Martin’s ITP Blog

For visual communication the past two weeks we have been exploring with typography and business card design. I worked on some experiment identities for my company I am doing my software work under, Emergence Studios. It is a brand new company so I have not settled on an identity. However, the topmost business card, and lower right logo, is what I am currently leaning towards, using a font called Fenwick that seems casual yet professional, modern and elegant. Some of the more computery fonts look fun for a little while, but the effect wears off over time and I am left wanting a mature look. I am currently using fenwick on the bottom of my website. The lower business card is a fenwick variation that looks like a wood-cut, fun but not versatile enough for a logo.

The studies:

Police Scanner: I streamed the NYPD for a while as background noise. Nothing particularly eventful. I used to carry around a police scanner while working as a photographer at a newspaper, and I seem remember it rarely or ever came in handy, except for a rare major event happens as you are listening. What I was thinking about this time was the protocol of the police radio, the formalness, directness of it and its effectiveness. Transmissions are kept short to not tie up the channel. Codes are use to eliminate the possibility of ambiguity, as well as securing access to  the information/data. It is an extremely powerful tool that we can learn a lot from in terms of group collaboration and coordination.

For the other part of the assignment, to generate my own codes, I took from what I know best, the HTTP protocol. A sort of web 2.0 trucker guide:

• 200 - OK - Equivalent to trucker 10-4
• 404 - Not Found - Dead end, unable to locate target
• 304 - Not Modified - This is a way to check in, and say that things are ok
• 409 - Conflict - There is a conflict
• 401 - Unauthorized - Authority problems, need to talk to boss
• 413 - Request Entity Too Large - too many of the opposition. Abort!
• 301 - Moved Permanently - The location has to be changed
• 101 - Switching Protocols - This means your line is bugged, switch method of communication

We were assigned to photograph some bad signs in NYC for visual communication. Here are three examples that I found:

This one is simply an egregious abuse of typography in all possible ways.

A common NYC parking post, however once tacked on by several special cases (Farmer’s Market, Faculty Parking, School Days) it becomes difficult to solve the puzzle of when you are allowed to park there.

An example of the horrors of combining Serif and Sans-Serif fonts, as well as not have a primary element.

For our Visual Communications class we were supposed to pick a website and analyse some of the design elements used, including the colors, grid system, and layout used to present the content. I chose to look a fairly standard but, in my opinion, well designed site, arstechnica.com . As a technical journal it’s main role is to present quality writing and articles, so the main focus is a simple uncluttered UI that does not distract from the content. However, within these confines, it manages to have a very solid design, with orange accents, rich black gradients, and consistently branded section headers. All of these combine to give the site a polished, professional, mature look that cements its reputation as a reputable, intelligent source of tech news.

Arstechnica Analysis Slides

For our Social Activism and Mobile Technology course we were assigned to review of an activism app. I thought about it a while, looked around the app store, but in the end decided that the most apt app was already present on my phone, the Obama ‘08 App. Nearly a year after the election and it still has not been deleted by me. Maybe because there is something special about this app, not that the app neccessarily had any effect on the election, but by what it represented. Technology integrating with modern political organizing. Directly and literally tapping your contact list to see which friends are in swing states, based on their area codes; tapping your location to key you in on local events and gatherings. While many would (rightly) consider this invasive, for passionate organizers this kind of technology just makes people excited about the cause and desire to stay updated.

However at this point it probably needs an update to move over from the Organizing category to the To-Do List category.

Just wanted to leave an update on here, Old Map App has developed into Historic Earth, an application that is a partnership with Historic Map Works, allowing access to their large, exclusive database of historical geo-referenced maps from around the country in various time periods.

We are preparing for a short round of testing, if you have an iPhone or iPod touch and would like to participate, just leave your info at the link below. (You will need to find your device’s UDID number, instructions are on the form)

Beta testing sign-up form