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by Tim Van Damme

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Heart of Pixels

Heart of Pixels

Early November I got an email from Jay Fanelli that made my heart skip a beat. For those of you who don’t know Jay, he’s one of the guys behind the amazing shirts-for-nerds site United Pixelworkers, which has a history of working with some of the brightest designers and illustrators of our generation. He asked whether I’d be interested in designing a shirt for them, and with sweaty palms I emailed him back saying it’d be an honor.

The only design direction he gave me was “We want this design to look like it came from you.” So of course I went off and told him I’d like to explore a direction that was completely un-me: Typography.

After some thinking I made a list of everything (interface/web) design is: Balance, rhythm, iteration, considerate, humble, honest, opinionated, patient, respectful… and (most important), design comes from the heart.

After a number of failed attempts translating this typographic concept into an actual design, I let it sit for a couple of days.

When revisiting the idea a couple of days later, the last item on that list really stuck with me. Design comes from the heart. The best designers I know love what they do. More specifically, I love pixels. The seed was planted, and after thinking about it some more I decided to completely change the design direction to something really simple: A pixellated representation of a human heart.

Shirt

Some Google Image-searching later I found my reference materials and went to work. I ended up with 4 different options they could pick from (I tried using as little different colors as possible), and now it’s something you can actually buy.

Crazy.

You can pre-order the shirt until Monday, January 14 at 2:00 PM EST. And while you’re there, take a look around their shop, they sell some really cool stuff.

Planetary Annihilation

From all the games I used to play as a kid, 2 really stood out: Carmageddon and Total Annihilation. I could waste hours, even days playing them.

Last month a remake of Carmageddon got funded on Kickstarter. Today, the makers of Total Annihilation announced they’re Kickstarting (is that even a word?) a new game inspired by the original game from 1997. For $20 $15 (didn’t see the early bird slot) you get the game when it’s done (they’re targeting July 2013).

I am beyond excited about this and really hope they make their (rather big) goal of $900,000.

(via)

Evening Edition

Evening Edition is quickly becoming my new newspaper. Every evening they post a list of articles about things that happened in the world that day. No sensationalism, no linkbait, just a clear view on events. Even the ads are tasteful! Content is delivered to you by RSS or Twitter (I’m guessing email delivery is up next).

Today they introduced topic pages which give you more context about certain stories.

I’d love to see more sites like this.