Outstanding Bachelor and Master Projects

Posted on October 1, 2011 by plab

 

The end of the week I spent mostly at the University of Applied Sciences Potsdam visiting Bachelor and Master presentations. While I was a little bit disappointed by the Masters I saw 2 outstanding Bachelor projects. First one was Johannes Tornellos project »Meaningfull transitions« in interaction designs. Besides his thesis he launched his project under  www.ui-transitions.com. Its more or less a library for user-interface transitions and a extensive bachelor project.

 

ui-transitions.com

 
In his words: Meaningful Transitions have the purpose to communicate the process of the interaction and the structure of the user interface. They focus on specific events, or explaining the user’s interaction by animation. All transitions are clustered in 6 categories in order to differentiate the certain field of use. The aim is to present a scaleable collection of existing transitions. The transitions are documented in an abstract visualization to explain their purposes and filled with concrete examples. The close look at a transition offers the field of use, the mental model, the consistency, the cognitive benefit and the illusion.

Have a look – its worth it.

 

Ban­ga­lore – The Visual Lan­guage of a City

bangalore_design_bachelor
The second project I can recommend is the work of Anja Gollar and Mirko Merkel. Both are graphic designers and went to Bangalore  for several weeks to document the life of the city in a photo-book and a second book full of infographics (+1 documentation book). Really a beautiful work with a lot of love for typography details and graphics. All books are manually handcrafted and limited to 5 examples (only) :(
I still hope that the produce some more of them or at least some of their infographic posters.

 

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TileMill Quick Tutorial

Posted on September 15, 2011 by plab

 

Great. MapBox updated TileMill!


download_tileMillTileMill (source:http://mapbox.com/tilemill/)


Run Tilemill Console

In the past you had to start and install TileMill via the console and run it from there. Now you can just download TileMill and run it without any technical hassle. So its super easy to create and design your own map on OpenStreetMap Basis.

 

What is TileMill?
»TileMill is an application for making beautiful maps. Whether you’re a journalist, web designer, researcher, or seasoned cartographer, TileMill is the design studio you need to create compelling, interactive maps.«
Source: http://mapbox.com/

 

Quick tutorial to use TileMill:
1. Go to MapBox/TileMill and download TileMill
2. Install TileMill. Move tileMill to your application folder
3. Start TileMill. Normally TileMill starts your default browser if you start it. If it doesn’t start your favorite browser manually and go to: http://localhost:8889
4. There you can edit your TileMill Map. TileMill uses Carto, a very easy »language« (inspired by  CSS) that helps you with layer style (like in Photoshop) to design your map.

 

Attention: If you want to edit for example a single city you maybe have to download some extra content. For example if you like to edit a map of Berlin you have to download the shapes of highways, water, nature etc.

Here you can find recommended datasources
I used the data from cloudemade.

 

Quick tutorial to add layers in Tile mile (with cloudmade files)
1. Download the necessary shapes (http://downloads.cloudmade.com/)
2. Copy the files to your MapBox data folder. It should be in your normal document folder (/yourdocumens/MapBox/Data)
3. Start TileMile and go to http://localhost:8889
4.Click on »Add layer«

AddLayer in TileMill

5.Give the layer a name and if you like name the class as well. Click »Browse« in the datasource input box and go to your data folder (/yourdocumens/MapBox/Data). Chose the zip file (for example highway-outline). Save it.

Data Source TileMill

DragAndDrop Layer

6. Now you have your layer in the left corner. You can drag and drop it like a layer in Photoshop and edit it like with CSS on the right hand side in the syle-editor.
You get more help in the MapBox manual.

 

TileMill in Processing and Unfolding
If you want to use TileMill for processing you should read the great tutorial of my lecture Till Nagel: TileMill and Processing. He also describes how to use TileMill for his neat library Unfolding.

Enjoy.

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Portfolio Slam Berlin

Posted on September 6, 2011 by plab

frog Portfolio Slam Berlin

Neat. Cool to see that the frogs go new ways even when acquiring new people …
Nice to see as well that Matthias Dittrich is still a happy frog.

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LiquiData at DESIGN MEETS DATA

Posted on September 5, 2011 by plab

Paul Brickle is talking about his work on the 4th DESIGN MEETS DATA on Sept 6th (6.3opm):
»The freshly recruited Infographics Editor at ZEIT ONLINE, will run through a selection of his projects and give us some insight into the everyday work-life of an info graphics designer.«

After his talk David Ikuye (master-student of the FH-Potsdam) and me will present one of our last semester projects, which was created under the supervision of Till Nagel in cooperation  with Christopher Pietsch, Luis Grass and Gunnar Friedrich and we hope you join the session @Fjord in Berlin (Friedrichstrasse 210, 10969 Berlin) with your questions and suggestions.

Hope to see you.

»DESIGN MEETS DATA is a bi-monthly meet-up, bringing together people from different backgrounds who are venturing into visualization (from Design, Coding, Journalism, Science, etc.).«

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»Sommerfest 2011« photos are online

Posted on August 25, 2011 by plab

Sommerfest Designcenter Berlin
Photo (c): Designcenter Berlin

via Fotos vom Sommerfest 2011 … | Designcenter Berlin.

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Infographics of the ministry of finance

Posted on August 8, 2011 by plab

Source: http://www.bundesfinanzministerium.de

The website of the ministry of finance Germany has its own infographic part. Not the best, but at least some Sankey Diagrams and in total much better then the stuff I’ve seen in my school for political/financial explanations.

http://www.bundesfinanzministerium.de/nn_316/DE/Presse/Bildservice_20und_20Infografiken/node.html?__nnn=true

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Justin McLean on a visit

Posted on August 5, 2011 by plab

Justin McLean with Stefan Hermann and Pierre La Baume at ixds
Stefan Hermann, Justin Mclean and Pierre La Baume (left to right)

Last week I met Justin Mclean, a programmer and Arduiono-tinker at a Arduino/Flex Seminar in the center of Berlin.
Justin presented some cool prototypes in which he used Arduino and Flex to draw graphs in real time on a screen projection depending on the physical changing (measured by an Arduino). It was impressive to see how easy it worked.

After the session we talked shortly about Arduino/Flex and the new project of IxDS (where I work as a freelancer atm) Fritzing Fab. Justin was surprised that the Fritzing headquarter is just around the corner and so I invited him to come over this week. Hence he came in at the beginning of the week and together with Stefan Hermann we gave him a short demo of the new skills of Fritzing and the Fritzing Fab. For everyone who doesn’t the new Fritzing Fab. From now on you have the opportunity to create your on PCB and get it produced by Fritzing Fab for a pretty good price. Justin seemed to be really impressed by the Fab+ the immense progress Fritzing has made in the last time. He gave us some interesting insights how he works and uses Fritzing (mostly for demonstration/documentation purposes).

In total it was pretty nice to have somebody here from Sydney and get some input from the other end of the world. Justin is flying this week to Washington and will be traveling and explaining stuff in the next months in countries around the world. So get the chance to meet him if he is around …

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DCB Sommerfest

Posted on August 5, 2011 by plab

Sommerfest Design Center Berlin

In 2 weeks the Design Center Berlin (DCB) is inviting you for an on-boat summer party at the historical harbour of Berlin (»Historischer Hafen Berlin«). If you like to join you can get a reservation at the DCB webseite. The Price is 20 € or 15 € for students. Buffet and live music from the german JazzDuo Vocal Invitation is included. All members of the DCB work on a volunteer basis. All earnings will be donated to the operator of the historical habour.

Hoping for good weather and friendly people to make this night a great one. Come along …

Jazz-Duo Vocal Invitation, Berlin. Photo: (C) Björn Missal, BerlinJazz-Duo Vocal Invitation, Berlin. Photo: (C) Björn Missal, Berlin

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Chip.de is an iPhone hater

Posted on July 30, 2011 by plab

 

 

Apprently. They count the iphone4 generation to one of the top 5 smartphones on the market but write articles like »10 reasons not to buy an iphone« (just in German): 10 Gründe: iPhone 4 nicht mehr kaufen – CHIP Handy Welt) in which they count 10 reasons why other phones are better than the apple product. Not really objective.

Image-source: http://www.chip.de

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Skeuomorphic UI’s

Posted on June 24, 2011 by plab

Interesting article about skeuomorphic design and interfaces:  when is it useful?

 

via Synthesizer 76 iPad App Shows Delights and Pitfalls of “Skeuomorphic” UI’s | Co.Design.

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