This Graphic clearly shows the current state of the US economy in regards to job losses in a well laid out line graph. The image distinguishes different recessions by differentiating colours used. The graph also adds the length in months that jobs have been lossed.

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Information Design is the formulation and creation of visual data representation. Information Design clearly and effectively demonstrates various types of information including but not limited to; statistical, communicative, medical, instructional, user guides and more, through an engaging and comprehendable graph/table/sign or otherwise. 

Information Designers must collate (sometimes very large amounts) of data and display that in a way that easily communicates a message the data is making. 

As a graphic designer you will most likely come across this type of design at some point, so it would be advantageous to research this further, and in my next post I will show some examples of Information Design.

Firstly, this is a soundboard that is easy and fun to use. Idaft turns your keyboard into a soundboard with various Daft Punk samples. A novel concept yes, but easily demonstrates interactive design in a clear and simple manner.

Next, is a site by the name of Ingenuity Welcome by Johnson Controls. Now what I really like about this site is that through an interactive and challenging game it invites users to ‘think outsite the box’. This is a quality the company highly values, and the site is an openening for people to apply to work within the business. The fact they have taken a very different approach to advertising careers in the company highlights the way they think internally and this brings a fresh new way advertise careers. 

The site is designed very well and the interactive nature of the game is very appealing. The actual interactive component is also well designed, easy to use and learning and keeps the user engaged.

Lastly, SHSK’H is a digital showcase of works by Jody Pou and Igor Ballereau, that provides exclusive recordings only available on the site. The home page is flash based (like many interactive designs on the web) and has an elegant, simple and eye catching way to link to further content. It is very user friendly, the colour pallete is clean and works very well and the over all composition is unique and tasteful. 

Well thats all for this post, but feel free to make suggestions on further sites that should be mentioned.

First up is Twitter.com. Although Twitter has being recieving quite a lot of press as of late, it has actually been a popular micro-blogging service since 2006. The site is structured around a scommunity based system where each user will post a short (140 character max) update on what they are doing at any particular time. Users can “follow” each other, and this allows them to see a post of someone they are following. Although it sounds novel at first, it has allowed people in certain fields to “follow” other peers, working on similar projects, in similar industries and to find others with simlar interests. 

Aesthetically the site is designed with a minimal approach, and it has rich API’s for developers to write applications to access all of Twitters common functions. This has led to a slew of both desktop and mobile based applications (for those of you on Macs, Tweetdeck is an excelent solution)

Secondly we have Facebook.com. This site is currently the largest social networking site on the internet. It boasts 175 million active users and chances are you’re already on it. With such a large community and an easy to use design Facebook allows users to share many many things with more people than ever. Directly within its “Status update” form, users can share not only what they would like to say, but also other links on the internet, videos, notes, comics and more. It’s services are further expanded by applicatios that sit inside the site itself. These applications expand its funcationality with games, competitons forums and more, allowing users to collaborate and interact with each in one seamless place.

Lastly, Digg.com. This is a growing community of users that all contribute in adding links to external sites and news that interest them, when another user reads the headline and the the story, they have the choice to “digg” it if they like the post. As a story/item, gets more diggs its place gets pushed up until it reaches the first page. As you can see this is a wonderful new approach to news creation, as it is entirely user directed, and effectively forces generally interesting posts to be on the first page. Sites such as news, comedy and technology blogs have now utilised the sites ability to draw traffic and have now added “badges” to their posts that allow a person to digg the story/item directly from the post without having to be on the digg site. This then greatly increases the amount of Diggs it recieves and therefore its position on Digg.com. 

The sites layout is quite friends and easy to use, and you do not have to be a member of the “Digg community” to see and view posts. It categorises posts into several options such as Comedy, Off beat, News, Tech, Business and more, so you can see content you are interested in. If you aren’t using Digg, I recommend you do so.

Out!

Although Web 2.0 is not referring to any update in technical specifications the internet relies on, it has brought to the stage a large shift in the way developers and end users interact with the web. Web 2.0 aims to facilitate interconnectivity user input and collaboration, by leveraging the internet as a platform. Developers that embrace this perceieved second generation of  web services are creating such things as social networking sites, video hosting, blogging sites and rich internet applications that put an emphasis on user driven data.

This is an exciting and fresh way to approach the web is and has already introduced us to some of the most popular sites on the internet, so in my next post I’ll gather some sites I think are great examples of Web 2.0 and tell you why.