Some time ago now I read a short review by Martin Belam of a presentation made at last year’s EuroIA conference. The presentation – On Beauty, given by Andrea Resmini and Eric Reiss – was described by Belam as “unbloggable”, but he gave a good description of their delivery of a visual essay on the nature of beauty and how information architects and web designers should address it. continue reading
Infographics have become very popular on the web in the last year: I see several links to examples every day on my Twitter feed. There are some fantastic examples out there, but it has to be said that there are some going under the name which would be better represented by just a bulleted list of text and figures. If, when you remove the text and numbers from the graphic, the remaining graphic becomes meaningless and no longer tells a story then the graphic fails the first rule of infographics: show, don’t tell. continue reading
I’ve just returned from a three-day course at Central St Martins in London. I went last year on their 100 Design Projects week-long course and I found it very… challenging, shall we say. It confirmed my feeling that I am not an artist but a designer who needs to create within certain constraints.
This year’s course, run by Helen Ingham of Hi-Artz Press, was much more to my taste. A short introduction to letterpress printing, with a chance to try out compositing, printing with metal and wood type and using a couple of different machines, it most certainly provided constraints to work within! continue reading
A few weeks ago Dave and I went to London to see Peter Brötzmann play at Café Oto in Dalston. It was a great night (except for the fact that the pre-gig interview overran somewhat and left us no time for a proper meal), and we’d booked a hotel not far away so we had a relaxed wander back there and didn’t have to rush for the last train. The next day I insisted that we walk into central London along the New North Road, Shepherdess Walk and Bunhill Row. It was a lovely sunny day, and I wanted to see some of the streets where my ancestors had lived and died. continue reading
