The basic idea is to write 1 post every week, 52 posts for 2010. This is number 1. Hello.

Now this first post is a bit of a copout, and it’s for the same excuse I’ve been using for the past year - I’ve had no time. But, I have been getting my act together. I’ve been busy. I could have posted screenshots of the new design (oh yea!), written about the upcoming news browsing visualisation I’ve been working on at my dayjob, or even documented all the un-used ideas, mockups, and files for the original DTN series. However, it being after 2am on the last day of entry for the first #p52 of the year - I haven’t.

Next week will be better. Promise. Until then here’s a little promo video I made a while ago which I’ve been meaning to post for bloody ages.

I know, the resolution’s crappy and my video editing sucks. I’ve used the program maybe twice!

For those of you on twitter who are so inclined, I’m posting regular updates on data visualisation and infographic stuff on the DTN twitter account. I’m planning a sweet visualisation of my twitter followers at some point, so if you want to be immortalised in print you should really follow me!

Like me, those of you visiting this site are looking for great examples of everyday data visualisation and infographics. Some for inspiration, and some in order to solve the problem of massive data overload. I’d like to tell people more about data visualisation and how it can be used in order to solve simple everyday user interactions on the web. I need you to help me do that, by voting for my panel at the SXSW panel picker website.

Not only will you be helping me out, you’ll also be helping to create more great content for the next version of this site, version 2, due for relaunch this October. Yes. Designing The News is coming back, bigger, better, with more posts and more great original content.

I’m also looking for guest authors as well, so if you’re interested email me at dave (@) designingthenews (dot) com.

Once again, if you could, I’d really appreciate you voting for my panel at SXSW. There’s only a handful of data visualisation related stuff on there — let’s tell people about it. Get them involved, and get them inspired!

Thanks. You should follow me on twitter to stay up on how it’s going. http://twitter.com/davebowker and http://twitter.com/designingnews.

Anyways, the reason there hasn’t been an update in so long is because I’m in the process of moving down to London. Actually I’m in London at the moment, without a computer and without the internet, which is why I’m in an internet cafe at the moment with 9 minutes remaining on my time trying to write this update pretty damn fast.

Hopefully I’ll have a new laptop by the end of next week, and will crank out some more stuff soon.

New job!

Also, I’ve accepted a new job at a company in London dealing with search technology, news, and data visualisation, and I’m just waiting to sign the contracts. Hopefully the paperwork will be done sometime this week, or early next, and I can let you know who that lucky bunch are!

The good thing about this is that in alot of respects, DesigningTheNews will become my day job. Bonus! Which means in areas where the work isn’t subject to NDA, I can share some of the things I’m working on right here. With you. Before anyone else. :)

Stay tuned! And thanks to everyone who’s emailed me wanting posters. At this rate if interest keeps up I may have to do another run!

Still in the apple store on Regent street. Single solitary tear just hit the keyboard. Not sure if that’s because I got a first, or because I will forever remember that I used a Mac to find it out. Thank-you Apple store.

Anyone else think the logo looks like pieces of Meccano and a couple of flat head screws?

Just a quick note to say that I’ve just set up a prints page for the One week of the Guardian data visualisation posters. They’ll be a very limited print run so if you’re interested in getting your hands on one, the series, or more then you’ll have to be quick!

Only available until MIDNIGHT GMT tonight!

I’ll be taking orders via email until midnight on June 15th. They’re £12 each, printed on thick semi-gloss paper, and are all signed and numbered on the reverse so you know which one you bought!

Remember kids, having the series is like owning Pokémon. Gotta catch ‘em all.

UPDATE: 12:30 25/June All posters were delivered to the post office this morning, and should be on their way to you shortly!

UPDATE: 10:30 24/June I’m sick as a dog at the moment. I have all the prints, all packaged and ready to ship. I managed to get a couple out yesterday, but the rest will be going out no later than tomorrow morning.

Sorry they’ll be a day or two late. This ‘not man-flu’ has knocked me off my feet.

The vanity list

Will be updated as and when the site makes it’s way around the net. As of 18 Apr 2008:

• WebCreme
• Best Web Gallery
• CSS Mania
• Nice Stylesheet
• Command Shift 3
• Screenfluent
• CSS Based
• Best CSS Gallery
• ALA Brasil
• CSS Artillery
• Most Inspired
• CSS Rand
• CSS Loaf
• CSS Import
• CSS Clip
• The Daily Slurp
• CSS-Design-Yorkshire
• Link Creme
• CMS Showcase
• The Best Designs
• Tag Society (The Best Of)
• We Love WP
• WP Cube
• Boxed CSS
• Design By Grid
• Design Shack
• CSS Remix
• Unmatched Style

Therefore, I have now set new project goals to concentrate on, whilst still keeping the theme of making the news more visual.

The refocused project aims will now be:

1. Simplification - To explore various ways of simplifying the presentation of existing news, and news data.
2. Visualisation - To transform a primarily text based medium into a more visual presentation of information.
3. Relationships - To create relationships between news reports to create a complete view of a series of events.

The presentation slides are available as a PDF if anyone wants. There’s not really much explanation in the slides but I think you can kind of see my train of thought.

Planning & wireframing

Thumbnail image shows mockup heatmap I wanted to create. This was the most important stage for this project. Usually when making a website I concentrate on the header and the footer, and the body seems to fall into place. With this site I gave the body much more attention than usual as I wanted the content to in some way mimic a newspaper layout. What I mean by that is I wanted to display the information in columns like a newspaper would, only the columns on site would flow in order of importance. The main content would sit on the left as the most important, followed by the semi important story highlights in the middle, with the least important sidebar coming up on the right.

The logo and brand

Thumbnail image shows rough logo positioning concepts all of which I thought unacceptable. The logo took a fair amount of time for me to be happy with. I went through dozens of sketches and nearly equal amounts of revisions and finished concepts. In the end I chose Times New Roman for the font. There were a couple of reasons for this, one of them being that I can have the post headers in the same font as my logo without having to add in sIFR titles for any custom font. This meant I could keep the look and the feel I was going for flowing across the pages.

UPDATE: Logo has been tweaked. Scroll down for more.
The final colours I kept as black, white, and red. You know the old joke, “What’s black and white and red/read all over? A newspaper/A panda with a rash”. Of all the newspaper research I did, most of the logo colours for a wide format newspaper were black and white (The Times, The Mail), and alot of the colours for a tabloid newspaper (The Sun, The Star, The News Of The World) included red.

The circle and it’s position represent continuity, infinity, and the symbol for degrees, as I think that the news is subjective, and means different things to different people.

The content

All the way through the site on every page, I’ve tried to create the most important content on the left, and stagger the less important on the right. The titles for the posts try to mimic the newspaper headlines, being as big and as concise as I can make them. Each section of content in a main post is split up with section headers, shown in a smaller font of the same family.

The footer

At the moment the footer is only showing about a 1/3 of its goodies. The rest will come apparent in the next few days, but what it will eventually show is the latest piece of work from the DTN DesignLabs, and when I get around to it perphaps a weekly netcast on the state of the news? (Think ZeFrank only probably not as Ze!)

Well I guess that’s it for now. I’d appreciate any comments if you have them. There’s probably one or two bugs that have escaped my attention so if you find any I’d be grateful if you could let me know. Otherwise, it’s built to webstandards and validates both in XHTML and CSS.

UPDATE:
After some great input from Nice Web Type’s Tim (tbrowntype) at the Flickr Nice Web Type pool, I’ve rejigged the type in the logo a little. For most people it’s going to look exactly the same, but for the detail devils (like me) it’s going to look (hopefully) better!

For better ‘after’ detailing, just look at the bigger logo in the header.

ANOTHER UPDATE:
The logo has gone through a few tagline revisions, but I think it’s settled now.

• Page List
  • About, information on the project
  • Discuss, forum for discussing the news and current work
  • Labs, the base for all the experiments I will be producing
  • Netcasts, collection of weekly news videos
  • Search & Archives, when you need to find something specific
  • Contact, as a footnote at the bottom of site
• Sidebar content
  • Latest netcast, full size playable video top of sidebar
  • RSS, subscription options
  • Latest work, linking to the appropriate Labs page for more detail
  • Popular posts, to show the buzz around a subject
  • Tag index, showing list of tags
  • Latest forum topics, possibly?
  • Selected pages - Category list, displayed on search/contact page
  • Selected pages - Blogroll, used as list of research sites

This is pretty much just scratching the surface at the moment. It is rough, and nothing is set in stone yet.