I’m going to start today with the material in my Commentary folder.

First up – after 28 years I returned to my Alma Mater in London, UK – The Royal College of Art to see the Spring Graduation Show. Sure the technology has changed – Apple MacBooks on most desktops, but the range and diversity of ideas is equally exciting today, as it was then. Was I really that young when I was there!

There are a number of sites that show the work of the students in the various disciplines, such as the ‘Communication Art and Design Show 2009‘ In 1981 I was in the School of Industrial Design and that now appears to be supplanted by Design Products , RCA/ICL Industrial Design Engineering (ICL stands for Imperial College London ) and Industrial Design Engineering Projects. Two current students that caught my eye were Emma Caselton who has created her own web site and managed to get her products featured in other design blogs such as Gizmodo, and Giles Miller , also with his own web site. The opportunities to get your ideas ‘out there’ have definitely multiplied since my time, but they have to, there were only 16 of us who escaped 28 years ago. Some of us have retired by now, and like RJSID have sites that show what we did do, and others are obviously still active, such as Daniel Weil and Dale Bevington.

I pass through London quite often but this is the first time since those bygone days that I have spent time there, wandering and revisiting old areas that I used to haunt. The images below are some of those I took while there this time.

There are a few other names I would like to mention. Attending the International School of Painting, Drawing and Sculpture , which is located here in Monte Castello di Vibio, Umbria, during this summer of 2009 were many talented folk. One was Vaydehi , a young photographer of Indian origins, who has a web site of her work at www.camerawaali.com

Another persons work I really liked was Hilary Pollock , an Austrailian artist who was returning to the school, having attended a previous session here. She is a painter, Illustrator, printmaker and sculptor – her work visually crosses those boundaries.

The last single person I will mention in this posting is Ailsa Rollo, a young and very talented fashion designer who has recently relocated to Brighton UK. Below some of the creations that she showed during theBrighton Fashion Week 2009.

Click on the images to the right to load them, there are a total of seven outfits that illustrate her talent.

Enough about what I like and mentioning single individuals. Onto web sites that provide what I feel is interesting commentary or thought provoking material

The first is another work in progress by the code monkeys of Google – This one called Google in Quotes – There are different editions (4, plus custom) and different individuals that can be paired commenting on a range of subjects. Politicians must hate it, it is a classic example of a past statement coming back to bite you.

The other site of quotes is called Quotes on Design. While more specific, it is a wonderful repository of pithy phrases. It has the added ability through a provided api to add these to a personal site, and provides a rss feed and the ability to suggest other quotes that you have found.

If you are or want to be an optimist, ‘The Optimist Conspectus‘ may be a useful destination. With comments from different parts of the world and different genders it can be a nice pickup after reading the news of the day.

But if that doesn’t cheer you up, then surf over to the article on the ‘New Scientist ‘ web site that shows some instructive graphics in an article titled. ‘Where is the remotest place on Earth ‘

As a designer there is nothing I like better than an elegant solution – be it a product, a piece of art or and infographic. And the tools we have to hand these days to present previously opaque data, in meaningful ways with the added dimension of time or motion are wonderful. If one thinks of the data sets that were analyzed for the images in the article above… Two other great infographics are below. The first is ‘The Hierarchy of Digital Distractions‘ – something we are to well acquainted with in real life but have not often seen illustrated. It is one of the many infographics displayed/explained on the site ‘Information is Beautiful‘

Another interesting infographic is this from Interbrand which is dynamic, actual a Flash file that while presenting a lot of data alters to make particular points stand out. What were the top brands a decade ago, which are there now and how have the faired in between

And a level deeper for designers is how products have changed over time. In this graphic by the UK paper the Guardian , the Fifties to the Noughties (I did not come up with that name for the millennium decade – they did), the Changing Face of Everyday Design . The images are displayed by decade and six categories – clicking on the category leads you one layer deeper, to larger images of each category. A great resource. This infographic reminds me one one of my favourite design source books, Crosscurrents, by Tony and Claes Lewenhaupt (I see that the book is still available via Amazon or from High Valley Books amongst many sites), which compares Art fashion and design spanning 1890-1989. Design is so much more powerful when seen in context.

As many of you know I am a news junky, reviewing a broad range of news site on a daily basis, exploring the various angles different interests present the same news. On of my weekly visits is the Economist – a great site that allows you advanced access to if you subscribe – you can do so either to the web site alone or in conjunction with the printed magazine. While a bit deeper than an infographic I found this sub site of theirs, called Think Space which explores individuals inspiration very fascinating.

I have in previous entries mention the people at Trendwatching , and their free monthly newsletter that covers a variety of marketing trends, that may impact of you design decision. I also regularly receive an e-news letter from the people at The Cool Hunter which reminds me to visit their site and explore the articles more deeply.

There is another type of site that is quite interesting – those detailing new business ideas or business/causes that you can get involved in. Springwise and Kickstart are two that I found interesting and have added to my already too long list of bookmarks. http://www.springwise.com/

As if it is not already getting hard to make a living as a designer, with clients supplying solutions they want you to tidy up, stock agencies giving away images – or nearly so – and design competitions created by clients to troll for cheap design solutions, this week I got an email from a Stock Photo agency wanting submissions of logos if you please – Give me a break! CreativePro in their newsletter CreativeProse clarified iStockphototo compensation policy and provide links to forums where the issue was being discussed. Logo design, good logo design, is not easy – The broad range of media that the result must work in, if it is going to be successful, can complicate the transformation of a cute idea into a workable reality. Touching on the assorted aspects of this particular type of design is Logo Designer Blog

I have mentioned the SmashingMagazine design website many time – An great mix of useful reference material and inspiration along with a dose of design history. I am eagerly awaiting my copy of their new design book . They recently had a great article on the Bauhaus the ’school’ that has had such a huge impact on architecture, product and graphic deign.

Another favourite web site, mentioned frequently is TED. If I were still working full time I would attend one of their seminars at the drop of a hat. But they are not cheap! – thankfully they are constantly adding material culled from the conference sessions to their web site. Another site that I recently discovered was Academic Earth , a repository of videos on diverse subject that is course material from some of the leading universities in the world. You are never too old to lear or revisit a subject from your younger years and see how it has progressed.

And that is it for this entry – I have stolen time over the last three days to post this and there are other things I had better get on with. Hopefully I will get onto the other folders in my Blog Stuff Folder ( Applications / Font Stuff / Books / Mac computer stuff/ Photography, Images and Ads / Web issues / Products) I want to thank those who have found things that they thought might be of interest to me and the wider audience.

I close with one more individual, Ben Cooper . A young photographer, working with NASA, who gets some unique photo opportunities others never get.

Late May now, almost a month since the last post

So much has happened! Where to Start? My URL’s folder on my desktop now holds more that 60 links of things I thought interesting, and my Application folder contains a variety of new applications that having found, tried and paid for, I want to tell you about.

I think I will tackle that URL folder first and try to put some order into it. Then maybe a few entries over the next few days…

If you don’t know the Screen Capture Keystrokes that Apple has included in your system, you ought,and even better the modifier keys to make specific selections of things like entire windows. But they are not the only story out there. the people at konigi.com have a list of 6, Apples and 5 others:

http://konigi.com/notebook/6-screenshot-utilities-you-should-know-about

And of course there is the next category up for capturing moving imagery on your screen. I personally settled on iShowU now at version 1.66 from

http://www.shinywhitebox.com/index.html.

And you must not forget Screenshot Settings.app, a two trick pony that does nothing but change the format of those created screen shots and where they are saved to. Don’t like Apples choice of png – like pdf and a specific folder?

I tried to look up the source of that last mentioned little application – it is actually a small Applescript. Search Results for ‘Screenshot’ at http://www.versiontracker.com returned ‘no Result by that name’ Oh well It is a script and editable at that using Script Editor.

Font Stuff:

The I Love Typography is again the source of some wonderful web inspiration regarding fonts and their use.

15 Excellent Examples of Web Typography

PART I: SHOWCASE http://ilovetypography.com/2007/09/19/15-excellent-examples-of-web-typography

15 Great Examples of Web Typography

QUARTER 2, 2008 http://ilovetypography.com/2008/05/07/15-great-examples-of-web-typography-q2-2008/

Do you know the origins of that wonderful character, the Ampersand ? One of my found in ‘Hoefler Titling‘ At Hoefler and Frere-Jones in their News, Notes and Observations section you will find a illustrated history at:

http://www.typography.com/ask/showBlog.php?blogID=98

I have also found another site dedicted to all things Ampersand to quote:

” The Ampersand- A scribal abbreviation for and. Derived from the Latin word “et.” I like the ampersand. I think it is often the most attractive punctuation mark of them all. This blog is an attempt to give this humble character the respect it deserves.“

It is located at: http://ampersand.gosedesign.net/

The folks at Smashing magazine have assembled ‘50 breathtaking typographic posters designed by artists across the globe’, while no facing the limitation of type on the web, these too are great inspiration. The collection is at:

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/02/25/breathtaking-typographic-posters/

If like me you are concerned about making your web type accurate and cross platform, knowing the correct coding for the odd characters in most fonts are needed. The ‘Designers Toolbox‘ have assembled a useful resource at:

http://www.designerstoolbox.com/designresources/html/

The Elements of Typographic Style Applied to the Web – A practical guide to web typography , is an ever increasing set of articles on the various aspect of just that. As of late May it is up to 3.2.1 Use titling figures with full caps, and text figures in all other circumstances. To date the subjects of ‘Rhythm & Proportion‘ and ‘Harmony & Counterpoint‘ have been addresed. As a work in progress it is worth returning or subscribing to its RSS feed. The site is at:

http://webtypography.net/

Have you ever needed to know what different fonts at differing sizes would look like on the web? And having then got the correct size spacing, alignment etc wanted the correct CSS description. Well it is available – one very great site called ‘typesetter – compare screen font‘. It is located at:

http://typetester.maratz.com/

Think you know your fonts? Helvetica vs Time – Easy ! But try out ‘ the rather difficult Font Game‘ and see how good you really are. It is located at:

http://fontgame.ilovetypography.com/

Yet another way of having type elements retain their visual integrity on the web – Have you heard of sIFR – to quote ” sIFR (or Scalable Inman Flash Replacement) is a technology that allows you to replace text elements on screen with Flash equivalent ” if you want to know more about this technology they have a site at:

http://wiki.novemberborn.net/

A beautiful font based screen saver; You can test it for awhile but it is not free.

It is called dropclock and the site is located at:

http://scr.sc/products/dropclock/

While I am still mentioning things web related I know one of the largest problems it trying your web site in assorted browsers for a client. If you are lucky the client has collected data from his existing site using some tool like Google Analytics available at:

http://www.google.com/analytics/

With it you will know what browsers, what platforms, what screen sizes, languages and plugins your viewers are using. A great starting point when doing a redesign. Use your tool of choice to develop the new site – mind you if you, like me have a preference for GoLive – you are now out of luck – Adobe have mothballed it. It has always been a better tool for the designer, Dreamweaver for the propellerhead – oh well. It still works, if you have it – it is just no longer supported or sold! Gee I bought it before it was an Adobe product – I remember it at the Boston MacWorld way back when…

Anyhow you have a site – now does it work? On the mac you throw it at Safari, FireFox and the now unsupported Explorer. If you are lucky enough to have a intell based mac, you probably have PARALLELS DESKTOP 3.0 FOR MAC from:

http://www.parallels.com

or VMware Fusion from:

http://www.vmware.com/products/fusion/

so that you can run Window XP or Vista. Hopefully XP – got your Service Pack 3 download for it yet. If you are using Apples of Boot Camp,make sure you down load the SP3 upgrade from Apple before you upgrade your copy of XP. Having used both Boot Camp and PARALLELS recently I strongly suggest PARALLELS of the two – It is so seamless – I have had no experience with VMWare.

Anyhow – you try Explorer, FireFox and Safari also on the PC. But what about the other browsers. I have used and strong suggest Browsershots. To quote ” Browsershots makes screenshots of your web design in different browsers. It is a free open-source online service created by Johann C. Rocholl. When you submit your web address, it will be added to the job queue. A number of distributed computers will open your website in their browser. Then they will make screenshots and upload them to the central server here.” You will find it at:

http://browsershots.org/

If they don’t have the browser – don’t worry about it. You will save yourself a lot of potential embarrassment if you do use it! Don’t let the client have the opportunity to use the fact the site was created on a Mac – for the reason it doesn’t look or work as it was meant to!

Lets move onto Cars – Automobiles.

I like cars, old cars. This last week has marked this years Mille Miglia here in Italy. 3 days to drive from Brescia to Rome and back. The second day has them going through Assisi, located near me here in Umbria.

One of my favourite cars has always been the Lotus Europa, but also up the is the BMW M1 – I doubt at six foot two I could even slip into the former, and given that used M1 are trading for 100K or better I can’t afford the latter. Still I was intrigued to see BMW’s supercar icon, the M1, which to quote: ” blew out the candles at the Concorso d’Eleganza at Villa d’Este this weekend. In honor of the car’s thirtieth birthday, BMW rolled out the new BMW M1 Hommage ” See the images at:

http://www.autoblog.com/2008/04/27/modern-retro-bmw-m1-homage-officially-revealed/

and:

http://www.thecoolhunter.net/transportation/BMW-M1-Concept/

A Wonderful VIDEO: Volvo’s 81-year History in 9 Minutes. I found this link originally on:

http://www.autoblog.com/2008/04/11/video-volvos-81-year-history-in-9-minutes/

but they had linked to the source file on YouTube. Here it is, we.ll woth 9 minutes

More Video:

Over the last few days I have yet again been going through TED video. I have mentioned this site before and I do so again. They are at:

www.ted.com

the most recent ones I have watched are:

• TEDTalks : Siegfried Woldhek (2008)
• TEDTalks : Roy Gould (2008)
• TEDTalks : Johnny Lee (2008)
• TEDTalks : Jill Bolte Taylor (2008)
• TEDTalks : Craig Venter (2008)
• TEDTalks : Clifford Stoll (2006)

All of these a very thought provoking, but a tip of the depth of ideas that are covered in this conference. But once again I was most impressed by the man who was not the president – Al Gore. His 2008 speech, included below was a followup to his prior presentation ‘An Inconvenient Truth‘. If you don’t take in anything else in this posting – take the time to watch this video – PLEASE

TEDTalks : Al Gore (2008)

Photography:

I have before expressed my interest in HDR Photography. Wonderful galleries of images are located at:

• http://hdrcreme.com/photo-gallery/
• http://www.flickr.com/groups/hdr

Most people who are interested in the subject have probably found the article by Colin Smith at:

http://www.photoshopcafe.com/tutorials/HDR_ps/hdr-ps.htm

Having read that and played with the HDR features in PhotoShop CS3 and the demo of Photomatix from:

http://www.hdrsoft.com/

I found a new product – HYDRA from:

http://creaceed.com/hydra/

To quote: ” Hydra is about mixing a number of under- and overexposed shots to get a natural sight of a scene. It provides human eye-like perception to your photographs by allowing you to create high dynamic range (HDR) images from a series of regular photographs, either from DSLRs or traditional point-and-shoot cameras.” As I use Apple Aperture I was also interested in the fact it worked as a plugin to Version 2.1. I downloaded the demo, I tried it and I paid for the product – Very simple to use – I like it. Here is an image I have done with it:

Now having said that, My wife is on a photoworkshop in Mull , Scotland , led by Mark Muench – http://www.muenchworkshops.com/gallery/3200186_JKGVA and I gather she has learned some new tricks – Apparently HDR is frowned on by this group of professionals and my wife says I have wasted my money – but then it was only 60$, one third of that from hdrsoft. I will report on what they had to say in another posting. They also have informed her that Aperture was not the best choice and to stick with PhotoShop and Adobe- I guess we all have our own preferences and workflows.

This week also brought a link to:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/audio_video/times_online_tv/?vxSiteId=d8fa78dc-d7ad-4d5a-8886-e420d4bc4200&vxChannel=Times%20Online%20News&vxClipId=1152_timesonline0664&vxBitrate=300

and ‘Billion-pixel panoramas — from your own camera‘ on the Times Online – UK Newspaper site at:

http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article3938717.ece

and another site related to this sort of photography.

http://gigapan.org/

It is amazing the technology spin off that is happening across the entire field of photography from the panoramas in Google Earth to the PhotoSynth and World Wide Telescope from Microsoft:

• http://labs.live.com/photosynth/
• http://research.microsoft.com/projects/wwt/

And into OUTER SPACE

From the Guardian and the UK National Archives, information has been released regarding UFO’s. Regardless of your own belief or not some interesting reading at the Guardians, Explore the X-files :

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/science/2008/05/explore_the_xfiles.html

or the National Archives, newly released UFO files :

http://ufos.nationalarchives.gov.uk/

On a more mundane subject regarding things whizzing around in the sky above us, from the European Space Operations Centre ” Space debris: evolution in pictures – Between the launch of Sputnik on 4 October 1957 and 1 January 2008, approximately 4600 launches have placed some 6000 satellites into orbit, of which about 400 are travelling beyond geostationary orbit or on interplanetary trajectories.” at:

http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/ESOC/SEMN2VM5NDF_mg_1.html

The images of the debris that the astronauts and spacecraft must avoid are frightening.

NASA have a site of multimedia : Images, podcasts, video and TV of past and present events…

http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/index.html

Presentation:

Be it a slide show, a series of images or a story you need to tell. We all have to order and assemble information in a presentation , either for ourselves, our friends or your clients. If you have a Mac – you get a lot of programs supplied with your machine and if you keep iLife up to date, and/or have paid extra for .Mac and iWork you probably won’t need anything else. A .Mac slide show is great! But if you want something a bit better?

Photoshop outputs images as slide shows in a variety of formats – here is one:

http://www.rjslade.com/DolceGara_RJS/index.htm

This collection of images is of a Dessert Competition that we have had every year in Monte Castello di Vibio, since I arrived – I have been lucky enough to be a judge. Note the controls in the bottom left corner of the window – play with them and see what they do.

Then from Photoshop you can use a plugin such as SimpleViewer. It is available free from here:

http://www.airtightinteractive.com/simpleviewer/

They also have a paid version that allows more customisation by providing the source files. Some of the navigation is obvious, some not so. You can see the larger images loading in the thumbnails and the arrow under the thumbnails obviously directs you to more thumbnails – it is obvious isn’t it. Less obvious is that as you mouse over the vertical midpoints of the larger image you will get left and/or right arrows that take you directly to the next image. The plugin is available for use with an assortment of programs. For an example see here:

http://www.rjslade.com/Torraccia/index.html

As an aside the images are of the Summer Bar just below the walls of Monte Castello di Vibio.

Of course if you have the full version of Acrobat, you can build a show in it. The people at CreativeTechs recently posted this tip on doing just that:

http://www.creativetechs.com/iq/build_an_acrobat_pdf_slideshow.html

As I advise a lot of artists, one of the advantages of this solution is ensuring that the colour profile of the files are included. Artists get quite upset when colours shift! Not all browsers on all platforms display the true colour of an image.

There are a growing number of online places that will host your presentation after assisting you in creating it. One of these that I have looked at recently was: SideRocket -

http://www.sliderocket.com

One I have paid for was BannerZest from -

http://www.aquafadas.com/

I got it as part of a MucUpdate bundle (http://www.mupromo.com/) that included

Parallels ($79.99), BannerZest (49.00), Sound Studio (79.99), DVDRemaster Pro (49.99), Typinator (29.99), StoryMill (44.95), Leap (59.00), MenuCalendarClock (19.95), Art Text (39.95), Hazel (21.95) – Total Value: $474.76 (Get it at MacUpdate for $64.99) Can’t argue with that sort of pricing, even if you only use half of the products regularly. I up graded BannerZest to the Pro version and you can see a simple set of images above, created in it , those of the cars in the Mille Miglia.

Why is it that we are so often dissappointed when we open the packaging and see the product inside. This is particularly true for food so from: Advertising vs Reality – A Product Comparison Project

http://funtasticus.com/20080324/advertising-vs-reality-a-product-comparison-project/

A German website, Pundo3000.com, has conducted a study of 100 different products by comparing the look of the products as shown by the packaging with the actual contents inside the boxes. Quoting the website, which is in German: “ All products were purchased, the packaging photographed and the contents prepared and photographed too. All products were then eaten up.” and also: “The purpose of the project is not to discredit any brands or products but to critically compare the packaging advertising with the inside contents ”.’

If you like the way more news site present tomorrows cover pages, the evening before you will love this site:

http://www.newseum.org/todaysfrontpages/default.asp?p_size=611

619 front pages from 58 countries. ” The Newseum displays these daily newspaper front pages in their original, unedited form. Some front pages may contain material that is objectionable to some visitors. Viewer discretion is advised.“

As you must know – news is not just content but also presentation. Here is a site on just that subject:

http://www.designingthenews.com/

From the site “About – Well here it is, all you ever wanted to know about DesigningTheNews.com, and all about what/why/when/how it is and does! Over the coming year (2008) this page will be updated with more information as I focus and refocus what I want the site to do, as well as maybe explain a little about the content it frames, and why I’m doing this.

The ‘elevator description’- DTN is a series of experiments which visually explore the news in various ways to encourage new ways of seeing a predominantly text based medium.

What is DTN all about?- News in general is primarily a text based format. When accompanied by an image, the image serves to reinforce the story, but what if the news was the image? DTN is about bridging the gap between traditional cartoonists and modern day generative news visualisations.“

But it is the presentation of data that is most interesting to me.

here are a few really interesting sites:

http://www.notcot.com/archives/2008/04/stefanie_posave.php

has an article on STEFANIE POSAVEC “ON THE MAP”

http://yesyesnono.co.uk/article/30/invisible-journeys

has a article ‘Invisible Journeys‘ dated May 2, 10:39 AM to quote the site:

” Invisible Journeys is my first try at data visualisation. I have seen a few wifi geographical mapping, but they looked a bit too technical to my taste. Here, i aimed at a semi abstract visualisation while keeping the ability to extract sense out of the graphics. Below is one of the visualisation showing 4 different journeys. Bigger to smaller rings : London / Vescemont / Belfort / Barcelona.”

and a third site is: http://benfry.com/

Quoted from the site: “Biography – Ben Fry received his doctoral degree from the Aesthetics + Computation Group at the MIT Media Laboratory, where his research focused on combining fields such as Computer Science, Statistics, Graphic Design, and Data Visualization as a means for understanding complex data. After completing his thesis, he spent time developing tools for the visualization of genetic data as a postdoc with Eric Lander at the Eli & Edyth Broad Insitute of MIT & Harvard. During the 2006-2007 school year, Ben was the Nierenberg Chair of Design for the the Carnegie Mellon School of Design. At the end of 2007, he finished Visualizing Data for O’Reilly. He currently works as a designer in Cambridge, MA.” Really intersting stuff.

All this interesting material from so many places. Not always posted by those who originally created it, but hopefully the correct sources referenced. I have tried to note where the material has come from – credit where credit due! On the issue of copyright ‘Who’s Ripping Off Your Website Content?‘ is an article in Issue 71, 5/15/08 Written by Anne-Marie “HerGeekness” Concepcion :

http://www.senecadesign.com/designgeek/ .

The story she recounts is all too common I would suspect. Her story will lead you to Copyscape at:

http://www.copyscape.com/

They have both free and paid services that could help you protect your content, or at least let you know who else is using it. Of course you can also use Google Search and do it yourself.

Information Architects of Japan, have taken the old idea of the London Underground map and populated it with another type of information. Not the first time I have seen this sort of thing but the example at:

http://informationarchitects.jp/wp-content/uploads/2008/02/wallpaper1600_1024.jpg

It is good and you can buy it here!

http://informationarchitects.jp/web-trend-map-3-get-it/

I have included a small example here but other versions are available at the web address I have quoted above.

Odds and Ends;

I have to assume no one has read all of this material in one go! but I have a few other things to include this time. Maurice has supplied many links over the last month, I thank him on your behalf. A recent one is this:

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/digital_image_resources_on_the_deep_web.php

to quote: ‘ Digital Image Resources on the Deep Web – Written by Sarah Perez / May 14, 2008 8:33 AM

Sometimes you stumble across something that really makes you say “wow” and reminds you that there’s so much more to this internet thing than just the latest web app. Case in point is this article describing some of the visual resources available on the web. The deep web. These images won’t show up in search engines’ image searches or on Flickr (save one exception), but instead can only be accessed via the links below.‘

Another resource is the MoOM – THE MUSEUM OF ONLINE MUSEUMS . It is located at:

http://coudal.com/moom/index.php

to quote ” Welcome to the Coudal Partners Museum of Online Museums. Here, you will find links from our archives to online collections and exhibits covering a vast array of interests and obsessions: Start with a review of classic art and architecture, and graduate to the study of mundane (and sometimes bizarre) objects elevated to art by their numbers, juxtaposition, or passion of the collector.”

For a colour specific source there is Follow the Rainbow: 101 Color Resources for Web Designers located at:

http://whdb.com/2008/follow-the-rainbow-101-color-resources-for-web-designers/

It is part of a larger site with lots of information presented with a bit of humour. Quote ” Hello and congratulations on reaching our humble Web site on the World Wide Web. Well, I suppose you’d like to know a little more about us, the wonderful people who have built WHDb. Well, we are two monkeys working in a cage scrambling frantically to complete this Web site so our masters will let us eat again. One of us is pictured below. This Web site features your daily dose of WWW goodness and all that encompasses, namely software, gaming, and Internet commentary.“

That list of URL’s in my URL folder that started off above sixty, it is now less than twenty. So I will close with two more things.

The first – TEN THOUSAND CENTS located at :

http://www.tenthousandcents.com/top.html

to quote ” Ten Thousand Cents is a digital artwork that creates a representation of a $100 bill. Using a custom drawing tool, thousands of individuals working in isolation from one another painted a tiny part of the bill without knowledge of the overall task. Workers were paid one cent each via Amazon’s Mechanical Turk distributed labor tool. The total labor cost to create the bill, the artwork being created, and the reproductions available for purchase are all $100. The work is presented as a video piece with all 10,000 parts being drawn simultaneously. The project explores the circumstances we live in, a new and uncharted combination of digital labor markets, “crowdsourcing,” “virtual economies,” and digital reproduction.”

A great work of participatory art!

And as so much of this posting has been about the news, and its presentation what better to close with than another video clip from flicker. The Day There Was No News from ‘Today there was no news. And here is the proof.‘ : Double click the image below to play the clip.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/arbernaut/2476955162/

That is it – Really! Hope you enjoy the reading and find it helpful – R

I do spend some time each morning reading the ‘Newspapers’ – With web access this is great:

• BBC NEWS
• Electronic Telegraph
• Guardian Unlimited
• CNN.com
• New York Times
• The Globe and Mail
• London Times Online
• Economist.com

Of these sites the only one I pay for is the Economist, the other are free services, although you may have to subscribe so that they can justify themselves to their advertisers. Still, with the ability to read left, right and centre opinions from the western world on the same issue, these do provide an interesting perspective to the world around us. I must say, the fact that I live on a slightly remote hilltop, and that many times the world below is shrouded in clouds, gives me a sense of retreat from the madness of the world!

More on Wordpress:

I have been playing, tinkering, with the code of this blog, and collecting information on how it really works. I have not been brave enough yet to add images. I have come across this information this week:

This seems like a good explanation of what it is all about. So often, to get ones mind around a new program, it is important to know how one slices the information, what parts are presented, and how those parts can be individually altered and integrated with each other. Then the other possibilities start to form.

HOW TO: Customize Wordpress Part 1 Submitted by Suzy on December 13, 2005 – 1:08pm

There are two main ways that I can see to go about customising themes in WP. I’m not really a theme user, as I tend to build from scratch, so it’s difficult for me to say which way would be easier for everyone. One way is to customise the functionality of the blog itself this involves getting into the “Loop” (more on this later), the other is just to build around the existing CSS of an already stable theme. There is a lot you can do by just dissecting your chosen base theme and using the CSS to do the work.

Another article that is very helpful, yet not too detailed is at:

WordPress Guide – Customizing WordPress Theme

For more in depth explanation, this site has a number of articles:

Devlounge : Design, Develop, and Grow

Most of you know we are heavily involved with images, with our PHOTOempt.com web site, our presence on SmugMug and our efforts to sell through agencies such as FotoSearch . One of the newsletters I subscribe to is from Crestock . Others are iStock , and the New York Institute of Photography . In the Crestock newsletter this week there was an interesting article:

13 Minimalist Blog Designs You Really Should SeePosted Thursday, 13 March 2008 by Lars Hasvoll Bakke in Design, InspirationIf you’re tired of websites bursting at the seams with widgets, flash animations and all the colours of the rainbow, check out this list of selected low-key, minimalist blogs. Greetings all! My name is Lars, I’m one of the Crestock regulars and I plan on throwing in an entry here in the blog every now and then.

I mentioned iStock above. Their newsletter this week included a link to the third article listed below:

• http://www.istockphoto.com/article_view.php?ID=392
• http://www.istockphoto.com/article_view.php?ID=395
• http://www.istockphoto.com/article_view.php?ID=413

This is a very slippery slope – one that is being greased by some and not by others. It potentially makes the legal responsibility of a photographer, a huge problem. Is an artist responsible for how his ‘art’ is used? It has been said by others ‘guns do not kill, people do’. Where do we draw a line? Where do we let others draw a line for us? As a seller of images, if I state how an image is not to be used, and the buyer agrees to that – can I be responsible for its misuse? Do I need to worry, that even if not responsible, somebody might take legal action that I would need to incur a large expense to defend myself against. This may seem like an incidental concern to some, but it has prevented me from undertaking product design, my original profession, for 23 years. I was unwilling to take the risk of legal recourse for the misuse of a product I created. How many useful ideas of mankind are wasted by the inappropriate application of ‘intellectual property’ rules.

After those comments, onto some lighter stuff.

Some interesting reading on Colour: MOMA in NYC is having an exhibition on Colour

http://www.moma.org/exhibitions/2008/colorchart/flashsite/

and two articles on how colour is used. I was aware of the initial article before, but found out that they had done a second one when I returned to the site today, looking for material to put in this posting. I was particularly interested in the pink/blue use for male/female.

• http://www.colourlovers.com/blog/2007/05/01/11-great-color-legends/
• http://www.colourlovers.com/blog/2007/07/03/13-more-great-color-legends/

This weeks sites from Maurice Belanger include: An interesting collection of Graphic design at:

http://graphic-design.tjs-labs.com/index.php

There is a lot of stuff here – I personally believe the presentation is a little to sparce to do it the justice it deserves but… He also found a link to the forerunner of Apples current AppleTV. Interesting that this information is on Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Interactive_Television_Box

If you are interested in this sort of Apple product history I strongly recommend ‘The Work of the Apple Industrial Design Group‘. To me fascinating, but then given my background, can you be surprised?

I mentioned ‘The Telegraph’, at the start of this entry, one of the big UK daily newspapers. They have run a photo series this week on the best 100 cars, as chosen by its readers. Again, a great collection of product design. The main link to the 5 part series is at:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/main.jhtml?xml=/motoring/2008/03/10/mfcars110.xml&CMP=ILC-mostviewedbox

Following the link to an interesting idea for a digital clock led me to this site:

http://alvinaronson.com/

Do what this page says, and you will be presented with a nice portfolio of work. For those you love, or those who love their coffee, another cute product is shown at:

http://www.yankodesign.com/index.php/2008/03/12/deep-love-of-coffee/

And I guess my last link for this posting will be a site for Water – I had a link to an interesting bottle shape a few postings ago – here is another. A nice site as well.

http://www.seiwater.com/

Back to the other things I need to do, like walk that dog I previously mentioned. Hopefully I will get to add to this blog again soon. In the mean time, your comments would be appreciated, either in private via email or using the site to add your own two cents worth.

All for now – Ross