Corporate and VIP visitors to the BC Showcase at Robson Square become part of a unique ‘people powered’ interactive installation created by Switch Interactive, Fleming Design’s sister division. As visitors walk down a 110 ft long passageway, their movements trigger sensors that ‘paint’ the wall with animated vignettes of sector success in Canada’s West. Illustrations appear and morph, and digital energy lines advance and recede – all according to the number of people moving down the corridor.
During the Olympics, visitors to the BC Canada Pavilion will have the chance to play with The Curious Tree, created by our sister division Switch Interactive. This multi-touch cube features five-foot-wide panels featuring scenes of a tree in a west coast forest in spring, summer, fall, and winter. Each scene is identical, except for season-specific colour palettes and interactive experiences. By touching the panels, visitors can transform the forest, making flowers grow, leaves fall, icicles form, kites fly, and much more. The entire surface of the panels is interactive, allowing for multiple users and a whole array of visual effects that fill the screen. Complemented by whimsical sounds created by an award-winning composer, the user-generated experience recreates the sights and sounds of a BC forest throughout the year. Check out The Curious Tree at the BC Canada Pavilion (at the Vancouver Art Gallery) from 10 am to 5 pm, February 12 to 28.
One of my favourite information designers, Nicholas Felton, just released his 2008 Annual Report.
He spends much of his time thinking about data, charts, and our daily routines. Therefore, he has created several personal annual reports (2007, 2006, 2005) that collate countless measurements of his year into a rich collection of graphs and maps reflecting the travel, photography, music, food, drink, and reading contained in the year.
Feltron also launched a new site called Daytum which provide a tool to a larger audience to examine and communicate their habits and routines.
+SAMOA #8 is a well-designed journal from São Paulo with a focus on the independent art, music, and performance scene. Worth checking out for the neat illustrations, graphics, and photos. If you can read Portuguese I’m pretty sure the articles are interesting as well. I like a lot the graffiti from Titi Freak and Tara McPherson’s illustrations.
According to Kim Ji-Hwan and Jin Sol from zero per zero, each city’s various railway systems should reflect the character of that city. In an effort to infuse the city’s identity into its subway map, while also trying to simplify the original map, the designers produced a series of original maps for three cities (Seoul, Tokyo and Osaka) in the size of 100 x 70cm (39” x 28")
Seoul Railway
Seoul boasts 600 years of history as the capital of the nation, and features the grand river, the Han Gang, flowing across it. The Han River is the symbol of Seoul. Representation of the Han River in this map mimics the curvature in the middle of the Tae-Geuk mark of the national flag of Korea. The overall circular shape of the map was also inspired by the Tae-Geuk mark. The brighter area in the centre of the map, seen up close in the detail shot 1, shows the territory of Han Yang, the old capital of the Cho-Sun Dynasty. This was the old Seoul marked by the Four Gates, and the growth of the city becomes clear when compared to the modern metropolis.
Tobias Hoss and Christian Schwentke from the University of Applied Sciences Konstanz, Germany designed an A1 size wall calender portraying the company MBTech, a subsidiary of Mercedes Benz, from a new angle. The calendar shows the services of this company in an unorthodox way and translates the highly technical processes in a friendly, humorous world. They created a world out of paper and cardboard showing the different fields MBTech is active in. Everything was cut, pasted, and photographed - no Photoshop. Beautiful illustrations!
