Buffalo’s Elevator B(ee)

University of Buffalo School of Architecture Students Bees Elevator B

If you’re a bee living in Buffalo, New York, you probably spend most of your time waiting for summer to happen. And when the warm months finally arrive, you probably set up shop wherever you are and immediately start making honey. Last year, some Buffalo bees found themselves living in the window of an office building that was boarded shut and the were not welcome. So the kind architecture students at the University at Buffalo, built the bees their very own gleaming tower. And it looks awesome.

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Alex Dent

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May 7, 2013 - See more posts by Alex

Massimo Vignelli Makes Books (video)

massimo vignelli makes books

All this week on the blog I’ll be writing about books, so I thought it would be a great idea to start thing off with this lovely video with Italian designer Massimo Vignelli discussing his approach to book design. The video – which was designed and animated by Pentagram’s Michael Bierut and Aron Fay – shows Vignelli explaining his design process and his particular reverence for the grid.

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Typefaces for People with Dyslexia

Typefaces for People with Dyslexia

I was really fascinated by this article about a typeface designed specifically to help people with dyslexia make fewer reading errors. Folks who have dyslexia tend to have trouble reading because the text doesn’t sit still; their brains flip, rotate and rearrange letters while they try to make sense of the words. This apparent movement stems from structural differences in parts of the brain, and I was surprised to learn that there are quite a few typefaces designed specifically to address this disorder. There are likely many more, but I easily found Open Dyslexic, Dyslexie, Lexie Readable and Read Regular.

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Alex Dent

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May 6, 2013 - See more posts by Alex

Designing a Better Supermarket

NL Architects Sanya Lake Park Supermarket China

It wasn’t until I had lived other places that I realized how terrible the grocery stores in Mississippi are. I was wandering around a Gelson’s or Albertsons when a coworker griped about how “disgusting” this particular store was. It wasn’t the worst I had seen in L.A., really it was just average, but it was still better than any grocery store in my hometown. And who likes being told that their food comes from a sad, gross place? Or the food they ate for 18 years. Economically, it makes complete sense for a grocer in rural MS to have less frills than one in Beverly Hills or even Los Feliz, but I still somehow felt deficient and isolated. Seeing images of the Sanya Lake Park Super Market, I feel a similar ache of what might have been.

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Alex Dent

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May 3, 2013 - See more posts by Alex