Four great designers, two of them whose writings I admire very much, have banded together and joined the blogging community. Michael Bierut, William Drenttel, Jessica Helfand and Rick Poynor are collaborating in a group blog and writing about design, designers and other interesting design theory and practice topics.

Called Design Observer the blog is already creating some interesting dialogue and will be visited by this reader on a regular basis. Welcome folks.

In case folks are interested in why posting has been light over here for the last month—here is a bit of a clue. I have a collection of work being featured over at 28mm.org this month.

Sometimes it's all about color and shape.

Recently spending way more time with my cameras and looking at photographs than trolling the net world for new interesting design sites. So, check this out.

I'll be at DUX at the end of this week, will you? I was a reviewer of the submissions, which was quite an interesting process in itself. I believe they are going to be doing a post-mortem on that process at the AIGA Summit the couple days before DUX. Should be interesting to hear how that goes.

If you are around look me up and let's do coffee.

Boxes and Arrows has been nominated for a Webby Award.

This is the first time something personal I have worked on has been nominated. We are up against The Onion, Metropolis Magazine, Shift Online and Alternet. I am very honored. Woohoo!! Don't forget to vote for us in the People's Choice Awards.

My sister has launched her website. Some sections are still in progress, but it promises to be pretty cool and a unique experience. The site showcases her photography, video and installation work. Check it out and offer her a job.

Matt Haughey points me to a really interesting presentation (8mb flash - but really worth the download) given by Lawrence Lessig at OSCON about the nature/history of copyright and technology layered with today's politics. This is definitely some heavy food for thought - especially if you are a creator or user of anything - media, music, books, movies, software etc.

Mike Lee, in an interesting post about Virtual Museums, points us to the Theban Mapping Project. An online Atlas and collection of articles, archealogical site information, resources and other really interesting stuff about the Tombs found in the Theban Valley. The site mixes HTML and Flash with other media - quicktime movies, still photographs, animated floorplans, and several different types of search.

The web site, done by Second Story, is really interesting (especially if you are into archealogical information or early art history) and shows what can be done with mixed media and a rich database. The design is lovely as well - and supports the content nicely. There is so much cool stuff here - I could end up spending the weekend traversing this site.

A collection of interesting book reviews about typography, design and type related books is over at Typotheque.com. There are reviews by Steven Heller, Andrew Blauvelt among others.

The reviews section is only one of three worth perusing. Interviews and Essays also are full of interesting and rich information by such authors as Steven Heller, Jessica Helfand, Robin Kinross and others. One of the most interesting interviews is Steven Heller interviewing Don Norman - the interview was done shortly after the 2000 election and a lot of the conversation revolves around the butterfly ballot. But it is interesting nonetheless to see these two (Heller and Norman) viewpoints about design.

Typotheque is a type foundry and site run by Peter Bilak based in The Hague, the Netherlands.

I stumbled across the newly redesigned site for RGA - R. Greenburg and Associates. They do a ton of motion graphics (Saturday night Live, the opening sequences for lots of movies, commercials - you've seen their stuff).
I am always on the lookout for elegant and interestingly presented timelines (see the Dr. Leslie timeline). Timelines are an interesting design challenge - there is usually a lot of data, sometimes multiple entries per dated section, sometimes images with text. The nature of time means that there will be scrolling - either horizontally or vertically and often relationships are trying to be made across the time units. The span of the time shown in a timeline also plays a factor in how difficult it is to manage - shorter time spans are always easier than large. This dictates how much can be shown in one screenful and that can make or break the success of the overall cohesiveness of the timeline.

The RGA site has a very beautiful timeline, [click on HISTORY], that gives a nice overview of their work since the creation of the agancy. I found it very easy to use. It gives a nice overview of their work since 1977 without being overwhelming. The timeline is elegant and a beautiful example of what can be done with Flash. There are several layers of information shown at once - the years across the bottom to give a sense of scope, the thumbnails of samples within each year to expand on the depth and as each thumbnail is clicked, specific information about the project, which collected as a whole details the capabilities of the agancy without having to read a boring Capabilities section.

Recently found this site, about illustrator Jim Flora. He illustrated many album covers for Columbia and RCA. The site provides images of many of these covers as well as samples of some of his magazine work, a couple of interviews and a variety of other items testifying to the talent of this interesting illustrator.

Dr. Robert L. Leslie - of the AD gallery and PM and AD Magazine said this of Flora in the exhibition keepsake for the exhibition of Flora's work - "Flora succeeds in making you laugh, as every good cartoonist should. [But] while you're busy laughing, he's planning to murder you."