Over Due For UnderConsideration
I had coffee recently with a new friend interested in the design world. She picked my brain on schools and what the working world is like, and at the end I told her I’d send her an email with all sorts of online resources for her to dive into.
Three of the sites I sent her were blogs by the UnderConsideration duo, Bryony Gomez-Palacio and Armin Vit.
UnderConsideration was an important resource and inspiration for me in school, and after being in the working world for three years, I lagged a bit on my visits to their sites. Gathering up these sources for my friend re-invigorated me and reminded me of what really got my design blood pumping while I was in school.
Brand New was my introduction to UnderConsideration. This blog focusses on brand designs, and re-designs. They do a phenomenal job on their posts about corporate redesigns, giving a good summary on the before and after, and some of the specific design decisions that were made. They also include a reader poll on various elements of the design, which can have very unexpected results.
One thing I have always admired is their ability to be very unbiased and straightforward in their reviews — they never bash poor designs, and really let you analyze it for yourself without feeling influenced in opinion.
FPO is a chronicle of printed materials — stationary, books, annual reports, posters and various collateral. The content is all user-submitted, and focuses on beautiful design and production details and techniques. It’s a lot of eye candy, and a place for designers/printers to completely geek-out over techniques and materials.
Art of the Menu is the latest division of UnderConsideration, and possibly my favorite. I have always been enamored by restaurant design, and enjoy the fun and risk you can take — the design don’t need to be so “safe.” Art of the Menu is user submitted content that chronicles beautiful menu designs from around the world.
While being complete eye candy as well, it is also extremely interesting to see the visual organization and hierarchy used to convey this varying form of information.