Novel typography for a children’s book where every beastie is crafted in type. Fantastic!

This weekend I sat down with a good friend to watch Signatures by Sweetgrass Productions which has just been released this week. The film features a beautiful series of tantalizing visuals of skiing and snowboarding in remote regions of Japan that just left me in awe of Japan’s natural beauty. While viewing this cinematic original I discovered noboarding and snow surfing which are two sports that were previously unknown to me. What got me excited about both of these sports was just how much they likened themselves to surfing and took the experience of snow sports back to its more rustic roots by freeing the artist (the snowboarder) to be more in harmony with the medium (the snow) by doing away with the bindings that normally keep the experience constrained. Also, by shaping the board to carve the way a surfboard does the athlete is then left to rely supremely on balance and positioning which, inevitably bring him closer to Mother Nature.

Any surfer recognizes the value in a well carved board and although beginners may start on boards that are designed at factories most surfers worth their salt turn to hand crafted boards as they recognize the value in having a board perfectly customized for their height, weight and style. From a design perspective I’ve become completely ecstatic whenever I see a move in any industry away from mass produced design and towards a more handcrafted approach. Watching the artisans at work in this movie as they perfect the lines of their boards is as evocative as watching the snowboarders they equip aesthetically carve powder on the wintery slopes of Japan.

I just came across one of the best critiques I’ve ever read on how visual design, messaging and focus affect website usability. The article takes an in depth look at the usability issues surrounding Apple’s and Microsoft’s websites and highlights the importance of focusing a company in one direction especially when there are many departments contributing to content, marketing and product development. A great read cover to cover.

Today I saw that Scott Thomas (@simplescott) design director for the Obama Campaign is now looking to publish a book titled Designing Obama. The book is a chronicle of the art from the campaign and provides a unique perspective on how design was used by the campaign and how it was supported by Americans everywhere in a grassroots fashion.

The 360-page book is full-color and hardbound, highly crafted with a stylish embossed sleeve. Having seen Scott Thomas present at An Event Apart in Seattle this year I simply can’t wait for the book to come out. Pre-order yours now as they have to raise $64,000 by mid-November or the book will not be published. We just ordered our copy!

The latest version of iTunes may sport a few new improvements but one thing that is certainly not improved is the user interface. Perhaps with Steve Jobs reportedly working solely on the new Apple netbook nobody has applied a critical eye to the latest iTunes release. After getting the upgrade via software update I opened iTunes up and immediately felt a few things were off. Firstly they increased the opacity of the white drop shadows underneath the play, forward, and rewind buttons; while this is a little detail the problem is that it makes the buttons no longer feel like they are inset into the interface. They did the same thing to the volume bar, the coverflow icons, the search box and every other button in the whole interface. Compare the new screenshot above to the old iTunes 8 screenshot and it’s pretty easy to see how they have ruined the subtlety of the buttons. Design is in the details.

Taking a deeper look you can also see how they have ruined the album art preview page by looking at the old album art page and then look at the new album art page. The whole interface is now set on white instead of a solid gray, a hideous black box now outlines each album, the drop shadows are a little too strong and they lost the tabs and the ability to control how big or small the artwork displays.

Oh Apple what are you doing? Did you just hire UI designers from Microsoft?

Really liked this type design by remcovandermeer. The crinkled paper and 3d lettering is just exquisite.

Google recently redesigned the Google Apps homepage. While it certainly was (sort-of) a good step in the right direction, I must say that whenever I look at their design work it just looks like it was slapped together last minute.

They started off well with the nice drop shadows on the headings, but then completely lost it in the details. Their icon work in general lacks polish and the button stating “Begin Free Trial” lacks both a hover state and corners that are anti-aliased properly. The page layout is simple enough, but I just wish they could hire someone who actually has the capability of making buttons that just state “I’m a gorgeous, sophisticated, well developed button, click me.” I guess this is yet a continuation of what you get when you have engineering decisions driving design decisions.

In this day and age with the plethora of incredible Photoshop tutorials on creating polished button interactions this type of mistake demonstrates a sheer lack of attention to detail.

This week Ikea made the decision to switch it’s dominant typeface used in all it’s catalogs from gorgeous Futura to Verdana. I simply cannot understand why any designer in their right mind would make such a switch knowing that Verdana really pales in comparison as a typeface for headings. Moreover it is a Microsoft typeface. Sigh.

Take a closer look at this typography sample below and you’ll notice just how wrong Verdana is compared to Futura for their usage. The uppercase “i” in particular just irks me. I get that they wanted to keep their branding consistent between their online presence and their catalogs but with inventions like TypeKit on their way there really is no excuse for such a poor type choice. More to the point, Verdana isn’t even a Scandinavian typeface, at least Futura was created by German born Paul Renner so it is sort of in keeping with their Scandinavian stylings. Oh Ikea, what are you thinking!

iQ font – When driving becomes writing.

When two type designers, an interactive artist, and a professional race car driver got together… a font was born.

The creativity behind the creation of this typeface is really inspiring. It’s rare to get a glimpse at what goes into designing a typeface and I really enjoyed the documentary.