The Work of Jonathan Harris
Work . Biography . News . Marginalia
Commercial Work
Diller Scofido + Renfro . 2007
Based in New York, Diller Scofidio + Renfro is an interdisciplinary firm straddling architecture, urban design, visual arts and the performing arts. Their projects include the Boston Institute of Contemporary Art (pictured), the Blur Building, the Brasserie restaurant, and the upcoming redesign of New York's Lincoln Center. I designed and developed a simple temporary website for the firm to use during the construction of their permanent site.
DSR temporary site | Current site
Daylife . 2005 - 2007
Daylife is a global news service designed to help people explore their world. Daylife aggregates and analyzes news articles from thousands of sources worldwide, extracts the people, places, and organizations, and then presents this information in a browseable landscape, providing multiple perspectives and lenses on the news.
I worked as the first Design Director of Daylife, developing its logo, its basic information architecture and UI, and the design concept for "Daylife Highlights", large and lush text/image combinations that represent the world's daily top stories.
While working with Daylife, I created Universe, which attempts to suggest new constellations for today's night sky, by finding the most salient themes in global media coverage.
daylife.com | Daylife Highlights | Universe
Oral Fixation Mints . 2003 - 2006
Oral Fixation is a designer breath mint company dedicated to making everyday objects beautiful. As one of its three founders, and its Creative Director, I take care of Oral Fixation's identity design, product design, web design, and advertising. Attention to detail is the first thing you'll notice when you hold an Oral Fixation tin for the first time. Each flavor follows a different theme -- classical music, minimalist art, the Garden of Eden, the Free Tibet movement, and so on. These themes are explored in the tin illustrations, the wax paper inside the tins, the mint engravings, the double entendre slogans, and inside the 3D fantasy land of the website. Oral Fixation mints are an easy product to fall in love with, because the more you discover the hidden design motifs, the more you feel you're in on a secret.
Sized perfectly to fit folded cash, credit cards, and other nighttime accoutrements, the tins double as reusable wallets for people who don't like travelling with a bulge in their pockets. The web site is an epic fantasy-world unto itself, loosely based on Oral Fixation's real world Chocolate Factory headquarters.
There is also an Art Gallery, which features the work of outstanding young artists from all over the world.
oralfix.com | Art Gallery | 3D Fantasy World
Art of Science Competition . 2005
The inaugural Art of Science Competition at Princeton University celebrates the aesthetics of science and the experimental nature of data-driven artwork. This nexus of artistic and scientific creativity holds a special place in my heart, as those two worlds inform much of my own work. I was honored to help design and organize the first annual Art of Science Competition at Princeton. Over the next few years, we hope to grow the competition into an international forum for scientific artwork, in all its manifestations.
www.princeton.edu/artofscience | Gallery
Yahoo! Netrospective . 2005
To celebrate the first ten years of the Interent, Yahoo! selected the top 100 moments of the web from 1995 to 2005. I worked with Yahoo! to develop "Yahoo Netrospective: 10 years, 100 Moments", the commemorative microsite, the design and functionality of which was inspired by 10x10.
birthday.yahoo.com/netrospective
Distilled Spirit . 2005
Identity design for the nascent lifestyle company Distilled Spirit, based in New York City and San Francisco. The company's emblem is the turtle, which figures prominently in the creation myths of various cultures. In one version, the earth is supported by four elephants, standing on the back of a giant turtle. The common ground between many cultures and nationalities, the turtle represents the "distilled spirit" of the world. The turtle's shell forms a multi-colored peace sign, and the colored spirits bubble out from the turtle, entering the world.
Fabrica . 2005
Fabrica is Benetton's creative think tank, located in northern Italy. I recently spent a year at Fabrica, towards the end of which I was asked to remake Fabrica's website. The site explores notions of order and chaos, control and changeability. A simple grid-based design allows the work to communicate without distraction. Fabrica fellows, past and present, can create project cards using a simple web interface, and their projects then appear on the site's front page. The Fabrica logo changes to reflect the most recently posted project, literally transforming the identity of Fabrica with each new piece of work. Any visitor to the site can scrawl graffiti on any project page, for all future visitors to see. In this way, any project is vulnerable to praise, criticism, or mockery, and any visitor to the Fabrica site becomes both a critic and an artist. An IP address locator logs the country where each graffiti is created, expressing the global outlook of Fabrica, whose community of artists stretches worldwide.
Fabrica (archived) | Fabrica (current) | Graffiti Archive | My Fabrica Projects
Princeton Department of Psychology . 2004
Princeton University's Department of Psychology commissioned me to redesign their website as their primary tool for attracting top graduate students and professors from around the world. The site had to establish the program as a field leader, yet convey its cutting edge, no-nonsense approach to psychology. The site is organized around two central phrases: "Stretch Your Mind" and "Question Everything," visually enforced by a series of images involving rubber bands, asking the viewer to rethink the ordinary, as Princeton psychologists do in their research. The site is composed of skewed, off-kilter angles, breaking the usual rectilinear website schematic, again echoing the approach of reconsidering the ordinary.
The TEAK Fellowship . 2004
Based in New York City, the TEAK Fellowship works with disadvantaged inner city kids to place them in top private schools. More personal than larger programs like Prep-for-Prep, TEAK delivers outstanding results, and its fellows are always among the highest achieving students in their respective schools. TEAK commissioned Number27 to redesign and produce their newsletters, and their 2003 Annual Report, which is sent to over 7,000 donors, mentors, past fellows, volunteers, and sponsoring corporations.
Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies . 2003
Created in August of 2003, the Princeton Institute of International and Regional Studies governs all international scholarship at Princeton University. PIIRS is a global leader in the research and study of major world issues, uniting universities and institutions worldwide to establish meaningful and coherent perspectives on matters of global importance. I designed the PIIRS logotype, website, and graphic identity. Using stunning photography from all corners of the world, I created a minimalist site that loads fast. The site has a universal aesthetic that transcends national and cultural boundaries, positioning PIIRS as an unbiased entity to which all cultures can belong, but which no single culture dominates.
Triple Tree . 2003
TripleTree, a leading investment bank based in San Diego and Minneapolis, commissioned me to redesign their website, presenting their industry-focused, personalized approach to investment banking. TripleTree wanted a site that would establish their innovative, offbeat approach to a very conservative field. The site is designed with upbeat imagery and bold colors, and continuously drives visitors to their industry-specific sections.
Princeton International Networks Archive . 2003
Centered at Princeton University, the INA is a global alliance of scholars who believe that geography has become irrelevant. The INA is developing a new way of mapping our world, based on global transactions instead of geography. The work will culminate in the production of an Atlas of Globalization that spans 2000 years. Number27 created the visual identity for INA, including its logo, website, a series of infographic maps, and its experimental mapping philosophy.
princeton.edu/~ina | maps | non-geographic maps
Stanford University P2P Sociology . 2004
A research group based at Stanford University, P2P Sociology takes basic human interactions such as trust, suspicion, attraction, and memory, and applies them to complicated systems of peer to peer networking. P2P Sociology commissioned Number27 to design a logotype that would convey these principles. The design uses human figures to represent nodes in a network, in which each node can simultaneously be both server and client. The server-client duality is exposed by a series of interlocking circles that originate at a single node (the server) and intersect each other node (the clients). Taken together, the multiple circles form a single thicker circle, representing the strength of the unified system.
Flaming Toast Productions . 2002 - present
The commercial design company I have directed since 2002, working with such clients as Yahoo!, AT&T, IEEE, Princeton , Duke, and Stanford Universities, in addition to many other groups and organizations.
LOHAS . 2004
LOHAS (Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability) is devoted to promoting emerging markets of environmentally and socially responsible products. LOHAS needed an insignia to convey this sutainable, yet commercially viable approach to commerce. It needed a website to explain and promote its conference, and a memorable invitation that would express the "Beyond the Box" thinking of LOHAS and its discerning, intelligent consumers. Number27 designed a logo composed of many skewed, multicolored circles, together forming a single, unified circle, stronger than the sum of its parts. Number27 also designed an origami-style invitation which recipients fold into a box and then destroy.
lohas.com | origami invitation
AT&T Visualization Group . 2003
The Information Vizualization Research Group develops real time graphical methods of displaying vast systems of data, such as all AT&T cell phone traffic in American in a given day. Their software allows AT&T executives to understand very complicated information sets in a simple manner, often saving the company millions of dollars in crises management situations. This group commissioned me to redesign their web presence, arriving at a group identity that would both echo the corporate tone of AT&T, and establish the group as edgy, independent, and exciting.
research.att.com/areas/visualization
Accent PR . 2003
Accent is an innovative public relations firm that creates unlikely partnerships to generate media buzz. Through this creative approach to marketing, Accent leverages the media's love of a good spectacle to bring extreme visibility to their clients. Accent commissioned Number27 to redesign their website, conveying their eccentric approach to an often conservative field. The site uses goldfish as its central theme: whimsical, colorful and upbeat, to represent Accent's unique business philosophy. The goldfish is paired with familiar business phrases which are given new meaning by the capricious imagery that accompanies them.
Saint Anthony Hall . 2001
For Saint Anthony Hall, Princeton University's 160+ year old secret literary society, I created a site with an air of mystery, puzzlement, and intrigue, using imagery often bordering on the macabre.
In 2000, the State of Vermont held an open contest among all residents for the design of their state quarter. My design had two main elements. The first is a Holstein cow, the hallmark of Vermont's dairy tradition that famously spawned Ben & Jerry's ice cream. The second is the silhouette of Camel's Hump mountain, Vermont's most famous and recognizable peak. The mountain also represents the skiing culture so popular in Vermont, and the rolling hills that unfold towards the mountain represent Vermont's beautiful pastoral setting, and its agriculture tradition. Our design was chosen as one of 5 finalists out of over 800 entries. The final quarter design borrowed the Camel's Hump mountain idea, but replaced the Holstein cow with a man taking sap from a tree.