Visual Design

I wanted to post something in English today. And go light. Have been very busy since my return from the States. Between translations and tabulating data my days are going fast. So I checked some recent posts of the excellent Codex 99 page and found some interesting finds relating to childred illustration. You just have to love the illustrations made for the Golden Book of Biology

Like the composition made for the Gregor Mendel's image above...

or my microscopic friends...

Here more:

The Golden Book of Biology
Charley Harper as Illustrator: the 1960s, part I
By the 1960s Charley was one busy commercial artist; he was doing ad campaigns for Libbys Pineapple1 and Morton Salt, continuing his work for the various Ford publications, and began a major commission for Western Publishing – the Giant Golden Book of Biology.

http://codex99.com/illustration/38.html

Then, it is also incredible that these color blindness tests are still being used today, after more than 100 years since they were printed in Japan. The use of color blots was truly innovative, even by today's standards:

http://codex99.com/design/72.html

Shinobu Ishihara 石原 忍 (25 Sep 1879 – 3 Jan 1963) graduated on a military scholarship from the Imperial University of Tokyo in 1905. In 1908 he began postgraduate studies in ophthalmology, first in Tokyo and, during 1913–14, in Germany. He received his Igaku Hakushi from the Imperial University in Tokyo in May 1916 and became a chief physician general in the Imperial Army. One of his first military assignments was to design a color-blindness for new recruits.

His first two sets of plates were hand painted watercolors that included “hidden” hiragana characters and were tested with a color-blind colleague. A third version, done in 1917, replaced the hirahanga with arabic numerals.

Well. I close for now. Hoping that the Santillana editorial that sells most of my sons' textbooks catch a glimpse of 1 or 2 pages of great visual design instead of the crappy mess of crammed knowledge and biased environmentalism they teach.

[smoke + chimney = industrial pollution]

[soiled beach = PRASA's fault, not the pampers I left on the beach on my last visit to Dorado's Sardinera Beach]

Although I really dig the illustrations made by Laura Michell on some of the stories of Santillana. I like the water colors and visual elements she uses...

http://lauramichell.blogspot.com/2010/08/aqui-va-otra-imagen-para-el-proyecto-de.html