Recently featured on Steven Heller's "Daily Heller" blog, Jesse Willmon and Kirsten Sorton have created a hilarious reaction piece to all those who are glued to their iPhones, Blackberries and other smartphones: "We created our own version of these technological travesties to use when your friends/enemies/passing acquaintenances are being jerks with their hand-held technology." Their solution? The i-wood, a piece of wood with graphics that make it appear like a fancy schmancy smartphone. Smartass applications vary from "status symbol" to "time waster." I suppose there are equal concerns about getting this phone wet, but at a fraction of the cost, I think it's worth it just to make your point.
Courtesy of Francesco Mugnai, a Graphic Design teacher in a renowned Italian institute of Art and Design in Florence, there is now a list of fifty great examples of infographics. The entire list is available on his website here. The wide array of examples really opened my eyes to the unlimited possibilities there are for creatively depicting information but still in a sensible manner. Here are my two favorites from the list.
Inside Bob Dylan's Brain (detail available here) includes everything from bad jokes to recipes.
What's in the Customer's Mailstream? (from Deliver Magazine issue 24, page 7). This infographic breaks down what's in the average mail delivery in the U.S. The illustration is by Jude Buffum.
New illustrative advertisements for the city of New York are the epitome of cool, adopting its street vibe.
I love the color of these medicine-related icons, but the high level of detail makes me question their practicality and function in the real world (if there is one). 
Here's a cool idea for how to record the movement in a room over a particular time span.
Where do our taxes go? The budget submitted by the president every February is publicly available, but why sift through thousands of pages of government documents, when a designer can create a comprehensive information graphic to explain it all? Designer Jess Bachman created "Death and Taxes," a 6-square-foot infographic that organizes the budget into an amazing bubble diagram (available as a poster and online). Agencies are assigned their official seals and scaled according to the program's annual expense. A percentage change is also given in spending from the previous year--helpful in understanding our last president's priorities. Bachman has her work set out for her for the 2010 budget design.
Type treatment, illustration, and sophisticated silver/light gray for this brochure complement the idea of a sparkling, bubbly drink. Designer unknown.
Instead of relying on a nutrition facts label smacked on top of your beautiful design to speak of its ingredients, why can't we express your product's healthy contents through the packaging itself? Japanese industrial designer Naoto Fukasawa is one step ahead. He created a series of fruit juice packages where the packaging mimics the color and texture of the actual fruit skin. These designs are definitely not from concentrate.
Recent Yale MFA graduate Aliza Dzik is helping you mark your territory by marking her own. The use of continual type across both the women's and men's bathroom doors is a witty visual experience and an example of successful abbreviated signage. Still, it says a lot about how we process information that understanding the signage would not have been nearly as immediate if the type was the same color on both doors.
Hydrogen... Helium... Lithium... Gotham? Students have diligently analyzed the periodic table of elements hanging in classrooms for years, and design-wise the table has served as what is actually a long-lasting example of information design. Why not present a history of typefaces the same way? Like elements, typefaces also have specific properties, compositions, ways that they can be grouped (families etc.), and can produce "reactions" of sorts when used together. While I don't expect this Periodic Table of Typefaces to be hanging in mac labs anytime soon, the table lists 100 of the most popular, influential, and notorious typefaces today. The typefaces are grouped first by families and then by classes of typefaces (sans-serif, serif, script, display, geometric, humanist, slab-serif...). Each typeface cell has a logical symbol and also the designer, year designed, and a ranking of 1 through 100. Rankings were based on combining lists and opinions from a few other sites. A larger image of the entire periodic table is available here.
BBDO's Identity for "The Kitchen" - Nice use of letterpress, solid colors, and close attention to negative shapes
Willoughby Design's solution for the New Leaf 100% Recycled line ("presenting environmentally friendly paper as a stylish, even luxurious, choice for consumers. The Willoughby Design Innovation Lab helped New Leaf design a series of product lines and accompanying packaging to present personal stationery, school supplies and commodity office products in a way that proves you don’t have to sacrifice style and convenience to make responsible choices. The paper goods, available in Whole Foods, Office Depot and Target stores, use innovation to compete with non-recycled mainstream brands at a better quality, price and style."
