latest files from each folder. You can even specify older or deleted files to be archived for extra safety. My daily backup consists of syncing 65GB of data in 3 minutes.

For just £25 it’s worth every penny. ChronoSync

I’ve mentioned the quality of Web Designers Toolbox before. But I’m always asked what a web safe area is and what are the variations between browsers and platforms.

There’s a whole host of tools and templates  at this site – including platforms and browsers templates at Web Designers Toolbox.