I love simplicty and you don’t get much simpler than this visual depiction showing How Genetics Works | FlowingData. Thanks, Nathan, for another excellent post! Short and sweet.
Archive for the ‘Arts’ category
How Genetics Works | FlowingData
March 5th, 2010Collection: How to take insects in-flight
February 8th, 2010
fotoopa rig in use (from flickr)
fotoopa has posted photographs and schematics showing his hardware design for taking pictures of insects in flight. While the depth-of-field is very thin (credit card thickness), the pictures he has posted are astounding.
Focus distance can by adjusted to every value. The focus range of the detector is very narrow. 1 to 2 mm at a distance of 700 mm form the camera. Objects of 2 mm diameter can by easily detected. Detector works also on full black insects. 4 lasers are used, 2 IR 5 mw lasers at 850 nm and 2 x 10 mw green lasers. The green lasers are only for visual position to the insects.
The Making of Vesper | i love typography, the typography and fonts blog
February 8th, 2010
Vesper's two phases (from ilovetypography.com)
How are fonts designed? What are the steps and decisions a font designer must make to create a really vibrant and successful font? As someone who recently started enjoying fonts, I’ve never really considered these questions, until now. On the i love typography website (one of my favorite blogs and websites), Rob Keller, of Mota Italic, describes The Making of Vesper, broken down into two phases of his design process as he created a new font, Vesper: The first phase, comprising the Regular, Devanagari, Heavy, and Italic, was completed during his stint at the Masters in Arts, Typographic Design, at the University of Reading. After completing the MA, Rob completed the font’s remaining weights and revised the existing weights.
He provided some interesting details about the process and how he made some design decisions throughout, all of which have a real bearing on the final result.
» Read more: The Making of Vesper | i love typography, the typography and fonts blog
Timelines: sources from history from the British Library
February 5th, 2010
BL Timelines screenshot
The British Library has released a new website, Timelines: sources from history, where users can traverse history “from Magna Carta to Obama.” From to the website:
The interactive timeline allows you to explore British Library collection items chronologically, from medieval times to the present day. It includes a diverse combination of texts: those that allow glimpses of everyday life (handbills, posters, letters, diaries), remnants of political events (charters, speeches, campaign leaflets), and the writings of some of our best known historical and literary figures.
» Read more: Timelines: sources from history from the British Library
With Copyright Protectors Like These, who Needs Enemies? – Brand New
February 5th, 2010
Hadopi Logo (via underconsideration.com)
One of my favorite blogs is Brand New. Each post is informative and enjoyable. Recently, they posted an incredible story displaying the dangers of protectors failing to live up to their own standards. Hadopi, the French agency responsible for policing copyright violations and protecting creators from intellectual property theft is guilty of the same. Here’s the short story:
- The government hires an agency to design the logo
- The agency (Plan Créatif) mocks up a logo
- The logo was found to include 2 unlicensed fonts (Bienvenue, which was designed by Jean François Porchez exclusively for France Télécom and only available via websites hosting illegal materials, and Bliss, designed by Jeremy Tankard)
- The agency quickly licenses Bliss and replaces Bienvenue with FS Lola (designed for FontSmith by Phil Garnham)
- A new, properly licensed logo is released (though the fonts were licensed on the day the logo was released to the public!)
Pretty amazing. For the first post exposing the problem, written by Jean-Baptiste Levée, read his post on graphism.fr. See Le Point’s post (1/11/2010) for a French perspective, or Font Feed’s post. BoingBoing and Torrentfreak also have coverage. It even garnered TV coverage (LCI; in french).
Paleontologist discovers 3-D secrets of Middle Age designs of Kells’ ‘angels’ [Medieval News]
January 27th, 2010
A page from the Book of Kells
I still don’t quite understand it, but, according to John Cisne, a paleontologist who studied the Book of Kells, the medieval scribes who illustrated this amazing manuscript employed “free-fusion stereocomparison” to generate the intricate scrollwork that can be found throughout the pages. With detail to the point of “submillimeter precision”, Cisne, in the journal Perception (Vol. 38, No. 7), argues that the medieval monks uses this method to create the wonderful artwork in the Book of Kells and other beautiful manuscripts.
via Medieval News: Paleontologist discovers 3-D secrets of Middle Age designs of Kells’ ‘angels’.
Compact Calendar 2010 by David Seah
January 24th, 2010
David Seah's 2010 Compact Calendar
David Seah has updated his Compact Calendar for 2010 and posted it for download (both XLS and PDF versions) on his website: Compact Calendar 2010. At that link you’ll also find numerous international versions and last year’s version, too. [Note: If you feel compelled to spend $50 on a more typographically pleasing calendar, visit aisleone and slap your dough down on the table. I'll stick with Mr. Seah's solution. Thanks to him for making it available gratis.]
“Seven Ages Of Britain”: BBC’s New Multi-Part History of Britain
January 23rd, 2010
The Alfred Jewel (source: ashmolean.org)
BBC presents a new series called “Seven Ages Of Britain” starting on 1/31/2010. Each of the seven episodes represents an era in British history, narrated by David Dimbleby. I’m particularly interested in the first age:
Programme 1: Age Of Conquest (AD 43-1066) – For a thousand years, from Emperor Claudius to William the Conqueror, the British Isles were defined by invasion, each successive wave bringing something new to the mix. The Romans brought figurative art, the Anglo-Saxons epic poetry, the Normans monumental architecture. David Dimbleby travels throughout Britain and beyond – to France, Italy and Turkey – in search of the greatest creations of the age.
Programme includes: bronze bust of Hadrian (British Museum); fragment of triumphal arch commemorating Claudius’ conquest of Britain (Palazzo dei Conservatori, Rome); Roman coin of Britannia (Pantheon, Rome); frieze of Britannia under the heel of Emperor Claudius (Aphrodisias, Turkey); Roman gold brooch (Dolaucothi Gold Mine, Wales); Oceanus Dish (British Museum); Roman mosaic work (Bignor Roman Villa); Beowulf; Sutton Hoo treasure (Sutton Hoo and British Museum); Celtic Cross (Iona); Jarrow Monastery; Codex Amiatinus (Laurentian Library, Florence); Alfred Jewel (Ashmolean Museum); Alfred’s translation of Pastoral Care (Bodleian Library); Caen Castle and the Abbaye-aux-Hommes (Normandy); Bayeux Tapestry (Normandy); the Tower of London.
Thanks to Medieval News for the original blog post.
