I could gripe…

I could gripe about the usability of this site, but it’s charming in its way. It makes every possible design mistake but gives off a light, naive, fun vibe.

(Warning: Loud intro music.)

Hat tip to Swiss Miss minimalissimo via Twitter.

Update (8 Feb 2010)

New Zealand twitterer infodesignr points to this site as another example of undesign (my term). IMO, it projects straightforward honesty lacks the joyfulness of Yvette’s Bridal Formal. I’m not being ironic. Still, given the content, you’d expect something mid-20-century-style Swiss School modernist, wouldn’t you?

Feel free to hunt me down and kill me for saying this, but isn’t there a slight, second-cousinly resemblance between Yvette’s and this site by the Swedish type designer Andreas Pihström?

Christopher Burd is a business analyst, writer, and information designer based in Victoria, British Columbia. His website is www.catchword.ca. You can follow him on Twitter.

A font too far

If you’re even remotely interested in typography and graphic design, you’ve probably seen the documentatry Helvetica. If you haven’t, I recommend it highly. Helvetica, the typeface, shows up just about everywhere: in corporate logos, ads for high-end luxury goods, utilitarian signage, notices at the local laundromat. It’s one strand of mid-20th-century modernist design: the search for neutral spaces, neutral means of expression. As one blogger put it, “the movie presents the typeface as an emblem of modernity, simplicity and abstraction.”

But there has to be a limit. Nowadays, under the influence of postmodernism, we tend to retro-interpret “neutralist” modernism as just another style, suggestive of rationality, technocracy, and pragmatism.

So, is Helvetica really the appropriate typeface for a plaque commemorating a visit by Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall to Victoria’s Anglican cathedral?

Christopher Burd is a business analyst, writer, and information designer based in Victoria, British Columbia. His website is www.catchword.ca. You can follow him on Twitter.

Colours in infographics

Sometimes a small change makes big difference in how an infographic communicates.

Colour choices, for example. This line graph from the London Times is in many ways a good one: it presents interesting data in support of a provocative thesis. The problem lies in the muted colour coding. As several readers complained, several of the categories are too hard to tell apart, which tends to lose the authors’ point.