Infographics genius: Map: Six Decades of the Most Popular Names for Girls, State-by-State, via Jezebel.
Awesomeness: John Waters gives a tour of Baltimore, from Dangerous Minds. I wish the city was still this weird.
It says what it is right on the label: Fuck You, Congress.
I’ve heard that installing and configuring Rails is a pain in the ass; Install Rails promises to help do it easily and without fuss (and with explanation). Nice!
Here’s a sobering and concise take on the government shutdown: How the White House sees the shutdown (and debt ceiling!) fight, via the Washington Post. Basically: Asshats.
There’s a ton of great stuff here: the New York Times’ 2012: The Year in Graphics.
Ooooooh, this scratches a couple of my particular OCD itches: This Guy Turns OCD Hoarding Into Amazing Photos.
In 1976, a guy tried to jump the St. Lawrence River in a yellow rocket-powered Lincoln Continental. He didn’t make it, but the story is awesome: The Devil at Your Heels. (via Bangshift)
Yahoo unveiled a new logo last week. Their CEO wrote a post about how she and a bunch of the company’s designers threw it together over a weekend. It looks like shit. I get asked to design logos all the time, and I’m greeted with amazement when I tell people how long it takes to do correctly.
Designing for mathematical consistency ignores three related factors: that identical widths and shapes appear differently to the eye in different combinations within a letter or glyph; that identical shapes blend together and are harder to differentiate across words and lines; that letters in a typeface are placed alongside each other, and one must adjust to deal with common juxtapositions.
via Yahoo’s Logo Reveals the Worst Aspects of the Engineering Mindset.
I really don’t understand why more agencies don’t give exposure to the people who do the actual work.
“Ad agencies hide the people actually solving the client’s needs, the creatives, behind bloated layers of account management to ensure maximum billing whilst everyone plays agency snakes and ladders, to the client’s detriment.”