piksels

I couldn’t watch this video just once. I had to watch it several times to completely absorb it. Partly due to the fast paced visuals, partly due to the great song (any one know the artist/title?), but mostly due to the great composition of the clip. The video, created by Circus Family Amsterdam (motion graphics and video studio), is basically a one minute portfolio; and personally, I’m sold:

7 Quick tips to improve your online portfolio:

1. If you got it, flaunt it.

Yes, it sounds corny, but make sure your best work shows up first. Don’t expect viewers to dig through your links to find the work you are most proud of. There is nothing worse than designers with great talent where you have to crawl through the dirt to find the treasure.

2. The one-two punch.

If you are applying for a job or position some where, don’t ever expect your portfolio to get more than 2 minutes of true viewing. Most people will have made up their mind whether they like your portfolio within the first 15 seconds, if you haven’t convinced them by then, it will be hard to change their mind afterwards (Again, point 1). Only stellar portfolios get true ‘air time’ and return visitors.

3. Little to no text.

Don’t expect viewers to read large bodies of text which may accompany the images in the portfolio. A picture is worth a thousand words, and if the images don’t clearly tell the story, find a creative way to get your message across.

4. Range

Make sure your portfolio shows off several different talents of yours. Don’t appear to be too specialized in one area, or you might miss out on other opportunities. Demonstrate your familiarity with different mediums, areas, techniques, etc.

5. Ambition

If you’ve got their attention so far, keep it. Make sure you let them know that you are planning on growing and going places. Maybe this can be presented in a short text, or something creative like mock-ups or sketches for some futuristic ingenious idea of yours.

6. Tell your story

If they are truly interested in you, make sure they can learn a little more about you. Even if this is just by adding your resume, you never know who may be watching!

7. Contact info

Make sure they can get in touch with you, add a contact form, leave an email address.

Sitting on the pot, pushing brown, descrating the throne, doing the doodly-squat, faxing a cigar to Castro, or whatever else you want to call it, it usually is our private moment of Zen.

However Monica Bonvicini came up with a design with preserves our privacy without obstructing us from the environment around us. Bonvicini’s ‘Don’t Miss a Sec’ is a public toilet built with walls of one-way mirrors. From the outside it looks like a large silver box, but inside is a toilet with a 360 degree view of the street around you.

It seems this toilet is “touring” through different cities, and will now be in the center of Rotterdam (Netherlands) until some time in November. I’m sure many of you have read about this before, so had I. But the moment I saw it in person, walked inside and started urinating while watching people walk by it amazed me how directly design had an impact on my immediate environment. It was sensational, I felt like I was starring in “Hollow Man” as I could watch world while being completely invisible to them! There is not much else I can say about

Anyone in the neighborhood should definitely take a look, because peeing in public never felt so good. The toilet is in the center of Rotterdam in front of the Stadhuis, and shouldn’t be hard to find.

Don’t know how one-way mirrors work? Read this

Today I came across two very noteworthy examples of clever information design which make understanding sets of data both more visual and relative. The best way to grasp what data means is often to put it into perspective with other sets of data so you can easily make a comparison. This is when charts and illustrations quickly become a better data medium than numbers.

How the World Really Shapes Up

The first example takes a map of the world and distorts each region size, relevant to the category it is in. For example, while viewing the map on HIV presence, Africa will be bloated compared to the rest of the world.

See more maps or read more about the project at the UK Daily Mail.

(These maps were produced together by the universities of Michigan and Sheffield)

Size of the Universe

Universcale is a very interactive example of helping us putting into perspective the size of the universe. We quickly can understand how small we are compared to the billions of light years which span across the universe, whilst still being millions of times larger than the building blocks which make up the universe.

(I found Universcale through a design website which I frequently visit, Position Absolute)

Here is a video which also helps us fathom just how large the universe really is