Thursday
October 8th 2009
2:15 am
The first month
Well I’ve had this blog running one month so far and in that time I’ve had over 300 visits (probably half of them mine) 800 pageviews and the most popular post has been the car game interfaces one.
Firefox is overwhelmingly the most popular browser used on this site, and Windows users just beat out Macs. I’ve had 43 comments, and 3 of them were not spam, and that dipsy viral seeding company got back in touch to remind me about their stupid video and obviously didn’t read the post I made about them.
I’ve got a bit of work going on now but really I don’t think I can post any examples here until they’ve been fully signed off by the client. I’ve got a few posts in mind showing off my final degree project with all the different iterations it went through and hopefully that will inspire me to create an independent site for it for some publicity and maybe a print run if there is a measured interest and I have the finances.
Also tonight I had the hiccups for probably the first time in over a decade and the first cure linked on google actually worked.
Also I need to fix the monthly archive pages.
Thursday
October 1st 2009
11:20 pm
Hardware Packaging
Had to pull the graphics card out of someone’s computer today and it got me thinking about the trend of hardware manufacturers going completely over the top when packaging or marketing these products. I say trend but I can’t remember a time when this wasn’t the case. It’s only fairly recently that graphics cards have evolved from a plain circuit board to being wrapped in a protective case which has given manufacturers the chance to splash about even more of their horrendous creations. Now I think I might have spotted a hole in the market, as there doesn’t seem to be any graphics card companies that don’t feature dragons, elf princesses or giant evil robot dogs on the packaging or device itself. Last time I bought a graphics card, I spent ages shopping around just to get a card with no external decoration at all. My computer is out of sight under my desk, there isn’t a window in the case or anything, so no one would see that I had a graphics card with laser dinosaurs on the front, but I wouldn’t be able to live with the guilt of knowing. Although it still came in a box with some kind of wizard man on the front.
Wednesday
September 30th 2009
10:20 pm
Confessional
I’m feeling compelled to update this blog everyday now. Today I was waiting in Specsavers to get my glasses readjusted as theyre wearing holes in my nose and I came across Specsavers Magazine. Now every page and I mean EVERY page has one or multiple pictures of glasses on. I dunno why this would surprise me but flicking through it, I just felt visually assaulted by the tremendous quantity of fashionable eye-wear directed at my attention. Then I saw this one picture of some metal type that just screamed out to me.
Wednesday
September 30th 2009
1:22 am
Vulcan Poster
Knocked this up tonight, was originally just going to do the vector drawing but got carried away learning how to do distress effects in Illustrator. I suspect as with most things, the more subtle the better so I’ll tone them down a bit for future efforts. Also the drawing I traced off an RAF plan and it was wrong – one wing was shorter than the other, so either the RAF has wonky plans or the plane came out of the factory lop sided. Made in Britain indeed.
I angled it going top left to bottom right as it’s supposed to give it an unnerving, slightly depressing feel, as opposed to the other diagonal which is meant to be uplifting. I started originally with a crosshair, which turned to a roundel, but then it looked a bit moddish, so I went with the anti-flash faded roundel, on a white background too so it looks a bit like its on the side of a dirty scuffed up plane. Also makes me think of the nuclear payload it could be carrying.
Monday
September 28th 2009
8:41 pm
Top Gear vs Fifth Gear infographics
Daytime TV is generally pretty awful so I find myself switching to this channel called Dave which broadcasts Top Gear and Fifth Gear episodes throughout the day. I didn’t really rate the latest season of Top Gear but I can still happily watch the old episodes but I just find myself switching over whenever Fifth Gear comes on. It just seems so repetitive – how many crash tests do we need to see repeatedly from several angles in slow motion until we learn that newer cars are safer than older cars? Plus the head to head where Tiff drives 2 cars round some racetrack. Today it was two vans – I mean come on, Top Gear did that fantastic piece about racing a Transit around the Nordschleife and this was the best they could come up with? I know the BBC has some amazing licensing system which allows them to play any music they want, but surely Fifth Gear can manage something better than the horrid stock music that’s played in every episode? So I put my frustrations into a couple of infographics:
Monday
September 28th 2009
8:23 pm
Branding and Nuclear Deterrence
These are two things that really began to take effect in Britain in the 1950s. With the ending of rationing and the beginning of consumerism, companies began to take increasing care about their public image. At the same time, Europe was descending into the Cold War with Britain being caught in the middle between America and Soviet Russia. Due to America at first not wanting to hand over its new nuclear toys, Britain was forced to come up with its own nuclear deterrent. The answer became branded as the “V-Force” – three remarkable looking strategic nuclear bombers, deployed to protect our little island from the communist threat.
The fact they they still look amazingly futuristic today gives some idea how they must have seemed when they first appeared in the 1950s. To many people at the time, this was the iconic image of what a bomber looked like:
Now imagine how people must have felt when this came screaming over their heads:
Saturday
September 26th 2009
10:48 pm
Terrible typefaces Batman!
I love Batman: Arkham Asylum, its ridiculously fun to play and it’s fairly obvious a lot of love went into it as it has been polished up and presented really nicely. As Batman you can pick off your enemies one by one, then disappear into the shadows leaving only bewilderment and fear. However it seems there’s one horror that even Batman is powerless against – that of bad typeface selection.
Thursday
September 24th 2009
10:21 pm
Font Wants
Heroic Condensed by Silas Dilworth at TypeTrust is probably top of my list of wanted typefaces. I like condensed fonts for infographic work and this has a nice retro feel to it whilst not being as sharp as the condensed Univers faces and narrower than Knockout’s offerings.
Museo by Jos Buivenga is a fun typeface with cheeky little serifs that I could see myself using on the odd occasion.
Thursday
September 17th 2009
11:21 pm
Mazda Rotary Engine
A little bit of vector tracing I did of an unusual bit of technology. This might develop further into something else.
