standards

Graphic Symbols for Disaster Response. A standard set of symbols for mapping and other graphic coordination between Federal, State, and local agencies in the event of a disaster, natural or otherwise. A work in progress by the Federal Geographic Data Committee’s Homeland Security Working Group. Download for free as TrueType fonts.

10 Design Policy Proposals.

The results of a meeting held in Washington DC on November 30, 2008, this concise policy brief proposes a consolidated design policy that fosters “economic competitiveness & democratic governance.” The proposals are:

1. Formalize an American Design Council to partner with the U.S. Government.
2. Set guidelines for legibility, literacy, and accessibility for all government communications.
3. Target 2030 for carbon neutral buildings.
4. Create an Assistant Secretary for Design and Innovation position within the Department of Commerce to promote design.
5. Expand national grants to support interdisciplinary community design assistance programs based on human-centered design principles.
6. Commission a report to measure and document design’s contribution to the U.S. economy.
7. Revive the Presidential Design Awards to be held every year and use triple bottom-line criteria (economic, social, and environmental benefit) for evaluation.
8. Establish national grants for basic design research.
9. Modify the patent process to reflect the types of intellectual property created by designers.
10. Encourage direct government investment in design innovation.

The site is currently accepting comments on the proposals.

screenfont.ca. Discussion of readable type for captions and subtitles from the Open & Closed Project. See, for instance, this critique of existing typefaces for HDTV captioning.

The Open & Closed Project. “A new research project headquartered in Toronto. Our main goal is to improve quality by setting standards for the four fields of accessible media – captioning, audio description, subtitling, and dubbing. We’ll develop those standards through research and evidence-gathering. Where research or evidence is missing on a certain topic, we’ll carry it out ourselves. We’ll test the finished standards for a year in the real world, then publish them. Then we’ll develop training and certification programs for practitioners. ” Not much there yet, but I like this direct approach. I hope legislative advocacy will follow.