Pentagram’s new site for Diller Scofidio + Renfro (one of my favorite architectural firms) is exemplary.

The site utilizes a 2 1/2 dimensioned tiled list, to house a grid of DS+R’s projects. Moving the mouse above and below a list row causes the grid to move forward and backwards on the z-axis. Clicking a project zooms into it, but leaves the context of other projects in the periphery, thus maintaining the context of the greater navigation. A consistent navigation bar helps users quickly pop-in and out of list views.

I love how the site’s navigation is minimal and centered around the content.

Check it out.

Designworks? Indeed it does. Check out their portfolio website for great content, or perhaps better yet for its navigation design. What I appreciate about it is how its motion compliments its navigation. It’s very iPhone-esque in that regard.

And be sure to read their “why designwork” statement. It’s money, on point, well put and delivered.

Right sexy website from Sony Picture Imageworks. Give it a view if you want to see an example of a job immaculately done.

A few aspects to note:
- The transitions between primary states of the experience. I haven’t seen transitions like this before. Unique stuff to be riffed upon.
- The sequences of text animations. Notice the smooth timing of the characters progressively fading into view, across all the text elements.
- The work. Imageworks does some damn fine sport.

One more note on text animation: I’m asking the Flex SDK team to bake methods for character sequencing into the Flex 4 text components. However, considering the sheer amount of components the SDK team must build for the new Flex 4 architecture, it’s unlikely character sequencing will actually make it in. This seems like the perfect thing for someone in the community to build into a custom text component (hint, hint).

If you live in/near Amsterdam or happen to be traveling through, be sure to check out Boekie Woekie’s latest exhibit, New Roles. It features five japanese artists who use paper and type to express themselves creatively and meaningfully. Organized by Utrecht.

Of the five artists, a few had websites. Kotaro Inoue’s website spoke most directly to me. Here’s an example of his work. It’s simple, but why not make art out of the layout?

Check out This Ain’t No Disco for a view into studios across the world. I’m gonna see if the guys in the Adobe office here in SF are down to post up to this site. Our space is very nice, open, super high ceilings with original wood structure, reinforcing steel beams, exposed piping, and original brick walls. Oh, and I forgot to mention the fine whiskey collection.

Great article by Creative Review on the art+design of Central Station, one of the main design firms around the branding of the Happy Mondays and other great outputs from Factory Records.

This years round up of Yale’s graduating graphic designers looks to be filled with some budding talent presented in an intelligent format.

Via The Style Press.

Yes. This diverse portfolio from Hudson Powell has me standing up. They make cool, technical, artistic, yet marketable work in diverse media. For a good time, and mind expanding experience, give their recently updated portfolio a thorough perusal.

Here’s a little generative type thingy I made via a link from their site to the responsive type conference they participated in way back in the olden days of 2005.

Incredibly distracting and numbingly beautiful portfolio, and also great work. Kashiwa Sato.

There are a lot of young people in NYC who buy vintage clothing and don’t brush their teeth. They tend to start trends so if you’re interested in peering into this world for a moment, check out the photos up in Stillhouse, or better yet click on the links in this guys poetry verse.