Drawing based on field recordings

Gather field sound material and then use it as a basis for drawings.Pick some different types of fields, as: - Repetitive background noise, like a train passing by - Sporadic clustered noise, such as people walking across schoolyard / park with dogs - Sounds of tv program/ talk show in unknown language - Various types of silence: with different emortional charge (awkward silence, silence before the storm, concentrated silence between two loud noises, eternal silence of outer space, etc.) - Sounds from the inside spaces: big/small rooms, bars, cafes, library, in public transport, inside own home, train station, church, theater, hairdresser, hospital, lavatory, bathroom - Sounds of nature vs man-made: wind, car sounds, church bells, bird songs, dog bark, rain, thunder - Sounds based on objects found in the field: knock on wood, rotating / breaking the glass, pouring/ boiling the water, clicking on switches, echo of different places, hand dryer, crumpling plastic bag.

Vignelli canon: use of fonts

In the new computer age, the proliferation of typefaces and type manipulations represents a new level of visual pollution threatening our culture. Out of thousands of typefaces, all we need are a few basic ones, and trash the rest. The Vignelli Canon, p. 56

Space as material

In phenomenology, the environment is concretely defined as "the place", and the things which occur there "take place". The place is not so simple as the locality, but consists of concrete things which have material substance, shape, texture, and color, and together coalesce to form the environment's character, or atmosphere. It is this atmosphere which allows certain spaces, with similar or even identical functions, to embody very different properties, in accord with the unique cultural and environmental conditions of the place which they exist. Phenomenology is conceived as a "return to things", maneuvering away from the abstractions of science and its neutral objectivity. Phenomenology absorbs the concept of subjectivity, making the thing and its unique conversations with its place the relevant topic and not the thing itself. The man-made components of the environment become the settlements of differing scales, some large—like cities, and some small—like the house. The paths between these settlements and the various elements which create the cultural environment become the secondary defining characteristics of the place. The distinction of natural and man-made offers us the first step in the phenomenological approach. The second is to qualify inside and outside, or the relationship of earth-sky. The third and final step is to assess character, or how things are made and exist as participants in their environment. Source: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenomenology_(architecture)

Which colours are Karel Martens' boxes?

1. Alice blue
2. alizarin crimson
3. amber
4. amethyst
5. aqua
6. acquarnarine
7. asparagus
8. azure
9. beige
10. bistre
11. black
12. blue
13. Bondi blue
14. brass
15. bright green
16. bright turquoise
17. bright violet
18. bronze
19. brown
20. buff
21. burgundy
22. burnt orange
23. burnt sienna
24. burnt umber
25. camouflage green
26. cardinal
27. carmine
28. carrot
29. celadon
30. cerise
31. cerulean
32. cerulean blue
33. chartreuse
34. chestnut
35. chocolate
36. cinnamon
37. cobalt
38. copper
39. coral
40. corn
41. cornflower blue
42. cream
43. crimson
44. cyan
45. dark blue
46. dark brown
47. dark cerulean
48. dark chestnut
49. dark coral
50. dark goldenrod
51. dark green
52. dark indigo
53. dark khaki
54. dark olive
55. dark pastel green
56. dark peach
57. dark pink
58. dark salmon
59. dark scarlet
60. dark slate gray
61. dark spring green
62. dark tan
63. dark tangerine
64. dark tea green
65. dark terra cotta
66. dark turquoise
67. dark violet
68. denim
69. dodger blue
70. eggplant
71. emerald
72. fern green
73. flax
74. fuchsia
75. gamboge
76. gold
77. goldenrod
78. gray
79. gray-asparagus
80. gray-tea green
81. green
82. green-yellow
83. heliotrope
84. hot pink
85. indigo
86. international Klein blue
87. international orange
88. jade
89. khaki
90. khaki (X11)
91. lavender
92. lavender blush
93. lemon
94. lemon cream
95. light brown
96. lilac
97. lime
98. linen
99. magenta
100. malachite
101. maroon
102. mauve
103. midnight blue
104. mint green
105. moss green
106. Mountbatten pink
107. mustard
108. Navajo white
109. navy blue
110. ochre
111. old gold
112. olive drab
113. orange
114. orchid
115. pale blue
116. pale brown
117. pale carmine
118. Pale chestnut
119. pale cornflower blue
120. pale magena
121. pale pink
122. pale red-violet
123. pale sandy brown
124. papaya whip
125. pastel green
126. pastel pink
127. Paul mauve
128. peach
129. peach-orange
130. peach-yellow
131. pear
132. Persian blue
133. pine green
134. pink
135. pink-orange
136. plum
137. powder blue
138. Prussian blue
139. puce
140. pumpkin
141. purple
142. raw umber
143. red
144. red-violet
145. robin egg blue
146. royal blue
147. russet
148. rust
149. safety orange (blaze orange)
150. saffron
151. salmon
152. sandy brown
153. sangria
154. sapphire
155. scarlet
156. school  bus yellow
157. sea green
158. seashell
159. selective yellow
160. sepia
161. silver
162. slate gray
163. spring green
164. steel blue
165. swamp green
166. tan
167. tangerine
168. taupe
169. tea green
170. teal
171. teené
172. terra cotta
173. thistle
174. turquoise
175. ultramarine
176. vermillion
177. violet
178. violet-eggplant
179. viridian
180. wheat
181. white
182. wisteria
183. yellow
184. zinnwaldite

Text source: Full color, Martens, Schwartz. Roma Publications, 2013. P. 143-145

Analysis drawings from the Slade drawing course, Autumn 2012

Artwork courtesy Ian Rowlands

The Noun project - a website about icons

A great website with lots of superb iconography - an extermely useful instrument when working on own icons - and for buying icons from designers, too, of course:

1968 Mexico Olympic Games pictocharts

Pictocharts for 1968 Mexico Olympic Games, by Lance Wyman (US) Image source: http://www.tapook.com/2012/07/olympic-pictograms/

Ten most used chart types

(from Digital Agency to Google)

Here's the praise to Calibri

Calibri has been behaving badly, tell us presentation specialists at Slidebean: 'Calibri is one of the ugliest fonts ever invented by mankind, I hold it up there with other design fails such the infamous Comic Sans MS'.

Ouch. After reading an introduction like this the only fonts I want to use now are by all means only Comic Sans and Calibri! I'm even ready to forget my beloved Arial and Times New Roman for a while. (:

Image source: http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/ascender/calibri/

Polar chart generator

Let our lives be changed forever! The interactive chart builder that we've been dreaming of for so long has finally been created by the genius of Matt Bentley (and it also exports results into svg's!).

Access it now!

Arnheim, R. - Syntax of Colour Combinations

Fig.235 - Similarity of the subordinate Fig. 236 - Structural contradiction in one common element Fig. 237 - Similarity of the dominant Fig. 238 - Structural Inversion

So why do infographics work, then?

Logically, users are after numbers, because that where the core information is. Why is there a need to visualize the data?

It seems like there is a purely visual mechanism that helps us to understand data in a different way when we look at the image, as compared to just the display of numbers, - a new meaning appears.

What did Otto Neurath like to collect?

Austrian philosopher of science Otto Neurath was famous for his passion of collecting various curiosities. Here's some of the things he was interested in:

• hieroglyphics
• isotype (vienna method)
• pictocharts/pictograms
• phenakistoscope
• atlas
• pictorial mnemotechnique
• emblem
• symbol/inn signs
• binary/duodenary systems
• visual aid/visual education
• saragon (voice)
• synchronogical chart
• tangram (dissection puzzle)
• rebus cards
• roundel
• alphabet books
• accident prevention pictures
• optical teaching aids
• zoopraxiscope
• drawings of primitive peoples and children
• sachbilder (descriptive pictures)
• anamorphic pictures
• mayan pictures
• cave paintings
• silhouettes

source: Neurath, O., From Hieroglyphics to Isotype: A Visual Autobiography, 2010 Image source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoopraxiscope

Development of art psychology: a rough mind map

Source:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychology_of_art

Top 16 Stockholm icons

[gallery columns="4" ids="7216,7217,7218,7219,7220,7221,7222,7223,7224,7225,7226,7227,7228,7229,7230,7231"]

Dangers of London

[gallery columns="4" ids="7209,7210,7211,7212,7213,7214"]

John Ruskin, The Elements of Drawing - things to be studied

1. Always right: Titian, Veronese, Tintoret, Giorgione, John Bellini and Velasquez. 2. Questionable: Van Eyck, Holbein, Perugino, Francia, Angelico, Leonardo da Vinci, Corregio, Vandyck, Rembrandt, Reynolds, Gainsborough, Turner and the modern Pre-Raphaelites.

3. Most desirable: Samuel Prout (Rhine), John Lewis (sketches in Spain), George Cruikshank (Grimm's german Stories), Alfred Rethel (Dance of Death, Death the Avenger, Death the Friend), Bewick, Blake (Book of Job), Richter (illustrations to Lord's Prayer), Rosetti (edition of Tennyson).

There's no such thing as Data Visualisation

Strictly speaking, there are only surfaces covered with marks. The rest is human interpretation of them. This could be argued that 'there are examples of graphics where shapes and colours are not employed to represent data'.

The answer to this might be:

'We agree that any conscious design activity implies some kind of analytical thinking. And where there's analysis, there's data. Therefore, any graphic design is dealing with representing data, and so there's no entity as Data Visualisation which would be separate from any other designing activity. And in turn, this proves that Data Visualisation is a term which was created artificially.'

I.e. we came up with term 'data visualisation' so that, on one side, we'd have a certain theoretical framework to facilitate working with what interests us most, and on another, to make sure  clients pay us more and with greater ease.

Explanation of perspectives

Perspective, depending on the angle of picture plane to picture's surface. When two planes are parallel, it creates a top view (as in most maps). When perpendicular, it is a front view. Sharper angles create deep perspectives, flatter angles are less deep. (map of Rome from Otto Neurath, p.151)

Rothaus!