The design museum

Aline writes: We went to the design museum on Tuesday, one of my favorite London places. They had 2 great exhibits: a history of information design, and voting for the best British designer of the year (picked by jury but we got to vote - not sure how that works!) The history of information design was especially interesting; for example, here is an early map of what the London underground really looks like:



But this is the popular map drawn in 1933 that is iconic now:


It sacrifices accuracy for simplicity, prioritizing the display of the relationships of the stations and lines over real geography.

Here was another example I liked, where the designer was able to show streetmaps as well as elevation:


I really like the medical examples as well, although they totally missed the boat on Leonardo da Vinci, since he was showing the mechanisms of the human body and anatomical illustrations 150 years before the example they used :-) - hey, I knew that thesis would come in handy!

As for the designer of the year, I loved the candidate from Penguin books, who worked under lots of constraints and developed a beautiful product - this is from the exhibit,
"Faced with the challenge of designing Great Ideas as a coherent collection, while reflecting the provocative spirit of each title, David Pearson, a Penguin junior designer, worked with art director Jim Stoddart to develop a graphic identity for the series. Another challenge was that each book had to be sold for £3.99 making it impossible to use expensive materials or production processes. Rather than risk distracting attention from the content with illustrations, they decided to use typefaces that evoked the text. By restricting each cover to two colours – burgundy and black – on uncoated paper, they remained within budget while indulging in special finishes such as debossing."

Here is a pic of one:



That's who I voted for - the embossing of the covers are really beautiful.

More later!