Dramatic Shift in Marketing Reality

Scholz & Friends: "Dramatic shift in marketing reality from Michael Reissinger on Vimeo.

Great little video from Michael Reissinger on the need for innovation and consumer interactions in today's marketing world.

Found through Twitter: @stonepayton

Anamorphic Parking Garage Signage

These are images from the Eureka Tower in Melbourne, Australia.  Emery Studio (look at the "Placemaking" link) had the opportunity to use both the horizontal and vertical surfaces to design some anamorphic signage in the parking deck.  When viewed from the correct direction as you're driving, the words appear legible and lead you in the correct direction.  Viewed from another angle, the words appear as abstract lines and colors.

Thanks Ethyl for sending the link on Twitter!  Images are from the Kosmograd blog.

Seasonal Visual Timelines

 

Roberto Rovira, and assistant professor of landscape architecture at the Florida International University's, School of Architecture, was kind enough to allow me to share some of his work with the readers of Cool Infographics.

 

Working as a consultant, these seasonal timelines were developed to show the activities and the plants used in a proposal for a project he led called "Envisioning Hudson Square" on the Hudson River near Manhattan, NY.

 

The first one shows the time of year that different activities would be active in this green area during the year like bicycling, bird watching and ice skating.  It also shows the different wildlife that would be present during the year like blue heron, striped bass and snowy egrets. Using the visual timeline you can see how the different activities overlap and that there would always be some type of activity during the year.

 

The second timeline from the same project show the proposed plant and trees to be used in the project, and with the use of the visual timeline shows their color and appearance throughout the year.

 

Graphics by Roberto Rovira, RLA, with assistance from landscape designer Kelly Woodward. Roberto is Assistant Professor in Landscape Architecture at Florida International University (www.fiu.edu/~soa) and Senior Landscape Architect consultant for ArquitectonicaGEO (www.arquitectonicageo.com), a Miami-based landscape and planning firm. He led GEO's design team and developed the concepts for 'Hudson Square Prints Green!', a proposal for a 30-block New York City district on Manhattan's West Side, adjacent to the Hudson River.

The Art of Visual Thinking

Last week, Guy Kawasaki posted a good interview with Dan Roam on his blog.

Do you recognize this picture? It's how Southwest Airlines was pitched.

To provide more insight into the process of visual thinking, I tapped Dan Roam. He is the author of The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures . In this interview he explains why and how to use visual thinking in your business. Click here to read it. To learn even more about visual thinking, be sure to read his book.

Map of Online Communities

Greetings from the Blogipeligo!

A fun infographic from xkcd.com that uses a map image to communicate the relative sizes of the different types of online communities.  I was impressed that I at least recognized most of them, and actually participate in some of them.

When are you at risk online?

From the Mozilla website, and obviously a part of their sales pitch.  I picked up that the calendar arrangement of the squares is in fact correct for 2006.  Its getting the small things right that help make good infographics.

An independent study shows that, in 2006, IE users were vulnerable to online threats 78% of the time. Firefox users? Only 2%.

“At risk” defined as publicly available exploits with no patch. Source: “Internet Explorer users Unsafe for 284 Days in 2006” Brian Krebs, Washington Post, 1/4/2007

The Summer of Pool Shows

Another page of quirky charts from Andrew Kuo that I came across from October 2007. These try to represent information about the 2007 summer's series of concerts at Brooklyn's McCarren pool.

Found on CoolHunting.com

Pessimist's Guide to Summer Festivals

A full page of different chart styles by Andrew Kuo on nytimes.com. A number of Andrew's quirky charts have been showing up in the NY Times lately.

When he was 15, in 1992, the artist Andrew Kuo tagged along with his older brother to the second year of Lollapalooza in Stanhope, N.J. It was Mr. Kuo’s first summer festival, and he was so excited that he bought the albums by most of the bands on the bill beforehand. Then, halfway through the show, after sets from Pearl Jam (his favorite) and the Jesus and Mary Chain, “I didn’t want to be there anymore,” he said. “I felt like I was being held captive.” Thus began his lifelong ambivalence toward outdoor festivals. “When you finally get to the picnic, there’s ants everywhere,” Mr. Kuo said. Here’s a pessimist’s guide to the summer festival season, which kicks into high gear with the Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival on Thursday in Manchester, Tenn. Mr. Kuo will be home napping.

Thanks Sandhya!

Fly Through Airport Security

"How to...Fly Through Airport Security" illustration by Jason Lee from Wired Magazine, March 2008 (16.03).

You might as well check your dignity curbside. Soon you'll be shoeless and flustered, spilling comics across the floor as you dig your MacBook from the depths of your duffel. But take a deep breath, frequent fliers: It is possible to pass security with your ego intact. Here's how.

Car HUD from the future

From the January 2008 (16.01)Wired Magazine; Artifacts from the Future, by Chris Baker. This future automobile HUD has some really cool features like a DUI driver identified ahead, in-car video chat, live GPS map with directions and a coupon for the Starbucks at the next exit. He's doing 90MPH, eating an energy bar and he's in the slow lane! For California, there definitely aren't enough cars on the road!

Looks a lot like a bunch of widgets on the desktop of your PC. It definitely seems too cluttered, but I think it was necessary to fit it on a narrow magazine page. I love that it seems to use a multiple-blink interface. Check out the calendar appointment in the top left: "...blink 3 times to reschedule."

If only this future were closer. I'm a real fan of car HUD interfaces. It's one of those promised technologies that still haven't become reality.