In the spirit of debate about the 2012 brand launch, design consultancy Bibliothèque exhibited their fantastic collection of design work by Otl Aicher and his team for the 1972 Munich Olympics.

It’s a timeless and extensive communications system covering books, posters, signage and was executed by a team of over 4o designers.

Wonder if 2012 will be admired in a similar way in 25 years (hope so) ?

Bibliothèque 72 Exhibition

Wiki - Otl Aicher

Character designed by Dainippon Type Organization - http://www.kokuyo.co.jp/hiramekitoys/toypography/

The font set is broken down into parts which can be transformed into Japanese text, or fun creatures!

Using a tool called Walrus, a clever chap called Young Hyun thinks it looks like this:

“Walrus is a tool for interactively visualizing large directed graphs in three-dimensional space. By employing a fisheye-like distortion, it provides a display that simultaneously shows local detail and the global context.”

The Gallery of images depicts nodes in a surprisingly organic and natural looking way, featuring visualisations of web site directory hierarchies, CVS repository (not normally known for their visual beauty), and directory trees.

Much prettier than we thought it would be.

If anyone has any children’s drawings of ‘What the web looks like’ we would be interested to see.

Created by Brand New School in New York, this interactive billboard was designed to in conjunction with the launch of Adobe’s new CS3 range of products and it’s tagline ‘Creative License’.

It’s an interesting execution of a simple idea and one that starts to push the boundaries of brand experience a little further away from the standard self contained brand showreel approach towards something a little more interactive.

http://www.brandnewschool.com/project.php?id=410

I found this site whilst doing Discovery for a pitch earlier this year. I’ll make no bones about it, it’s pretty ‘out there’ in terms of design and IA, the idea of placing the car parking information in a giant pop up car possibly verges between madness and genius, you decide.

It’s certainly memorable…

http://www.airport-cgn.de/

After a few minutes playing with the site I actually quite liked it, in a crazy, chunky soft icons sort of way.

Found this nice little shockwave (does anyone still use shockwave?) app some time ago whilst doing discovery for an interactive project. It’s part of the Getty ‘interact 1o ways’ campaign, in which companies such as Tomato, Less Rain, Sumona etc… created apps that explore the ‘power of the image’ - it’s been on the front of digg when it was launched way back.

Here’s a short blurb by Sumona:

“From its content to its visual components, a photograph is filled with information. Choose a point on an image and delve deeper into it, linking one idea to another in a never-ending chain.”

Reminds me of those fantastic Chuck Close paintings, which is why it inspires us.

The endless loop of interaction, a journey, telling a story - all parts to be considered in any user experience.

Interact 10 Ways - Sumona App

Snippets from a D&AD lecture on sustainability in March 2007…

The questions posed were:

How do brands and agencies communicate to people in an environmentally friendly way whilst maintaining sales?

Would brands be better off spending their money on actually helping the environment and not wasting it telling people they help the environment? Whose responsibility is it to push sustainability up the corporate agenda?

The bag is not produced in a sustainable way and is made from non-organic cotton. It’s fun and maybe a little superficial but that’s exactly the kind of thing that might infect the popular imagination and create different behaviour, and certainly debate about the wasteful stupidity of plastic bags.

Walkit.com is a routefinding website for pedestrians in London, it also shows you how many calories you’ve burned, distance travelled and C02 emissions saved by not taking a car, taxi or bus.

Greenpeace campaign ‘BA’s answer to climate change’. In 5 years time business air travel will be as unacceptable as wearing fur…

Marks & Spencer announces “Plan A”, a business-wide £200m “eco-plan” which will have an impact on every part of M&S’ operations over the next five years. The 100 point plan means that by 2012 M&S will become carbon neutral, send no waste to landfill, extend sustainable sourcing and set new standards in ethical trading. This will have a knock-on effect on other retailers as M&S raises the standards that consumers expect major retailers to adhere to.

Wardrobes by Howies, idea created by Carter Wong Tomlin. Gave wardrobes to different artists and illustrators to get creative with on subject of junk mail, food miles, fish farms, brand power, GM food or sparrows. Cost about £2,500 in total for second hand wardrobes. Wardrobes then went into shops and became an award winning point of sale promotion. Artists included Ian Wright and Marion Deuchars.

“As a brand you need to tell people your issues in a way that charms them.”