Presenting the new d3.loom chart form plugin - Visual Cinnamon
Nadieh has packaged up the code for her lovely loom diagrams as a plug-in for d3.
Tags: visual
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The Evolution of Trust
Such a great primer on game theory—well worth half an hour of your time.
SolarBeat
Luke just demoed this at Codebar. It’s a lovely audio/visualisation of the solar system—a sonic orrery that you can tweak and adjust.
Hypnotic.
ARP Observatory (@ArpObservatory) | Twitter
In July we started receiving audio signals from outside the solar system, and we’ve been studying them since.
Tweets contain sound samples on Soundcloud, data visualisations, and notes about life at the observatory …all generated by code.
ARP is a fictional radio telescope observatory, it’s a Twitter & SoundCloud bot which procedurally generates audio, data-visualisations, and the tweets (and occasionally long-exposure photography) of an astronomer/research scientist who works at ARP, who is obsessive over the audio messages, and who runs the observatory’s Twitter account.
Out of the (Drop)Shadows | Scott Jensen Design
Can an opinionated flat design still have depth and truly be free of drop shadows?
Scott proposes a technique that mimics atmospheric perspective—y’know, when things in the distance look hazier than things in the foreground.
The fact is, we are surrounded by a world that is full of depth, and very little of it is defined by shadow. If we are going to replace drop shadows in our visual UI metaphors, we should look at other options that create depth in the world around us.
Hertzsprung-Russell diagram animation | ESA/Hubble
When I was in Düsseldorf for this year’s excellent Beyond Tellerrand conference, I had the pleasure of meeting Nadieh Bremer, data visualisation designer extraordinaire. I asked her a question which is probably the equivalent of asking a chef what their favourite food is: “what’s your favourite piece of data visualisation?”
There are plenty of popular answers to this question—the Minard map, Jon Snow’s cholera map—but we had just been chatting about Nadieh’s previous life in astronomy, so one answer popped immediately to mind: the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram.
Creating a pattern library in Sketch, Roobottom.com
A smart approach to creating patterns as symbols in Sketch. Sounds like diligence and vigilance is required to make it work, but then, that’s true of any pattern library.
Font Map · An AI Experiment by IDEO
Fontlandia is yours to explore.
By leveraging AI and convolutional neural networks to draw higher-vision pattern recognition, we have created a tool that helps designers understand and see relationships across more than 750 web fonts.
Painting with Code : Airbnb Design
Very clever stuff here from Jon in the tradition of Bret Victor—alter Sketch files by directly manipulating code (React, in this case).
I’m not sure the particular use-case outlined here is going to apply much outside of AirBnB (just because the direction of code-to-Sketch feels inverted from most processes) but the underlying idea of treating visual design assets and code as two manifestations of the same process …that’s very powerful.
Stark
A plug-in for Sketch that allows you to simulate colour blindnesses and check colour contrasts.
Mood boards in a content-first design process — Thomas Byttebier
How style tiles can work great in combination with content prototypes:
Surprisingly, it helps clients understand the HTML content prototype better. They now clearly see the difference and the relationship between content and design. In general it helps me explain the content-first process better and it helps them make more sense of it.
Functional Minimalism for Web Design
According to this, the forthcoming Clearleft redesign will be totally on fleek.
Stuff in Space
A gorgeous visualisation of satellites in Earth orbit. Click around to grasp the scale of the network.
Visual Design meetup, Brighton
Are you a UI designer? In Brighton? Well, feel in this form if you’re interested in gathering with like-minded people.
This local, monthly and free meetup will let designers show their work, share any methods, processes and tools and ask for the odd critique.
Designing inspired style guides presentation slides and transcript | Stuff & Nonsense
Having spent half a decade encouraging people to make their pattern libraries public and doing my best to encourage openness and sharing, I find this kind of styleguide-shaming quite disheartening:
These all offer something different but more often than not they have something in common. They look ugly enough to have been designed by someone who enjoys configuring a router.
If a pattern library is intended to inspire, then make it inspiring. But if it’s intended to be an ever-changing codebase (made for and by the kind of people who enjoy configuring a router), then that’s where the effort and time should be concentrated.
But before designing anything—whether it’s a website or a pattern library—figure out who the audience is first.
A Day in the Life of Americans | FlowingData
Watching this data visualisation on its high speed setting is quite hypnotic.
29 Bullets
Russell wrote an article for Wired magazine all about PowerPoint, but this extended director’s cut on his own site is the real deal.
Who knew that the creator of PowerPoint was such an enthusiast for the concertina?
Our World In Data
If you’re in need of some long-term perspective right now—because, let’s face it, the short-term outlook is looking pretty damn bleak—then why not explore some of Max Roser’s data visualisations? Have a look at some of the global trends in inequality, disease, hunger, and conflict.
Proposal to CSSWG, Sept 2016 // Speaker Deck
Jen has some ideas for a new CSS Region spec to turbo-boost Grid. I’m still trying to wrap my head around it, but in the meantime, if you have feedback on this, please let her know.