I like maps, and maps of the world are my favourites. So seeing blaberize.com do a feature on desktop world wallpapers has made my friday. Here’s a pick of some of the best, but make sure you visit http://blaberize.com/2009/10/15-really-cool-world-map-wallpapers/ for the whole bunch.
Thanks to Carl Haggerty for posting up this presentation by Oliver Blanchard, something which cuts through the social media crap and shows obvious ways to tell if all your social marketing is actually doing anything. And of course what’s key to any good presentation, it has excellent graphics.
I like fonts, I’m not quite a typography nut, but I do appreciate the brilliant influence that typography can have on design. So this post is all about typography, looking at three quite different angles.
1 – Toast
As well as typography, I love toast, hot taost with melted butter, mmmmm, the breakfast of choice (as you may have noticed). So lets mix typography and toast say the people at handmadefont.com
Seen on: bblinks.blogspot.com, originally at www.handmadefont.com
2 – Cheese
Unlike toast, I hate cheese. And it hates me. I have a ‘cheese face’ to prove it. But, there is a connection with fonts and cheese, their names are often indistinguishable. @mogrify noticed this and decided to test the world on their cheese and font knowledge and built Cheese or Font.
Seen on: www.swiss-miss.com and originally at: cheeseorfont.mogrify.org
3 – Wallpaper
I wish I had more computer screens so I could show more desktop wallpaper. If I had 40 screens I could have a different typography wallpaper on each one courtesy of www.1stwebdesigner.com. It’s an excellent collection, and make me want to print them all out as postcards and stick them around my desk.
Found by: dainix on designbump.com, originally at: www.1stwebdesigner.com
This is the kind of post I wish I could write if I was more literate. It sums up very neatly all the problems which so many companies and organisations have. It’s a mix of venting frustration with reading terrible blogs whilst nudging you away from falling into the traps yourself.
Read all about it on Smashing Magazine: 10 Harsh Truths About Corporate Blogging | How-To | Smashing Magazine.
I like this idea of wrapping paper and have done something similar before myself, but not with quite the same thought and style as Matt Dent.
Easy to make your own if you’ve got a big enough printer, but good to support a designer selling a great idea.
Found at Noisy Decent Graphics: My Bright Idea.
After a few text heavy posts here’s something less brain demanding. Thanks to the London Advertising & Design Group blog I found this site for the new VW Golf GTi. Take control of your own GTi and drive it round the track as fast as possible for your chance to win a golf for 3 months (Only three months? Then what?). It’s been very well put together and plays well, and if (when) you take a corner to fast your car goes flying off and you have to wait for an scientist to pick you up and place you back on the track. Good attention to detail there.
Go and have a play and take a look around the ladge blog, one worth keeping an eye on.
Today I found a new way to challenge my London knowledge, which was a map of Zone One of the London Underground without any of the station names. You have 10 minutes to type as many of the station names as you can remember and watch as your answers get added to the map. I managed 52 out of the 63 stations which I was fairly happy with, but still had to kick myself when I saw the ones I’d missed. It instantly highlights the parts of London you never visit, for me there was a huge empty space in south West London which I had no idea about. Have a go yourself at www.sporcle.com/games/londontubecentral.php and see if you do better than 52…
It reminded me of a simliar game, with the same concept but on a much larger scale. At travelpod they have a flash game where you must place a flag on the map of the world to mark the location of cities and famous places with points are awarded for speed and accuracy. There are 12 levels of difficulty with cities becoming more and more obscure as you progress. Give it your best flag at www.travelpod.com/traveler-iq. Unfortunately I didn’t make the 30,000 threshold to get past level 6, I’m sure you can do better!
Taking Liberties is a shocking but hilarious polemic documentary that charts the destruction of all your Basic Liberties under 10 Years of New Labour. Released to coincide with Tony Blair’s departure, the film and the book follow the stories of normal people who’s lives have been turned upside down by injustice – from being arrested for holding a placard outside parliament to being tortured in Guantanamo Bay.” From the official site.
“The Taking Liberties Film is finished. Nearly. We still have to mix the sound and strike the prints, but we had 3 screenings yesterday and the response was fantastic. Packed house at the Amnesty screening, and people laughed, cried and tutted angrilly in all the right places. Thanks all for coming alone – please spread the word! Cinema listings now up on listings page.” From the offical blog
More at: www.noliberties.com and noliberties.blogspot.com
“Once the journey was complete we uploaded the route into Google Earth and this time used the altitude of the route to portray speed. This creates an impressive Google Earth path and considering that the phone was merely placed on the seat, rather than near a window, one with a high level of accuracy.”
More at: digitalurban.blogspot.com/2007/04/nokia-n95-gps-google-earth-tracking.html
