Issue 002: Visualizing the Toll of Covid, Logo Trends of 2020, Upping Your Zoom Game

In our modern media landscape, when we’re bombarded with thousands of images per day, many of those images are charts and graphs that represent data. At their best, data visualizations can help us understand complex issues quickly.

The New York Times has been fantastic lately, visualizing the devastating effects of Covid-19. The most dramatic chart we’ve seen in a long time is from the front page of their March 27 edition: a single column to represent 3,283,000 lost jobs, a near-twelvefold increase from the week prior. Last Sunday, May 24, the Times created an even more powerful visual: a wall of type that showed 1,000 victims of Covid-19, each with a mini-obituary. The names represented just one percent of the human toll of the virus. It’s a compelling reminder that behind numbers are real humans with stories and legacies, who left behind loved ones.

Follow the New York Times Graphics team on Twitter if you’re a data viz nerd like me, or check out some of their best work here.

Obviously, the Covid-19 pandemic has forever changed our world. For a brief moment in time, the world came together, and we all did our part and stayed home. Air pollution around the world has plummeted. Companies and product teams have answered the call by building products that do contact tracing, fight misinformation about the virus, or calculate how much toilet paper you really need. 

While parts of the country are opening back up, safety is still paramount. Summer camps may be canceled for kids, but Camp KiwiCo is trying to mail summer camp in a box to the kids. These boxes contain about four hours of stuff to occupy your children’s attention while you try to get a couple of Zoom conference calls in.

As designers, we’re lucky to be able to work from home. And in companies where they’re still hiring new employees, the onboarding process is a bit different nowadays. No more new hire lunches with the team or cubicle banter. Instead, adapting is the key, with an emphasis on communication. 

Logo Lounge came out with its “2020 Logo Trend Report.” Chock full of variable fonts and chexmelts (I’d rather have a tuna melt), it’s an interesting look at the zeitgeist in the design of marks.

Going from the best of, to the worst of, Fuzzco brought us a contest to design the worst logo of all time. Sadly—or thankfully—this ended last month, and the winner is the CAPTCHA-inspired submission by Kai Takahashi.

Meanwhile, Italian designer Emanuele Abrate took it upon himself to redesign the worst logos ever, fixing the marks that were a bit too accidentally risqué.

In design school, my Graphic Design 2 teacher taught us how to use photography as a tool to help illustrate concept. Brand identity guru Wally Krantz always carries his camera with him, capturing indelible compositions from the streets of NYC.

In a love letter to photography, travel photographer Ryan Jiha writes, “Photography forces us to slow down and appreciate the beauty in the most mundane, ordinary things we often take for granted.”

You’re a designer, so you better make sure you’ve art directed your video call frame. If you need some pointers, look no further than advice from Larry Fong, Hollywood cinematographer who shot feature films like 300 and Batman V Superman. The biggest takeaway: Raise your camera to be at your eye level! 

Fong also did an interview with IndyMogul on YouTube, outlining his steps. 

Meanwhile, many brands have gotten into the virtual background game, including Adobe Stock, Shutterstock, West Elm, Airbnb, Star Wars, Pixar, American Idol, and more. 

Yup, it’s been 10 years since Ethan Marcotte introduced the concept and term of “responsive web design” to the world. Before that, we were basically creating bespoke websites for every device.

“I read about glass walls that could become opaque at the flip of a switch, or when movement was detected. I even bought a rather wonderful book on the subject, Interactive Architecture, which described these new spaces as ‘a conversation’ between physical objects or spaces, and the people who interacted with them.

“After a few days of research, I found some articles that alternated between two different terms for the same concept. They’d call it interactive architecture, sure, but then they’d refer to it with a different name: responsive architecture.”

I will also submit that Marcotte’s concept of one experience on all devices is very much in the same vein as equivalent design, aka accessibility. Put simply, as designers and developers of digital experiences, we have to ensure that the intent of our work can be experienced across all people.

Apple licensed new fonts from Commercial Type, Klim Type Foundry, and Mark Simonson Studio for macOS Catalina. Here’s how to install them now.

Dolby’s double-D logo got a 21st-century update. I’m with Armin Vit on this one, I think they’re throwing away a lot of brand equity, printed on millions of devices and movies across decades. 

As a little boy who grew up obsessed with Adam West’s “Batman” on TV, I am just as obsessed with this Batmobile documentary from Warner Bros.

Hoefler&Co launched a new playground of sorts to see their impressive typefaces in action. Called Discover.Typography, you can explore 13 boards, each with a different theme, and click around to see which fonts were used. To keep with our theme today of data viz and cars, I like Redline.

Sneakerheads! Ex-sneaker designers started sharing some behind the scenes stories on Core 77’s discussion boards.

Get ready for summer with Poolside.fm. Chill, summery tunes (piped in from SoundCloud) paired with nostalgic TV ads and movie clips from the mid-eighties to the early nineties, on a Mac System 8-inspired interface.