Design is in

Cover: Wet Apples, White Blood

Cover: One of the books from Space Opera Series

Cover: UK version of Sea of Poppies

What makes one pick up a book and even think of reading it? Apart from the format, the cover of the book plays an important role in attracting attention. If one were to buy a shirt, one can try it before buying. When we are buying a book, the cover has to speak to the eyes. 

David Drummond's body of work is what I think of, when I am talking of book covers. The cover of the Naomi Guttman's 'Wet Apples, White Blood' book should explain why I am fond of his work. I have set of five criteria to judge any work done by a graphic designer — instant likability, message, relevance, character and potential. This is one book cover that gets a yes for all five. The cover is matt laminated with a spot UV varnish on the descending drop of milk. Fascinating.

If one had to apply the set of five criteria, I think of designer Sanda Zahirovic's Space Opera Series, which is art directed by Luci Stericker. Sanda designed these series of book covers in reaction to the Student D&AD brief, for which she won a pencil. She knew that she could create a relationship between the high tech content of the books and the low tech materials used for them. The end result is both simple and striking.

I am quite kicked about UK version of the Sea of Poppies. You should check out Faceout Books, which is a decent collection of contemporary book designs. The best part of the collection is that designers are speaking about their work and that may give design students insights on book design.

A lot of you have been asking where do we find links to write about. This post was triggered off from a search in google that directed me to How Magazine site. Then in that list, I got all excited seeing this link that records the top ten sites that all designers should visit. In there, I met David and Sanda. And many faces I uncovered.

Have a great week, all of you.
By Sanjay Basavaraju

Fixing Braille printing plates

Languages are one of the oldest forms of abstraction, and ‘design’. Culture, society, and the available tools have designed every language collectively. Languages have developed and changed over hundreds, or thousands of years. One unique language, developed around 200 years ago, for a very specific need, is Braille. 

Braille was developed by Louis Braille, in the 1820s, in Paris. He had turned blind at 3, and developed a unique system while teaching at the blind school in Paris. Braille developed a code using one or more raised dots in a cell three dots high, and two dots wide. He was also an accomplished musician, and developed an application of his system for musical notation. In 1916 schools for the blind in the USA officially adopted Braille. In the 1960s, Braille seemed to be declining in popularity, as many people saw it as ‘old-fashioned’. However, children who had been trained in Braille, had much better chances of getting employment later on. The 1990s saw a revivial of Braille, partly due to computer devices and software, which enabled many blind people to read and write. 

The design of Braille is such that it appears big. Braille shortens many word and letter combinations by a system of rules called ‘grades’. One page of printed material will give 2-3 pages of Braille. Braille uses a lot of white space around letters. For this reason, the size of Braille paper is large, 11 x 11.5 inches, a standard paragraph indent is only two pages, and lines are not left between paragraphs. Braille requires unique rules of typography. 

There are no photocopy machines for Braille, but there are Braille embossers, ruggedly built to punch thousands of dots accurately in sheets of paper. Braille is embossed on both sides of paper simultaneously, aligned so that both sides are readable. 

When printing Braille documents, the challenge lies in representing illustrations, maps and images, which need tactile representation. Sight absorbs images as a whole, but touch acquires information in pieces. Most drawings and graphs have to carefully re-design for fingertips. The main principle is simplicity; all unnecessary details must be eliminated. Consistency is crucial, the appropriate symbols to represent rivers, boundaries, graph curves etc, must follow consistent guidelines. 

In India, the National Association for the Blind produces and prints books in English and the state languages. In India, Braille has been adapted for the numerous local languages. Indian languages are essentially phonetic in nature, which further enables Braille to be used as a script for writing text in different Indian languages. India has made a recommendation to UNESCO to consider a standard universal system for Braille, based on a phonetic representation of sounds using the six-dot system. Read more on standard English Braille. 

Producing Braille materials is essential, as having information when you want, at your choice of speed, and in a format you can write in, makes anyone feel more at home in the world. 

By Armeen Kapadia

Local radio broadcasting farming information

In 1970, a Canadian journalist George Atkins visited Africa and he found that Africa's farmers had ideas, but couldn't communicate those ideas because of barriers such as distance, language and literacy. He believed that radio could break those barrier.

While the Internet is being considered as the medium to spur revolutions, many have forgotten radio. The Internet is for not everyone since most of the content is either in English, Spanish or French. Many Africans don't have access to Internet. In this context, sharing information through radio is cheap and effective. Radio is often considered to be a one-way medium, but African Farm Radio Research Initiative (AFRRI) is  combining radio and Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) to gather content and to share information among farming communities throughout rural africa.

More than half of Africa's population is dependent on agriculture. Farmers in Africa are in need of information on farming. For instance, they want to know where they can buy improved seeds for the next season, where to sell their crops or how to keep the soil fertile.

Many farmers in Africa often share information through formal networks such as cooperatives and associations. The information shared here is limited. Outside the community, farmers depend on local radio. Over the recent years, the radio stations across Africa have grown rapidly. There are more than 500 radio stations in Mali, Ghana and Uganda put together. At the same time, the use of mobile phones throughout Africa is growing too. This has helped the radio presenter to encourage listeners to send in text messages requesting answers to their queries. 

Most farmers now know that Cayenne pepper discourages elephants from grazing on farm fields or the fact that placing a lit candle in a container of grain before sealing it deprives pests of oxygen. Such insights could not be shared easily until radio became a mainstream medium in Africa.

By Sanjay Basavaraju

NY Times Information Graphics

Information graphics are visual representations of data, information or knowledge, which are easier to understand than large amounts of data. Info graphics have numerous applications, in all forms of journalism, and educational material. One great resource to see various info graphics is the multimedia section of the New York Times.  

On this page, search exclusively for the word 'graphic' and there are more than 10,000 results to browse through. Each graphic representation is unique, structured exactly for the topic it deals with. It is amazing to see how vast amounts of data have been made easy to understand. Take for example the interactive graphic of How Class Works. It is interactive, engaging, visually rich, and structurally easy to grasp. Another graphic Snug and Tight, about passive housing, is not highly interactive, but is still extremely informative and interesting. Also, don't miss How Design Can Save The Democracy, which shows how a redesign of the ballot design guidelines makes a huge difference. It gives a clear cut before and after scenario, where each design decision has been justified and explained.  

Many interactive features show current events, such as the recent Air France Flight crash or tracking the swine flu. Info graphics are also useful for explaining scientific concepts, such as the New Fleet of Spacecraft. Info graphics can show narration, such as a change occurring over a long period of time, like migrations to and from New York City. They can be used to show everything, from an ecological crisis, to the reasons for recession, to Baghdad neighborhoods, carbon emissions and accidents.

There are some things all the interactive features of the New York Times have in common. They are clear, functional, and aesthetically pleasing. They make reading the article more enjoyable; in some cases they may even effectively substitute reading the article. These info graphics prove that visual representation can, and in fact should be highly functional. There is well thought out logic, order and structure behind each of them, the natural outcome of which is an aesthetic piece of communication, that, well, communicates. The forms, colour, and text are managed superbly, so as not to dominate, or distract the eye, but in fact harmoniously aid in the transmission of information. All the elements are so chosen as to cohesively make the whole. 

Exploring these representations is that rare mix of being educational and fun. More information should be made available to us this way, as it is easier for the mind to grasp these images, then miles of data, or technical terms. Info graphics of this caliber has a huge potential in education. Sometimes, a picture may really be worth a thousand words.

By Armeen Kapadia