Showing all posts about design
Keming is omnipresent, now let’s add it to the dictionary
16 May 2022
American photographer, filmmaker, and writer David Friedman has launched a campaign to have keming, a word he devised in 2008, added to the Merriam-Webster dictionary.
I coined the word “keming” in 2008, defining it as “the result of improper kerning.” It’s a bit of visual wordplay because kerning is the adjustment of space between letters and if you kern the word kerning improperly, the r and n can merge to form an m. “Kerning” becomes “keming.”
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2022 Australian Book Design Awards shortlist
19 April 2022
The 2022 Australian Book Design Awards shortlist, which can be viewed here (PDF), was announced last week. The awards celebrate the best of Australian book design, and the winners will be named at a ceremony taking place at The Craft & Co in Melbourne, on Friday 3 June 2022.
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Australian literature, awards, design
To honour honey bees, a commemorative two-dollar coin
11 April 2022
Image courtesy of Royal Australian Mint.
Australia’s honey bee industry is officially two hundred years old this year. To mark the milestone, the Royal Australian Mint will soon be making available a commemorative two-dollar coin adorned with two honey bees, and feature a distinct honey-coloured honeycomb centre.
Since its introduction in 1988, the Australian two dollar coin has featured a number of colourfully designed centres, making certain pieces particularly collectible, and in some cases, worth somewhat more than their two-dollar face value. It might be an idea to check through the loose change in your coin jar…
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Vale Stephen E. Wilhite, creator of the GIF
29 March 2022
American computer scientist Stephen E. Wilhite who invented the GIF, being Graphics Interchange Format, in 1987, has died aged seventy-four.
Although GIFs are synonymous with animated internet memes these days, that wasn’t the reason Wilhite created the format. CompuServe introduced them in the late 1980s as a way to distribute “high-quality, high-resolution graphics” in color at a time when internet speeds were glacial compared to what they are today.
GIFs weren’t just used for animations, they were also an image format, similar to the more familiar JPEG or PNG formats in use today. Hunt around on Oblong Obsession and you’ll find one or two. You can’t go passed a classic. Thank you Mr Wilhite.
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2022 Australian Book Design Awards longlist
18 March 2022
Especially for those who enjoy judging books by their covers, the 2022 Australian Book Design Awards longlist has been announced. There are over one hundred and sixty titles vying for recognition across twenty categories, plus the Deb Brash Emerging Designer of the Year award.
Fiction titles are essentially separated into four groups, children’s, young adult, commercial, and literary. The Other Side of Beautiful, by South Australian author Kim Lock, The Younger Wife, by Melbourne novelist Sally Hepworth, are among candidates in the commercial fiction category, while In Moonland, by Miles Allinson, is one of the nominations in the literary fiction segment.
Over four-hundred-and-ninety titles were considered in this year’s award, before the longlist was unveiled. The shortlist will be made public in early April, with the winners in each category being named on Friday 3 June 2022, in Melbourne.
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Neil Mendoza’s amazing hamster powered hamster drawing machine
6 July 2016
The Hamster Powered Hamster Drawing Machine, created by Neil Mendoza, is exactly what it says it is. A drawing machine powered by what is effectively a running wheel for hamsters or mice.
I expect the hamsters or mice are pleased that their exertion brings about a little more than some exercise on their part.
Originally published Wednesday 6 July 2016, with subsequent revisions, updates to lapsed URLs, etc.
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art, design, legacy, technology
Mechatronic Harmonies, a translation of instructions and knowledge
9 February 2016
abstr^ct:groove is a Milan, Italy, based production and design studio, who work mainly “on developing uncommon audiovisual projects in communication and advertising”. Mechatronic Harmonies is the result of a recent collaboration with Wittenstein, a German manufacturer of high-precision electro-mechanical systems.
This description of the creative process probably better describes how Mechatronic Harmonies came to be, than I could:
After a series of meetings at their laboratories, we were asked to translate all the instructions and knowledge we received in images and sounds, but within a well defined task limitation: no technical data could be conveyed in a linear or didactic manner.
Originally published Tuesday 9 February 2016.
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A map of the solar system for your own grand tour of the planets
4 February 2014
Back in the 1960’s the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a US space agency, was keen to organise a “Grand Tour” of the solar system’s outer planets, by taking advantage of a planetary alignment that would occur in the late 1970’s. They hoped to send up to four automated probes to take a closer look at Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto.
Funding cuts thwarted the idea, though NASA deep space probe Voyager 2, launched in 1977, was able to fly by Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.
There won’t be another such alignment of the outer planets until well into the twenty-second century. But thanks to Pasadena based designer and illustrator Paul Rogers, who has created a map of the solar system for tourists, you may be able to plan your own jaunt about the planets in the meantime.
Originally published Tuesday 4 February 2014, with subsequent revisions, updates to lapsed URLs, etc.
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astronomy, design, illustration, legacy, science
Takeaway coffee cups that let you have your cake and eat it
30 July 2012
I’m all for reusable takeaway coffee cups, or keep cups, in principle, after all we should be trying to conserve resources whenever possible. Thing is I’m not always carrying mine — if I can even find it some days — so the question remains, how not to be too wasteful while still ordering take out coffee, or your beverage of choice?
Edible coffee cups however, as designed by Enrique Luis Sardi, and made from biscuit, or cookie mix, with a sugar icing lining that stops the coffee steeping away, may be the solution.
If these cups could also be made with other food stuffs, such as say banana or raisin bread, then we might be able to significantly cut back on single-use disposable cups.
Originally published Monday 30 July 2012.
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The album cover artwork of Alex Steinweiss was a real smash hit
28 July 2011
American graphic designer Alex Steinweiss, who pioneered the concept of album cover artwork, died last week aged ninety-four.
In 1939 Steinweiss thought records might have more appeal if they featured eye-catching artwork over the plain brown packaging that was then in use. And he was right.
After designing a cover for Smash Song Hits by Rodgers & Hart (Internet Archive link), sales of the record increased by almost nine-hundred percent.
See more of Steinweiss’ work here (Internet Archive link), and here.
Originally published Thursday 28 July 2011, with subsequent revisions, updates to lapsed URLs, etc.
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