Two pieces came out this week that focus on accessibility online, and color in particular. The first focuses on designing for color blindness, and gives some great tips to keep in mind and the second outlines some major problems across the web with proper color contrast. Since we’re often designing websites, and want to be sure what we build is usable by the most people who interact with it, we’re big into all aspects of accessibility here at Forum One. This is an issue close to a lot of people’s hearts here and something that we’re always aiming to get right in our work. If you’re a designer, or even if you’re just interested in accessibility, be sure to check out these two articles, this is important stuff.

We also took a look at the new logo and identity for Kodak. The existing logo was fine, nothing to write home about, but this new one is a perfect blend of retro and new. The designers at Work-Order took inspiration from the old mark from the 70’s and integrated a fresh new typeface that extends throughout the brand—a really nice combo of elements that hits the mark. Keep an eye out for the packaging in stores so you can get the full effect! 

We’re now less than two weeks out from the general election (hooray!), so get yourselves pumped up to interact with one of the controversial and—at least to me—frustrating pieces of design in our country….our ballots! In July, we touched on this a little bit, and this week the conversation started again thanks to this excellent piece from Pro Publica, which is a great overall review of the problems that are prevalent nationwide with ballot design. Even if you don’t follow through to the whole article, just have a look at these real instructions for how to vote versus a plain language version and if that’s not enough to make the problems clear to you…I’m not sure what else to say. So many things are wrong with ballot design, I could go on all day, but I’ll spare you (for now). In the meantime, I hope y’all will share that article around so that more people can be aware that it’s not their fault voting can be confusing sometimes.

And finally, please enjoy this transformation of Abraham Lincoln into Bill Murray.