Valentine Makhouleen — interactive art director

Same information, better design

Valentine — Fri, 24 May 2013 16:05:51 +0000

Compare the two interfaces below. They should both convey the same type of information, although one of them does it a lot better. Which one do you think does a better job?

vs

One interface is from the recently-redesigned Environment Canada Weather page and another is from the Icelandic Met Office. One forces you to click around aimlessly across multiple pages until you find the information you need (or give up and just go straight to Google). Another one lets you access all of the information at a glance via a simple drag action.

Only one of these examples successfully marries form with function and keeps the user in mind.

Underground library

Valentine — Thu, 23 May 2013 13:44:53 +0000

Ourit Ben-Haim takes photos of people reading on the New York subway and documents their reading choices on the Underground New York Public Library.

View the rest of the series

Music in colour

Valentine — Tue, 14 May 2013 15:54:40 +0000

Great music video by Blockhead titled “The Music Scene”.

Explore the world & play

Valentine — Sat, 11 May 2013 15:46:55 +0000

GeoGuessr puts you in a random place anywhere in the world and you have to guess where you are. Careful, you might spend a lot of time playing this!

Play at geoguessr.com

Via @jeff_macgregor

Great cities by starlight

Valentine — Fri, 03 May 2013 17:27:10 +0000

Thierry Cohen combines photos of great cities with a clear starry sky. Dark city landscapes feature clear starry skies taken at a different location to match what would have been visible in the city without light pollution.

New York

San Francisco

Tokyo

See the rest of the series

The Last Question

Valentine — Thu, 02 May 2013 20:23:22 +0000

Published in 1956, the Last Question is one of Asimov’s most acclaimed short stories.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojEq-tTjcc0

You can read it in full here.

A hurricane on Saturn

Valentine — Wed, 01 May 2013 20:39:02 +0000

NASA Cassini spacecraft provided us with the first close-up, visible-light views of a gigantic hurricane around Saturn’s north pole. Truly stunning.

The spinning vortex of Saturn’s north polar storm resembles a deep red rose of giant proportions surrounded by green foliage in this false-color image from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI

The north pole of Saturn, in the fresh light of spring, is revealed in this color image from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI

This spectacular, vertigo inducing, false-color image from NASA’s Cassini mission highlights the storms at Saturn’s north pole. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI

Via NASA

Poetry between the lines

Valentine — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 21:01:30 +0000

By Austin Kleon

Grasshopper – next generation space flight

Valentine — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 17:30:18 +0000

This revolutionary new design for a rocket that is able to perform multiple take-offs and landings will change space exploration forever. This means that rockets can now be used multiple times instead of shedding their segments once at every stage of leaving the orbit.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NoxiK7K28PU

SpaceX’s Grasshopper flies 820 feet, tripling its March 7th leap. Grasshopper is a 10-story Vertical Takeoff Vertical Landing (VTVL) vehicle that SpaceX has designed to test the technologies needed to return a rocket back to Earth intact. While most rockets are designed to burn up in the atmosphere during reentry, SpaceX’s rockets are being designed to return to the launch pad for a vertical landing.

Head spinning

Valentine — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 20:57:29 +0000