Quote from 422′s “Britain From Above” web page:

“422 create Unique time-lapse views of British life using real GPS data for major new BBC series presented by Andrew Marr. 422 has created ground breaking CGI sequences revealing never seen before patterns of life in modern Britain. Starting with GPS data mapping the movements of London taxi cabs, commercial aircraft, Channel shipping, refuse trucks and schoolchildren, 422 MD and senior programmer Craig Howarth translated lists of raw numeric co-ordinates sampled at regular time intervals, into coherent animated paths. 422′s VFX team, led by Art Director Dave Corfield and VFX supervisor Andy Howell visualised the resulting paths in Maya and composited them with satellite imagery of the UK using Shake. The result is simultaneously beautiful, surprising and informative. “Click either of the images to take a look 422′s at web site and watch their reel.

This clip and the ones on room.tv web site shows a great before and after comparison from the wonderland of retouching. On room’s website you find more fx & design examples of their recent work. room’s mission is to merge editorial, motion graphics, computer animation and sound design into a complete creative experience. room edits commercials, music videos and films, design CG effects and title sequences and more.

room’s team members are:

Jeff Selis (editor), Elisa Bonora (editor), Bill Pollock (online artist/editor), Elad Marish (composer/designer), Brandon Toh (sound designer/mixer), John Musemecki (cgi arist) & Jason Barager (executive producer)

A highly recommended book “Graphic Design The New Basics” written by Ellen Lupton and Jennifer Cole Phillips.

Some “Graphic Design: The New Basics” reviews:

motionographer.com:  “If you’re at all interested in design education—either as a teacher or as a student—Graphic Design: The New Basics is required reading. Ellen Lupton and Jennifer Cole Phillips have made something more than a mere textbook; they’ve created an authoritative and thorough yet useful and inspiring companion for the successful practice of graphic design. I’m confident that I will happily revisit this book again and again during my never-ending journey as a student and teacher.”

viget.com: “Overall I highly recommend this book as an addition to your personal design library. Whether you are a seasoned design professional or someone just interested in learning more, it serves as a fantastic and succinct resource for the fundamentals of good design. “

nytimesbooks.blogspot.com: “But if you do, check this one out, if only for the fantastically sourced examples”

Ellen Lupton and Jennifer Cole Phillips on their newest book:

“Graphic Design: The New Basics, published by Princeton Architectural Press and Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) in Spring 2008, is a guide to basic design principles.We created this book because we didn’t see anything like it available for today’s students and young designers: a concise, visually inspiring guide to two-dimensional design written for today’s world. As educators with decades of combined experience in graduate and undergraduate teaching, we have witnessed the design scene change and change again in response to new technologies. When we were students ourselves in the 1980s, classic books such as Armin Hofmann’s Graphic Design Manual (published in 1965) had begun to lose their relevance within the restless and shifting design world. Postmodernism was on the rise, and abstract design exercises seemed out of
step with the current interest in appropriation and historicism.

During the 1990s, design educators became caught in  the pressure to teach (and learn) software, and many of us struggled to balance the teaching of technical skills with and critical thinking. Form sometimes got lost along the way, as design methodologies moved away from universal visual concepts toward a more anthropological understanding of design as a constantly changing flow of cultural sensibilities.
This book addresses the gap between software and visual thinking. By focusing on form, we have  reembraced the Bauhaus tradition and the pioneering work of the great formal design educators, from Armin Hofmann to some of our own teachers, including Malcolm Grear.
The majority of student work featured here comes  from the course we teach together at MICA, the Graphic Design MFA Studio. Also featured are excercises from a range of undergraduate design courses. A sampling of those exercises are assembled on this site. To complement the student work, the book also presents key examples from contemporary professional practice that demonstrate a variety of experimental,
visually richdesign approaches.
Graphic Design: The New Basics lays out the elements  of a visual language whose forms are employed by individuals, institutions, and locales that are increasingly connected in a global society. We hope the book will inspire more thought and creativity.
—Ellen Lupton and Jennifer Cole Phillips”

You can read the some sample chapter online by selecting one of the chapters below:

• Front Matter
• Color
• Layers
• Time Motion
• Modularity

About the Authors:

Ellen Lupton is Director of the Graphic Design MFA program at Maryland Institute College of Art, and director of MICA’s Center for Design Studies. She is also curator of contemporary design at Cooper–Hewitt, National Design Museum in New York City. She has curated and authored numerous exhibitions and books, including  Thinking with Type (2004), Skin (2002), National Design Triennial (2000, 2003, 2006), Mixing Messages:  Graphic Design in Contemporary Culture (1996), and Mechanical Brides: Women and Machines from Home to  Office (1993). She is a 2007 recipient of the AIGA Gold Medal for lifetime achievement.

Jennifer Cole Phillips is Associate Director of the Graphic Design MFA program at Maryland Institute College of Art, and Principal of J. Cole Phillips Design. Before joining MICA, Phillips was a tenured Associate   Professor in the program in Publications Design at University of Baltimore. She has an MFA from Rhode Island School of Design. Her work has been included in the annuals of Graphis Design, Graphis Poster, Print, the Art Director’s Club of Metropolitan Washington and New York, AIGA 50, and ACD100 Show, among  others. She served for eight years on the Board AIGA of Directors for Baltimore.