Being Designerly - Issue 10 - Empathy and reads related to the senses

WELCOME

Being Designerly is about designer-like behaviors and habits. Empathy is one of them and the first couple of curated articles in this issue are related to empathy.

Other curated links involve the senses of sight (periodic table), taste (chocolate), sound (LEGO) and smell (typographical perfume)!

Being Designerly also turns double digits with this issue!

EMPATHY

Philips and Disney join forces to improve the healthcare experience of children

If you've ever been in an MRI machine, you know what its like. How do you create an experience that is less stressful for a child who views the machine as a long, dark tunnel that slowly swallows them, with no one around them?

It begins with the designerly habit of empathy.

Tweet by Voilà: Francis Gagnon on Twitter

This tweet highlights a limitation of a NYTimes data visualization of the casualties of Coronavirus by reducing people to dots on a page / screen.

How do you bring empathy to visualize this information? https://mkorostoff.github.io/hundred-thousand-faces/, by Matt Korostoff, used computer-generated images to curate a demographically accurate view of the actual victims, accounting for age, race, and gender.

Note that the site has 300K faces (current US death toll is: 519K)

VISUAL

Amazon just fixed its controversial new app icon

Amazon's app icon was recently refreshed to show Amazon's signature arrow on a package, along with a hint of the company's bright blue parcel tape. That tiny strip of blue tape, when placed above the 'smile', looked a little like a moustache. And not just any moustache, but, according to Twitter, a rather familiar one.

Rich Gradients Flow Through a Luxe Set of Chocolate Bars with Matching Packaging

Growing up, chocolate came in one color. Then they added the ends of the white and dark spectrum.

We've come a long way. These white-chocolate treats are produced from cocoa beans grown on a farm in Sulawesi, Indonesia, and then dyed naturally with fruits, teas, and other edibles. Their luxe aesthetic dovetails with equally sumptuous flavors, including black pepper yuzu, matcha raspberry, and cassis brandy, all of which coincide with one of Japan’s four seasons. Pick up a single bar, or more realistically try all 12.

The new USPS trucks are delivering strong reactions — here are some first-class responses

Does it remind you of a robotic Beluga whale? Leave the visual design apart, it is redesigned to be environmentally friendly, as well as safer and more comfortable for drivers.

TOOLS

Google Fonts now supports open source icons

From their blog: "We believe that everyone should have access to quality design resources, so Material Icons are open source and available under the Apache 2.0 license. We’re also planning to add other select open source icon sets to Google Fonts in the future."

GEAR

Love typography? Now you can smell like it!

Designers Rob Stolte and Maarten Dullemeijer from Dutch design studio Autobahn recently launched their interdisciplinary design project GLYPHS - The Alphabetic Perfume Collection.

It is a series of niche perfumes based on the historical origins of the Latin alphabet. A great gift for typography nerds!

INSPIRATION

Periodic Table of Elements in 3D

Get inspired by a 3D project on Behance exploring some of the elements of the periodic table and how/where they are used in our daily lives. Part 1 has helium, hydrogen, tin, tungsten, neon, iron and sodium rendered in 3D.

NEWS

When Design Flops

The exhibition Flops! When design gets tangled up offers you an informal and humorous look at the flops of design. The show spotlights 40 objects from psychologist Samuel West’s Museum of Failure, which opened in Sweden in 2017.

UNTIL NEXT TIME

I hope you enjoyed this issue, and the articles that touched on so many of the senses!

I'm looking for feedback, of the brutally honest kind, so this can improve over time. You can reach me at lycerejo (at) gmail.com - thank you!

Onward and upward from a two digit issue to the day when it hits 3 digits!