digitalart

Do you know what all the parts of the characters in an alphabet are called? To be honest, although I examine, discuss and write about type on an almost daily basis there still are blind spots in my typographic vocabulary. Sometimes I can be really struggling to name very specific details. This is where the [...]

via Nationaal Archief.

Softlab are at it again, with a spectacular, generated architectural volume. I was part of a group show with them last year; then, they worked entirely with the lasercutter. In the spring, they did a small work that switched media, making each piece of the installation with an inkjet printer to apply color. (Hey, it’s wildly expensive thanks to ink costs, but simple – and with photo paper, looks gorgeous.) Now, they’ve put the two together: it’s a large volume, playing with interior and exterior form, it uses the inkjet-printed cards, and it’s held together with binder clips. It’s installed in such a way that it seems to intrude into the space, filling it organically. There’s something magical about going from its plain exterior to the brilliant color inside; peering in is a bit like looking from one dimension into another.

Marius Watz, known in the Processing community, has photos from the opening on the Lower East Side last week, above.

The other novel idea here was using Kickstarter to fund the development. It’s a model of how to do Kickstarter right: everyone gets their name on a piece and gets involved in the artwork. Using the reward is a lot more logical than simply begging for money, and it’s what could give Kickstarter in general some longevity. Here’s how they explain it:

In order to make this project happen, we need to complete the final design, print color on + or – 3,960’ of super high gloss photo paper, laser cut the paper into their specific geometry, clip the pieces together, and install the final piece. There’s a lot to do and a short amount of time to do it!

If you can help us offset some of the costs we will reward you with pieces from the original installation! Every cent you give will go towards materials such as paper, ink, fasteners, lights, etc.

Along with our Kickstarter campaign and the production of the installation, we would love to track where our support is coming from. After you donate, leave us a message containing your name, where you are located, and a picture to be uploaded on a Google Map found here www.chromatex.me

You can also see how many panels have been given names at www.chromatex.me! Pass the word along and help us tag the entire installation with supporters!

Just talking about the funding, even, takes away from the broader point: when you make your work participatory, even in a small way, you build your audience. That might be in the form of funds. It might simply be in the form of people showing up for an event. The capital that you generate doesn’t have to be in money. But if you’re making art for people to witness, it seems their participation on some level is essential. Why else do people go to openings but to be part of a crowd, of something happening? Food for thought.

Check out the video on Kickstarter, which describes the participatory model:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/SOFTlab/chromatexme-a-site-specific-installation

More coverage in a nice piece on Designboom

Project Page at Bridge Gallery

Oh, yeah, this is Create Digital Motion. But if this isn’t giving you ideas for a motion-based event or ways to involve your audience and community, I don’t know what will… (and hey, you can walk around it: check the lovely Flash model on the gallery site above.)

Try G-G the book.

Le Centre culturel suisse présente les trente ouvrages récompensés lors du concours Les plus beaux livres suisses 2009. Ce concours annuel, organisé par l’Office fédéral de la culture, a pour objectif de mettre en valeur des publications au graphisme contemporain particulièrement significatif. Le jury en évalue le design et la typographie, la qualité de l’impression et de la reliure, ainsi que les matériaux utilisés, en privilégiant en particulier l’innovation et l’originalité. Un catalogue des lauréats est publié, dans lequel éditeurs, artistes et designers parlent de l’avenir du livre à l’époque des nouvelles technologies.

21 Septembre – 12 Décembre 2010 Le Centre culturel suisse , Paris

Le Prix Fernand Baudin – en hommage au typographiste belge – a été créé dans le but de favoriser la création contemporaine du livre à Bruxelles et en Wallonie et de la rendre accessible à un public large et international par le biais d’un site internet, d’une exposition et d’un catalogue circulant à l’étranger. Un jury international composé de professionnels du secteur du livre, prime chaque année les plus belles réalisations dans le domaine et décerne un Prix aux graphistes, aux éditeurs et aux imprimeurs ayant œuvré à leur création.

Le 30 septembre, le temps d’une soirée, l’exposition « « Les plus beaux livres belges » sera présentée à Paris en avant première et circulera ensuite dans plusieurs écoles d’Art de France: Vernissage: Jeudi 30 septembre 2010, Délégation Wallonie-Bruxelles, 18h.

Tournée française de l’exposition, du 1er octobre 2010 au 30 janvier 2011: Paris (Ecole Estienne, dates à confirmer), Amiens (ESAD, 13-30 janvier), Nancy (ENSA, 25 octobre-4 novembre), Besançon (ERBA, 9-19 novembre), Valence (à confirmer), Strasbourg (à confirmer)

The Poster Collection’s holdings are a record of the history of the poster, in Switzerland and world-wide, from its beginnings in the 19th century to the present day. The collection is continually being expanded and brought up to date, in dialogue with contemporary output and acknowledging historical achievements. The Museum für Gestaltung’s poster collection is one of the most comprehensive and significant archives of its kind in the world. The publication series is aimed not only at documenting the stock of the poster collection but also at making it known to a wider public.

blackmoth.org posted a photo:

Hexacon posted a photo:

Death Valley, CA.

♡ cew ♡ posted a photo:

fwd from kersti

♡ cew ♡ posted a photo:

velvet & sequins

On the heels of the many real-time sports visualizations that appeared alongside the recent FIFA soccer worldcup, the US Open Pointstream [usopen.org] presents an original 3D-like way of exploring the statistical data generated during all the live tennis matches of one of the most famous sports events in the world.

Users are able to select individual matches which occurred in the past or are still in progress. A "Momentum Meter" shows who is on top of the match, while a series of filters at the bottom (e.g. ace, double foult, netpoint, breakpoint, ...) allow for deeper analysis of the data. Visually, each player is distinguished by the color green or blue. Each ring represents a set, going from the inside to the outside. Each bar represents a point, with its height according to the serving speed.

Beautiful or useful?

Brennaaa posted a photo:

great new album, check it out!!! cover is a collage collab by jan anderzen and me.

Brennaaa posted a photo:

great new album, check it out!!! cover is a collage collab by jan anderzen and me.

Brennaaa posted a photo:

The current issue #11 of German typography magazine Slanted – Monospace, Typewriter focuses on fixed-width faces, and features an interview with yours truly.

via Nationaal Archief.

It takes two to tango, and lots of people for a line dance.

Yes, as the rest of the Web has noticed, Apple has just proudly touted the fact that it’s streaming its own press event in a format only people with the latest Apple devices can actually watch. Even Mac site TUAW, gearing up for today’s press event, thinks it’s pretty odd. But let’s skip straight to the good stuff: what’s this HTTP live streaming, anyway? The short answer is, it’s something cool – but it’ll be far cooler if Apple can acquire some friends doing the same thing.

Apple PR has this to say about their stream:

Apple® will broadcast its September 1 event online using Apple’s industry-leading HTTP Live Streaming, which is based on open standards.

Note that they never actually claim HTTP Live Streaming is a standard, because it isn’t. Apple has proposed it to the Internet Engineering Task Force, but it hasn’t been accepted yet. Meanwhile, as we’ve learned painfully in the case of ISO-certified AVC and H.264, just having a standard accepted is far from the end of the story – standards on paper aren’t the same as standards in use. Ironically, presumably all Apple means by saying HTTP Live Streaming is “industry-leading” is that they’ve done it first, and no one else has.

Apple can claim, correctly, that HTTP Live Streaming is “based on Internet standards.” In lay terms, you take a video, chop it up into bits, and re-assemble it at the other end. While common in proprietary streaming server software (think Flash), that hasn’t been something you can do simply with an encoder, a server, and a standard client. As Ars Technica explains, one key advantage of Apple’s approach is that by using larger slices or buffers – at the expense of low latency – you can count on higher reliability than real-time streams. And unlike previous approaches, the use of HTTP means you don’t have to worry about which ports are open. So you get something that’s reliable, easy to implement, and doesn’t require pricey additional software.

Other than that, it’s all basic stuff, meaning implementations should be easy to accomplish, software stays lightweight, and lots of clients could easily add support on a broad variety of desktop and mobile platforms. Here are the basic ingredients:

• MPEG-2 Transport stream, set by the encoder.
• Video encoding – Apple’s proposal suggests only that you use something the client can support, so while they require H.264 video and HE-AAC audio for their implementation, you could also use VP8 video and OGG Vorbis audio; you just have to hope the client has the same support.
• Stream segmenter – this is the part that actually chops up the video.
• Media segment files – the output of the streamer, this could be a video .ts file (the MPEG-2 format), or even, as Apple observes in their developer documentation, a standard M3U (M3U8 unicode) file, just as you may be accustomed to using with Internet radio stations and the like.
• The client reads the result, by reading the standard playlist file. That’s the reason multi-platform, open source player VLC can read Apple’s stream.

It all makes perfect sense, and it’s actually a bit odd that it hasn’t been done sooner in this way. For the record, just streaming video over HTTP doesn’t cut it; you need exactly the kind of implementation Apple is proposing. The proposal is so simple, I’d be surprised if someone hadn’t implemented something similar under a different name, but then, I can’t personally find a case of that. Sometimes, technologists overlook just these kinds of simple, elegant solutions.

All of this raises an obvious question: why is Apple crowing about how cool it is that only they are using it? (“Look at me! I’m the only one on the dance floor!”) I suppose the message is supposed to be that other people should join, but that leads to the second question: where are the implementations?

There’s no reason HTTP Live Streaming couldn’t see free encoding tools on every platform, and still more-ubiquitous client tools. John Nack of Adobe muses that it’d be nice to see it in Flash. Browsers could work as clients via the video tag, as Safari does now. VLC appears to work as a client already.

One likely missing piece there is the encoder. In their FAQ from the developer documentation, Apple lists two encoders they’ve tested: Inlet Technologies Spinnaker 7000 Envivio 4Caster C4

This tech is currently used as a way of streaming to iPhones specifically, but it’s not exactly household stuff.

Client implementations shouldn’t be that hard. But that brings us to a climate in the tech world that, for all the progress on open standards, could still use some improvement.

Making interoperable technologies work requires building partnerships. Apple hasn’t exactly been focused on building bridges lately, it seems. Nor are they alone; today’s lawsuit-heavy, savagely competitive, politically-charged tech environment seems to have everyone at each other’s throats. I’m all for competition. Friendly competition can even help standards implementation: witness the near-daily improvements to rival browsers Safari, Firefox, Chrome, and others, all of which are made by a group of engineers who share a common interest in getting compatibility for these innovations in the near term, and within a standard framework. A little one-upsmanship on getting those things done first or better is absolutely healthy.

But even as the draft HTML5 spec continues to evolve and open Web standards improve, badly-needed, genuine working partnerships seem to be fewer and further between. Posturing between competitors isn’t helping.

And nor can I find evidence that, while this is in draft, it’s set up for people to implement. Even the draft document begins by telling you you’re not allowed to use it:

Pursuant to Section 8.f. of the Legal Provisions (see the IETF Trust’s Legal Provisions Relating to IETF Documents effective December 28, 2009), Section 4 of the Legal Provisions does not apply to this document. Thus, to the extent that this Informational Internet Draft contains one or more Code Components, no license to such Code Components is granted. Furthermore, this document may not be modified, and derivative works of it may not be created, and it may not be published except as an Internet-Draft.

So, in other words, you can read the draft, but you can’t use the code in it, and you can’t make derivative works of the draft. (As far as I know, this is standard boilerplate for IETF drafts. But then, much legal writing in general can be summed up in one word: just, “No.”)

The bottom line:

1. HTTP Live Streaming is super cool.

2. It’s based on open standards and should be easy to implement.

3. Let’s hope we get implementations.

4. This PR stunt aside, it’s unclear what efforts Apple has made to reach out to anyone else doing an implementation, though information is sketchy.

Regardless, this somewhat odd move will certainly raise visibility of the tech. Whether that lasts beyond today’s media event remains to be seen.

Here’s where to go for more information.

HTTP Streaming Architecture [iOS Developer Library]

Apple proposes HTTP streaming feature as IETF standard [Ars Technica]

Image (CC-BY-SA) Ryan Harvey.

The National Grid #6 is a maintenance manual for graphic design. It features articles of a historical nature. For example Max Hailstone’s ‘Treaty Posters’ are given a good airing, while the New Zealand government’s Design Taskforce and Better By Design initiatives are thoroughly investigated. Design Historian Noel Waite is given a good talking to, and Bruce Russell summons 12″ voodoo through Jimi Hendrix and Walter Benjamin. There are also some large concrete structures, a letterpress job, motorcycles and some Incredibly Hot sex With Hideous People.

Not quite ‘magazine’ and not quite ‘academic journal’, The National Grid attempts to chart a path through the murky wasteland between the professional practice of graphic design and its troublesome academic manifestations. The National Grid was first published in March 2006. It is edited and designed by Luke Wood and Jonty Valentine. It is independently published in New Zealand, and is distributed internationally. The National Grid receives funding from Creative New Zealand.

Launch at split/fountain, Auckland Wednesday 8 September 6–8pm

From Bert in Copenhagen:

"Over a year ago I started placing my work into the public urban landscape. Of great importance was that I used a form of wood already found on the street and make the work pertinent to its surroundings. My objective was to bring sculpture to a new and unorthodox framework: common road works. I carve 100x100mm timber used in the barricades surrounding almost all road works/ building sites in Copenhagen. In the middle of the temporary and unsightly mess, where one would not normally expect an artistic experience, I plant my hand carved and painted wooden sculpture. The incongruity should provoke a smile and some bafflement for the viewer and I hope that the carvings will help alleviate the irritation of congestion and hindrance these work areas create."