The Weekly Wraparound: October 7
Article by
AIGA editorsOctober 7, 2011
Thursday’s
Design Envy post featured Graham Roberts and his team’s elegant explanation of the 9/11 Memorial for the
New York Times.
Editors’ note: “The Weekly Wraparound” is an editorial roundup of links to the week’s best design stories, posted every Friday by the editorial staff of AIGA.org. For recommendations all week long, follow us on Twitter at
@AIGAdesign. And note that next week we’ll be at “Pivot: AIGA Design Conference” in Phoenix, so we won’t be posting. Look for a double edition on October 21, and follow #AIGApivot for the latest news from the event.
We
started the week excited about Adobe’s announcements on where digital
publishing is headed and end it mourning the loss of one of the greatest
innovators and design champions of our time. Here’s a filtered look at
some of the stories we followed.
1.
The
overwhelming response to the passing of Steve Jobs was to be expected,
and yet still came as a surprise. Perhaps you’ve already grown tired of
the tributes, but we’ve only just
begun to process his impact on business, technology and culture. So we
say, keep those articles and essays coming! Because talking about Steve
Jobs and Apple means talking about design and the pivotal role design plays. On this site, we hope you’ve checked out
Tom Hapgood’s essay on what Steve Jobs has meant to designers, and Ric
Grefé’s call for your stories and perspectives. Here are more links
you shouldn’t miss:
2.
Molly Renda curated Design Envy
this week. Based in Piedmont, North Carolina, she designs books,
periodicals, exhibits and ephemera, and recently became the exhibits
librarian at the Special Collections Research Center at NC State
University Libraries in Raleigh. Not surprisingly, then, her selections
celebrate work in print—from the Matsumoto-designed exhibition catalog on Alexander McQueen to “The Library: A Museum,” an exhibition-design
course inspired by the wonders of rare books. What do you think of her
picks? Vote and add your comments. The most popular designs will become
part of a special collection in the AIGA Design Archives.
3.
At Monday’s Adobe MAX conference, Adobe made some big announcements, including the introduction of six new touch-based apps and Creative Cloud, a cloud-based service offering 20 GB of storage and a hub for viewing, sharing and syncing content. The company also announced the acquisition of web-font service Typekit,
which will continue to be a stand-alone product but also be available
via the Creative Cloud. And coming in November, single-edition licenses
for the Digital Publishing Suite will offer individual designers
and smaller studios greater access to Adobe’s publishing tools. UK-based
@GymClassMag tweeted, “Great news for indie publishers,” and, on the Imprint blog, Patric
King also noted this potential in his post, “Your Industry Changed (Again) Yesterday.”
4.
The Atlantic
launched a new blog called Cities, focusing on “the most innovative
ideas and pressing issues facing today’s global cities and
neighborhoods.” It includes design coverage by Allison Arieff and articles by Richard Florida on jobs and the economy, focused particularly on the creative class and the Global Creativity Index. Florida notes “substantial job growth” for the creative sector, including a 45-percent increase in jobs
for designers. That’s what we like to hear!
5.
And finally, we love that the Velojoy blog noticed all the bike-centric designs selected in this year’s “365: Design Effectiveness” competition and—speaking of patterns—how Dave Gilson points out “a long American tradition of mixing economic populism with cephalopods” in political cartooning in his post “Octopi Wall Street!” for Mother Jones.
What have you been checking out this week? Let us know what we missed in the comments.
Compiled by Sue Apfelbaum and Rasika Welankiwar