Historical Designs: Sitcom Homes, NY Subways, Echo Park, Peterson Museum, and Social Engineering

During the week, I skim newspapers as an palate cleanser between tasks. As I do so, I bookmark interesting links, and come back to them over lunch to see if they coalesce into a theme. Today they coalesced into a theme relating to design, particularly historical design:

• Recreated Design. Let’s start with perhaps the most meaningless design of all: the floorplans of major sitcom and TV show houses. Yes, this person did have too much time on their hands.
• Underground Design. Subways and transit systems have their own unique designs. There is conscious thought put into the font selection, typography, layout, and such. Here’s a glimpse into the first style manual for the unified New York City subway.
• Hidden Design. Sometimes, designs are hidden, but those hidden design aspects can impact you. Take Echo Park Lake in Los Angeles. Turns out that there is a hidden dam there, and this led to having to redesign the lake to make it not subject to dam rules.
• Moving Design. Sometimes the design moves. There is a museum in Los Angeles called the Peterson Auto Musuem. Most of its collection is hidden. Here’s a peek into the hidden automotive designs in that collection.
• Informative Design. Sometimes the right design can inform. Here’s a wonderfully designed graphic that explains the social engineering threat.

Music: The Smile Sessions (The Beach Boys): “The Elements: Fire Session”

This entry was originally posted on Observations Along The Road (on cahighways.org) as this entry by cahwyguy. Although you can comment on DW, please make comments on original post at the Wordpress blog using the link below; you can sign in with your LJ, FB, or a myriad of other accounts. There are currently comments on the Wordpress blog. PS: If you see share buttons above, note that they do not work outside of the Wordpress blog.

(Click Here to Comment)