But what can we do in a world where people are becoming increasingly indifferent? What can we do if abuses of power have become universally accepted, almost uncritically? What can we do if citizens get lost in their lethargy and apparent paralysis instead of getting informed and questioning what is happening around them? Open their eyes! With posters that speak out, that encourage people to start thinking about what they’re seeing.”—from the Mut zur Wut site

What issues matter most to you?

“Mut zur wut” (“courage to rage”) is an international poster contest and free public exhibition giving designers the opportunity to create a poster on a theme of their choice. You have approximately two months to submit your entries, which will be selected for exhibition by an international jury. Submission deadline is 31 May.

The competition will culminate in a free exhibition in the cities of Heidelberg and Mannheim, Germany, from 25 July to 28 August.

More details on how to submit your poster here.

“In their tendency to persist even in the context of geographically homogenizing forces, place differences permeate the artifacts whose creation they stimulate. … The mechanisms through which such diverse elements combine into a local industrial atmosphere shape not just competitive advantage of one place over another in producing a given artifact, but the nature of goods that can come into existence.”—New York University sociologist Harvey Molotch, quoted in The Atlantic—Cities.

City Maps shows an unexpected view of the streets of Austin, New York and San Francisco by mapping the city using logos. The app is linked to Foursquare, Twitter and deals so you can be fully connected with the activity surrounding you.

Once you get over the overwhelming number of brands that pepper the map, it becomes obvious that the experience of a place—particularly one as dense as Manhattan—is heavily influenced by the pacing of the landscape. Where do you escape the lure of the commercial?

Meanwhile in London . . .London Typographica is mapping the typographic landscape of the city by documenting public signage, type and lettering around the city. The result is a rich tapestry of old and new styles, typefaces, materials and scale. Gorgeous.

Offset, a 3-day creative festival taking place in Dublin is now in its third year. Between 9 and 11 March 2012, twenty-five design luminaries and countless devotees will converge on the Irish capital and chat about design. Paula Scher, Michael Bierut from Pentagram, Shepard Fairey, Stefan Sagmeister, Von, Droga5, Antoine+Manuel, to name a few, will be speaking at this year’s installment.

The conference’s site contains a useful video archive of 2009 and 2010 talks. Caution: wonderful array of accents.

The New Design Museum from Design Museum on Vimeo.

The Commonwealth Institute building is set to be adapted to its new purpose by John Pawson. “We are on the brink of something extraordinary,” says museum director Deyan Sudjic. “John Pawson has the ability to very quietly give the building a new life and a new dignity in a subtle but powerful way.”

The new site is set to open in 2014.

Lost in Motion from Krystal Levy Pictures on Vimeo.

The organization announced its top 5 newspaper designs and Canada is well represented with 2 winners from Toronto: the National Post and the Grid. The three other winners also displayed strong typography coupled with memorable type/image interplay.

Excelsior, Mexíco City, Mexíco
Cir. 75,000 – 174-999 (Daily)

Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, Frankfurt am Main, Germany
Cir. 175,000 & over (Non-Daily)

Politiken, Copenhagen, Denmark
Cir. 75,000 – 174-999 (Daily)

Unit Editions is a new, progressive publishing venture producing high-quality, affordable books on graphic design and visual culture. We combine impeccable design and production standards with insightful texts and informative commentaries on a wide range of subjects. Unit Editions is a collaboration between Tony Brook (Spin) and Adrian Shaughnessy (ShaughnessyWorks) and brings the notion of the book as a highly designed artefact with rich visual and textual content to an international audience of design professionals, design students and followers of visual culture.

Unit Editions produces books for graphic designers by graphic designers.

Standford University has an amazing track-record in the initiation and development of projects that deal with data visualization. Geoff McGhee, an online journalist specializing in multimedia and info-graphics produced a compelling documentary on current research and practices in the art of visualization and its place in the age of data.

An annual awards and opportunity for cross-pollination is the Society of News Design Malofiej 19 Summit. Participants have observed that the rise in technologies allowing us to create visualization has led to an increase in stunning but otherwise vacuous graphics. The beauty factor remains compelling however as the annual Feltron Report demonstrates.

“We’re just in a phase where we haven’t quite figured out how to put this out to average reader. (. . .) It’s become like a cult trend. Some of the people doing it are like rock star”—John Grimwade of Condé Nast, observes.

This same technological development however is providing greater opportunity for interactivity and use of live data so results can in fact reflect trends in meaningful ways. Many Eyes, an IBM initiative, offers examples of visualizations but also tools to create your own. Its creators believe that—not unlike typography which is now accessible to anyone with a computer—data visualization will improve greatly the more people experiment with it.

“This idea of enabling discovery, look at the data and discover things in it that you wouldn’t have necessary have thought to look for is an important part of what we’re thinking about.”— Eric Rodenbeck, Stamen Design

With successful visualization comes unexpected questions, explorations into cause and a requirement for complete data and unlimited access. Stamen Design cites a telling example where, asked by the City of San Francisco to produce a crime stats visualization, the designers discovered that numbers they were provided were lacking those relating to prostitution, alcohol-related crimes and homicides.

“Visualization can promote openness by the fact of it existing. (…) [it] can serve two roles: one is the explicit role of letting us see stuff coming, the other is this sort of funny passive-aggressive role that you find yourself pushed into a mode of wanting to make data open.”—Martin Wattenberg, IBM Research

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All images from Journalism in the Age of Data

Enriqueta Book / V. Monsalve y G. J. Ibarra (C/AR)
Latinité Roman / Carlos Zinno (AR)

Sancho Regular / Miguel Reyes Cabrera (MX)
Petra / Fernando de Moraes Caro (BR)

The call for entries for the fifth biennial is now open. Whilst the typefaces design category can only include designers of latin-american origin, the design categories covering latin-american type uses is open to all nationalities. Deadline is 23 February 2012 for works produced between April 2010 and February 2012. More info on the site.

Jumping to conclusions

Throwing a wobbly

Lifting a Finger

Otl Aicher pictogrammes