David McCandless is justifiably famous for his work at Information is Beautiful but as his bio on the TED website says, his “genius is not so much in finding jazzy new ways to show data [...] but in finding fresh ways to combine datasets to let them ping and prod each other.”
With free tools such as Many Eyes and Tableau it’s becoming easier and easier to visualise data (though making it look beautiful is another matter).
The real challenge now is in finding and curating data to tell a new, compelling story.
“Great design is serious (not solemn),” says Paula Scher, a New York based partner at design firm Pentagram. She argues that you do your best work when you’re having fun, exploring and not pressured by expectations.
I find the key is finding somewhere in between: creative work needs a combination of space and freedom but also a clear problem to solve.
Need more Paula Scher? Hillman Curtis has a video discussing type as image that’s also worth watching.
Documentaries are no longer passive experiences that viewers sit back and watch from start to finish. New approaches are making the user an active a participant and using alternate forms of navigation to add more context to stories.
‘CreativeMornings‘ is a monthly morning gathering of creative types in New York. Each event includes a 10 minute lecture, followed by a 20 minute group discussion. The New York Times’ Khoi Vinh recently spoke about his early life as a designer and the lessons that he learnt.
Khoi Vinh has linked to a great redesign walkthrough of the new NPR.org site. It is a beautiful piece of video that proves that even somthing like an introduction to a redesign can have a nice narrated story.