An Enlightened Book Cover

enlightened-eccentrics_cover1Our client wanted a cover that encapsulated the iconoclastic spirit of the Enlightenment -- the birth of skepticism, secularism and the full flowering of the scientific method. The natural candidates for this were Voltaire, the great French thinker and Emile du Chatelet, his intellectual equal and lover. We selected three period-appropriate typefaces for the title: p22 Declaration, based on the penmanship on the American Declaration of Independence, Bodoni, designed in 1798 and Requiem Text, based on the humanist typefaces of Renaissance Italy. The typefaces and painting formed a harmonious combination, and Voltaire stares out at the viewer with a frank air of challenge.
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Productivity Ideas

If you are afflicted by self-doubt, procrastination, attention deficit disorder, old-fashioned laziness or a simple inability to get things done, 43 Folders is a very useful source of advice. Completely devoid of motivational bumph and navel-gazing, Merlin Mann's mission is to help you avoid distraction and get on with your real work. For example:
  • set your email to update once an hour, rather than every five minutes.
  • Writers should write, rather than read books about writing.
  • Everything takes longer than you expect, even when you anticipate it will take longer than you expect
  • Spend significant time thinking rather than filling up every moment of your time with activity
Many of his thoughtful and amusing musings boil down to the following nugget: "Creative work only seems like a magic trick to people who don’t understand that it’s ultimately still work."
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Book Cover Design Extraordinaire

egg-code1As someone who designs a lot of book covers, it can be inspirational (and rather challenging) to gaze upon the work of the masters of the field. Many of them are attractively displayed at the Book Cover Archive. Evocative, startling, confrontational, joyful, spare, ornate, saturated: the covers on display are all that and more. Many of them do a really remarkable job of capturing the zeitgeist of a particular time and place. With its constant fixation on the current moment, will the Internet ever produce such persistent and influential artefacts?
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Finding Your Way in Old Parliament House

Though the politicians have moved on to more opulent digs, the historically important Old Parliament House (Canberra) lives on as a museum, exhibition space and function centre. In 2008 Chameleon Print Design was tasked by interpretive design specialists Convergence Design with designing a detailed wayfinding scheme for the sprawling building. Our brief was to reflect and preserve the heritage fabric of the building while at the same time projecting a contemporary, approachable aesthetic. The wayfinding signs/objects were in large part free-standing, as most of the building is heritage listed and therefore off-limits to intrusive fixings. After two visits to Old Parliament House, extensive long-distance collaboration and many interations, we compiled a comprehensive report spelling out the various wayfinding levels, patternation, colour schemes, type selection and readability. Some samples of the report and other interpretive design may be viewed below and here. signage and wayfinding, Old Parliament House signage and wayfinding, Old Parliament House
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Dynamic Live Brush

livebrushLiveBrush is one of the more fully featured programs available in the Adobe AIR format (see earlier post). While nowhere near as precise and powerful as programs such as Illustrator or CorelDRAW, it does have a few interesting aspects and the virtue of being free. Users select a brush from a fairly extensive list, and apply to a new page. The brush stroke is governed by the velocity and direction of the mouse, and the result is often very smooth, spontaneous and gestural -- far from the quavery line many of us manage when drawing freehand. The brushstroke has a mind of its own -- only notionally following the path you lay out for it. Each succeeding stroke has its own layer, and the artwork can be saved and exported at any time. Despite the many customisation options, Livebrush feels more like an interesting feature of a larger program than a standalone entity.  It's most obvious use is as a means of producing some loose, interesting brushwork and importing same into a drawing or layout package.
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Viva Data Liberation!

dataliberationIf, like me, you spend a lot of time in the cloud, you may occasionally worry about your (over?) reliance on Google's many cloud products. You may have bookmarks set in Chrome, appointments recorded in Calendar, emails stored at Gmail, documents saved at Documents, blog posts at Blogger and so on. With the exception of fairly rare gmail outages, Google's service provision and data security performance has been pretty reasonable, But still, but still... A Google engineering team has set up a site called Data Liberation, aimed at providing users with clear and easy information on how to 'escape' from each of the Google services, taking their precious data with them. The stated (and admirable) principle behind this site is: "users should be able to control the data they store in any of Google's products". Google may be about to take over the world, but in this instance at least, they are doing so with a modicum of politeness.
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Adobe Air -- Rich Internet Applications

Adobe Systems is not quite in the same corporate league as Apple or Microsoft, but in terms of influence, it is a giant. The company has been instrumental in the development of page description language (Postscript) that dominates the printing and design industry, typeface formats (Type 1, and in conjunction with Microsoft, OpenType) used on tens of millions of computers, and the ubiquitous Portable Document Format (PDF) used to create platform independent documents. Hence, when Adobe strikes off in a new direction, many will take a keen interest. Adobe Air was launched in 2007, and is described as a "rich internet application".  While programs that use Adobe Air are installed to a user's computer and can run offline, they also add functionality via the Internet. For example, the Adobe Air-powered New York Times Reader allows users to download the entire paper, then access it even if offline. Adobe encourages software developers to write applications for the Air environment, and the Air Marketplace contains several hundred offerings. Productivity oriented examples include a job time log,  task managers, software shortcuts for all Adobe packages, Colour combination finder, and a surprisingly addictive graphics program specialising in dynamic brushstrokes. Adobe Air will have to build up a significant user and app base in order to survive. Web technologies need to have a critical mass behind them, or they tend to fade very quickly. Adobe claims 100 million downloads for Adobe Air apps, so perhaps the technology has a bright future.
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Give Me Your Hand (writing)

'Handwritten' typefaces are a popular area of computer-based typography. The too-perfect edges and shapes created by layout and design packages often seem to need humanising, softening, a touch of variety and irregularity. The OpenType format has enabled the emergence of a new generation of typefaces with hundreds or even thousands of alternate characters, ligatures and other typographic goodies. For example, Liza Pro inserts a variety of different ligatures and alternate characters as the user types, giving text a warm and idiosyncratic feel. If you'd like to go a step further and personalise a document with your very own inimitable handwriting, www.fontcapture.com allows users to print out a special form, then pen an instance of each letter of the alphabet, numbers and other special characters. When scanned in and uploaded, Font Capture uses the sheet to automatically digitise your handwriting and save the result as a typeface. If you like what you see (and the results can be somewhat erratic), the typeface can then be installed.
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OCR, ASAP, OK?

Here's another neat little service on the cloud -- optical character recognition (OCR) for free. If you couldn't be bothered re-typing a two page printout with no electronic original, just scan the accursed thing and upload the file to OCR Terminal. The result can then be saved back to your PC in a number of formats. Their free basic account allows you up to 20 pages of OCR a month, which might be more than adequate for the occasional emergency.  Additional pages are charged on a per page basis, with the amount per page dropping with increased volume. After a certain point, however, one is entitled to wonder if a standalone OCR program would be cheaper. For any machine, anywhere convenience, however, this is a site worth bookmarking.
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More Free Lunches

In the realm of layout and design, Adobe products tend to loom very large. Most designers submit to their gravitational pull and use at least one and usually all of the big three: Illustrator, Photoshop and InDesign. However, there are plenty of people whose design needs are not extensive enough to justify the purchase of these quite expensive products. They recognise the diabolical shortcomings of Microsoft's drawing and layout programs, and hence strike out for an alternative. Scribus and Inkscape may appeal to those with a DIY frame of mind. Both are free, and both were developed by a fairly egalitarian community of developers. Scribus is a page layout program. Its capabilities largely mirror those of InDesign and QuarkXpress, but it cannot open files created with those programs (for practical and legal reasons). Those familiar with commercial layout packages will find the Scribus interface very familiar. Additional and improved features are added on a rolling basis, and new builds can be downloaded from their website. Inkscape is an Illustrator/CorelDRAW analogue. The drawing tools are adequate for all but the most demanding users, and files can be output into industry standard formats such as EPS and PDF. As per Scribus, the developer community surrounding the program is open and cooperative, and the program continues to evolve.
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Me and Mobile Me

Apple's response to the Cloud, Mobile Me allows users to maintain an online address book that synchonises with the address book on their Mac, and also on their iPhone, iTouch and any other mobile device. Changes to one version are 'pushed' to the linked instances elsewhere. The same applies to the Calendar application. Enter the details of your mail server, and Mobile Me also functions as a webmail portal. Users are also encouraged to upload images into an album application, and a user-nominated portion of the 20Gb standard allocation is available as an online hard disk. As per Apple's usual modus operandi, the interface is simple, clean and allows only limited customisation. After a couple of days use, my initial reactions are as follows: I love the address book feature, which works as advertised. The calendar feature is fine, but not as good as Google Calendar. More research is needed to see if it is possible to synch Google Calendar with MobileMe. The mail service is easy to set up, but has a huge flaw, for my setup at least. Each time it pings the mail server, MobileMe downloads everything on it, even if the same emails have already been downloaded. Ping several times, and you will get several copies of the same email. Given my office Mac will download the emails later, I don't want to set the server to delete an email if downloaded by MobileMe. Surely MobileMe should be able to recognise an email it has already downloaded. My web-based mail browser certainly has no such problem. The disk space supplied by Apple is useful, but in a world of cheap and sometimes free online storage, AUD$119 is not overwhelmingly great. In summary, the service is good, but not revolutionary. It didn't wow me the way DropBox or Google Earth did, but perhaps further enhancements are on the way, and MobileMe will go on to a more fully featured future. If not, my ardent hope is that Google somehow ties all of its online services together into a single integrated service -- the cloud on steroids.
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Type Radio

Europe is the mecca of print design. In countries like Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, Italy and France, typography and the practice of design is a topic for serious discussion. And serious discussion is what you will get with Type Radio. Their motto conveys something of the air of endearing earnestness that surrounds them: "Type is speech on paper. Typeradio is speech on type." With over 400 episodes available for downloading through Itunes, or directly through their site, a great deal of information awaits potential listeners. The members of the Dutch based collective spend a lot of time attending design conferences and talking to established and emerging designers, so their show is an excellent way of tapping into the design Zeitgeist.
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Vectors Online

aviaryOne of the interesting aspects of cloud computing are programs that run over the web rather than residing on your PC. Examples include Google Documents, Google Calendar, online accounting solutions and online databases. Other programs install on your computer, but run on a constant stream of data from the web, such as Google Earth, or are strongly integrated with the web, such as Picasa. Google Docs and Calendar have fairly limited capabilities compared to programs that reside on a single PC, mostly due to limitations of bandwidth. In the graphics field, the tentative beginnings of a revolution may be underway. A company named Aviary is offering a suite of programs available online, no installation required. The programs include both an image editor and a vector drawing editor. The drawing tools are frankly primitive compared to those available in Illustrator or CorelDRAW. The fundamental interface is very similar, and it could prove a useful introduction to people learning to use vector packages. As a pointer to the future, however, it is very interesting indeed. If a user could access a professional standard drawing package online, would it make sense any more to install it on your machine  (assuming reliable internet service provision)? Updates and improvements would be instantly available to the user, projects could be stored and distributed online, and collaboration and file sharing would be much easier. The same reasoning would apply to photo editing packages and even page layout programs. The financial model would be subscription or membership based, with some offerings perhaps free in return for advertising placement. Bandwidth would have to improve dramatically for this to become a reality. Barriers to entry for new software providers would be much lower. Personal computers would become windows to a much larger realm rather than kingdoms in their own right. Perhaps the only role for the home computer would be to mirror the data generated online in as a form of insurance. Perhaps each of the programs to which the user subscribes could have an offline version for moments where the web is unavailable, resynchronising when the connection is restored.
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A Future for Reading?

For those interested in the future of the book, Amazon's (remarkably unattractive) Kindle reading device has been a subject of some fascination. The New Yorker recently ran a long essay on the experience of using the Kindle, listing its pluses and its rather numerous flaws. Further discussion can be viewed here. It seems that Kindle is unable to reproduce the sensory experience of reading a printed book, particularly regarding graphics, paper colour and readability. Future generations of such devices will overcome at least some of these shortcomings. At present, books purchased on Kindle cannot be resold, which seems a significant downside. Will readers of the future be willing to part with the book as artefact, and use their bookshelves for other purposes? Music continues to trend in that direction, with predictions of the death of the CD becoming more credible each year. Perhaps printed books will linger on as a niche market for afficianados and collectors. At the very least, publishers will need to completely rethink the way they market, produce and distribute printed books in order to stay relevant in a digital world.
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Storm in a Coffee Cup

coffee cup software Little programs created by small companies are often the most enjoyable. They have personality, they have attitude, and they don't feel like they were put together by a giant committee.  Coffee Cup Software ("We make software so you can make Websites") exemplifies this tendency. Their website is bold, simple and easy to navigate, and from my experience, of a piece with their software. I have used both their Visual Site Designer and Direct FTP client, and have found both to be easy to use, stable and surprisingly powerful. I write this from the perspective of a web neophyte, not a programmer.  Site Designer, FTP client and other programs offered by Coffee Cup come with long term support, forums and resources and are reasonably priced. Visual Site Designer was US$49 at the time of posting. For those who want a taste before buying the whole cup of coffee, many of their fully featured programs are also available as free stripped down versions.
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Mondo Planet Hunting

Recently launched planet hunter Kepler has just sampled its first exoplanetary atmosphere, and the verdict is in: very tasty indeed! Kepler is able to measure the tiny, tiny dip in starlight caused by a planet transiting the disk of its parent star. So sensitive are the measurements, Kepler is able to provide data about atmospheric structure and the phases of the planet in question.  With the aid of Kepler, scientists are on the verge of detecting Earthlike planets, hopefully orbiting in the so-called 'habitable zone' around their star. Kepler is able to sample very large numbers of stars, so it will provide valuable data on the number and distribution of planets in our galaxy, and by inference in further flung parts of the universe. Exciting times for armchair explorers of the universe!
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Absolutely Smashing

smashing1If you feel like being wiped out by a monster wave of digital resources, then surf over to Smashing Magazine. The look is clean and accessible, and the tone is upbeat and practical. The online magazine's motto is: "We smash you with the information that will make your life easier".  One of Smashing's signatures is the list: 70 best Photoshop Tutorials, 50 Brilliant Photos, 40 Free Fonts and so on. Compiling such lists is easy enough, but the lists at Smashing generally live up to the hyperbole. The resources listed are good quality and worth exploring. Beware the addictive side of resource hunting: one list inevitably leads to another, and one lifetime is probably not enough to fully exploit your ever-growing personal list of finds. Like all good Web 2.0 sites, Smashing Magazine encourages user feedback and participation. Many users go on to contribute articles to the site, and guidelines for doing so are prominently displayed. Most of the material is oriented towards web designers, but there is plenty of useful stuff for print designers and those in need of resources for a non-work project.
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Build it, and they will kern

fontstructYou've visited all the type vendors and searched in vain. There's nothing that quite matches up with the search image in your head. 'I could do a better job myself!' you cry. Fortunately for you. Fontshop has recently added an interesting functionality to their website: a typeface constructor. The FontStruct site equips you with an array of basic font shapes that can be moved arround lego-like on an underlying grid to form letters. Although the basic shapes are simple, when used in concert, the results are quite sophisticated. A gallery shows the variety of effects achieved by contributors.  Once you have put together your masterpiece (and that might just be an uppercase set of letters, or an extended character set), your typeface can be saved as a truetype font and used out in the 'real' world. Over 160,000 people have signed up with FontStruct and 7,000 typefaces have been saved for public use. At the very least, the site is a worthy educational tool for those interested in typefaces, and reinforces the notion of an underlying grid over which the letterforms are arranged/organised.  Oh, and it is completely free.
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Images for peanuts

picframe1Typing ‘free images’ into Google is an interesting and sometimes dispiriting exercise. Some of the sites listed are ad-laden, spyware infested monstrosities. Others are merely royalty­-free, which is not free at all. There are however quite a few legitimate and useable sources of free images worth considering, of which the following are a small sample. 1. Wikimedia Commons: from the folks at Wikipedia, a fairly clunky search engine and a rather arbitrary system of classification. All of the images are in the public domain. 2. Flickr: A monster photo sharing website with literally billions of images. Some are just happy snaps, but others top flight professional images. The search engine is organised around tags and extremely easy to use. Many are copyrighted, while other images (100,000,000 at last count) carry the Creative Commons licensing system. This allows for use by others in certain circumstances dicated by the creator. 3. Mayang’s free textures: Wood, paint, metal and more. Useful as backgrounds, licensed for unrestricted use. 4. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs catalogue: over a million images held by the Library of Congress, many of which are in the public domain. The search engine is old-school librarian – heavy on text, light on thumbnails. 5. Picture Australia: contains a vast archive of historical images relating to Australia. The images belong to various Australian institutions. Some are still under copyright, but many are in the public domain. Picture Australia maintains a tagged category at Flickr, on an experimental basis. 6. Easy Stock Photos: a nuts and bolts free image site. The quality is moderate and the range limited, but it is easy to use and not infested with malware. For further searches, try:  http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Public_domain_image_resources For Chameleon Print Design’s list of pay and free sites, go to http://www.chameleondesign.com.au/image-libraries/ Note: Please read the image use policies of the site from which you are downloading the image. Some allow for private use only, others restrict modification of the image in question and some don’t care what you do with it.
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