Friday, 30 January 2009

Rubikcubism

mona lisa - robert_mckinnon_rubikscube2
love these, has done ray charles plus others. cant remember the exact prices but he uses about 8oo cubes.
more described at the blog i found it. i know i am re-blogging old news which i try not to intentionally but it ws new to me and i like it. sure it will be new to some people.
more description at the blog at the bottom.

first saw in the metro, uk yorkshire free paper on the public transport.

found at : http://torontoist.com/2008/03/rubiks_cube.php

Wednesday, 28 January 2009

389 Type


I created the initial concept of this poster on the night of November 4th.
Inspired by Barack Obama's victory and struck with a sense of awe when realizing
the amount of hard fought progress that has been achieved in this country,
Iwanted to pay homage to this centuries long journey. The original graphic which
can be seen here, became very popular and spread all over the internet. Many people loved it and ask me to make a print.


While I initially created it rather spur of the moment and with no desire to
sell it as a poster, the graphic needed to be completelyoverhauled in order to
make it practical for printing. The original would have been 12 feet long. So I
took the opportunity to really refine the design and create a lasting piece.
There were also many additions to the time line that people suggested. This
poster is not a tally of African American achievements, rather it is a record of
progress and setbacks. While Obama's election is not the endgame of equality, it
is a magnificent example of what is truly possible.

I hope you enjoy it and that it reminds you of the shoulders we all stand upon
and the stained greatness of this nation and its people who have indeed,
overcome.

jess states further 'It's not a typical visualization, as its all type and NOT a
word cloud but it is conveying information and special attention was paid to the
type weight, size, and placement to convey subtext.'

can appreciate that would have been delicate and kind to the look of the type as
i'm sure there was some altering of tracking, leading etc.

but it is good to see an informative design that isnt just a word cloud that is
more often that not aloud to arrange itself. words in this have been placed,
arrranged, hierachy, no doubt edited with 'selective omission' as quentin newark
states in what is graphic design' (been reading recently for quotes to define
design)

from: http://www.wallstats.com/389yearsago/#about

cheers

jess

Tuesday, 27 January 2009

Animated Face

People have fallen in love with word clouds that make pictures. Zoom in and you see a bunch of individual words. Zoom out and you see a famousperson's face, seen so many Obama '08 - vote for hope faces.

It is a dictionary or a portrait? Mystical. TBWA/Chiat/Day,an advertising agency in Nashville, Tennessee of all places, brings the concept to promotion for the 2009 Grammy Awards - in animated form. Float through thecloud of songs and lo and behold, it's Stevie Wonder.

great stuff

from: http://flowingdata.com/2009/01/19/fun-with-words-that-collectively-make-pictures/

Saturday, 24 January 2009

Balloon Animation

Saw this quirky little durex animation, thought it would lighten everyones mood. quite creative.

CR state 'Not much to say about this Durex ad made by NY animation studio Superfad for Atlanta agency Fitzgerald + Co, except that it made us laugh.
Apparently, everything is done in CGI. Shame, we had visions of a particularly filthy-minded party balloon folder twisting away in a studio somewhere…'


Out-takes here

from: http://www.creativereview.co.uk/crblog/durex-balloon-animals/

Friday, 23 January 2009

Amazon Books Map



Amaznode (http://amaznode.fladdict.net/)
is a relation based search engine for amazon which is made with adobe flash9 (as3). This search engine visualizes a relation network of products in amazon, from the statistics data "customers who bought this item also bought", by digging related products again and again. Amaznode is not
only for searching but also good for researching and making an associate link.

Fantastic how it mines the associational network of products 'also purchased by...'

good display for hover over with its interactivity. love it.

integratable to your own amazon associates id. score

and not just books, or info vis... any product. the best amazon widget.


Affiliate with amaznode

Amaznode enables you to make a direct link to paticular saerch query, and you can also add your own amazon associate link.


In the search result view, click the "COPY RESULT LINK" button at the top left menu. It copies a handy html to your clipboard.


a href="http://amaznode.fladdict.net/#keywords=information%20design&locale=uk&searchIndex=" target="_blank" affiliate="AFFILIATEID-22">Search with amaznode: information design /a>


You can easly make a link to amaznode search result by adding this code to your blog or email.


Also if you have amazon associate id, and you replace the part "affiliate=" to your own id, all products in this query works as your associate product link.



Market analysis with amaznode


An another aspect of amaznode is that for researching tool. Searching with amaznode, you can find hidden characteristics of products. For example, some kind of products may be bought by a limited user group even it is very very popular.


Made by Takayuki Fukatsu (fladdict.net / blog)


see previous post: Green Search Engine

Thursday, 22 January 2009

Book Cutouts


This Is Where We Live from 4th Estate on Vimeo.

These are very nice books visalised into a typographic territory through cutouts by Peter Cookridge & James Birdle (directed by asylum's ben falk & jos newbolt.

It is a stop motion film and features an entire city made out of books and covers from publishing house, 4th estate's titles.

they visualise scenes that cookreidge describes as 'in jokes' such as a man falling off a boat which is the scene from title book 'The Corrections'.

The production design is by Pippa Culpepper who crafts these beautiful artefacts.

from January 09 Creative review p10.

Also very similiar but all from one book,


Tuesday, 20 January 2009

MacCrunch

Change from a Pound with McDonalds Saver Menu



Just saw this quirkly little, quick info-graphic style with a pinch of monty pythons and Now for something Completely Different collaged hand.

Trying to play on the the economic narrative of there been an utter abundance of money for everyone recently they thought they'd be inspired by showing people, how they info graphically calculate the savings from a pound, just one pound (uk), of a whole penny in an amusement arcade game, bless.

What do they compare their 99p savings to, 5 bears, a tree and a crayon.

Was quirky and it is no surprise it has a soupcon (checked spelling in word ;o) of the amusing terry gilliam is it... two terry's... animation.

unbelievably found it quickly here: http://www.visit4info.com/advert/Change-from-a-Pound-with-McDonalds-Saver-Menu-McDonalds-Restaurant/67995

Like this one more when i was searching for it, dont think it was aired in uk,

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=SZw1lCPVbtY

Saturday, 17 January 2009

Blocker Mapping


Blocker 0152 150x100
Originally uploaded by watz
This grabbed my attention, and so had a read and marius states about the client for this and other pieces that,

'they wanted an artwork that could communicate the complexity of the information flow involved in trading'

so he created 4 different visulisations based on stock data.

He wanted to achieve balance between complexity and clarity.

They are examples of generative art using open source software, i think the artcicles said... was in a rush... can only just interpret my quick scribble.

http://unlekker.net

blog - Generator.x is a conference and exhibition examining the current role of software and generative strategies in art and design.

http://www.generatorx.no/

blog - Code & Form. Computational Aesthetics

http://workshop.evolutionzone.com/

Great work.

Saw Marius Watz work in Computer Arts magazine Jan 09 issue 119 p18.

Friday, 16 January 2009

Green Search Engine

JumpGauge™ is a visual labeling technology that has been applied to thousands of green and eco-friendly products.

Each product’s JumpGauge™ tells you why it is green and eco-friendly visually, in a picture, so you can skip lengthy product descriptions, decipher technical jargon or verify government and industry certifications.



To use JumpGauge™ simply put your mouse over an icon and a pop-up will appear and will give you more information about this particular eco- friendly qualification of a product.


bit like a taggging system to tell you how ecofriendly a product is.

found through visual analytics group on linkedin.com

Quilted Information



leah evans is a textile artist based in madison, wisconsin. she makes quilts that are far from traditional. each piece features a map which is hand-sewn in fine detail forming an almost abstract pattern. evans uses appliqué, reverse appliqué, piecing, natural and synthetic dyeing, needle-felting, hand printing and a variety of embroidery to make each piece. she takes the imagery from maps, aerial photography and satellite images. however she doesn’t simply translate maps onto here quilts, instead she creates imaginary lands uses elements from
different maps.

Also equally interesting, not by leah, is with aesthetics relating to DNA and the Gnome is here

genome_quilt.jpg

a series of quilt designs, based on genetic code. a square, bisected into a
light & dark triangle, is rotated in 4 orientations to resemble the letters

C, G, A & T, the 4 DNA bases.

also check this out: http://visualthinkmap.ning.com/photo/photo/show?id=2168552%3APhoto%3A1862

from here: http://feeds.infosthetics.com/~r/infosthetics/~3/386549417/genome_quilts.html

Self Mapping

Visualise yourself, what would you display to an audience? how intimate would you make it? Well even though he has been doing them from 2005 I have just discovered them by Nicholas Feltron. With very minimal styles but nice clean, clear, infographics and bold numbers encased in this swiss style grid system to keep some structure and rigidity to his diverse information of his life.

I am curious how he records all this data to be absolutely accurate, it must be some focsed, disciplined time keeping and number crunching.

Why? When quizzed, Felton’s admits that ‘it satisfies a real curiosity that I have about my habits. Why is it a popular document? If there are numer ous people out there who think it is fascinating and don’t even know me… imagine how fascinating I find it’. At first your reaction is ‘Oh please….’ but soon you are scouring the pages to see which was the most visited restaurant, his most-drunk beer: a sort of typographic Truman Show, authored by Truman himself.

It is intersting how the CR blog author describes it as a sort of typographic Truman Show.

http://feltron.com/

there are previous versions there.

found here: http://www.creativereview.co.uk/crblog/me-myself-and-i/

Thursday, 8 January 2009

Animated Audi


I saw this on the tv recently, usually forget to search for the ad to blog it or i forget who the ad was for to actually search it. 

But i found it at creative reviews blog. CR's first twee spot of ‘09: the new Audi Q5 ad featuring Woody Guthrie’s Car Song

Twee, acoustic, folksy music accompanies practically every second ad on TV at the moment. We first noticed the trend back in mid 2007 – a list of sappy offenders compiled here – but when, we ask, will it end? Joining CR's discussion: Dan Stevens, a director at music PR and management company, Darling Department; Parv Thind, sound designer at Wave; and Peter Raeburn, founder and creative director of music production company, Soundtree.

It is great the hand drawn animated style, check out Blank Canvas & Communication Animation

Great making the card posses the ability to reflect. 

Looked good. there is a new one by nokia i just saw today. will search for that, think it was E17 model... or something.

spotted here: http://www.creativereview.co.uk/crblog/change-the-record/

Tuesday, 6 January 2009

Advertising History Timeline




this is an excellant interactive timeline, as you hover over one of the red brackets between years, it displays a drop down/up of information with specific year and a form of communication/advertisign developed such as the cuniform pictographs.
a beautiful, clean, tidy layout with white space to hold the interactive mouseover links that softly animate into the space to display more information and thew use of red and black combines well. the style is similar to Type Timeline Half 1, Kurt Schwitters on a Timeline by stefan thermerson and with a few images of important inventions/communications already displayed that have a small films/animations appeneded to their nodes gives a great liuttle bit of interactivity and focus for the users attention until the discovery of the mouseover bracket links.
also like any timeline that progresses over the western logic of left to right reading of a notoriously landscape layout there are too many dates to keep proportionatley spaced and still fit to a3 size or 1024 x 768 screen. So the creatore at nonline give these bold brackets with small arrows for left and right as the most dominating feature to hint at the scrolling navigation of the years. What was an intersting interactive navigation of space was done for British History Timeline by BBC, which doesnt keep the same proportionate space but divides history into colour categories and expands/stretches the display for each category.
My only let down is the limited amount, although a great tool and overview already provided, a limited amount of information as i was left wanting more history appended to the smaller grey brackets. but their are plenty of brackets for this to be rectified in the future.
great tool for students/people to interactive with themselves or even be instructed through, just keep the use of pictures to break up the text.






cheers arnaud