August Issue of Web Designing “Feature 2: Web Typography as Information Design”

With the introduction of CSS3’s @font-face, we’ve seen the development of favorable environments for using “Webfonts” where creators can display whichever fonts they want in the browser. Abroad there have been numerous Webfont services established, making it easier to integrate Webfonts. So it’s a question of ‘do we use only fonts we like’? With high quality web content being offered, the importance of “readability” can be thought about as “Information Design”, not just the simple selection of typography. In this feature we develop four sections combining the state of Web Typography with theories and examples from sites as well as methods for incorporating Webfonts.

Chris, Ian Lynam and Craig Mod got together to explore typography for screen media.

See more details (Click this link after August 1st, 2010)

In the summer of 2008, we visited the Setouchi area and started working on a website for Setouchi International Art Festival (July 19th – October 31st 2010). It’s been revamped several times since then, as the artist list was confirmed and preparation gained momentum. We’ve also been enthusiastic about developing and carrying out a social media strategy to build buzz and amplify the discussion leading up to the event.

Twitter was one of the obvious platforms, and with the service hitting a stride in Japan in summer/fall of 2009, the timing was just right.

• @setouchi_art (English)
• @setouchi_art_jp (Japanese)

Between the five of us at AQ, we post to more than a dozen Twitter accounts. We’re constantly trying out different tools, theorizing and experimenting with audience interaction, and diving into Google Analytics and bit.ly. As you can imagine, it’s led to many lively discussions around the office.

The interest turned outwards, i.e. a talk event specifically for and by the art industry and art enthusiasts. Piggybacking on the TAB Talk platform and held as part of TAB’s fundraising campaign, the event came to life on a late Sunday night.

TAB Talks #17 “Twitter & Art Promotion”
Venue: Loftwork Ground
Schedule: 2010-03-14 from 20:00 to 22:30
Address: Dogenzaka Pia 1F, 1-22-7 Dogenzaka, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo 150-0043
Phone: 03-5459-5123

Various naka no hito for art related Twitter accounts gathered to share insight on “how we can drum up interest in art and build a community on Twitter”. (Vocabulary of the day: the person behind a blog or Twitter account is called naka no hito 中の人 in Japanese, which literally means “person inside”. )

Here’s the lineup of presenters and panel discussion participants:

• Masaki Ishitani (@masakiishitani)
• Xin Tahara / Tokyo Art Beat (@TokyoArtBeat_en)
• Tomomi Sasaki / Art Setouchi (@setouchi_art)
• Yoshihisa Abe / Media Arts Festival (@JMediaArtsFes)
• Kosuke Fujitaka / New York Art Beat(@NYArtBeat)
• Hajime Nakagawa / NPO CAT Contemporary Art in Tokyo (@npocat)
• Mochi Watanabe / Mori Arts Museum (@mori_art_museum)
• Hikaru Morioka / unseal contemporary (@unseal_art)
• Kazuki Umezawa (@umelabo)

I had the honor of joining this fabulous group to present our work with the Setouchi Twitter account. It’s meant to be a case study on using Twitter for an upcoming art event, giving the Setouchi answer to the question “How do you get people interested in an event that 1) they’ve never heard of, 2) will happen next year, 3) in a remote part of the country?”.

Here’s the presentation material (sorry, Japanese only).

In addition to a full house, the talk was broadcast on Ustream with the help of content producer Tetsuomi Sukeda. The video is archived in two parts: Part One and Part Two.

The presentation is a short summary of our Tweeting activities in the past year. The fun has just begun and there’s a lot we’d like to do as the opening date gets closer and more details become available. Focusing on our Facebook presence and really getting the English Twitter account off the ground will be the next venture.

Again, here are the links. See you somewhere online or on an island in the Setouchi Inland Sea!

• @setouchi_art (English)
• @setouchi_art_jp (Japanese)

After countless hours of planning, design and code, Art Beat Inc finally released the app.

From the press release:
“Art Beat Inc announces TokyoArtBeat 1.0 and NYArtBeat 1.0, their new cultural event finder apps for iPhone and iPod touch devices. The new applications enable users to easily discover the art & design events happening around them as they move through their cities. No need to plan museum & gallery visits from home anymore: the apps leverage the huge database of 1800 cultural venues in the cities to give instant access to more than 1000 art and design events in total.”

We have thoroughly enjoyed the experience of designing the apps and are thrilled by the early feedback from the launch: more than 500 comments on Twitter and over 10,000 downloads.

The 2 apps are similar in design and UI and are only distinguished by their splash screen (illustration by our own Eiko), the colour of the top navigation bar (pink for Tokyo and deep purple for NYC) and the event content.

As long time iPhone users, we started with the apps we love for inspiration, quickly realizing the most useful and used ones provided great content and tools, while sticking thoughtfully to Apple’s established UI conventions, inventing new ones only out of necessity. We felt that this approach was the best for Art Beat’s many existing features and sophisticated data model.

For the debut version, we concentrated on 3 main areas:
* A Nearby Search to let users quickly know what events are happening around them
* a Most Popular section that inform users on the most popular events of the moment (based on traffic and user bookmarking on the websites)
* Event lists (per media, area) for users that want to dig deeper and find something more to their taste.

With so much information to choose from, we first focused on making sure you are never more than 1-2 taps away from the event data you’re looking for, regardless of which method you use to search.

Next, we designed the event lists and individual event screens. For the lists, we kept each listing compact and informative, with ample-sized images, and typography that are legible (in both English and Japanese) and create a rhythm that allows the eye to rest on the most important details.

The individual event screen opens to a bigger visual, next to a summary of information that will help you make an initial decision about whether you can visit the event. All the other details below do what you expect them to. Tapping the address opens a Google Map of the area. Tapping the phone number dials it.

The post-launch feedback on Twitter has been a blast to read. Several customers said it was their first app purchase, many noted its practicality and simple design, and that it had enabled them to discover events around them they would have never otherwise known about. Some mentioned they’d spent the weekend bouncing from show to show, or that they were going to buy an iPhone just for the app. How gratifying, we can’t wait for our kickbacks from Steve!

Many thanks and a big o-tsukare to Suzanne Ginsburg who set the groundwork for the app’s UI, Chuck Soper and Olivier Thereaux who brought the idea to life, and last but not least, TAB and NYAB’s tireless team of editors who continue to fill it with the best art information in either city.

More about the apps (and screenshots) over on the TABlog.

Sharp-eyed sugar addicts living in Japan may have noticed by now that Meiji Seika Kaisha, Ltd, one of Japan’s biggest confectionery manufacturers, and Meiji Dairies Corporation, a major dairy manufacturer, have shed their previous identities to share a single new brand mark, reflecting the establishment of Meiji Group in April of this year.

Design no Tobira reminds us that Meiji Seika’s previous logo was the work of design legend Yusaku Kamekura (1915-1997). Best known for his poster work for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics and his logos for Nikon, NTT and many other Japanese brands, Kamekura was largely responsible for the establishment of graphic design, as a profession in Japan in the early 1950s.

Kamekura’s 1971 design was actually a tune up of a similar wordmark that had adorned Meiji milk bottles since 1964. Ikko Tanaka, another graphic design giant known for his powerful posters and co-development the Muji concept, provided Kamekura with color direction, perhaps taking inspiration from the orange ink on the original bottles.

Photo by Gen Kanai

Kamekura’s wordmark is most strongly associated with the beloved Meiji Milk Chocolate wrapper design, combined with a mismatched script and ornamental linework in an expression of elegance typical of Showa-era rōmaji typography.

Meiji Dairies previous wordmark was designed in 1986 by Takenobu Igarashi, a sculptor, product designer and graphic designer.

Top Left: Old logo for Meiji Dairies Corporation; Bottom Left: Old logo for Meiji Seika Kaisha Ltd; Right: New logo for Meiji Group

Designed by the Tokyo office of Landor Associates, the new wordmark continues several trends from the last few five years of corporate ID, with its switch from serif to sans, casual lowercase m, child-safe rounded edges and chubby strokes. Perhaps the most memorable element is the soft curve of the m leading towards the left-most stem, a pleasing shape that, as noted on Wikipedia, resembles a dollop of whipped cream.

From the press release:

“Through the use of a soft, voluptuous font and congenial lowercase letters, This brandmark expresses the gaiety of our “food and health” focused group, as well as the warm connection of each of our individual customers. The shape of the “iji” also recalls the shape of people snuggled together and supporting each other.

Our brand color is red. It is the first color people recognize after birth, a color which evokes dynamism and life itself. We hope this mark lives alongside and continues to be loved by every generation, from infants to the elderly.”

Mid-sixties Meiji milk bottle. Image courtesy of 漂流乳業

To twist this pretzel even further, the new letterforms bear a strong resemblance to those used on milk bottles just before the introduction of the high-contrast serifed italics which Kamekura later refined. In logo design, it is both common and often fruitful to look back to previous solutions first, before striking ahead with a completely new idea. But rarely does this require stepping over work so deeply ingrained in a national psyche by several designers of the highest pedigree. Only the yet-unnamed designer at Landor knows whether this new Meiji was a defiant attempt to correct a 45-year mistake, or a respectful close to a 45 year loop.

This writing was enthusiastically, but hastily researched over a weekend in an attempt at timeliness. Please send us any corrections and we’ll post ‘em here. Now go drink your milk.

Like the Seto Inland Sea, Niigata’s countryside has experienced rapid depopulation over the last few decades, with devastating consequences to the local economy. The triennial started in 2000, led by general producer Soichiro Fukutake and general director Fram Kitagawa. This year marks its fourth edition, with 350 artworks scattered across 750 km².

Disembarking in Echigo Yuzawa

Tatsuo Kawaguchi “Relation-Blackboard Classroom／Relation-Farmer’s Work”

Tatsuo Kawaguchi “Relation-Blackboard Classroom／Relation-Farmer’s Work”

Tatsuo Kawaguchi “Relation-Blackboard Classroom／Relation-Farmer’s Work”

We stayed at Sansho House, a school house converted into a lodging facility, with bunkbeds and homemade meals with local ingredients.

Next time, maybe we’ll try for Dream House By Marina Abranovic. Guests sleep in wooden boxes with crystal pillows wearing special pajamas designed by the artist. The next morning they write their dreams in a book embedded in the bed.

Dream House By Marina Abranovic

Lauren Berkowitz “Harvest House”

Sotaro Yamamoto “Yard of Doors”

Planning. . .

On the first day, we had a tasty vegan lunch prepared by local oba-sans at Jean-Luc Vilmouth’s “Cafe Reflet”, a cafeteria furnished in all sky blue, with mirrored table surfaces.

Jean-Luc Vilmouth’s “Cafe Reflet”

A group fav was Junichi Kurakake + Nihon University College of Art Sculpture “Shedding House”. An old, unused house was meticulously carved on every surface, including the wooden sandals in the entranceway.

Junichi Kurakake + Nihon University College of Art Sculpture “Shedding House”

Junichi Kurakake + Nihon University College of Art Sculpture “Shedding House”

Junichi Kurakake + Nihon University College of Art Sculpture “Shedding House”

For “The Last Class”, Christian Boltanski＋Jean Kalman repurposed an entire school in a dark meditation on the absence of human presence.

Christian Boltanski＋Jean Kalman “The Last Class”

One room reproduces the rhythm of actual human heartbeats using massive vibrating speakers and a single incandescent bulb:

Janet Cardiff & George Bures Miller “Storm Room”

Claude Leveque “In silence or in noises”

Claude Leveque “In silence or in noises”

Claude Leveque “In silence or in noises”

Harumi Yukutake “restructure”

You can see many more photos by Tomomi, Ryan, Naoki, and myself on Flickr.

Until next year!

On why he still works on so many records at relatively low rates:

“If you think about records that are made over months for superstars, those are horrible, horrible records [...] whereas records that you knock out in a weekend, a lot of those are pretty good records, and more importantly, if you work on 50 or 100 records a year you have a much better likelihood of a couple of them being really great experiences than if you work on two records a year. If you’ve worked on two records a year and they both suck, then you’ve blown a year.”

On his production style:

“Most bands are plenty good, they don’t need a lot of production. Most bands, if you allow them to do what they do naturally, you’ll get a pretty good representation of the band, and generally speaking it’ll be a satisfying experience.

When you start deconstruction a band into its component parts and parsing music out into lyrics and choruses and verses and riffs and bridges and turnarounds and fills and modulations and stuff, then you work on all these elements individually and then try to reassemble them into a simulacrum of what the band was doing organically. That makes freakish records that don’t represent the bands.”

Japanese site and a full write-up on the way.

Tokyo Art Map was recently featured in the Japanese book Layouts for Catalogs and Pamphlets (カタログ・パンフレットのレイアウト）. The book is published once a year as a selection of print design case studies based on real projects in a variety of categories. The art map spread explains some of the thinking behind our design decisions, including typefaces, colors, and format details like the index tabs.

In other news, the latest edition of the map is now available at over 450 locations throughout Tokyo, with a illustrated suggestion from Eiko on how to make it through this year’s rainy season.

Recently, we started working on a new project with a quick launch cycle and several dev projects moving at once. We’re tracking the project with Google Analytics, and as you can imagine, there have been a lot of bumps large and small to follow in our stats.

One team member suggested that we keep a log of our releases so we understand how they correspond to changes in traffic patterns. That got me thinking, “it’d be nice to track releases in GCal and have them appear on Analytics timelines.”

This would be especially useful for large organizations where stakeholders not directly involved in the website are occasionally checking Analytics to understand which web projects are paying off, and how the site is affecting their business.

I mocked this up quickly, taking design guidance from Google Finance. If anyone at Mountain View is listening, this one’s on the house!