MOMOKO MASHUPS

Infographic on Sex

transparency: how kids are having sex

Once upon another lifetime, I was a sex ed counselor at an inner city highschool in Pasadena, California. Fresh out of college, it was an awkward yet fun experience. Somebody had to teach these highschoolers about sti’s. Anyhow, I don’t think I was good at giving advice on those things so I bonded with some of the students on things like comic books, web design, and the rules and etiquette of facebooking in highschool. Evenutally, I led a career day presentation about design and communication arts that led to a field trip to the Art Center.

This infographic summarizes my experience well. Back in 2004 Bush decided to cut all sex ed programs centered on contraceptives, and instead decided to allocate 100% federal spending on abstinence programs. Our program was at risk, but thankfully due to California’s state funded sex education program, the funding was only reduced to about 89%. Good produced this great infographic that communicates how adolescents are having sex. It’s my ah-ha moment of the day because it summarizes my first-job-of-college experience. (Later, I went on to study consumer and social behavior on millenials in Japan and North America.) I also love it beautiful design that communicates social statistics well.Oh, I’m super happy about the section titled “condoms and culture” because it seems like inner-city kids are receiving the proper sex ed that actually (works) is a bit more realistic.

Among 14- to 17-year-olds, 80 percent of boys and 69 percent of girls say they used a condom the last time they had sex, compared to well under half of sexually active adults.

I’d like to know the sample size and the geographic location of sample.

via good

Brand Thoughts: Fashionista

After publishing with a blackletter logo since 2007, Fashionista decided it was time to reconside and redesign its stoic face as well as swap its back-end CMS from Movable Type to WordPress.

The old logo was this oversized, domineering, gothic lettering thing that said “spiky, aggressive, old-school news brand.” That’s not what Fashionista is. The editors of Fashionista are excellent journalists who will be critical when it’s called for, but they’re also unashamedly fashion lovers. They might poke fun from time to time, but they’re not spiky or unnecessarily aggressive. And they’re also inherently new-generation when it comes to how they go about their business — they use a blog platform, Flip cameras, smartphones and various social media to deliver their content and engage their audience — so unless we were being very ironic with the gothic, old-school newspaper font thing it just wasn’t really appropriate. I’m also a big believer that the logo and furniture on the site should be a little subservient to the content — it’s the content that engages and the content travels well beyond the site too — so we also needed something a little less imposing.
— Jonah Bloom, CEO/Editor-in-Chief, Breaking Media

More treatments of the new logo at Brand New.

A New Kind of Typography

LAIKA from Michael Flückiger on Vimeo.

Michael Lebovitz pointed me to this cool dynamic typography tool where you manually stretch and contort the typeface. There’s a dial that controls the LAIKA typeface to elongate or widen the font. On Sputnik, the typeface is influenced by people’s swaying motions against the wall. The project is part of Michael Flückiger’s bachelor thesis and he explains his idea behind the concept:

Since not much work has been done in this field, we devised a system in which a typeface would not be defined static font styles anymore but would be able to change it‘s shape and appearance at any moment reacting to a broad spectrum of inputs.

Here are more of his typography experiments:

Details Pandoras Box from Michael Flückiger on Vimeo. Continue reading…

Visionaire 57: A Plug-In, Electric Magazine

This post was originally published on PSFK.com

The fashion and art publication Visionaire has continuously used a variety of unique formats to present its content. For the 57th issue, the publication draws inspiration from the two-seater Smart Fortwo car. Visionaire 57 “2010″ will be the first plug-in electric issue in the publication’s history. As seen in the photo above, the plug is shaped like Daimler’s compact automobile. Continue reading…

Muji Manufactured By Thonet

Thonet, the oldest furniture brand in the world and the German manufacturer of high-quality furnishings, is producing a simplified form of bentwood and tubular steel furniture for the Japanese retail chain Muji. The products are manufactured entirely at Thonet’s headquarters in Frankenberg, Germany to the company’s customary high quality standards.

Continue reading…