360angles

This is good information design. It’s the back of a new coin that won a Dutch design contest and will soon be in circulation. Some details about the above picture:

• The contest was to design a coin that was a tribute to Architecture…
• The ring of buildings is made up of books that are either by or about famous Dutch Architects or Dutch Architecture.
• The negative space in the center of the ring is a rough outline of the Netherlands.
• There are 12 birds, each one flying over the capital of each of the 12 Dutch provinces.

More pics of the process below.

Here’s the final product:

This was just the back; the front is great as well. Read the blogpost by the creator. He explains his thought process and provides pics every step of the way.

I happened to be flipping through an old yearbook the other night and noticed something … BAD layout. For those of us still in school, it has started up again. And although we’re months away from the handout of yearbooks, the process of brainstorming yearbook layout design ideas has begun. It’s not so much the actual picture pages, but the pages in between where the structure falls apart. In most yearbooks, the layout and design are done by the students themselves and I know when I was in high school I didn’t have the best ideas about yearbook layout.

Here you can find a quick 3-part tutorial for using grids for designing a layout.

And here’s a guide to designing to make sure your layout passes the C.R.A.P. test.

Even if you aren’t a budding designer, articles like these aren’t a bad refresher.