Sign­Sphere is a monthly col­lec­tion of design inspi­ra­tional arti­cles, web­sites and more. This month the roundup is a col­lec­tion of typog­ra­phy, design, UX, wayfind­ing and data visu­al­iza­tion design. If you have any­thing you want to share please use the con­tact form to send infor­ma­tion for future episodes of Sign­Sphere. Enjoy reading!

Arrow & Icons Magazine

The niche mar­ket wayfind­ing and envi­rone­men­tal graphic design is grown­ing on the inter­net, many com­pa­nies start their own blog and star­tups in the field are emerg­ing, visit the wayfind­ing and design blogs below to be updated with the lat­est infor­ma­tion in this field.

Arrows & Icons is an online mag­a­zine devoted to the field of Envi­ron­men­tal Graphic Design. It is a place where design­ers of any expe­ri­ence level can come together to read, learn, share ideas, and engage in com­mu­nity cen­tered around a com­mon passion.

Oper­ated by Ryan Las­cano he shares his knowl­edge and from the fel­low con­trib­u­tors, a great blog.

Some of its pre­vi­ous highlights:

• What is envi­ron­men­tal graphic design?
• New Jer­sey wayfind­ing, guest arti­cle by Kelly Ben­nett and Amy Rees
• Visit the web­site Arrows & Icons or sub­scribe to the RSS feed.

Soci­ety for Envi­ron­men­tal Graphic Design

The global com­mu­nity of peo­ple work­ing at the inter­sec­tion of com­mu­ni­ca­tion design and the built environment.

The Soci­ety for Envi­ron­men­tal Graphic Design has a long his­tory on pro­vid­ing qual­ity indus­try news through their mag­a­zine and com­mu­nity. The world­wide highly appre­ci­a­tion for the mem­bers and staff has put the SEGD on top of the infor­ma­tion source. The blog is a con­stant update on sub­jects such as EGD, Typog­ra­phy, Design, Archi­tec­ture, Com­mu­ni­ca­tion and more.

• Visit the blog of SEGD or sub­scribe to the RSS feed.

ID/Lab wayfind­ing blog

ID/Lab wayfind­ing blog is a place to exchange ideas about wayfind­ing, place­mak­ing, human fac­tors sci­ence and envi­ron­men­tal graphic design.

ID/Lab an Aus­tralian based wayshow­ing con­sul­tancy firm and good frieds of design­work­plan recently released a blog about their field of work. Look­ing for­ward read­ing more about their phi­los­o­phy on wayshowing.

Pre­vi­ous highlights:

• Thingfinding-Where is this place?
• Visit the ID/Lab blog or sub­scribe to the RSS feed.

Johnny Hol­land Magazine

Inter­ac­tion Design (IxD) is the study of devices with which a user can inter­act. The prac­tice typ­i­cally cen­ters around embed­ding infor­ma­tion tech­nol­ogy into the ambi­ent social com­plex­i­ties of the phys­i­cal world. Wikipedia

All Johnny talks about is focused on one aspect: inter­ac­tion. He believes that this is the most impor­tant part in com­mu­ni­ca­tion. Instead of focus­ing on the means by which we com­mu­ni­cate we have to think of cause and effect.

Johnny Hol­land is great web­site about all that involves inter­ac­tion design, user expe­ri­ence design, meth­ods & the­ory, phys­i­cal inter­ac­tion and much more. With over 20 expe­ri­enced writ­ers from all over the world Johnny Hol­land is a great infor­ma­tion resource.

• Visit Jonny Hol­land Mag­a­zine or sub­scribe to the RSS feed.

UX Mag­a­zine

UX Mag­a­zine was cre­ated to deliver a cen­tral place to dis­cuss the crit­i­cal dis­ci­plines that all enhance user expe­ri­ence. Extra­or­di­nary user expe­ri­ences should be the goal of every inter­ac­tion you deliver to your users at any level.

UX Mag­a­zine hold a great archive of user expe­ri­ence arti­cles that apply to design, inter­ac­tion, tech­nol­ogy, strat­egy and more.

• Visit UX Mag­a­zine or sub­scribe to the RSS Feed.

idsgn (new) typog­ra­phy and design blog

Typog­ra­phy and design is every­where and design­ers use typog­ra­phy as a tool to express the visual com­mu­ni­ca­tion. There are many many blogs about this field of exper­tise but some star­tups really gets my attention.

idsgn is a new blog about the things we see and enjoy (or some­times hate) as design­ers. We like to talk about graphic design, brand­ing, typog­ra­phy, and some­times we might post a video or two.

idsgn has a hightl inspi­ra­tional level of bring­ing arti­cles into the blog, with detailed and up-to-date resource infor­ma­tion they know what they are talk­ing about. Great new blog added to my RSS reader.

• Visit idsgn (new) design blog or sub­scribe to the RSS feed.

Infor­ma­tion Visu­al­iz­ing: Infosthetics

Latelty I have been really into infor­ma­tion graph­ics and the visu­al­iz­ing design, mak­ing infor­ma­tion read­able and under­stand­able for large audi­ences. There are sev­eral great blog that I found that share infor­ma­tion about how to design infor­ma­tion. Below you will find a list of inspi­ra­tional web­sites in the field on infor­ma­tion visualizing.

Inspired by Lev Manovich’s def­i­n­i­tion of “infor­ma­tion aes­thet­ics”, this weblog explores the sym­bi­otic rela­tion­ship between cre­ative design and the field of infor­ma­tion visualization.

Infos­thet­ics is a great show­case of infor­ma­tion design and visu­al­iza­tion, with exam­ples of show­ing com­plex infor­ma­tion, Infos­thet­ics is a great place to gain inspi­ra­tion from.

• Visit the web­site infos­thet­ics or sub­scribe to the RSS feed.

Infor­ma­tion is beautiful

David McCan­d­less from Infor­ma­tion is beau­ti­ful is inter­ested in how designed infor­ma­tion can help us under­stand the world, cut through BS and reveal hid­den con­nec­tions, pat­terns and sto­ries under­neath. Or, fail­ing that, it can just look cool

Infor­ma­tion is beau­ti­ful says it all and the blog goes deeper into shar­ing infor­ma­tion, ideas, knowl­edge and data. With many inspi­ra­tional exam­ples of show­ing com­plex infor­ma­tion in a easy to read and under­stand­able design.

• Visit Infor­ma­tion is Beau­ti­ful or sub­scribe to the RSS feed.

Web Trend Map

The Web Trend Map com­mu­nity curates mean­ing­ful link trends by choos­ing sources they trust.

Founded by infor­ma­tion­Ar­chi­tects this great visu­al­iza­tion web­site shows trust­worhty links by Twit­ter users. The users can cre­ate maps where they place their trusted Twit­ter friends on, the sys­tem tracks the tweets and puts them in a top trend­ing links.

• Visit the web­site Web­trendmap and be sure to visit design­work­plan webtrendmap

make this simple

seethis­make­sense aims to seek out the worst exam­ples of con­fus­ing information

make this sim­ple is a new web­site about infor­ma­tion design fails, they show an image of a map, instruc­tions, let­ters, sig­nage or related infor­ma­tion design and the com­mu­nity can have their say on the design and if it should be redesigned. Look­ing for­ward see­ing a good inter­ac­tive talk com­ming from make this simple.

• Visit the web­site make this sim­ple or sub­scribe to the RSS feed.

Enjoy read­ing

Thank you for read­ing design­work­plan, if you enjoy this con­tent please sub­scribe to the free RSS feed to get the fresh arti­cles in your favourite news reader. Please let me know your favourite inspi­ra­tion resource and I’ll put it in Sign-Sphere next month, sub­mit infor­ma­tion via con­tact. Thank you & enjoy reading.