The new British coins revealed yesterday by the British Royal Mint are oh so very hot. They were designed by 26-year-old Matthew Dent, someone who’s never turned his eye to coinage before. Pretty decent first effort, I’d say.

In comparison, H&FJ look at what the US Treasury managed with 2,500 people and an annual budget of $525,000,000 (not forgetting the coins).

Posted in Design on Thursday April 3, 2008. Shoutouts [2].

Reading Tea Leaves and Campaign Logos, a comic-book critique of US presidential campaign election logos.

Posted in Design on Tuesday November 20, 2007. Shoutouts.

Shuetsu Sato is a Japan Railways employee known for making complex, stylish signs and maps from strips of coloured duct tape. The majority of his work could be spotted around Shinjuku station over the past couple of years, but similar beautifully ad-hoc construction signs can been seen at almost all those (seemingly) perpetually under-construction stations around Japan.

Posted in Design on Thursday September 13, 2007. Shoutouts.

Terrorist organization logos

Terrorist groups, like any organization, need brand identities. With so many groups claiming credit for terrorist acts, and so many videotapes being put out featuring men in ski masks, it’s hard to keep track of which group committed what violent act. So terrorist organizations have logos. It recently occurred to me that someone had to actually design those logos. But how did they decide who gets to do it? Did the job go to whichever terrorist had a copy of Adobe Illustrator?

Posted in Design on Wednesday September 12, 2007. Shoutouts.

£400,000 and audience with super-designers Wolf Olins gets you a logo for the 2012 Olympics. Awesome value, only slightly tainted by the fact that it seems the entire UK hates it. The best comment I’ve seen comes from a viewer of the beeb: “It looks like a logo designed for young people by old people who don’t understand young people.” Or a Klaxons CD cover.

Are your eyes bleeding yet?

Posted in Design on Tuesday June 5, 2007. Shoutouts [4].

Pop-Up Cities: China Builds a Bright Green Metropolis is a story on Wired about a built-from-scratch city in China that’s designed for peak environmental efficiency:

Today Gutierrez and a team of Arup specialists from Europe, North America, and Asia are finalizing a plan for a scratch- built metropolis called Dongtan. Anywhere else in the world, it would have been a thought exercise, done up pretty for a design book or a museum show. But Shanghai’s economy is growing three times faster than the US economy did at the height of the dotcom boom. More than 2,000 high-rises have gone up within city limits in the past decade. The city’s most famous stretch of skyline, including the jewel-box-like Jin Mao Tower and the purple rocket-shaped Pearl TV Tower, was a rice paddy just 20 years ago. Now some 130 million people live within a two and a half hour drive of downtown. Even the wild ideas get built here.

This idea that the only limit to construction is imagination seems to something that resonates with visitors to Shanghai. I know I was floored by the sheer grandiosity of the plans city-builders had for Shanghai, and Amanda wrote a great piece on it after she visited the city earlier this year.

People have often remarked that one of the huge advantages China has over the west when it comes to building and development is the ease with which it can repossess land. Need an extra couple of blocks? No worries; just bulldoze whatever is there and move the people elsewhere. It’s one of the reasons I’m so glad I visited Beijing before the bulldozers moved in for the Olympics.

That said, a consistent theme in current Chinese developments seems to be a desire for environmental sustainability and that can only be a good thing.

Posted in China on Sunday May 6, 2007. Shoutouts [1].

The Design Disease (via. Designers Who Blog)

Please note that I am not this bad. Yet.

Posted in Design on Wednesday January 31, 2007. Shoutouts.

From this This is Broken school of terrible signage comes this sign at a beach in Okinawa where you’re not allowed to swim, ever, and especially not during swimming hours. I think they need to hire a new sign writer, and perhaps spend some money on marketing as well.

Posted in Design on Monday October 9, 2006. Shoutouts.

Posted in Design on Thursday September 14, 2006. Shoutouts [2].

Remember that Bravia advert? Before they blew up that building, the one with balls and Jose Gonzales and the frog? Yeah, that one. Well, have a look at this. Fruity.

Posted in Design on Monday September 11, 2006. Shoutouts.