New York

London

Paris

Tokyo

Moscow

And finally, my local system, the relatively pathetic-looking San Francisco MUNI/BART system

See many more world subway systems at scale right here. Thanks to Adwait for the tip.

Ok, we're biased, since the list references our collaboration with FICTILIS for the Colors of Commerce exhibit. But author Jude Stewart highlights some other notables in color from 2011:

#1: On This Day calendar

Reusable for every year, this handy wall calendar consists of heat-sensitive cubes, each marking a noteworthy event from that day in history. Scribble your own notes for the year on the cube’s side, then wash-and-reuse next year - or frame and mount a year in your exceedingly colorful life.

 #9: Imprint's series on synesthesia

#6: Google Image Search by Color. More useful than I would have ever thought!

Happy 2012!

First off, Design Milk has a nice review of the best of architecture in 2011.

Then, enjoy this write-up of the Plumen light bulb by designer Samuel Wilkinson and product design firm Hulger. The Plumen was named the Design Museum's Brit Insurance Design of the Year.

Also from the Design Museum, the winner of the Brit Insurance Graphics Award for 2011 is BlogLESS favorite Homemade is Best, by Swedish Interactive graphics agency Forsman & Bodenfors.

And, finally, the interesting A Year in Web Design: How the Experts Saw 2011 from Web Design Tuts is worth a look.

Happy new year to each of you very fine BlogLESS readers.

A few options for the modern minimalist this Christmas.

Via

Via

Via

The booth features custom software that colors the the user's picture in the palette of the Seattle port. We'll post more about the project and how the booth works later, but we wanted to share an image we took from the booth while setting up.

If you happen to read BlogLESS from the Seattle area, we encourage you to stop by!

Pink Tentacle has posted an excellent collection of Japanese political posters from the last five decades of the 20th century. Here are a few of my favorites.

Poster for exhibit in support of Vietnamese women and children (Makoto Wada, 1968)

Anti-pollution poster (Kenji Ito, 1973)

Hiroshima Appeals (Yusaku Kamekura, 1983)

Goodbye whale (Mamoru Suzuki, 1994)

See more here.

The whole slide show is worth a look, but here are some favorites:

Unknown Pleasures, Joy Division (Factory, 1979), Image: Factory Records

This was the first and only time that the band gave me something that they’d like for a cover. I went to see Rob Gretton, who managed them, and he gave me a folder of material, which contained the wave image from the Cambridge Encyclopedia of Astronomy. They gave me the title too but I didn’t hear the album. The wave pattern was so appropriate.

True Faith, New Order (Factory, 1987), Image: Factory Records

This was a first work from real life. In 1986, I happened to have a trauma in my personal life and it made me very attuned to the world around me. Suddenly, I had no filters. I was parking the car one night and a leaf drifted by the window and I thought, ‘That’s so beautiful.’ It was framed by the windscreen, which is probably why I saw it as an image. So we did a leaf. I went to Windsor Great Park with photographer Trevor Key, came back with about 50 leaves and shot two or three until we found the right one. It had to be the right shape and look like it was falling. There was no digital manipulation at this point. I still have the leaf although I keep thinking that one day it will fall apart.

Total, Joy Division & New Order (Rhino, 2011), Image: Rhino Records

...I realised this was a record that would be sold in supermarkets and advertised on television. So the cover has a ‘pile it high, sell it cheap’ aesthetic....

We've written about various angles of Failure a number of times here at DLB. Sohrab Vossoughi has a pretty good article on how companies fail at design over at HBR. According to him, the keys to success for companies trying to innovate through design are being open to design, integrating design within the organization and broader practices, and aligning expectations before beginning any engagement or process:

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