Monday
November 30th 2009
4:00 am
BBC Appreciation Station
I love the BBC – in fact I’d go as far as saying it’s one of the increasingly fewer things we can be proud about in this country. I have no problem at all paying the license fee for the extreme wealth of content they provide. The iPlayer service is brilliant in it’s simplicity. No extra charges, you can stream straight off the page, you don’t have to sign up or download a DRM laden player. It seems to be extremely popular too, based on the statistics they’ve released.
Wednesday
October 21st 2009
7:24 pm
The Forgotten Defenders
This was done for a little zine project that Jack Richardson is working on. The rules were it had to be on the themes of British, 50+(age) and three. Other limits were black and white only and had to fit on A5.
As I had already done the Vulcan stuff I’ve posted earlier, I immediatly knew I wanted to do the V Bombers. I started work on a kind of mash-up infographics poster but I got bogged down with it and felt really limited by the lack of colour. So in the end I played to my strengths and did a layout composition. Once I got going it was a lot of fun to make, although I spent most of my weekend on it – it definately was a change from making websites for clients.
I tried to recreate the style of some of those military adverts from the 50s, and if there’s one part I particularly like, it’s the mix of spaced out caps, then tighter italics underneith under the weapons.
Sunday
October 18th 2009
3:56 pm
Sunday
October 18th 2009
12:00 am
Another Cold War design
One page of a design I’m working on for a friend’s zine. The themes are Britain, Three and 50+ Years Old, so I’m going for all three. I’m working on a second page.
Wednesday
October 14th 2009
12:28 am
Piano Stairs
This is a video of a really nice idea. However I could imagine the novelty for some people wearing off, and anyone who worked within earshot gradually going insane.
Sunday
October 11th 2009
2:52 pm
Spam and teaching computers to read
After my last admission of 43 comments, 40 of which were spam I decided to do something about it. I’ve installed reCAPTCHA for a try out. As well as trying to weed out spam robots, it has a novel secondary purpose of using the results to digitise books.
reCAPTCHA improves the process of digitizing books by sending words that cannot be read by computers to the Web in the form of CAPTCHAs for humans to decipher. More specifically, each word that cannot be read correctly by OCR is placed on an image and used as a CAPTCHA. This is possible because most OCR programs alert you when a word cannot be read correctly.
But if a computer can’t read such a CAPTCHA, how does the system know the correct answer to the puzzle? Here’s how: Each new word that cannot be read correctly by OCR is given to a user in conjunction with another word for which the answer is already known. The user is then asked to read both words. If they solve the one for which the answer is known, the system assumes their answer is correct for the new one. The system then gives the new image to a number of other people to determine, with higher confidence, whether the original answer was correct.
We’ll see how well it does.
Saturday
October 10th 2009
9:27 pm
The making of Digital Nostalgia: Mobile Evolution
I thought I’d take the time to write up a journey one of my university final project posters went through. When working, I’ve got into the habit of saving as a new file after every major design addition or change. The mobile phone poster had over 25 iterations by the time it reached a finished piece and here are a few of them:
First after some experimentation I decided which typefaces I’d use. Knockout was my first choice as it was condensed enough to fit into tight spaces, and I really like the slight retro feel of using it all in caps for titles. I wanted a serif for large pieces of text for easier legibility and as a contrast to the rationality of Knockout. I went with Caslon mostly out of personal preference as it’s one of my favorite serifs, with a classical edge but still very readable. Lastly I decided to add some Bodoni Poster sparingly in places as a highlight, as I just love its eccentricity and classic look. Read the rest of this entry »
Friday
October 9th 2009
6:35 pm
Photoshop browser templates and page furniture
This site is too useful not to post immediately. Browser templates for mockups with editable features for most of the current browsers (only notable one missing is Chrome) over a range of platforms as well as form elements, all in handy photoshop files.
Friday
October 9th 2009
3:15 pm
Threadless <3
It’s always exciting to get a threadless order arrive in the post, generally because I ordered it over a month earlier and completely forgot about it. The £12 customs charge was a much less pleasant surprise but with the sale on, it works out £8 each a t-shirt which really isn’t too bad at all. My latest haul:
The attention to detail on the tags is nice:
Friday
October 9th 2009
3:09 pm
