You Can't Miss: Games and Graphics in Augmented Reality

I'm in the process of thinking of a game to create to go with the special section The Missourian will be putting out next month. I'm one of two people working on graphics, and there's an emphasis on interactives this year. I'm really excited about it, and I was really excited to see this post on Made by Many. It's about how we can leverage games to make them do more than what they do on Facebook.

In the post, it's more about the psychology behind games, but it'll be interesting to see how I can turn it into something useful for news. One thing that really hit home was that games need to satisfy the PERMA rule: Positive Emotions, Relationships, Meaning and Accomplishment. If anyone has an idea about how to create some of this in a quiz, I'd love to hear it.

The blog Cool Infographics showcased a graphic given in a bit of a different style: augmented reality. Hans Rosling did this for a talk that illustrated the changes in quality of life over the past 200 years. Check it out! It's so cool to see innovations like this.

You Can't Miss: Holler Gram and Movie Barcodes

In order to gear up for SXSW, Made by Many created an iPad app. In the blog post, they talk about how they did the animations for it, as well as distribute the code for the animations. I thought it provided great insight into the thought process behind many of the decision making we'll be doing for our iPad apps and gives us some more information about the iPad.

I also found these great movie barcodes on chartjunk. They stretched each scene out vertically and smashed each scene together.

Critique: Food challenge covers

With double production, this food challenge feature is running over Spring Break, but is being designed now. The idea is much like the Man v. Food tv show, so I wanted to find different ways to illustrate that idea.

The first one is pretty clear to get the concept, I think. My biggest problem with it right now is that I think it could also work as a cover for a story about obesity.

The second one is my favorite concept, with a man and food squaring off in the boxing ring. I'm not a fan of the typography, so if anyone has any suggestions on that, I'd appreciate it.

The third one is a man vs. the local food challenges. The story features four different food challenges around town, and I would like to photograph each of the four challenges and use them instead of the stock art I pulled.

Response: iPad conference

There was so much going on this past week, it's hard to settle on just one thing to talk about. But I think the most design-relevant event was the iPad conference. I went to the Popular Science talk and the BHG talk.

I really enjoyed the part where everyone seemed to be making it up as they goes along. The don't know what they're doing any better than we do.

I also appreciated seeing two different perspectives on getting involved. With Popular Science, they released their iPad app the same day as the iPad. BHG is timidly testing the market until things settle and there is a standard for what should be done.

Critique: Logos

So, I've actually spent most of my time this week tracing over a hundred years of Missouri Congressional state boundaries. It's boring, tedious work that will actually make a pretty cool interactive graphic when I'm done.

But other than that, I've been working on logos for SJI. I've posted a sampling of what I've come up with so far. My favorite is actually the blue one on the bottom because of the color and the emphasis on the more journalism-y aspect. I might add the Institute's tagline above the 'S' somewhere.

This week, I'll keep plugging away on the interactive graphic and more logos. I'm looking forward to seeing what everyone else has done.

You Can't Miss: Redesigning the health report and Google's relationship with the news

First off, this has been out for awhile, but I think it's a great example of how good design can improve the lives of everyone. In December, Wired did a piece on how redesigning medical tests can empower patients to understand what is going one with their bodies. It's an example of how great design can change someone's life for the better.

Secondly, Made By Many blogged about a bunch of different links this past week, one of which was very interesting to me. Google is partnering with the International Press Institute for a news innovation product competition. They've allocated $2.7 million to the project. It's interesting to see how many of these products are created, and how design plays a role in their success.

Response: Historical perspectives

It was fascinating to see the change in design from the 1950s to the 1960s. As Jan said, there wasn't a lot of difference in the design during the decades until then.

It was especially interesting to see the differences in Esquire. I had looked at the 1940s, but the design in that decade was a page of text, a page of image. There was actually a decent amount of difference between the '40s and '50s, but with the amount of color and more unique illustrations used in the '60s, there was an even bigger difference.