…but then augmented, although i do hope that this isn’t the future… because it makes my eyes go all funny
…the architecture of the contemporary city is no longer simply about the physical space of buildings and landscape, more and more it is about the synthetic spaces created by the digital information that we collect, consume and organise; an immersive interface may become as much part of the world we inhabit as the buildings around us…
this amazing project understanding shakespeare is worth a look… it’s a similar idea to my ‘obama inauguration speech’ project, but then on a much more thorough and analytical scale…
The goal of this approach was to provide an overview of the entire play by showing its text through a collection of the most frequently used words for each character.
A scene is represented by a block of text and scaled relatively according to its number of words. Characters are ordered by appearance from left to right throughout the play. The major character’s speeches are highlighted to illustrate their amounts of spoken words as compared to the rest of the play.
spotted via my friend ‘thijs’ on twitter: an explication of the principle behind the ancient mayan calculator, you learn something every day…
the dutch design association (BNO) has published a report entitled design effectiveness made together with the netherlands ministry of economic affairs, most important conclusions worth a quick mention: products (and organisations) that have received a lot of attention to design (experience and functional) perform on average 20% better than those that don’t, not a fact that would surprise most designers i know or those clients that understand the importance of design, those clients that yet don’t are probably not very likely to change their attitude towards design based on this figure, i would guess…
the second noteworthy fact is that products (or services) where designers have been given a relatively large amount of freedom during the design process, tend to be much more effective and perform better than those where the client keeps a tight rein on development, again not a real surprise to me and my colleagues… clients please read this report, keeping complete overall control doesn’t lead to a better result… honest
it’s time that somebody wrote a paper on the intangible effects and benefit of good design not just the financial one… i mean, just look where accruing more money has got the world in the last few years
the english version can be downloaded here
it’s not very often that graphic design gets a serious item on TV, let alone infographics or ‘data visualisation’ if you prefer the term… and it generally ends up being the sort of ‘non-topic’ which just baffles the general public:
what on earth are they talking about? who cares? this isn’t important… etc
this week new RCA head ‘neville brody’ and ‘david mccandless’ (from ‘information is beautiful’) clashed on the BBC newsnight
current affairs programme on that very subject: a lively comment discussion has also picked up on the CR blog, the BBC ‘iPlayer’ doesn’t unfortunately work outside the UK but without having heard the talk i kind of feel inclined to agree with neville brody… although i can just picture my mother watching this, shrugging her shoulders and thinking ‘boring’…
update: an amusing footnote to this story, point taken :)
