Space and structure

A real treat turned up in the post: Space and Structure, Unit Edition’s latest Design/Research paper. Printed on wonderfully tactile newsprint (and these days, what isn’t?), it charts the short life of sixties neo-modernist magazine Form. As well as a generous selection of spreads and covers, it contains a revealing interview with editor, designer and publisher Professor Philip Steadman. For those of you out there who love nothing more than some thoughtfully griddled Helvetica, this is a must.

Vonnegut's seven tips for writing with style

Having just read Frank Chimero’s ‘playlist’ of great writing, I’ve had my eyes opened to the wisdom of Mr Kurt Vonnegut. It shames me to say I’ve never actually read Vonnegut before, but looking at his seven tips for writing with style, he’s a definite contender for my own playlist:

1. Find a subject you care about
2. Do not ramble, though
3. Keep it simple
4. Have guts to cut
5. Sound like yourself
6. Say what you mean
7. Pity the readers

I’ve got a few writing projects lined up ahead of me, so hopefully I’ll hear Vonnegut’s voice in my head as I’m working on them. Not really sure what he sounded like, so I’ll just assign him the default disembodied voice: Richard Burton.

Death Records

Dr B and I watched Brian De Palma’s bonkers Phantom of the Paradise the other night, and one of the things that really caught my eye was this logo for the fictional Death Records label. It looks like something that was designed yesterday, not way back in 1974 (although the choice of type – Ortem – gives it away a little). The more I look at it, the more I love it. Definitely one to be filed under ‘all time classic logos designed for fictional clients’, alongside Ghostbusters and Weyland-Yutani Corp.

Nicholas Felton interview

Every year since 2005, graphic designer Nicholas Felton has produced a personal annual report, collating and quantifying an assortment of of facts and figures about his life. Illustrating each one with all manner of graphs, tables and beautiful, beautiful maps (including one that could be folded into an icosahedron), he has created an extraordinary snapshot of 21st century life, like some kind of iPhone-armed Manhattanite Samuel Pepys.

The popularity of these reports (printed copies of which are available from his website) has led Nicholas to join forces with fellow data-obsessive Ryan Case to create Daytum, a personal statistics recorder. Now anyone can keep track of their own bizarre habits and routines, and wrestle the control of personal data away from the loyalty cards and cookies that permeate modern life.

Gym Class Magazine managed to interupt Nicholas’ work for long enough to throw some questions at him.

Hello there.

Hiya.

We've never met, but I know you. I know you better than people I’ve known for years. I know that you listen to a lot of Atlas Sound, that in 2007 you won four games of pool and that your average speed last year was 4.39 miles per hour. Do you ever find it a bit scary that complete strangers know so much about you?

I suppose it should bother me more, but you’ve only gleaned what I’d like you to know about me. I’ve given you a lot of insight into my interests and habits and some nice factoids, but I reckon that it does not give you a complete sense of who I am, or what I’m like. In fact people that know my work well have the tendency to tell me that I’m not at all like what they expected. So while you have the intimate knowledge of my favorite band, the broader personal strokes of my life are missing.

The publication of your annual report is now an annual event anticipated by design­geeks the world over. As something of a “celebrity designer”, do you ever feel the weight of expectation?

Absolutely! I spend all year getting excited about my ideas for the report and love watching all the outings and adventures pile up from January to December. But when I start laying out the pages of the report I am a knot of anxiety. Do I have enough data? Is this report going to stand up to it’s predecessors? How will I ever make this better than last year’s?

Fortunately, things generally seem to come together. By the middle of the design process, I’m starting to get excited about elements of the layout that are working. By the end of the design process I am bursting with enthusiasm again and am eager to share the product with the community of people who anticipate and support the project each year.

How does your data-collection fit into your daily routine? Do you dash home from a bar and instantly record how many beers you’ve had?

The point of my report has always been to catalog my behavior and activities without unduly influencing these actions. It is my aim that the recording process be invisible, but this is of course impossible. For the most part, I have found that I can sit down each morning in my office and record the items from the previous day. Over the weekend, or on a busy night, I have found myself needing to take notes on occassion … and some of the more complicated tasks have required on-the-spot note-taking, as in my quest to determine every street I walked down in 2007.

These days, it pleases me enormously to record my entries on Daytum from the bar or the rest­aurant via my iPhone. I find it incredibly satisfying to have a tool that can keep my data up-to-the-moment and tally and present it for me immediately. I also recognize that I may be alone here!

So what can we expect from this year’s report?

I am really excited about this year’s report. For 2009, the statistics I would typically collect for the report have been catalogued daily on my Daytum page, forming a real-time annual report. Rather than using this material to form the printed report, I am relying on a feedback system I developed that encourages the people I spend time with this year to report on my activities, moods and our relationship. It is my hope that this data set will illuminate numerous aspects of my personality and social sphere that I would be uncomfortable collecting on my own.

I have a theory on your stat-nerdery: Manhattan is a neat, self-contained grid, covered in towers of varying heights. It’s basically a giant three-dimensional bar graph. Living amongst this spatial and geometric logic has influenced the way you see the world. Does that sound about right? Or were you just bitten by a radioactive statistician when you were a boy?

It’s a good theory, and I think the city has played a key role in the development of my reports. Clearly they are an attempt to bring order to a chaotic city and my place within it, but I can trace my stat-nerdery back even further. At art school I enjoyed mapping and graphing, and I think it all ties back to a radioactive book that bit me at a young age called Comparisons. This book is a visual dictionary of the tallest plants, fastest vehicles, oldest things and everything else a young visual thinker might wonder about. The pages of my well-worn copy are all trying to escape from the binding, and I keep returning to it’s pages for inspiration.

Daytum has really taken off. People use it to record all kinds of bizarre behaviour – do you have any particular favourites?

Certainly. I love the users who push the site into unexpected places... There is a dog using the site (charleylhasa) to track his interesting walk activites and the other breeds of dogs met. I was also thrilled to see another user (CBCV) adapt his page into a resumé.

What’s next? This time next year, are we all going to be walking around with Daytum-appified phones that record and quantify our every action?

It’s possible. We are currently building an API for the website. In the same way that the Twitter API has bred innumerable ways of accessing their site, we hope that this pathway will encourage our community to plug in more of the statistics they wish to collect.

Gym Class demands an exclusive. Tell us a quantifiable fact about yourself that you haven’t revealed before – the geekier the better.

I don’t think I’ve revealed this to myself before, but … Computers currently owned: 5 (4 Macs and 1 PC )

Thanks very much Nicholas! You can now add +1 to your “interviews conducted” tally.

Thank you Daniel. Consider it tallied.

-

This interview originally appeared in Gym Class Magazine #4.

Archive Apps

After reading about Creative Review’s new online-only subscription offer, which includes access to an archive of back-issues, it occurred to me that this sort of model could be a real game-changer on the iPad.

So far, there’s been a lot of chat about various magazines bringing out digital editions from this point forward, but not much about the massive potential for offering whole archives of older content. When a perfectly portable printed issue of a magazines exists, I don’t really see the appeal of replicating that on a screen for the same price (no matter how many flying toasters you stick on the page). However, give me the option to have every single issue with me, and you’ve got yourself an essential purchase.

The seeds for this model of publishing are already out there, most obviously The Complete National Geographic (which comes on its own hard drive!). In print, Taschen have been producing lovely (but expensive and bulky) reproductions of Arts & Architecture and Domus. All it needs is for someone to take that logical step into apps-ville. Imagine a Domus app for, let’s say, £40. Every single issue. 71 years’ worth. Searchable, bookmarkable, portable.

Or how about an app that contains the entire run of The Face? As well as allowing you to flick through all those old issues, it could come with a documentary about the magazine and an automatic playlist-generator that would pluck relevant tunes from your iTunes library to listen to while you’re reading. All that in your little satchel for a reasonable price-tag.

ArchiveApps: who wants one? Any suggestions for titles that would work particularly well? Any other potential features that you can think of? Am I completely wrong? Does something like this already exist? Replies on the back of a stamped-addressed tweet.

Favourite feeds

I have about 100 feeds in my RSS reader, so I always have a look at that in the morning. This isn’t an ideal situation though – so many of those feeds come from sites that first caught my eye because they were so well designed, and now I’m regrettably bypassing that aspect simply because of convenience. Tis a shame.

But what you want is a list of Good Stuff, right? Well here’s a small selection of sites that I’ve been following for ages that never fail to deliver the braincandy:

— AceJet170
— BBC News
— but does it float
— Creative Review
— Davidthedesigner
— FormFiftyFive
— Iain Claridge
— Linefeed
— magCulture
— Noisy Decent Graphics
— The Onion AV Club
— PopJustice
— The Quietus
— Subtraction

Unmarvelous

Fact: this week, 53% of the Internet is made up of iPad reviews.

One of the big talking points is the nice-in-theory Marvel app, which I of course have a problem with it. The thing is, in terms of purchasing/storing comics, a publisher-specific app just seems like a huge backwards step for Apple. If I’m going to buy digital comics, I want them all in one place. Imagine having a separate iTunes app for each record label!

I’m not a Marvel reader, I’m a comic reader, and as such feel no need to keep different comics from different publishers in distinct boxes. I can see how this benefits the seller, but I can’t see how it benefits the consumer in any way. We need a single iComic store/app.

I’m inclined to think that an iMag app/store is the way to go too, otherwise our iPads and iPhones are going to start getting really cluttered.

Note: This post is basically a copy-and-paste of a comment I left on magCulture’s iPad review.

Oscars 2010

  • One misreading-the-teleprompter joke is one too many. How soon after the ceremony finished do you think Billy Crystal got a phone call?
  • It was like a very expensive school production, particularly the best actor/actress debating society section (although the appreance of Mr Sheen was a nice surpise, as I could try to convince Dr B that yes, that was actually me up on stage).
  • Fisher Stevens, won an Oscar. That was unexpected.
  • Molly Ringwald looked terrified. I was worried it was all going to go a bit Scanners.
  • They really should’ve reunited the entire cast of The Breakfast Club (did Emilio have something better to do that night?). And then they should’ve made them dance.
  • … which would’ve been a hell of a lot better than The Legion Of We’ll Just Gracelessly Robot Dance Over Any Bit Of Music You Throw At Us.
  • It was quite hard to spot any moveable eyebrows. Everyone’s faces were so very diseased. Except for George Clooney, who spent the entire show scowling.
  • Respect to the guy – I hear that The Cove is a great film, and I’m sure he’s a lovely bloke – but Fisher Stevens? An Oscar? That’s just weird.
  • No songs? I know two songs by Randy Newman in a row would’ve grated a little, but not more so than Baldwin and Martin attempting to reinvent the concept of comic timing.
  • If you’re going to make a point about how an Oscar hasn’t gone to a horror film since The Exorcist in 1973, don’t then include 1992 Best Picture winner The Silence Of The Lambs in your horror montage.
  • In fact, it’d probably be best to ask an adult what constitutes “horror” before creating such a montage. Edward Scissorhands? Really?
  • When was it decided that actors have to come on in pairs? They step on each other’s lines, they’re always woefully mis-matched and THEY ARE GROWN UP ACTORS. Surely they can manage to deliver three lines of gooey sycophancy without having a friend holding their hand?
  • Fisher Stevens. The “Indian” from Short Circuit. He won an Oscar.
  • Having nominees come on to present awards is just silly. They’re usually bricking themselves, and why not make the most of all the other talent in the room? Why not get as many different stars on that stage as possible?
  • Actually, talking of stars: the lifetime achievement awards were handed out at a completely separate ceremony – one that looked a lot more fun and more classically Hollywood. Where they got Lauren Bacall and Jack Nicholson, we got Kristen Stewart and Taylor thingy.
  • If I see Meryl Streep do that fake throw-head-back-with-big-laugh thing again, I’m going to kick her in the shin. How can somebody with 87 Best Actress Oscars come across as that insincere?
  • People referring to Push Based On A Novel By An Author by its full title got just a little bit annoying after a while, didn’t it? And why did everyone involved feign surprise at how much attention the film has got, given that the most powerful woman in the world has been aggressively promoting it for months?
  • What the hell was Sean Penn talking about?
  • Despite a fairly terrible show, the awards themselves went to pretty much the right people (except for the fact hat Moon wasn’t even nominated for anything. Pfft). The Hurt Locker deserved everything it got. Sandra Bullock, who has been very good in some very bad movies, will finally get some good roles now. And hopefully she’ll stop turning into Joan Rivers. And Mr Bridges – bless you sir, bless you.
  • Seriously. Fisher Stevens.

Why the "i-Pod" will never last

Khoi found this fascinating little gem from the depths of the Internet: the Macrumors forum on the day that the iPod was unleashed on the world. What’s interesting is the amount of negative feeling and general disappointment. It seems like a lot of people were holding out for a new Newton, but were incredibly cautious following the failure of the Cube. And remember this is October 2001, so when the inevitable squabbling erupts, pretty much everyone accuses everyone else of being “a Taliban”.

Here are some gems:

All this hype for something so ridiculous! Who cares about an MP3 player? I want something new! I want them to think differently! Why oh why would they do this?! It’s so wrong! It’s so stupid!
— WeezerX80

I’d call it the Cube 2.0 as it wont sell, and be killed off in a short time … and it’s not really functional.
— elitemacor

All that hype for an MP3 player? Break-thru digital device? The Reality Distiortion Field™ is starting to warp Steve’s mind if he thinks for one second that this thing is gonna take off.
— nobody special

This iPod is for spoil rich kids with insane parents or an Apple fan as fannatic as a Taliban. It has good features but forget about getting it for $399!!!! Never, who gets that thing is a very stupid person. Steve Jobs is under terrible consuling or is under too much pot. This propusal is not realistic at all. If Apple does something like this again is going down. This unit may work for an audio engeneer to record some conference or rock band on the field in place of buying a expensive DAT machine, that is the only real good market this machinne is gonna have.
— mymemory

I particularly like this one, where the person doesn’t quite seem to realise that they’ve summed up the brilliance of the iPod in a nutshell:

Doesn’t a Mac with a CDR undermine the need for most of this? All that’s left is the number of songs you can play and the ability to listen to all of them with headphones anywhere … Won’t last. Another Cube.
— guest

Great stuff. Isn’t it weird that there’s stuff this old still floating around out there?

Ladies Don't Lunch

Ladies Don’t Lunch has raised exactly £500 for Haiti, thanks to some generous folks skipping their lunches and donating what they would’ve spent. But why stop there? If you haven’t done your bit yet, then this is a easy way to do it. There’s still a lot of horridness happening over there, and they need all the help they can get … not that you’d know that from watching the News, which has got bored of that particular catastrophe and moved on to far more important stories about sports people having sex.

Anyway, go and do your bit. And remember, you don’t actually have to be lady.

Big type

Whilst watching Up In The Air (very good by the way), I was distracted by the massive American Airline logo on a tail-fin of a 747. And then a question popped into my head that I can’t shift: what/where is the biggest type in the world?

Dr B, ever patient with my inane fontular ramblings, suggested the Hollywood sign. Possible, I thought. After a quick visit to Wikipedia and few taps into Convertbot, it turns out the sign is set at an impressive 42,520pt. Pretty darn big.

And then I was directed to Woodtyper’s post on the Tillamook Air Museum, a massive hanger sporting the words “AIR MUSEUM” in gargantuan 120,000pt Helvetica. Now that’s BIG (see the comparative scale image above and shudder in vowel-fear).

But I’m sure that can’t be it. There must be something bigger. Probably in Vegas. Can you think of anything? Please send any suggestion on the back of a stamped addressed tweet to the usual address.

Ladies Don't Lunch

Whilst I’m getting a ridiculous amount of new traffic to the site, it seems like a good time to remind everyone that there’s still time to get involved in Ladies Don’t Lunch. Basically, on the twelfth of February, you skip lunch and instead donate what you would have spent to the Haiti Relief Fund. An easy way to do good.

Go on, get involved (and spread the word).

iBooks

There’s a lot I like about the the iPad, particularly the interface design. However, one thing stands out like a sore thumb: iBooks, specifically the half-arsed bookshelf visual metaphor. What’s with the horrendous pine shelving? And the horrible colour of the menu bar? And who actually displays books like that, apart from understocked charity shops?

If you are going to do it this way, then at least slap them on some virtual Vitsoe shelves (or the ubiquitous Ikea Expedit ones at the very least), spine-on. Plus I’d like to see some little bookmarks sticking out the tops of those books to remind you which ones you’re halfway through.

And I think there should be some scope for not just a shop, but a library, based on the iTunes movie rental model. And this could be adapted a little to allow people to lend books to each other for a limited duration.

And … I think that’s all for now. Basically, if you want us to start using ebooks, then you need to replicate the mobility and visceral appeal of their physical counterparts.

Uncling

Today my four year-old nephew called me on the phone specifically to tell me that he was Batman. You have no idea how proud this makes me. Soon I'll have him trained up to introduce himself to strangers as Inigo Montoya …

09

Adventures

New year, New York, New York / vampires and chorizo at the Electric Cinema in Brum / escaping the eaves and mujifying our little square box / power-tool racing / Blur, Hyde Park / Lester’s wedding / putting the world to rights in the Vic / freezing our butts off in Somerset House / the Australians / watching Moon twice in a row / (1) Day Of Manchester / Bowl-Punching / eating and shopping our way around London / meeting Mr Kitson / A-Road walking in the Lake District / getting lost in the Barbican / uncling on the farm (without it turning into an episode of Outnumbered – thank you Sam) / discovering the local chippie.

Books

Buffy: Time Of Your Life / Fear Of Music / Fray / Graphic Design: A User’s Manual / Great British Editorial / New X-Men / Studio Culture / The Complete Peanuts 1959–1960 / Yes, I know, I know. I promise to read more in 2010.

Brands

Apple / Converse / Fred Perry / Freitag / Graze / Moleskine / Muji / Stack / Unit Editions / Vitsoe​

Cinema

Moon / The Hurt Locker / (500) Days of Summer / District 9 / Let The Right One In / Franklyn / Transformers 2 / The White Ribbon / Alien / Poltergeist / The Breakfast Club / The Curious Case of Benjamin Button / Revolutionary Road / Choke / Frost/Nixon / Star Trek / Away We Go / The Wrestler / Drag Me To Hell / Up / Zombieland / Coraline / Creation / The Fantastic Mr Fox / The Damned United / Watchmen / Bolt / Slumdog Millionaire / Paranormal Activity / A Simple Man /Avatar / Where The Wild Things Are / Last Chance Harvey / The Strangers / X-Men Origins: Wolverine / Terminator Salvation / The Hangover / The Proposal / Monsters vs Aliens / Synechdoche / An Education / The Men Who Stare At Goats / 2012​

Eats

Anything from City Screen covered in cheese / Anything griddled / Canteen / Chorizo / Crunchy Nut Cornflakes / Dr B’s baked potatoes / Graze / Haloumi / Kensington Roof Gardens / Loch Fyne’s take-away fish supper … even the mushy peas / M&S cream of oakham chicken soup / Pastrami on rye at Katz’s Deli / Thomas the Baker’s vanilla slice / Tunnocks / Wagamama / Whole Foods

Magazines

Arts & Architecture / Creative Review / Design Week / Esquire / Gym Class / Little White Lies / Loud And Quiet / Man About Town / Observer Music Monthly​

Music

Artists: Arcade Fire / Beck / Blur / David Bowie / Elbow / Foo Fighters / Franz Ferdinand / Glasvegas / Interpol / Jamie T / Kings Of Leon / Lily Allen / Muse / Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds / Nine Inch Nails / Radiohead / REM / Saint Etienne / Wilco / Yeah Yeah Yeahs

Tracks: Best Of You – Foo Fighters / Farewell To The Fairground – White Lies / How It Ends – DeVotchKa / L.E.S. Artistes – Santogold / On Call – Kings Of Leon / Sex On Fire – Kings Of Leon / Sticks ‘n’ Stones – Jamie T / The Fear – Lily Allen / Your Ex-Lover Is Dead – Stars / Zero – Yeah Yeah Yeahs

Gigs: Arthur Rigby And The Baskervylles / Blur / Muse / Wilco / Yeah Yeah Yeahs​

Online

Apple Trailers / BBC / The Big Picture / The Book Cover Archive / But Does It Float / Clients From Hell / David The Designer / The Designer’s Review Of Books / The Enemies Of Reason / The Guardian / Gym Class Magazine / FormFiftyFive / Iain Claridge / iPlayer / Linefeed / NYC Grid / The Quietus / Twitter​

Television

The Apprentice / Come Dine With Me / Dexter / Dr Who / FlashForward (to start with anyway) / Flight Of The Conchords / Gameswipe / Harry Hill’s TV Burp / Lost / Mad Men / Outnumbered / The X Factor (right up until the ridiculous four-hour finale)​

And looking forward to 2010 …

Collecting Vitsoe 606 Universal Shelving / Daily photography / Dieter Rams at The Design Museum / Finally framing and hanging my Because Studio, Jack Dylan and Dieter Rams prints / Gym Class #5 / Iron Man 2 / Latitude Festival / Lots of FFFing / Mark Kermode / Newspaper Club / Old John–Old Dartfordian wedding / Rediscovering fiction / Screen-printing / Subscribing to Little White Lies and Stack / The Swell Season / Walking the planets

+ many more adventures.