I once had the immense pleasure of spending a joyous Midsummer’s Night on a mountain above the northern Norwegian city of Trondheim. I never really considered visiting during the winter, that is until I saw this wonderful film from the folks at Visit Trondheim. Winter in Trondheim, 2014 was shot by drone and helicopter by Natural Light.
New York City’s MTA has finally launched its much anticipated new digital, touch-point “MTA On the Go” kiosks. The units offer 47-inch screens providing real-time transit information, including visual station to station directions with transfers and line info, countdown to train arrivals and line alerts. Users tap their intended destination and the map draws an easy to follow route.
The first batch of kiosks were installed in the Grand Central Terminal subway station. More units will roll-out in the MTA’s busiest stations in the coming weeks. The “On the Go” system should be a boon to tourists and locals alike. Here’s how they work:
Here in the Philadelphia area, Stephen Powers’ large-scale murals have been a colorful, entertaining and surprising presence since the 1990s. Although he’s currently based in Brooklyn, Powers has been spreading his personal brand of typographic signage murals around South America, Africa, Europe and the U.S.. This week the Princeton Architectural Press released a terrific retrospective of Powers’ vibrant, joyous work called “A Love Letter to the City”.
You can follow Powers at his website.
Rotterdam-based artists/designers Michael Bom and Antoinet Deurloo market their line of sustainable, recycled artwork under the BomDesignNL brand. Utilizing discarded books and atlases, the pair create beautiful, practical pieces that warm up any room. You can see more of their “Book Lamp” project and buy one for your very own at their etsy shop online
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With hundreds of online sites and apps for booking hotels and travel accommodations, travelers these days may be experiencing information overload. Now the hotel and flight booking site Hipmunk is providing a very useful hotel finding tool called the “Heat Map”. The color-coded map, based on your hotel searches, shows accommodation proximity to 
tourist attractions, restaurants, shopping, nightlife and even “vice”. This clever tool furnishes a multilayered visual view that goes beyond address and neighborhood.
H/T to loyal TBTP follower Aubrie Rudnick for this post.
With commonplace leaf rakes and rope, San Francisco artist Andres Amador creates extraordinary temporary masterpieces on the beaches of California and Mexico. Even though it takes hours to form the enormous geometric patterns, Amador is philosophical about the transitory nature of his work. In fact, the realization that the arresting designs only survive until high tide somehow makes them more poignant and appealing.
You can see more of Amador’s remarkable work on his website and even purchase photo prints of his temporary installations.
all images © Andres Amador
Graphic artist and animator Ben Kling has been having a laugh with his twisted, tongue-in-cheek Valentine’s Day greeting cards. It’s too late to purchase your own cards this year, but you can visit his website and stock up for next Valentine’s Day. This year’s series focuses on writers and artists, but earlier series include philosophers, historic figures and even dictators.
Much to the annoyance of my traveling companions, I love a good train station. Long lay-overs in train trips are just another opportunity to hang-out and explore a great station. Apparently, photographer Yannick Wegner feels the same way. His artful video of the stunning Gare de Liège-Guillemins in Liège, Belgium evokes the momentum of train travel and the grace of Santiago Calatrava’s architecture.
Lisbon, Portugal has launched a unique tourism campaign utilizing its iconic tram lines and overhead electrical wires. Lisbon’s ad agency, Leo Burnett Lisboa, has created a new font called LX Type that is based on the tram lines, where letters and numbers are liked with a local attraction accessible by city tram (see below). The font is being offered for free downloads here.
Lisbon’s tourism office describes the campaign this way:
“The iconic trams of Lisbon do not go unnoticed to anyone. Neither they nor the wires that provide them with energy and that are spread across the city’s most charismatic neighborhoods. Still, Leo Burnett Lisboa looked at these in a different way and saw a typography in its complex mesh. And like that, with the support of the Lisbon City Council, the official font Lisbon was born. On the website lxtype.pt, where it can be explored and downloaded for free, everyone can test the font and find out a place associated with each letter, transforming words in spontaneous and personalized guides of the city. To spread the idea, a film was created and directed internally by Hugo Lage and with a soundtrack kindly provided by Dead Combo.”
London-based, French-Japanese illustrator Hugo Yoshikawa has created this marvelous alphabet with letters composed of building, bridges and monuments from European cities. Each letter is hand drawn and watercolored. Of course A is for Amsterdam and Z is for Zagreb, but some of the other choices may stump you. If you’re baffled, check this list below.
Here is the list of the cities: Amsterdam (Netherlands), Barcelona (Spain), Copenhagen (Denmark), Dublin (Ireland), Edinburgh (UK), Frankfurt (Germany), Geneva (Switzerland), Helsinki (Finland), Istanbul (Turkey), Jerez de la Frontera (Spain), Kiev (Ukraine), London (UK), Madrid (Spain), Naples (Italy), Oslo (Norway), Paris (France), Quimper (France), Rome (Italy), Stockholm (Sweden), Toulouse (France), Utrecht (Netherlands), Venice (Italy), Warsaw (Poland), Xanten (Germany), York (UK), Zagreb (Croatia)
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