Pocket Noodle - Eventually, everything connects

A new global visual language for the BBC’s digital services. An overview of the process and inspiration in putting together a ‘visual language‘ for the BBC Online.

• FontPark 2.0 – Interesting interactive toy that lets the user create and save typographic illustrations using Japanese letter forms.
• Boston.com’s The Big Picture does it again with this fantastic set of photographs from the recent Singapore Grand Prix.
• The Art of Kevin Dart – Some nice illustration work with a retro slant including these backgrounds for the Jamie Hewlett BBC Olympic spots

• Aurora – Web interface concept from Adaptive Path that explores “new ways people could interact with the Web in the future based on projected technological trends and real-world scenarios”. Designed as part of the Mozilla Labs concept browser series, Aurora is designed around four themes: Context awareness, natural interaction, continuity and multi-user applications. HD versions of the series of videos can be found here.
• Britain from above – New series from the BBC exploring the topography of Britain using satellite technology and aerial photography. Starts Sunday 10th August. Preview.
• Incredible satellite images of earth via Environmental Graffiti

The BBC have just launched a public beta of their music site, BBC Music. Using data from MusicBrainz! and Wikipedia, BBC Music Beta enables users to explore artists played on BBC Radio. Artist profiles currently show a biography, discographies, BBC appearances and related artists information with the data available in a variety of ‘RESTful’ formats including XML, YAML, JSON, RDF, Atom and RSS.

The IA is good and the overall design works well within the new BBC web guidelines. It definitely looks like it should easily scale as more data gets added and it looks like there’s plenty of scope for integration with other BBC data sources such as programmes, events, news, album reviews and even iPlayer. One to keep an eye on!

Not only have Damon Alban and Jamie Hewlett been busy working on the opera ‘Monkey: Journey to the West‘, but they’ve also put together the new animated campaign for the BBC’s coverage of the Olympics. There’s also loads of goodies on the BBC site including an interactive screensaver, and Monkey, Pigsy and Sandy masks. Great stuff especially if you were a fan of the cult 70′s TV series.

• Amazing infographics that visualise language structure from artist Stefanie Posavec.
• BBC Programmes – Project to create an online archive of every radio and tv programme from the BBC’s 80 plus year history which promises some interesting iPlayer/online media integration. I’m guessing this follows on from their ‘BBC Programme Catalogue‘ prototype.