An action packed chase sequence through various program windows. Reminds me of the clever animations in Flash that involved stick figures and total destruction of the UI. This is, of course, much more polished and sophisticated. But then, that was 1999 and definitely not Intel i5 powered!

Found this quote at the Global Coalition of Peace website

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.  This world in arms is not spending money alone, It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children… Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower (April 16, 1953)

Reminded me of the documentary Why We Fight.

Wikimapia, Google Maps, Google Earth, Nat Geo’s Map Machine, OpenStreet Maps are some of my favourite applications to explore the world. Mashups using these technologies and the purposes they serve have been a constant source of interest. Recently, while designing some envelopes, I wanted to incorporate some map shots.

I was pleasantly surprised to find Map Envelope by Beste Miray Doğan and Teevio . Useful and efficient. On further searching, I found the Google Maps Envelope concept project by designers Rahul Mahtani & Yofred Moik.

Their concept is to include both the “From” and “To” addresses in the map on the envelope and incorporate it right into the Gmail interface.

Icons of Susan Kare

The Paint Bucket icon for the fill tool and the Lasso icon for the freehand selection tool are now part of everyday computing for millions of people worldwide. Their designer, Susan Kare , according to the Museum of  Modern Art, in New York, is “a pioneering and influential computer iconographer. Since 1983, Kare has designed thousands of icons for the world’s leading software companies. Utilizing a minimalist grid of pixels and constructed with mosaic-like precision, her icons communicate their function immediately and memorably, with wit and style.”

She began her career at Apple, Inc. as the screen graphics and digital font designer for the original Macintosh computer, initially advertised as the “computer for the rest of us.” The computer with a sly smile, watch, trash can, bomb, hand and the arrow are some of the initial icons that have now become part of computing culture. The Macintosh set the standard for how computers could appeal to a broad new group of nontechnical people. Every software designer has dreamed of having his or her program achieve the same level of quasi-religious adoration as the Macintosh.

All sorts of interesting characters stumbled into the personal computer industry in the early 1980s, but Ms. Kare’s entry was more serendipitous than most. After receiving a doctorate in fine arts from New York University in 1978, she moved to the San Francisco area to work as a freelance graphic artist. One day she received a call from Andy Hertzfeld, a high school friend who was a programmer at Apple Computer Inc. He was working on a new computer and needed help creating graphic images by turning on and off the tiny dots, or pixels, on the computer’s screen.

“He told me to go to the stationery store and get the smallest graph paper I could find and color in the squares to make images,” Ms. Kare recalled. Ms. Kare was soon a full-fledged member of the Macintosh development team. She also designed the original type fonts that shipped with the Macintosh and were named for cities: Chicago, New York and San Francisco.

Since leaving Apple in the mid-80s after the chairman, Steve Jobs, was forced out, she has created hundreds of icons, including most of those featured in Windows 3.0, which was Microsoft’s first successful attempt to reproduce a Macintosh-like experience on IBM-compatible personal computers. She even designed many of the playing cards in the solitaire game included in Windows programs.

Ms. Kare favors a minimalist approach. Much of what she does when asked to give a program a face lift, she said, is take away elements rather than add them. “I tend to think of icons more like traffic signs than as illustrations,” she added. “It’s much more successful if it is simple.”

Her restraint also applies to the use of color. “Just because you have millions of colors doesn’t mean that you have to use them all the time,” she said. Her icons tend to be rendered in bright, primary colors.

But the secret to her art is not just pruning or rendering an image in light but also coming up with a cohesive metaphor for whatever action the icon must represent.

Nouns are easy, she said. Verbs are hard. The toughest commands to illustrate are “undo” and “execute,” she added.

She does not strive to make the action represented by each icon instantly recognizable. Her goal is to make them easy to remember. “I would say an icon is successful if you could tell someone what it is once and they don’t forget it,” she said.

It is also a challenge to come up with a fresh idea for a well-worn concept. “I’ve done trash trucks, trash bags, plastic garbage cans, aluminum trash cans, wire trash baskets, wastebaskets and even fires,” she said, referring to the variations on icons for “delete.”

For each icon that ends up in a program, she said, two or three others are rejected. “I always have many more images than actually ship,” she added. “The image graveyard is littered with things that might have been.”

“My work has continued to be motivated by respect for, and empathy with, users of software. I believe that good icons are more akin to road signs rather than illustrations, and ideally should present an idea in a clear, concise, and memorable way. I try to optimize for clarity and simplicity even as palette and resolution options have increased. I rely on common sense; when I designed buttons, icons, and other screen images for Microsoft’s Windows 3.0 in 1987, I was able to use the 16-color palette to replace black rectangles with images that looked like three-dimensional “pressable” buttons. I was also challenged to fine tune many images for applications by using dithered patterns of color to offset the constraints of the limited VGA palette.”

“Although I’ve designed thousands of icons for hundreds of clients over the past eighteen years, I still search for better metaphors-perennial brain twisters such as “undo”, “save”, and “run program” come to mind. I have endeavored to make all kinds of software more intuitive: programs designed for users, for experts in vertical markets, for technical audiences, and for more or less everyone.”

“The nature of user interface design is collaborative; much great software is the result of a team effort among engineers, marketing types, and designers. My design work-installed at the top level of software-has often been inspired by imaginative and breakthrough engineering. Current work that intrigues me is having the opportunity to improve the quality of small monochrome icons and typefaces in fast-proliferating handheld devices, in addition to the larger and more colorful images on computer monitors. I work to hone the meaning and appearance of each image, and I hope the cumulative effect makes the process of interacting with machines-the way people “see” the software-more gratifying.”

“I feel much happier that people are looking at my icons every day than having my sculptures in five living rooms across the country.”

A collection of font and typography related jokes

Mark Twain was the first author to use the typewriter. He supposedly typed a manuscript for his publisher who wrote back that he left out the punctuation. Twain sent back a sheet filled with periods, commas, semicolons, etc. “Insert where necessary”, he said.

“Did you hear? Comma and Period got married.”
“Really? Comma’s a great guy, but who’s Period?”
“Some moody chick he picked up at the Crossbar a year ago.”
“I bet she’s perfect for him.”
“Yep, she’s always finishing his sentences.”

“Wow, you always have so many fonts, where do you get them from?”
“Oh they come from Monaco, Geneva, Chicago, New York… I get them delivered at various Times throughout the day…”
“By who?”
“A Courier!”

A sans-serif face walks into the street and is hit by a Swiss Modernist truck. The carnage is grotesk… but you know, akzidenz happen.

One font meets the other in Rome. He asks: “Hey, are you a Roman too?” “No,” says the other, “but I am an Italic!”

A font walks up to Gill Sans and asks: “Do you want to go out with me?”
Gill Sans says “No!”
“Why don’t you want to go out with me?” the other font asks.
Gill Sans: “Because you’re Grotesque!”

Two fonts walk into the bar, and the barman says, “Sorry lads, we don’t serve your type.”

There is a new revival of Cooper Black rolling on to the market which only contains ordinals. It is called Mini-Cooper.

What type of diabetes is a graphic designer most likely to get diagnosed with? Type 1

What kind of relationships do typophiles prefer? The open type

What did the typographer say to the printer who wouldn’t stop talking?
“Get to the point.”

What is the type designer’s favorite breakfast?
Kern flakes!

How many typesetters does it take to change a light bulb?
One, but be sure to specify how tight you want it.

‘Font’ is a four letter word that starts with an ‘F’.

How long does it take for a type designer to change a light bulb?
It depends on if you need it to be normal, bold, or heavy.

In an ancient monastery, a new monk arrived to dedicate his life to subservient solitude and to join the others copying ancient records. The first thing he noticed was that other monks were copying, by
hand, books that had already been copied by hand.

The new monk had to speak up. “Forgive me, Brother Mark, but copying other copies by hand allows many chances for error. How do we know we aren’t copying someone else’s mistakes? Are they ever checked against the originals?”

Brother Mark was startled! No one had ever suggested that before. “Well,that is a good point, my son. I will take one of these latest books down to the vault and study it against its original document.” He went deep into the vault where no one else was allowed to enter and started to study.

The day passed and it was getting late in the evening. The monks were getting worried about Brother Mark. Finally, the new monk started making his way through the old vault and after he searched for a while, he heard sobbing.

“Brother Mark?” he called. The sobbing was louder as he came nearer. He finally found the old monk sitting at a table with both the new copy and the original ancient book in front of him. It was obvious that Brother Mark had been crying for a long time.

“What is the matter?” asked the concerned new monk. “Oh, my Lord,” sobbed Brother Mark, “the word is ‘CELEBRATE’ !!”

Dreamspaces

Dreamspaces was a brilliant BBC documentary series with high production quality and visually stunning stories. Sadly, the series was of only 12 episodes. It covers great buildings from New York, Helsinki, Puerto Rico, Chicago, Romania, Brazil, Israel and many more international destinations looking at various aspects of design and architecture and their relationship with contemporary living. It is part travel show and part architecture appreciation with emphasis on the appreciation.

Architecture is a narrative of our culture. The things architecture creates, the spaces, forms, shapes and patterns, tell us about ourselves. Buildings anchor and mould our lives – some say we can read our lives through our buildings – but who are the people who design our world? What do they believe in, where do their ideas come from and what challenges them?

The presentation was top class. David Adjaye, Charlie Luxton and Justine Frischmann provided the show with a fresh, clear, relaxed and well paced informative narrative. Guest presenters added cameos of their own favorite buildings. The choice of subjects was made this show one of a kind. Music, visuals and camera work, was superb. The contemporary soundtrack was outstanding.The focus was on bringing out the uniqueness of the architecture of the subject, its history, character and use.

There was a bit of irreverence and funkiness which actually enhanced the message of the show. The wonder of architecture and the brilliance of the architects who build dreamspaces was very well showcased. The episode list reveals the vast area they covered in the course of just 12 episodes. Jam packed with goodness, you would miss out if you don’t keep up with the fast paced narration of the show. This in some way makes it stand out from other slower paced highly detailed architecture documentaries. Dreamspaces was a successful attempt to make architecture and design relevant, interesting and stylish.

Some of my favorite moments were the the Art Deco of Miami, Brasilia, Moroccan Architecture, Architecture of Libraries, the renovation of Ireland’s National Gallery,  Archigram (Beatles of Architecture!) and buildings in camouflage.

Antoni Gaudi

This is the third part in the series Visions of Space that I saw. This is a look at how the works of three remarkable architects of the 20th century shaped our modern world. It examines how each one of them use space to express our response to the power of the corporation (Meiss van der Rohe), the power of the State (Albert Speer), and religion (Antoni Gaudi).

The third part is called God’s Architect.

Catalan architect Antonio Gaudí (1852–1926) designed some of the world’s most astonishing buildings, interiors, and parks.
So unique and fanatastic was his vision and architecture that it is almost impossible to extrapolate and complete the spectacular, still-unfinished masterpiece, the Sagrada Familia cathedral in Barcelona.

While the Sagrada Familia cathedral is often referred to as the magnum opus of Gaudi, the buildings that showcase the, sensuous, curving and surreal style of Gaudi and his use of very advanced, unconventional methods, his keen and intense observation of nature are the Church of Colonia Guell, The Park Guell, El Carmel and the Casa Mila.

Robert Hughes takes on a journey of exploration as he traces the career of Antoni Gaudi and visits his buildings. His relationship with his parton Eusebi Guell and his staunch faith and celibacy as a catholic christian are quite well explained.How could such a intensely austere man build some of the most sensuous and fantastic buildings? The exploration of this aspect of Gaudi is what makes this part of the series very interesting.

For a person who has never heard or seen the works of Gaudi before, this documentary is a wonderful introduction. The presence of such a formidable person as Robert Hughes stamps the documentary with a unique sense of wonder, awe and appreciation. The interviews with experts interspersed with imagery and music of the best quality makes it an excellent watch for all people interested in architecture, culture, history and design.

Aldus Manutius

The late 1400s must have been very similar to current times. This was the tumultuous time when the printed word was changing the fabric of society, much like the digital revolution of the early 21st century. The transition from the bibles of Gutenberg to the widely available paperback type books which created a huge reading class of people sowing the seeds of public participation and democratic ways was a time of confusion and struggle as existing structures came tumbling down.

In the middle of this was Aldus Manutius, venetian printer, publisher and inventor. His legacy lives on today five centuries after him.

Dolphin and Anchor Logo

Before the invention of the movable type, the predominant books were hand copied bibles. Monks would spend a life time copying every word by hand. The Gutenberg printing press came as an invention to print bibles. The church, calligraphers and illustrators held complete sway over the printed word. These bibles were large, bulky and expensive. Gutenberg made Mainz, the industrial center of printing in Europe. However, the man responsible for democratizing books was not Gutenberg, it is a credit often given to Aldus Manutius and his Venetian printing press.

Aldus created modern typography by standardizing page layouting and printing methods. He created simple layouts by using whitespace. This enabled the printing industry to break free from the clutches of calligraphers and illustrators. He concentrated on the words and enhanced their power to reach the reader by removing embellishments. This was the first time that the gap between the writer and the reader was bridged. He created small and handy portable pocket editions of classics in a new book format called octavos. He innovated binding techniques and methods to standardize design for use on large schemes. Most important of all was his introduction of a standardized system of punctuation and the italic type.

His typefaces were all designed and cut by the brilliant Francesco Griffo, a punchcutter who created the first roman type cut from study of classical Roman capitals. However, he did not use his italic typeface for emphasis as we do today, but rather for its narrow and compact letter forms, which allowed the printing of pocket-sized books. He patented the exclusive use of the italic. He is also believed to have been the first typographer to use the semicolon.

Aldus Manutius used the motto “Hasten Slowly”. His editions are of great typographic excellence, at the same time,he shrived to make it cheap. Despite the hardships of war his work and enthusiasm lead to the production of some of the most remarkable books ever made. These inspired whole generations and preserved Greek literature The great typographer Herman Zapf produced a font in his honor and the publishing software company Aldus produced the page design software called Pagemaker, often given the credit of bringing printing to the desktop. An Italian free text project like the Gutenberg project is named after the great man and is called Progetto Manuzio.

Aldus Pagemaker

This is not a pipe.

1968
by René Magritte

“The famous pipe. How people reproached me for it! And yet, could you stuff my pipe? No, it’s just a representation, is it not? So if I had written on my picture ‘This is a pipe,’ I’d have been lying!“

The Treachery of Images. The eternal geek favorite for T-shirts.

A Super Macro Photo on a Cell Phone Camera

I just saw this amazing hack. An ingenious way to circumvent one of the major drawbacks of bad cell phone cameras. Cell phone cameras are rather dodgy when it comes to macro photography.

Cell Phone with DVD Lens

Almost every one who has been using computers for some time now will have an obsolete or redundant CD or DVD ROM drive. They are practically of no use. The idea of taking out the lens from these drives to use for the cell phone camera is a fantastic hack.

Do read the full instructions given at DIYPhotography.net. A big thanks to them for sharing this hack with the world.