COLORS 85: Going to Market — A Survival Guide
A bursting bubble, tumbling stocks, bears, bulls and futures for sale. Modern markets are obscure, unpredictable and dangerous places. But they also dictate whether you have access to necessities like toilet paper and water, whether your job will still exist tomorrow and whether you can buy a cup of Columbian light roast on your morning commute or not. To get what you want, you have to navigate the flow of trade and exchange. Sell what you have – your labor, your possessions, your first-born child – and buy what you can. Everyone does it. So how do you? Which markets are you a part of? What are you buying? What are you selling? And at what price?
IdN v19n6: Character Design Issue — Character Building
A good story, in any medium, is only as interesting as the characters in it. How do you invent a fictional being with which the whole world can identify? If we knew the answer we'd be millionaires, but there are plenty of people out there trying hard to come up with the next Mickey Mouse or Homer Simpson. We talk to some of them about the difficulties and satisfactions of this challenge and ask them what advice they would give to someone starting out on the character-building path.
IdN v19n5: Interactive Design — Perfecting those Air to Surface Missiles
Designing the perfect digital tools and useful applications that end-users will want to embrace is the design world's new holy grail. We present the work and observations of 9 prestigious practitioners of this most cutting-edge end of the design field to show us how interaction design can be as functional as it is fun to use – and to discuss the challenges that it offers, as well as to predict some of the future paths it may take.
COLORS 84: Apocalypse — A Survival Guide
Hit by a meteorite, wiped out by a pandemic, fried in a nuclear holocaust or frozen in another Ice Age: civilization could end in a hundred ways. Yet the relentless onslaught of disaster prophecies leaves you overwhelmed, exhausted and unsure who to believe. You've got Apocalypse Fatigue, but don't give up. The climate is the hottest it's been for 1,000 years, and this century will see temperatures rise five times more than they have already, bringing hurricanes, floods, famine and wildfire. So start preparing: build a bunker, secure your energy supply, stockpile food. When mankind throws itself into the abyss, you need to be ready to climb back out.
IdN v19n4: Shapes-in-Pattern — Shaping Their Own Patterns
Patterns are easy, right? Just come up with a nice little design, then copy-and-paste it ad infinitum. Well, nothing could be further from the truth. We decided to reduce the parameters even further – and asked seven creatives who utilise mainly shapes to achieve their desired effect, how the tight discipline involved both constrains and liberates them. It is a lot more complicated than you might think – but the results can be deeply satisfying.
IdN v19n3: The Line Issue — Artist on the Front Line
A line is so much more than just the distance between two dots. It is the fundamental building-block that every artist employs – even if, like Jackson Pollock, they are simply dribbling paint onto a horizontal canvas. It is a signifier of innate talent: the critics speak of "bold" lines and "subtle" lines. One would be hard-pressed to think of any work of art that did not involve lines – even Malevich's notorious 1915 "Black Square" wouldn't have worked without an outline to define it.
IdN Extra 07: Infographics — Designing Data
Using graphics to convey information has long been a fundamental design challenge. How do you get people to notice and absorb data that may in itself be quite mundane — but that it is necessary for them to know, as well as making it beautiful? In this special issue, we present more than 120 examples of this all-important design genre.
IdN v19n2: Sexual Graphics — Visual Orgasm
We're pretty sure we've already got your attention just with the use of that word "sexual" because nothing arouses so much interest or is capable of stirring up so much controversy. With the help of 11 top-flight practitioners who have flirted with the bare-all approach, we examine the pros and cons of using sex to spice up your portfolio – and present some eye-popping examples of their work to help you make up your mind about this ever-burning issue.
