"“Snowfall” has become a verb in many newsrooms after The New York Times launched its beautiful multimedia project earlier this year. Though the format was touted as the future of online storytelling by some, The Times wasn’t the first to pull of this type of format. If you’re looking for inspiration to make snow fall in your own newsroom, here are a few other examples, not all of which come from newsrooms, as I think it would be irresponsible of us to confine ourselves to the sphere of news organizations when collecting inspiration for innovative storytelling formats."

"I am a Canadian that studied industrial design. It’s not surprising that I often got strange looks when I told people about my thesis project to redesign America’s voting system. The reason is simple though - I find America to be an amazing and fascinating nation and also like exploring the diverse applications of industrial design thinking. The 2012 election was the first time I experienced an American election first hand. I found it to be absolutely exciting and intriguing. I loved it." This is, as all his posts are, beautiful and interesting. It is also full-on Bigend-Draperism -- control through the emotional leverage of nostalgia. Quite brilliant.

"Q U B E is a handmade Rubik’s Cube with QR-Codes – a physical object that links to pages containing digital content: videos, audio files (music!), images and text. The idea here was to reintroduce some form of physical, human, ‘hands-on’ engagement with post-physical content, rather than pander to the ubiquity of one-finger DOWNLOAD culture."

video calling as "always-on, ambient, background presence." I love it when BERG do these breakdowns.

Because these are among the greatest book covers in the world.

"The workshop started with two briefs. The first examined the book cover: its purpose in the old world of bricks-and-mortar bookshops and bookshelves, and its new place online and embedded in devices, more avatar than wrapper for the book. The second looked at the problems of navigating a long-form electronic text, without the ability to thumb and spatially conceive of a solid block of paper."

A giant shining dome of illuminated QR codes

Always interesting to see a designer's notebooks.

"What I like about the publication is the way it uses its large pages to reproduce smaller magazine-sized pages. The contents page, above, shows how they play with this; the contents listings have been annotated beyond the edges of the reproduced ‘magazine’ by Bruce Weber."

" I unearthed this rather charming and naive, cheque book size, direct mail piece produced for the Midland Bank in 1975, although its design styling is pure 60s…"

"books from an invented intellectual history concerned with the study of invertebrates and other animals as they relate to architecture and psychology."

"I’m fine with the usual engineer trope of saying something’s impossible, and then going away and doing it. I expect that; in fact, I’ve even grown to look forward to that happening on a project, as confirmation that what I’m trying to do is far enough out the difficulty curve to be interesting. What I do not get is why some people seemed so offended by what we were trying to do with PERRY that they’d invest time and energy in trying to convince us it wasn’t worth the effort."

"However, one thing has changed: designers can now take power into their own hands. Burbayev gave me two incredible examples. In 2007 the Russian central bank held a competition to design a symbol for the ruble, which has never had one. Instead of waiting for the government to choose, 26 of the best design firms in Russia chose a design among themselves, and agreed to make it a contractual obligation to use it as the symbol for the ruble in their work. It is now the de facto symbol for the currency, even though the government has never authorised it. Similarly, frustrated by the state of the Moscow subway map, which is ungainly and out-of-date (13 new stops have opened since it was designed), the Art Lebedev Studio created its own, and provided a free downloadable version to anyone who wanted to publish it. Consequently, it now appears in all kinds of guidebooks; but when metro staff are asked for a copy they are completely nonplussed. Which must be rather satisfying for the rebel designers. Where the bureaucrats once held an omnipotent grip on design, designers of the post-Soviet era have learned to turn the tables on them. From which we can conclude one of two things: either getting things done in new Russia means resorting to piratical tactics, or, with a free market and the internet, good design is just difficult to keep down."

"So, the Adaptive Journey service I describe isn’t possible at the moment, because you can’t get at the user data without breaking TfL’s terms and conditions. Nevertheless, the “We see you’re doing this, perhaps you’d find it better to do that” design pattern is a powerful one, if used properly." Yeah, crossref with @TowerBridge there, Ben. good read, though.

"We think the humble receipt could be something like a paper “app” and be valuable in small and playful ways."

interesting design approach

"TWR combines an austere design attitude with a very contemporary feel; reflected, too, in the journal's well-honed online presence."

"Set in the deserted grounds of Paypal founder Elon Musk’s Space X jet lab in Hawthorne, California, the film was inspired by the pioneering spirit of the space race, which, according to Rodarte’s Kate and Laura Mulleavy, “has defined generations of artists in their desire to use new mediums and question the established rules they were taught to follow.” This cinematic collision between rocket science and visual daring is an apt match for Rodarte’s spring 2010 collection—a symphony of flesh-colored crochet knits, fluorescent fibres, leather bandages and distressed plaid. Costumed in a series of these exquisite creations, Van Seenus blurrily emerges from a shimmering seascape before running through the starkly alluring spaces of the Space X facility... Van Seenus’ hallucinatory journey, punctuated by glimpses of mysterious experiments and sudden rocket blasts, is chillingly soundtracked by LA noise-merchants No Age."

"Denton acknowledged that his numbers have in fact suffered due to the makeover, which abandoned the standard reverse-chronological scroll of blogs for a more traditional layout in which a single story dominates the homepage."

"I just think it needed a little bit more of an improvisational, we-just-did-it-this-week kind of feeling,"