Martin Parr’s new book called Parking Spaces is out. For € 95,- this latest binded photographic artwork can be yours.

Maybe we should port the voornopnaarpop.nl-concept from free music tickets to books. There is a lot of promo-material available out there. As long as you can create a certain reach.

Just make sure a publisher sends you a book, you publish the excerpt and some links to reviews. People sign up if they want the book. After X weeks you give the book away to a random subscriber.

Or maybe you can just write a review yourself or give it away and ask a review in return. It is all about creating the right (valuable) community / context.

Tip: Listen to an interview with Martin Parr, about how he works and about his new book.

Wieden + Kennedy, the guys behind the slogan ‘Just Do It’ redesigned the website (launched april 2nd). And they used 37signals collaboration software, that’s how I found out about it.

I like the new Wieden + Kennedy flash based website. The interface focus on information sorting by time in combination with tags. Different colors highlight people, companies, etc.. By clicking a keyword you enter a never ending 3d network with nodes. The focus is on discovering instead of retrieving.

I think good information design and storytelling will be the things that can really make a difference in the upcoming years. Websites are starting to look more similar due to effective user and usability research.

The great Phill Knight / Nike photo was found here.

This Friday the Next Web conference will be held in Amsterdam. On the website there is a 20 minute teaser movie with ‘people from the web’.

The New York Times writes about AddArt, a Firefox plugin that replaces banners with art.

What a great idea, the ad-block plug-ins are extremely popular. I’m not an ad-blocker myself and I’m not sure why people block ads? To fight the corporate world, Adbuster style? Or just to block the different intrusive information on a webpage? I guess the last one. Art instead of ads can also be intrusive, although this could be a reason for me to install an ad-blocker/art-replacer.

I wonder how this would work in print? I would love a newspaper with art by young artist instead of advertisements. The question is, how much would you pay extra for a newspaper like this?

I once read in a book about information design that in WWII the American soldiers where supplied with ad-less newspapers from home. The reason was simple. Local ads are irrelevant if you are stuck in a forest in France. The soldiers complained about the ad-less newspapers, because the positive ads balanced the news, even when irrelevant.

Download the AddArt plug-in here.

The photo above is linked from the New York Times website and is taken by Joe Fornabaio. His photos are great, make sure to check his portfolio.

Via: Marco Raaphorst

A lot of updates around voornopnaarpop this weekend. We started to spread the word ‘old-skool’ offline ;) and we presented the first KindaMuzik tickets on the website.

We updated the website with some default out-of-the-box background-grass. Festival season, here we come.

I didn’t know there was a Google patent search. This is great you can find the 1978 draft for the first patented sneaker, submitted by Aldo Gucci.

There is also a 1975 version, called sportshoe.

Yesterday Rhymo published a link to the pixelator video. I hadn’t seen this before. What a great idea, great street art.

For a few years I’m wondering how to mix all the functions I love about a blog with the great looks and impressions of information design. Somehow I can’t seem to find the perfect balance, not by myself, not on the web.

I have tried to build an interface with features like this in my graduation project. I tried it with a videoblog, a photoblog and I’m also experimenting with a portfolio. Somehow I can’t find the perfect combination. A blog is open to every format and hack. You can embed video, audio, images, interactivity or just use text. A blog can be updated instantly from anywhere.

With information design you immediately see what is in there, and you can sort the information visually. It is much more interactive.

The functions of a blog are

• easy to read
• user friendly
• scrolling (relative long compared to width)
• html
• comments
• permanent links
• great search engine optimization
• time based
• text based (blog software is text based, even when using Wordpress or Blogger for a videoblog the video is just an embedded item in the text-based structure
• tags / categories
• rss
• free format

The functions of an infographic are

• all information easily accessible and visible
• highly interactive (using flash or javascript)
• visual
• sortable by different information axis
• maps
• fast (no reloads)
• connected to realtime data (XML)
• forced format

What is great about a blog is that it uses free format. An infographic uses a forced format, because it is always data driven. I liked the experiments above. Although I think the context created around the content is far better when using an infographic styled page.

iTunes did pretty well converting the iTunes interface into an audio blogging (podcasting) interface that is something different than blog.

The iTunes interface is designed for audio and it doesn’t seem to be converting its success to video. YouTube is ‘the’ videoblog. They have the content. I’m sure that if they open the archives in different formats (instead of embedded flash) a videoblogging program or website will arise.

If you know a great website that mixes live and original data with great interaction design, please leave the url in the comments.