A face based on the Penrose triangle. Beautiful and brain-bending.

"The Institute For Figuring is an educational organization dedicated to enhancing the public understanding of figures and figuring techniques. From the physics of snowflakes and the hyperbolic geometry of sea slugs, to the mathematics of paper folding and graphical models of the human mind, the Institute takes as its purview a complex ecology of figuring.

"Our activities include lectures, publications and exhibitions."

All about building Tiny Houses and micro-architecture.

UK Government manual on the design and usage of road traffic signs.

UK Government specifications for road directional signs.

A carbon-neutral, 3x3x3m wooden cube house. Lovely.

A Möbius Strip-shaped gear.

Spectacular collection of title and "The End" cards from a century of film.

The history and science of human-powered stuff and what it may mean for our post-oil future.

Remarkable expanding circular wooden tables.

The true story behind the Starbucks logo.

Exactly what it says on the tin.

"McDonald's... wanted to make nutrition information more accessible and understandable to the average consumer, and determined through extensive research that visual icons representing key food nutrients (protein, for example) were the appropriate course of action. But how does one convey a nutrient in pictures when no established images exist? McDonald’s essentially had to create a new visual “language” of nutrition that could communicate with or without language."

Remarkable JavaScript bookmarklet to remove clutter from any page you're looking at and restyle the text to make it easier on the eye. Has a range of type and layout options.

Screenshots of the onomatopoeic sound effect cards from the 1960s "Batman" TV series. THWAPP! BIFF! CLANGE! (Clange?)

"Just as it would be difficult to imagine the Cold War without the Berlin Wall or the American-Soviet "hotline," it would be equally hard to consider this tense era without the instantly recognizable National Fallout Shelter Sign."

"The Hexayurt is a new kind of sheltering solution. To make the simplest hexayurt, make a wall by putting six sheets of plywood on their sides in a hexagon. Cut six more sheets in half diagonally, and screw them together into a shallow cone. Lift the roof on to the wall with a large group of people, then fasten it down with more screws. Seal and paint it for durability. Your basic hexayurt is complete. This shelter will last for years in most climates and costs less than $100. This basic design can be improved with proper windows, doors, room partitions, stove fittings and other architectural features. More durable materials could give it a very long life. "

[[ "This room — the “maximum kitchen,” he calls it — and the “video game room” he was sitting in minutes before are just 2 of at least 24 different layouts that Mr. Chang, an architect, can impose on his 344-square-foot apartment, which he renovated last year. What appears to be an open-plan studio actually contains many rooms, because of sliding wall units, fold-down tables and chairs, and the habitual kinesis of a resident in a small space. As Mr. Chang put it, “I glide around.” ]]

Gallery of some of the best designed subway stations in the world.

Urbanist blog about life in and improvements being made to Washington DC.

"In this essay, I will illuminate Corbusier’s thought using the model of the Radiant City (1930-1935). I will show how his utopian perspective is egregiously flawed and how this vision has been harmful for the practice of city planning in our life-world. I will also comment on the alternative vision offered by the sustainable city of Yanarella and Levine."

"Le Corbusier was to architecture what Pol Pot was to social reform. In one sense, he had less excuse for his activities than Pol Pot: for unlike the Cambodian, he possessed great talent, even genius.... When one recalls Le Corbusier’s remark about reinforced concrete—“my reliable, friendly concrete”—one wonders if he might have been suffering from a degree of Asperger’s syndrome: that he knew that people talked, walked, slept, and ate, but had no idea that anything went on in their heads, or what it might be, and consequently treated them as if they were mere things."

"The Open Share Icon is designed to help users easily identify shareable content... [it] conveys the act of sharing by visually representing one hand passing an object to another hand, as in 'pass it on' or 'sharing'. The icon also represents an 'eye', as in 'look at this'."

"The patterns in this collection are social design patterns (a.k.a. social user experience design patterns). They are interaction pattern for people designing social interfaces."

"When... "legitimate" systems of communication fail individuals or groups in a society, people often turn to illegal ways of communicating with both each other and the system attempting to control them.... I'm going to discuss four historical examples here; Paris in May 1968, Nicaragua in the late 1970s, South Africa in the early 1980s, and finally Argentina from 2001-04."

"In this article, we explore the types of interfaces that could result if we violate each of the Macintosh human interface design principles. We focus on the Macintosh interface because it is a prime example of the current interface paradigm, and Apple Computer has published an explicit list of Macintosh human interface design principles.... We should state at the outset that we are devoted fans of the Macintosh human interface and frequent users of Macintosh computers. Our purpose is not to argue that the Macintosh human interface guidelines are bad principles, but rather to explore alternative approaches to computer interfaces. The Anti-Mac interface is not intended to be hostile to the Macintosh, only different."

"The functional home of 1,600 square feet is what Austin calls, “the ultimate desert structure.” It’s built with recycled and durable materials, as well as a prominent steel canopy that shelters and shades the home."

"Oobject is a design blog all about technology. We create hundreds of lists of unusual or interesting gadgets which are ranked by user votes, much like music charts."

Skull-faced biker helmet. Awesome.

The Futuro: saucer-shaped future house of the 1960s.

Bikes with frames grown from bamboo. *Very* 21st Century.

"Most people do not want a computer. They don't even want software."

"Architronic [was] a scholarly refereed journal, exploring the new ranges of architectural communication available through digital media... a platform for both presenting and reviewing research... and a forum for stimulating dialogue on emerging ideas."

I have to admit, this rethink of Coke packaging is really, really attractive.

[[ Rotor is an experimental script created to realize the concept of letters that literally move on the “page”. It consists of seventeen minimal pairs of graphemes in which the members of each pair are identical except for the way they move ]] Aagh!

£12 from the IHT via their old-fashioned ecommerce system (print out the price list and post it to them woohoo).

Whacking great report about the TTC's failure to uphold typographical standards in the signs of the Toronto subway network.

Photographs of neon OPEN signs.

Well well. It's been a long time since I saw the RAW name. Is this related to the original, I wonder?

Dodgy online copy of the book by Steven Skiena.

"The Government of Abu Dhabi has unveiled Plan Abu Dhabi 2030: Urban Structure Framework Plan, a comprehensive plan for the development of the city of Abu Dhabi that will guide planning decisions for the next quarter of a century."

Some interesting ideas for fixing the mess that the Tube map is turning into, plus designs for possible future system extensions.

Tom Phillips painted on the pages of a Victorian novel, leaving only occasional words of his own choice peeking out, transforming the original book into something entirely new.

"Welcome to the home page for my book, Underground Maps After Beck. Here, you will find more information about the book, myself, and my other pages about Underground maps."

"All common monospaced fonts have hinting imperfections from 9 to 12 points and above. All but Pragmata."

"This site provides a guide to color design for information visualization... to help designers who are not color experts find usable color designs."

"What's the difference between Times Roman and Times New Roman?"

The best of 2006.

Personal vehicles for use on abandoned rail or tram tracks.