Tags: graph

The New York City Subway Map as You’ve Never Seen It Before - The New York Times

The design history of the New York subway map.

Frank Chimero Redesign Blog: The Popeye Moment

Frank is redesigning in the open. Watch this space:

By writing about it, it may help both of us. I can further develop my methods by navigating the friction of explaining them. I’ve been looking for a way to clarify and share my thoughts about typography and layout on screens, and this seems like a good chance to do so. And you? Well, perhaps the site can offer a clearly explained way of working that’s worth considering. That seems to be a rare thing on the web these days.

2019-11-17 – florian.photo

These are great photos of the speakers at Beyond Tellerrand—great captures of Sharon, Cassie, and Charlotte.

The Department of Useless Images - Gerry McGovern

The Web is smothering in useless images. These clichéd, stock images communicate absolutely nothing of value, interest or use. They are one of the worst forms of digital pollution because they take up space on the page, forcing more useful content out of sight. They also slow down the site’s ability to download quickly.

Photopea | Online Photo Editor

I found myself needing to open some old Photoshop files recently, but I haven’t had Photoshop installed on my computer for years (not since Adobe moved to the Mafia pricing model). It turns out there’s an online recreation of Photoshop!

I remember when this was literally the example people would give for the limitations of the web: “Well, you can’t build something like Photoshop in the browser…”

SVG Artista

A handy tool for tweaking the animations in your SVGs.

Enigma machine / Tom MacWright / Observable

See how an Enigma machine works …and interact with it.

Letters to be encrypted enter at the boundary, move through the wire matrix, and exit.

Recursive | Recursive

Play around with this variable font available soon from Google Fonts in monospaced and sans-serif versions.

Less… Is More? Apple’s Inconsistent Ellipsis Icons Inspire User Confusion - TidBITS

The ellipsis is the new hamburger.

It’s disappointing that Apple, supposedly a leader in interface design, has resorted to such uninspiring, and I’ll dare say, lazy design in its icons. I don’t claim to be a usability expert, but it seems to me that icons should represent a clear intention, followed by a consistent action.

CSS { In Real Life } | How to Accessibly Split Text

This is why we need an nth-letter selector in CSS .

Online Color Picker From Image - Pick your color

A nice standalone tool for picking colours out of photos, and generating a colour palette from the same photo.

How using component-based design helps us build faster

A case study from Twitter on the benefits of using a design system:

With component-based design, development becomes an act of composition, rather than constantly reinventing the wheel.

I think that could be boiled down to this:

Component-based design favours composition over invention.

I’m not saying that’s good. I’m not saying that’s bad. I’m also not saying it’s neutral.

5 Keys to Accessible Web Typography | Better Web Type

Some excellent explanations for these five pieces of sensible typography advice:

1. Set your base font size in relative units
2. Check the colour of your type and only then its contrast
3. Use highly legible fonts
4. Shape your paragraphs well
5. Correctly use the heading levels

Mapping the Moon

A look at all the factors that went into choosing the Apollo landing sites, including this gem:

Famous amateur astronomer, Sir Patrick Moore, also produced a hand drawn map of the moon from his own observations using his homemade telescope at his home in Selsey, Sussex. These detailed pen and ink maps of the Moon’s surface were used by NASA as part of their preparations for the moon landing.

The Guardian digital design style guide

What a lovely way to walk through the design system underpinning the Guardian website.

Bonus points for using the term “tweak points”!

Spurious Correlations

Correlation does not imply causation.

Variable Fonts for Developers

A showcase of fun experiments with variable fonts, courtesy of Mandy.

Lights at sea

Lighthouses of the world, mapped.

First You Make the Maps

How cartography made early modern global trade possible.

Maps and legends. Beautiful!

Breaking the physical limits of fonts

This broke my brain.

The challenge: in the fewest resources possible, render meaningful text.

• How small can a font really go?
• How many bytes of memory would you need (to store it and run it?)
• How much code would it take to express it?

Lets see just how far we can take this!