Toyota's Family Tree

To celebrate 75 years, Toyota has released a family tree for their cars.
The interactive map allows you to go through the entire range of cars they have made since the company was established in 1937 and it's plant operation began in 1938 (the first cars were released in 1936).

The timeline covers the lives of different cars they have developed and allows you to search through it based upon year, body type or model.

The spots on the tree have pop-up images of the vehicles, which are click-able, and allow you to look through the different generations of a model of car like the Land Cruiser or Avensis.

Their 75 Years of Toyota landing page also has a clever scrolling timeline which focuses on the company and it's growth over this period.

Take a look through the vehicle lineage here.

There is also a lineage page for engine type here.

Design Museum open exhibition of permanent collection

The Design Museum  has opened a new exhibition containing some of its permanent collection.

Extraordinary Stories about Ordinary Things will be on display on the top floor of the current home of the Design Museum, broken up into six themes or "stories". 

The 'Identity & Design' story features items that contribute to national identity such as the K2 Phone Box by Giles Gilbert Scott, UK road signage by Jock Kinneir and Margaret Calvert, and the London 2012 logo by Wolff Olins.

The 'Taste' story charts the influence of modenism on British design and includes pieces by Marcel Breuer and Erno Goldfinger.

'Why We Collect' features recycled designs from Jasper Morrison's table made of bicycle handlebars to the Campana Brothers' Cartoon Chair made of soft toys.

'Materials & Process' charts the development of plastic technology.

Whilst 'Icons' follows iterations of the Anglepoise Lamp.

'Finally Fashion' focuses trends from the 1960's to the 1990's.

The exhibition was designed by Gitta Gschwendter and consists of the objects being displayed on rough, chunky shelving alongside contextual images and documents. It will run until the museum moves to its new home next year in the former Commonwealth Institute building in South West London, which is currently being redeveloped by John Pawson.

Celebrating the GIF

For all you creative types out there take a look at this great stop motion video celebrating the History of the Gif.

An interesting film short and a bit of fun created by Legs Media of New York and Los Angeles.

Enjoy!

The changing face of logos

This new book 'Logo Life' is a must for logo buffs, celebrating the development of 100 famous logos over the years. From Lego to Apple and Gap to Adidas, see how your favourite logos have evolved.

The book is by BIS Publishers and you can see an online preview of the book here. 

A Dash for Gold with Actuate

BIRT (Business Information Reporting Tools) developer and founder Actuate has launched a fantastic microsite, Dash for Gold,  that allows you to investigate and explore the results of sports competitions of the past and compare them to this year’s games.  

Using their intuitive reporting dashboard they interrogate a wide range of economic, demographic and geographical data to hunt out the trends and enable users to analyse and predict their own medal winners in simple and easy to understand graphical interfaces.  

The Think Tank was asked to create a brand identity for the online application including a detailed infographic which explains what users can expect when they delve into its data.  

The branding was extended to a series of multi-lingual online banners and a video that guides users through the experience. Working closely with Actuate during the app’s development, The Think Tank has provided advice on messaging, design and graphical execution of the microsite and application as well as the marketing collateral that promotes it.  

This simple to use app puts you in control of the data past and present, allowing you to predict this year’s winners alongside a competition for the best dashboard created by users.  

Actuate Dash for Gold includes:  

Did you know: Sports and competition data at your fingertips

All historic and current information at one glance in a dashboard application with sports data that is updated daily. Compare and analyse historic results by country or by discipline. Get timely information on your country's medal count.    

Interactive Analytics: Explore & Play  

The interactive analytics section of the Dash for Gold app allows you to correlate sports and medal information with external data and gain completely original insights. The app brings together different public databases with geopolitical and economic data by country as well as some fun facts. Review performance against world economic and demographic factors such as wine consumption, CO2 emissions or fertility rates. Or maybe you already knew that countries with a low birth rate under perform in swimming?    

BIRT Dash for Gold Contest: Join the athletes and compete  

From 27th July you will have the opportunity to create your own interactive dashboards to uncover trends and fun facts about the world’s top sporting competitions by applying economic, climatic, historical and other indicators to sports data. You'll be amazed at what you find as you drag and drop Google-style gadgets to discover hidden correlations and expose exciting information about your favourite countries and sporting events.  

When you're ready, submit your dashboards to the competition and they'll be published to the community for all to see. Judges will evaluate and choose the top four dashboards and each will win a 32GB 3rd generation Apple iPad with WiFi.  

To get in the game you can find out more and register here to keep current on the latest updates and contest announcements.    

On the go – Mobile Dash for Gold  

Keep your sporting facts handy wherever you are with mobile access to Dash for Gold. After registering, you will receive a link to access daily updates to the latest competition results and figures. Dash for Gold Mobile has been optimized for iPad and viewable on most tablet browsers.

Get predicting here and delve into the facts.

Interactive Gallery of Lost Art

'The Gallery of Lost Art' is a year-long online exhibition curated by the Tate and developed by UK creative studio ISO.

It displays artworks that have disappeared for reasons of theft, arson, rejection or just having been discarded.

'Art history tends to be the history of what has survived,' reflects the gallery's curator Jennifer Mundy, 'but loss has shaped our sense of art’s history in ways that we are often not aware of.

'The website is visually structured as an open warehouse floor, viewed from above, with different chalk headers on the ground delineating the subject of that area of the gallery: destroyed, stolen, discarded, rejected, erased, or ephemeral. users can zoom into particular areas, and by clicking on specific projects they can access essays, photos, film footage or interviews, and other material about the artwork.'

Why the the piece of art was lost is also documented and the site will add one new work each week for six months and six months after this the website will disappear itself.

Click here to go to the site.