graphic design, art, typography and architecture

The title of this video, "A Modern-Day DaVinci Genius" is perhaps hyperbole, but the wind-powered sculptures by the engineer/artist Theo Jansen are incredible. You can see several of them featured in the videos below: Kinetic art is sculpture that contains moving parts. The moving parts are generally powered by wind, a motor or the observer's hand. The term kinetic sculpture refers to a class of art made primarily from the late 1950s through 1960s. Kinetic art was first recorded by the sculptors Naum Gabo and Antoine Pevsner in their Realist Manifesto issued as part of a manifesto of constructivism in 1920 ... [more]

A topic inspired by a comment by Lauren Marie, and melded into a post by Tara over at the Graphic Design Blog, entitled "When Do You Consider Yourself a Successful Designer?" How did you get started in the business? I had no idea what I wanted to do when I left school. I was torn between so may disparate career aspirations, that I pretty much flipped a coin to decide. The coin chose a course in "Design--Technical Illustration", which I thoroughly enjoyed. I then worked freelance as an Architectural Illustrator (before the days of CAD!). After a few years at that, ... [more]

Well, I've been away from blogging for a week. I wonder if anyone noticed? ;) Owing to work commitments during last week, I couldn't find a minute in which to write something; and it's not as though I'm without ideas for posts. Well, as soon as I finish the redesign of my biggest (and best--just in case they're reading this) client's web site, and moving dozens and dozens of sites to my new host, Media Temple, I will be back. Here are some posts still in draft form, that I'll publish soon. Something to whet your appetites, I hope: "The Day the Web ... [more]

I like this Green Skyscraper concept by Australian architect Andrew Maynard for the Sony Tower in China. What caught my eye was the overall profile and the inclusion of wind turbines. I especially like the wind turbine within the main structure. I wonder why this isn't seen more often? We decided to design a tower and then hit it with a wall of sound. Through computer modeling we manipulated a simple tower buy hitting it with the sound "SONY" to create the kinetic form that is Sony Tower. Not completely sure how they did that, but none the less and interesting idea. ... [more]

When I come across something on-line that really grabs my attention, I make a note of it with Google Notebook -- I almost feel embarrassed to "promote" a Google product, but it really has helped me to keep track of and organise my web likes. I began using it after one day scrolling through -- for what seemed like an eternity -- my Bookmarks; kind of defeated the whole purpose. My bookmarks list had become so big, that even after adding a few more folders, taking out the trash and reorganising, it was still too big and cumbersome to be of ... [more]

When I first began blogging my single most difficult decision was not what to write or how to write it, but which "blogging engine" to use. Should I go with TextPattern, Blogger, TypePad, Mephisto...? After experimenting with numerous systems both hosted and self-hosted, I chose to go with WordPress. Why? Simply because it's the best; simply because when it comes to blogging, nothing comes close to WordPress - it's free, it's open-source and it rocks. At this stage, perhaps I should let you know that I am in no way affiliated with WordPress; I don't work for them, I don't get ... [more]

On the whole, I find browsing the web a pleasurable experience. However, there are times when the 'arghhhhh!" factor is take off the scale. None of the things in my list is life-threatening but, boy can they be annoying. Here are mine: 1. Illegible captchas. I have nothing against these little fellows; they are a necessary evil. However, when you have to squint and strain your eyes to decipher the alphanumeric conundrum - is that an "e" or a "c", a "2" or a "z", a capital or lower-case "s". arghhhhh! factor 9/10 (I have a suspicion that illegible captchas ... [more]

Now here's an article, published in Print Magazine, that has ruffled a few feathers in the Blogging Community. Design writer and former editor of the Design Observer blog, Rick Poynor* really throws his toys out of the pram in Easy Writer. The biggest single problem with blogs as a medium for writing is the very thing that bloggers tend to love them for: the lack of editors. It’s naive to imagine that you can just sit down at the keyboard, shoot from the hip, and hit the target unaided every time. Although I respect Mr Poynor as a journalist, a ... [more]

This post is the passionate offspring of a discussion that began over at David Airey's site. In reviewing a site, he wrote (almost in passing, I think), that he wasn't keen on the site's fluid* layout. As the comments to his post became more impassioned, I thought it was time to write something on the topic. For those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about, a fixed-width web page is just that - fixed; so, for example, this site has a fixed width of 965px; and if you resize your browser window to anything less than 965px ... [more]

I'd been thinking for some time about changing the design of this site; 2-, 3-, 4- columns, understated or bold, and which features and plugins to include/exclude. I also started to build my own theme from scratch, then came across the Grid Focus theme by Derek Punsalan. The old 2-column theme wasn't, I felt, making good use of the available space, and 4-columns melt my brain with info-overload. A quick look at my logs, revealed that just about no-one uses 800*600 screen resolution to view this site, so I settled on three columns. I've hacked the theme and added a ... [more]