Information Design Watch » Dynamic Diagrams News

Electrotyping Animation Now Online

Henry Woodbury — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 22:20:28 +0000

The Electrotyping Animation we created for the Metropolitan Museum of Art has now been posted online. It is currently the featured video on the Met’s MetMedia page.

Here it is on Information Design Watch:

Electrotyping Animation at the Met

Henry Woodbury — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 20:44:47 +0000

Opening today is a new exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art: Victorian Electrotypes: Old Treasures, New Technology. The show presents a selection from the museum’s archive of electrotypes — Victorian-era copies of European decorative artifacts.

One of the main pieces of the show is the Bryant Vase, designed by Tiffany and Company. The vase itself was copied by electrotyping and the exhibit accompanies the original with its copper molds. Using the Bryant Vase as the main character, Dynamic Diagrams created a short animation explaining how the electrotyping process works.

Bryant Vase with electrotyping animation in background

The video starts with slow zoom of a photo of the original vase. We then transition to a 3D model which we animate to show the steps in which a mold is created and immersed in a copper-sulfate bath. A “microscopic” view explains how copper ions transmit in the the bath from a positively charged copper bar to the negatively charged mold. Finally, we show how individual pieces are reassembled into a near-identical copy of the original and plated in silver.

By using 3D modeling software we are able to give exhibition visitors a greater understanding of the technology behind the works they are viewing.

Update: The Museum has posted an exhibition page.

Dynamic Diagrams Has Moved

Henry Woodbury — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 23:31:16 +0000

It has taken a few weeks to unpack the boxes and locate all the cables, but our new office is starting to look like a real office. We are on the second floor of 10 Davol Square, one of Providence’s beautiful 19th century brick commercial buildings.

Here is our new main conference room:

And the whale mobile in the central area:

The address is:

10 Davol Square
Suite 200
Providence, RI 02903

Our phone numbers are the same.

University of Southern Maine Launches New Site

Lisa Agustin — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 19:48:40 +0000

The University of Southern Maine recently launched a redesigned site based on an information architecture developed by Dynamic Diagrams. Like many enterprise-level web sites, the USM site is not so much a single site as it is a collection of smaller sites maintained by individual departments and groups. Content had been organized by owner (and therefore required users to know the organizational structure of the university) and a de-centralized management approach meant that architecture and design were often inconsistent across the web site. The university planned to migrate its content to a new content management system, and recognized this as an opportunity to create a new information architecture that would improve both the end-user experience and the process for maintaining and growing its web presence. The new site’s architecture provides users with a more intuitive and streamlined online experience by grouping related information together (e.g., all information related to specific academic degree is available from a single location), while encouraging the use of the site as a community building tool (e.g., a “social dashboard” aggregates social media activities across campus). At the same time, the architecture’s modular approach means that content owners can focus on creating information without worrying about its location on the web site.

Launch! (Remodeling Dynamic Diagrams)

Henry Woodbury — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 14:23:31 +0000

Late on Friday afternoon last week we relaunched DynamicDiagrams.com and this blog. The new site is more scalable than the old and incorporates more ways to present our work. Information Design Watch is incorporated into the main navigation of the site though it still resolves to its own dd.DynamicDiagrams.com subdomain. We like the new look too.

The relaunch has given us the opportunity to update our portfolio and present the popular dD Orrery on its own page. For the latter we’ve created free Mac and Windows screensavers you can download.

Let us know what you think.

University of Southern Maine Undertakes Re-Design with New Information Architecture by Dynamic Diagrams

Lisa Agustin — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 19:33:23 +0000

How do you organize a collection of over one hundred, decentrally-managed micro-sites into a single, cohesive entity that offers a consistent user experience from the home page down to the lowest level? This was the key issue facing the University of Southern Maine‘s site redesign, and Dynamic Diagrams was happy to help. The university had plans to migrate the site to a new content management system, and recognized the importance of creating a new architecture to provide both a better experience for site visitors as well as a standardized approach to organizing content for micro-site owners.

After completing a rigorous research and analysis phase that included stakeholder interviews, an inventory of over 5,000 pages (you may have seen the earlier Post-It Note output here), user focus groups, and an online survey, we created a new information architecture (see above) and a set of core wireframes (page schematics) to illustrate the new high-level and page-level user experience, respectively. The new architecture puts the user’s needs front-and-center by presenting all related information together (e.g., degree information that was previously scattered across the course catalog, academic department, and university system database), rather than forcing users to navigate multiple silos of information. The architecture and wireframes will guide the development of the site’s new look and feel, which is now in progress. Look for the new design to be launched later this year.

Cameron & Mittleman LLP Launches New Web Site

Lisa Agustin — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 14:55:52 +0000

Dynamic Diagrams is pleased to announce that the web site for the law firm of Cameron & Mittleman LLP is now live. The two main goals for this project were a refresh to the site’s design, and an easy way to maintain the web site in-house. We provided the information architecture, visual design, and web development services, which included a move to the WordPress platform. Content for launch includes the history of the firm, staff profiles, and practice area information. The extensible solution will enable the organization to add features planned for the future, including a blog. You can view the web site at http://www.cm-law.com/

The 50 Pixel Hangover (Remodeling Dynamic Diagrams)

Henry Woodbury — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 19:17:51 +0000

One significant target for our Remodeling Dynamic Diagrams project is the redesign of this blog. The interface designs are close to final now and have us thinking about how we will import current content. Unlike our primary web site we will not recreate content or images for Information Design Watch. Instead we will create a WordPress theme and apply it to the existing posts.

The issue is this. Our new blog design has a 640 pixel width content column. The current design has a 690 pixel width content column. Any image or object in our archives sized to the maximum setting of 690 pixels wide will not fit the new format.

We are approaching this issue in two different ways.

First, about month ago, we set 640 pixels as the maximum image size in the current theme. This means that recent images are already optimized to work within the new design.

Second, the new design features a wide content margin. Using a negative margin CSS technique, images up to 690 pixels can extend into this margin without obscuring sidebar links or breaking the column.

There is a third solution. We can manually edit each post with a 690 pixel width image and replace it. That one awaits a design intern.

Meta Works (Remodeling Dynamic Diagrams)

Henry Woodbury — Fri, 03 Dec 2010 15:18:52 +0000

In Tim’s last post on Remodeling Dynamic Diagrams he mentioned our decision to use web fonts. By maintaining font files on our server and referencing them via @font-face calls in our CSS files, we can bring to our web presence the Meta typeface we have long used in our diagrams, presentations, print collateral and Flash animations.

This demo page shows the Meta Web version we have purchased for the site redesign. Internally we have tested it on Internet Explorer 6, 7, and 8, and current versions of Firefox, Safari, and Google Chrome (such incremental browser testing is part of our process). It also works on the iPhone’s Safari browser.

If the fonts on the demo page don’t resemble the image below on your browser, let us know!

A sample of Meta

UPDATE (December 9, 2010): As Andy mentions in the comments, the lower-case y in Meta Web Medium renders with a flaw. This appears on all Windows-based browsers. We’ve reprocessed the fonts and uploaded a new demo.

Nightingale’s Serendipity

Henry Woodbury — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 22:06:47 +0000

In the BBC News Magazine, mathematician and author Marcus du Sautoy extols the power of diagrams. The cliche that a picture is worth a thousand words misses the point, he explains. A scientific diagram has the power to transcend language, to “create a whole new visual language to navigate a scientific idea” or even show the impossible. “Words” is the wrong unit of measure.

Among other scientists and thinkers, du Sautoy draws examples from Copernicus, Newton, and Florence Nightingale. In that last case, he links to our recreation of Nightingale’s Rose, the circular set of charts that Nightingale created to show relative causes of death of soldiers during the Crimean war.

du Sautoy’s television series, The Beauty of Diagrams, is offered on BBC Four.