Text modules?

Another one I found while looking at Comm Arts...



This one is designed by Samia Saleem. I feel like I've been seeing text arranged like this a lot lately. The McDonalds ads look like this right now, and I think I saw a Ford commercial (actually, I'm not sure... I just know it was a commerical for a car...) and it had moving type that would line up/fall like tetris pieces into these module sort of configurations sometimes.

Pinkberry

I really enjoy the branding for Pinkberry! :] It's so cheerful and happy, without being circus-y. I like the soft colors... they look really delicious.

Plus, froyo is yummy and healthy. Yay us!

Coa (Design Firm)

I was surfing on the Comm Arts website and saw this piece here:



I thought it looked pretty amazing. I'm curious as to what this book is, and I want to read it. They seem to have made information design look innovative and fun. It really drew me in with this little picture.

Provinces of China

Have you ever wondered how about all those provinces in China? Well... when I was little, I didn't know that China didn't have "states" like we do here. When I got older, I learned that they were provinces... and I always wondered how they were separated and how they looked like. Well, now wikipedia offers an easy-to-read map of all the provinces in China :)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:PRC_provinces_big_imagemap

I like that the colors are subtle and don't distract. As far as communicating the provinces go, this map is successful.

However, the thing I don't understand are the blue and red lines; what do those mean? And why is Taiwan in white? Maybe it's a political thing... maybe the creator of this map thinks that China and Taiwan have "wiped face" (I'm not sure how to translate that phrase in English!) and so, they made Taiwan look invisible! Hahaha oooh the questions, they burn. I'm going to have to pace around my room dramatically until I figure out the meaning of those lines.

Or maybe someone else will figure it out and let me know.

Colors...

Why are google, msn, xanga, and blogger all using the same colors?

D: I have my gmail and hotmail next to eachother in one bracket, and my blogging thingies in another. They all just so happened to line up next to eachother. If I didn't have "mail" next to the gmail logo, things might get confusing. What if my mom calls me to ask which button on my little toolbar (?) is the gmail button?? I can't use the colors to describe it to her haha. Information misreading!! >o<

Rawr!

Btw, happy Chinese new year, everyone! Nummy food is ahead :9

PS3

I was watching my brother re... program? Reset? You know, actually, I'm not sure what he was doing, but he was fiddling with the settings of his Playstation3! He sent it in to get repaired since it started having some problems and the warranty still covered it. So I was watching him play around with the menus and I thought "wow, this is pretty cool! The graphics are really smooth!" (Smooth, just like the gorgeousness of SquareEnix's Final Fantasy games. Swoon! Sorry, Capcom, you lose.)

Everything has this flowy feel to it; including the background. It reminds me of water or air... it has a thin, transparent quality to it, and it fluctuates slowly across the screen. The icons don't have text to show you what the icon is until you scroll over it, and whichever setting you are on, the text will light up. A simple and effective touch. On another screen, an alphabet keypad pops up. (I'm assuming it's screen where you enter your username and such.) They keypad was a very easy to read. You can't really "type" on game consoles, so it's important that your letters on the screen are easy to read when you scroll over them, so that you know which letter you're selecting.

The only thing I thought was weird about the menu setup was that the game button was the last one on the screen (the icons line up horizontally, so the game one was the one on the very right). For a gaming console, you would think that it would be one of the first few icons for you to scroll through. I'm not sure what rationale the designers used to get this approved, but I bet it was spectacular since the folks at Sony were convinced it was a good idea to put that icon there.

Angelic Pretty

What are they selling?












Awww... who needs words anyways? One look and you can see exactly what kind of clothes Angelic Pretty sells :) Maybe it's harder to understand here in the US--but these are actually dresses for adults. Cute cute cute, Rococo-inspired, fluffy dresses for grown women! Not for children. Although, I'm sure you could find some for little girls too.