Articles about Design

1153. (Via BikePortland) We've seen the future of the old Sellwood Bridge, and we like what we see.There are some gorgeous design thoughts happening, everything from cable-stayed to through-arch for the higher-priced options to a beguiling delta-frame bridge and a simple box-girder design that, while relatively plain next to the other glamour-pusses, is still elegantly-designed. Here's the rundown of concept imagery, nicked wholesale from the Sellwood Bridge Project's site:The Sellwood Bridge Project is running a survey right now on these visual design options. The BikePortland blog suggests we take it, and we endorse that suggestion. Just go the home page there and look for the splash graphic at the top of the right sidebar. It won't take long.

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1144. Doing a Google search on the keywords sign toppers today, I came on the program that the community association of an area of Gwinnett Country, Georgia known as Peachtree Corners (this being a part of the northern part of the Greater Atlanta area) has implemented to increase community pride: tastefully designed sign-toppers, reasonably priced at $50 a throw. Any citizen can buy one, and the County will apparently install them for you, free of charge. In viewing the unveiling of one, I got an unexpected gift: a good look at the rather well-designed sign blades that presumably are standard in Gwinnett County: Peachtree Corners, GA, County road blades with neighborhood sign topper. Photo by Sean Dunlap; used with permission This design works well; it gets a lot right. The street name (or specific) is big and clear, in a an FHWA-Variant font, and in mixed case, which is actually more readable than completely majuscule (we'll discuss

Dear Copious Dissenters To celebrate this Thanksgiving, we have redesigned our blog again - slightly. We had complaints from many of you that the RED was too overbearing. Consequently, we added a darker/ softer touch. We hope you all approve. But, as you can see, we kept the overall layout, and will probably keep it this way for quite some time. We have received a very favorable response... Click the Headline Link to Visit Copious Dissent and Read the Full Story.

1141. We return to the street blade beat with a couple more from the Heartland, courtesy of our Mid-Continent Bureau Chief, Stan Kost. This following image should have some resonancy with you if names of jazz like Count Basie and Charlie Parker mean anything to you:What we have here is a couple of blades out of the heart of the 18th & Vine National Historic district in Kansas City, MO. As it happens, 18th & Vine had a hot jazz scene back in the day, and some of America's more famous jazz musicians came from or passed through there; it's credited with being one of the cradles of jazz in America. It's said that the KC flavor of jazz has its own spice to it; I'm no jazz fan, so I'll have to take Wikipedia's word for it (for what it's worth, the entry on 18th & Vine seems written by a fan, but there's Wikipedia for you). It is known as the historic center of KC's African-American community. Technically speaking, the street signs are very simply informat

1139. Regular visitors to this blog will notice an addition to the header image: a line of words. Mousing over them, one should find that one's mouse pointer goes from the arrow to the pointy finger. Clicking on those image hotspots will cause things to happen. How can this be?Simple: we can haz image mapz naow. This is something that I've wanted to implement for quite a while, but since I've never quite grokked Blogger's implementation of HTML/XML, I've held off. What we have here is called a client-side image map. This means that the markup code is in the HTML and interpreted by the browser. The way I thought I would have to approach this is by image slicing from either Photoshop or Illustrator, and uploading the slices. Bloggers new regime makes this problematic; the head widget doesn't like to work with you this way. it becomes possible, however, if you just delete the head widget code. This works for me, as all I want the the head image is to sit up there

I found a website that has so many workbenches to choose from for just about everyone needing different furniture. They were custom made by Formspace, a company that manufactures custom technical furniture, accessories, and services. It develops elegant, practical, flexible solutions for customers in laboratory, technical, drafting, material handling, and industrial environments. Now for you out there looking for any workspace that will not only accommodate your work and space but something that last, be sure to see the site for a huge selection of workbenches. I am sure you can find one that fit your needs. You can even custom design and build your own Workbench, you know. So, there you go, visit the site and see if the site has the solution for you. My husband would like one.

This two-hour program is divided into 12 chapters. Choose any chapter below and select QuickTime or Windows Media Player to begin viewing the video. If you experience difficulty viewing, it may be due to high demand. watch chapter 1 inQuicktimeWindows Media: hi | low A TOWN DIVIDED The rural community of Dover, Pennsylvania is torn apart in the latest battle over the teaching of evolution, and parents file a lawsuit against the town's school board in federal court. running time 10:50chapter 1 transcript watch chapter 2 inQuicktimeWindows Media: hi | low WHAT IS EVOLUTION? More than 150 years ago Charles Darwin developed the theory of evolution to explain how the diversity of life arose, laying the foundation for modern biological science. running time 7:04chapter 2 transcript watch chapter 3 inQuicktimeWindows Media: hi | low INTRODUCING INTELLIGENT DESIGN The Dover School Board attempts to introduce into science classro

1132. We were up in VanWA today for a few minutes doing our last apres-Con bit–ferrying a dear friend home to his humble hovel out near NE Burton Rd and NE 98th Avenue, and I was, as is my wont, eyeing the street signs as we went. Now, I've always liked the street blades in greater VanWA. Big, clear, easy to read, and affixed with the City logo on the left end (the City of Vancouver's logo is one of the best local logos we have going, too–but that's another story, which we still might touch on along the way here, but let's move on the the nub of our gist here). I noticed something different about the type out near NE 95th Ave, something about the the lower curves of the numeric glyphs. the curled up tails, rather than the 'hanging' tails I expected to see. Here, for illumination, is an angle on NE 96th Ave at Burton Road:Like I said, clear, communicative, delivers information in adverse photographic conditions. There's something unexpectedly differen

1131. Here's an interesting how-to I stumbled on via Google Alerts just now: If you ever wanted to make gel-buttons like these, this tutorial takes you step-by-step through it. It's unique for two important reasons; first, it builds a "master button" object that you can alter the colors of without reconstructing–all you have to do is change the RGB values of three of the four objects that make up the button, and second; it uses a vector drawing program to build the object, and not a pixel-based program. Being vector-based, all the components scale up without getting the bad jaggies on the sides. Go read it here. NB: the demo involves Adobe Illustrator 9, which is three versions back if you're using CS3. It has the master button graphic available for download, but I'd suggest building it from scratch–the steps are quite clearly laid out, and the processes touch on some basic skills that every Illustrator user needs to know.(NB: illustrations were nicked

1120. More anagram map fun. This one I'm pretty sure nobody else has tried yet. It's PNG. Here's the real deal.PS: Yes, I just now realized that I left some things off. There will be a revision in near future. Tags: transit, map design, map humor, anagrams, anagram transit maps

1119. In order to get Adobe AIR's branding unified, Adobe has created and debuted the AIR logo: I'm getting a discussion started over on Designorati here. I'd really be interested in hearing what people think about this (including how calling it "Adobe AIR" is the same as saying "ATM Machine" or "ABS Braking". Or, maybe not). Technorati Tags: logo design,Adobe AIR,Adobe Integrated Runtime,branding

1117. It's sure a tough world out there; if you're a wimp (who happens to live outside Redmond, Oregon), they'll put a sign on your road so bullies can find you:NW Wimp Way, greater Redmond, OR – photo courtesy CrallspaceUsed with permission And, as this street blade sighted near Veneta, Oregon (in rural Lane County about 15-20 miles west of Eugene) will attest, it's not so hard to find the route to the absurd – you just have to find the right sign:Ridiculous Rd, Veneta, OR – Photograph by CrallspaceUsed with permission Links in the text above take you to a Google Maps display of the road concerned. We note that Ridiculous Rd comes off Suttle Road, which is ironic, because ridiculousness is rarely "suttle" (subtle). Tehnically speaking, the two signs present location information in a certain way. The bare minimum is represented by the NW Wimp Way sign. It's in a location along US 97 north of Redmond called Terrebonne, an unincorporated community which is the

1112. Starting the ball rolling in our new catgory of Street Blade Gallery is long time friend of TZKT, Stan, expat Milwaukiean and still proprietor of the quirky and readable Dinglemunch. Latterly, after wedding the lovely Nicole, he relocated to Carthage, Missouri, which is along old historic Route 66 near the intersection of Kansas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas. Carthage is a town of about 13,000, and is notable because it is the county seat of Jasper County, Missouri – whose largest town is, infact, the nearby, larger, and somewhat more well-known Joplin (this is like our own Coos County, where the largest city – Coos Bay – is in fact also not the county seat, but nearby and smaller Coquille is). Carthage has its county courhouse sited in a centrally-located Courthouse Square block, outward from which the town presumably grew. As preservation-minded towns are wont to do, a historic district has been organized around this area of the central city, with some distinct

Beginning interior design is a challenging, exciting adventure that one must be willing to endure sacrifices and even at times costly mistakes in order to complete this learning successfully. If interior design is an activity that you are thinking about as a potential career, you owe it to yourself to invest the proper amount of time and energy into educating yourself in the field of creative design. If you are interested in learning about creative design for other reasons, such as designing your own space or home, it is better that you focus your attention on the particular area of design that is pleasing to you. This being said, if you have the time and energy and would like to learn more about overall designing, then hey, go for it! You might become so good at it that it might be a potential career for you as well! In any case, beginning interior design is not for the ´curious´ entrepreneur who does not possess the patience to learn the essential elements and makeup of

Beginning interior design is a challenging, exciting adventure that one must be willing to endure sacrifices and even at times costly mistakes in order to complete this learning successfully. If interior design is an activity that you are thinking about as a potential career, you owe it to yourself to invest the proper amount of time and energy into educating yourself in the field of creative design. If you are interested in learning about creative design for other reasons, such as

Have you ever wondered how you can make your home look like the place of the affluent people? Or would you just like to create an impression of classic beauty with an air of sophistication? All of these things can be made through the use of interior designs. Basically, interior design refers to the art of manipulating and forming the inner space of a house, an office, or a room, through the management of surface healing and 'spatial volume.' Interior designs are generally used to bring in the features of architecture, furniture designs, environmental psychology, and product design. All of these are combined to create an artistic projection of the area in project. The Style The interior designer should know and take into consideration the different parts of 'design styles.' These are the proportion, function of design, concept, and balance. All of these parts are important in creating the total 'look and feel' of the room. For instance, in creating the 'look and feel' of t

Have you ever wondered how you can make your home look like the place of the affluent people? Or would you just like to create an impression of classic beauty with an air of sophistication? All of these things can be made through the use of interior designs. Basically, interior design refers to the art of manipulating and forming the inner space of a house, an office, or a room, through the management of surface healing and 'spatial volume.' Interior designs are generally used

As many of you probably recognize already, we have changed the design of our blog. The load time should be significantly faster, and we have added two sidebars on the right to make everything easier to read. Thanks for putting up with any technical difficulties over the last few days as we were changing things around. Consider this an open thread. Click the Headline Link to Visit Copious Dissent and Read the Full Story.

Researchers successfully simulate photosynthesis and design a better leaf University of Illinois researchers have built a better plant, one that produces more leaves and fruit without needing extra fertilizer. The researchers accomplished the feat using a computer model that mimics the process of evolution. Theirs is the first model to simulate every step of the photosynthetic process. ...