Design Dabbling @designdabbling - Tumblr Blog

Nice video about noticing the design in the world. I especially liked the bit about breakfast cereal mascot eyes being oriented toward the height that a child riding in the grocery cart would be.

Via Austin Kleon’s Substack (https://substack.com/@austinkleon/note/c-248083986?r=6hpmg&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action)

“Most people, when they learn to read, stop looking around…” This 2003 60 Minutes segment with John Stilgoe (OUTSIDE LIES MAGIC) is so good

#Youtube

I enjoy how the footnotes work in this book; they're embedded in smaller text on the bottom of the page so you don't need to go flipping to the back of the book. They're also in a small font with a reduced width, which makes them easier to read than many footnotes I've seen (which tend to span the full width of the page)

From p 13 of "The Work of Art: How something comes from nothing" by Adam Moss

#design #book design

I thought this two page spread showing how Shakespeare liberally copied from Plutarch was very clever. Note how the ALL CAPS words are identical or very similar across the two pages.

From the book "Beg, Steal, Borrow" by Robert Shore

#book design #shakespeare

Very cool use of translucent pages with contrasting color in the book "Geometry of Design" by Kimberly Elam. At various points there author tries to compare things or show how art and architecture conforms to geometrical rules.

Here's an example comparing Durer's "Man Inscribed in a Circle" and da Vinci's "Human Figure in a Circle"

#design #geometry #Kimberly elam

This is a very nice chart. The higher erosion in the north is clear to see due to the layout. Furthermore, the connection between the rows in the chart and the geography of the map is clear to see.

Note too that the bars have a clear 0 at the origin, which provides a more accurate comparison across rows. (Non-0 axes can be very misleading, as they amplify a difference that doesn’t really exist when looking at the full picture)

#infographic #design #chart

Great example of small multiples in this New York Times article. Note the repeated dashed line so you can see how each location compares to the national average. Finally, note that the data are sorted in descending order rather than alphabetically. Data by social explorer.com, graphic by Christine Zhang

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/06/us/economic-segregation-income.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share

Americans are increasingly living in areas that are either much richer or much poorer than the regional norm.

#small multiples #design #new york times

An example of how not to sort numerical data, via freecash.com

#sorting

The New York Times has a really slick way of presenting footnotes. Rather than a traditional footnote that brings you to the bottom of the page, losing your context, this implementation pops up the relevant information in a clear box above what you’re reading. You keep your context and place on the page, and the text of what you’re reading is not obscured.

I’ve seen this pattern used for documentation as well, where it’s especially useful to define terms or acronyms.

#footnotes #new york times

“I thought I would share how I, as someone who is visually impaired use my iPhone.☺️ https://t.co/wPI9smOIq0”

Awesome demonstration of accessibility features of the iPhone. I especially like the chorded keyboard, which lets you type letters by combining concurrent presses. That’s a similar idea to how court stenographers work, but with physical keys instead

Incredible visualization of Simone Biles’ triple double skill. In a way this static display with small multiples does a better job of conveying how the move actually works than an animation would. In particular, you get a sense of the horizontal movement at the beginning and the incredible amount of height and twisting motion at the end.

The listed credit is Bedel Saget/The New York Times

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/09/sports/gymnastics-simone-biles.html

Biles pushed the sport’s boundaries by doing a double flip with three twists at the U.S. championships on Friday. She plans to try again Sun

#smallmultiples

Nice use of small multiples in Wall Street Journal. By keeping the relative increases constant (same distance on y axis means a doubling, for instance) you can easily compare the slopes of the lines to see which category is increasing at the fastest rate.

#small multiples

I'm Scott Hurff, a product design leader, author of "Designing Products People Love," and co-founder of Designers.how.

Great article on making user interfaces that you can actually use on mobile, particularly when it comes to tapping on buttons. It has a great case study of the Apple lock screen music/podcast controls, and how they vastly improved in usability when the touch controls were made larger.

#fitts' law #user interface #mobile design #mobile user interface