decode unicode

This Decode Unicode poster displays 51.980 characters. This project s an effort to retrieve the meaning of some of the 98,884 graphic characters that Unicode 5.0 contains. From far it looks like a Turkish Rug. A fascinating work of information visualization.
 

Beautiful typeface(s)

I came across this beautiful typeface when looking for a typeface called DAS DECK (by the same designer, Andrea Tinnes). Both fonts are for sale here
Andrea Tinnes has a couple of more nice fonts there.

Charley Harper

Charley Harper seems to have laid the foundation for what is now called "vector style" illustration.
His work is done by hand, but is characterized by extremely stylized an simplified forms.
His finesse in borh color, line and composition is extreme.
It seems he had devoted his life to the visualization of nature. I read somewhere that he stated: I don't want to count all the feathers on the wings of a bird, I just want to count how many wings the bird has". Or something like that :) The idea is clear. Only the bare essence
This illustrator is new to me but it is already hard to imagine that I did not know him and his work.
It is possible to buy prints of the wonderful illustrator Charley Harper here. the pictures are from the same site which is a nice gallery in its own.
There is also a marvelous book, in four editions. With four different silkscreens, and one, cheaper, without.
I have it on my wishlist. It is for sale here. and a bit cheaper here

good news for the rare picture hunters

I just found something amazing.
On the site of Media.org, which is an outstanding collective that produces very important and relevant websites and online initiatives, I found a link to Public Resource. At first this looks like a simple and strange site.
However, when you click on one of the logo's you find an open letter to a government institutions.
The letter(s) deals with the right a culturual and public institution had of keeping information from the public (which is in essence the funder of the institution).
Here's a fragment:
We write to you today on the subject of SmithsonianImages.SI.Edu, a government ecommerce site built on a repository of 6,288 images of national significance. The site is breathtaking in scope, with imagery ranging from the historic cyanotypes of Edward Muybridge to historic photos from aviation, natural history, and many other fields. If the Smithsonian Institution is our attic, these photos are our collective scrapbook.
However, the web site imposes draconian limits on the use of this imagery. The site includes a copyright notice that to the layman would certainly discourage any use of the imagery. While personal, non-commercial use is purportedly allowed, it requires a half-dozen clicks before the user is allowed to download a low-resolution, watermarked image. An image without the watermark and at sufficient resolution to be useful requires a hefty fee, manual approval by the Smithsonian staff, and the resulting invoice specifically prohibits any further use without permission."
The result of this is:
"Because the overwhelming majority of the images in SmithsonianImages.SI.Edu appear to be public domain, and because the draconian notices on the site have a dramatic chilling effect on use of these historic images and national symbols, we have performed several actions that we hope will allow others to examine the public domain status:

1. We downloaded all 6,288 images, scraped the metadata from the html pages, and embedded the metadata in the .jpg headers. These images are low-resolution and contain a watermark, and were all previously available on-line.
2. The images were uploaded to Flickr, a popular photo sharing site.
   http://www.flickr.com/photos/publicresourceorg/
3. The images were loaded into 262 contact sheets and formatted with a cover for printing as an e-book. The book is available for free download or a printed copy may be ordered.
   http://stores.lulu.com/publicresource
4. A tarball of the images was created and is available by download by ftp or http.
   http://bulk.resource.org/si.edu/
   ftp://resource.org/bulk/si.edu/
5. Three of the high-resolution, non-watermarked images of Muybridge Cyanotypes were purchased, and a series of derivative works were created and posted.
   http://www.flickr.com/photos/publicresourceorg/collections/72157600218951688/
   ftp://resource.org/bulk/si.edu/

when I went to the flickr site, I found this fantastic image (among thousands of others!)

Private Art

A Collection of WWII Letters

To and From The Home Front.

Map Site:Map Mundi and nice example of data map

Map of .com names in New York
Copyright: Matthew Zook, 2000 <br>


 There are currently over 18 million .com domains registered on the Internet, along with another 11 million domains of varying sorts [1]. What is the geography of these domains - who owns them and where are they concentrated? Clearly domain names are a valuable commodity (and some of them are very valuable, for example the $7.5 million paid for business.com or $3 million for loans.com), but they are also a useful indicator for tracking Internet content production. Mapping domain name geography provides valuable insights into where the decision makers, the new jobs, and the money are, helping identify which neighborhoods, cities, regions and countries are leading the pack on the Internet. Matthew Zook is a researcher at the forefront of measuring and mapping domain names in his Internet Geography Project [2]. Map of the Month asked him recently about his project.

      Zook has been running a bi-annual survey of the geography of domain names since the summer of 1998. Using the billing address for the domain name registration he is able to pinpoint the location at which it is owned. From this dataset he undertakes a variety of analysis and mapping from the global scale down to the local neighborhood level. An example of one of his maps shows the detailed geography of domain names in Manhattan, New York, at the level of individual streets and neighborhoods. The blue dots represent clusters of domain names at individual street addresses, with the size of the dot denoting the number of domains at that location.

taken from a great site about maps

the lone star flag

<br>
Nice Design for a new American flag.
This is the rationale behind it:<br>
<br>

The suffrage flag was my inspiration for a 2004 re-appropriation of the American flag which, since 9/11, seems to have been co-opted by conservatives to represent pro-war nationalism, “family values”, etc. I’m taking it back. The flag below has only the 6th star, for Massachusetts (the 6th state), the only state which allows gay marriages. I’ll republish this flag with more stars when more states follow suit.<br>
taken from the site of Carl Tashian, who also has a nice idea of displaying photo;s

Blast II

from picture parade 1953

blast

</br><h3>"It is that beauty that great pets dream about but describe most poorly and inadequately"</h3><br><h1>Thomas F. Farrell, <A Los Alamos Laboratory official speaking to the press after the first atomic blast on july 1945 at the trinity site in Jornada del Muerto, New Mexico</h1><br>

A site which has a large amount of nuclear bomb test images.

illustration teacher

a great interview with a gifted illustration/comic artist teacher.
form the blog of cedric cohnstadt

Itunes link, look for episode #395

the interviewer is a suck-up so try to only listen to the man itself.

tools for sale here

buy them here!

Craig Thompson's tools of the trade

taken from his site

Carson Ellis, works for sale

mjummy work.
Her site
Her Blog

Fast Company: a rolemodel agency

a brilliant story of a brilliant agency

two more links on woodblocks

http://ana.lcs.mit.edu/~jnc/ http://grandstreamdreams.blogspot.com/2007/10/japanese-woodblocks.html

How to make a reproduction of a Hokusai

This Japanese site shows the making of a reproduction of a Japanese woodblock print by Hokusai. Although it is not understandable (in Japanese), the process is made clear in movies.

Carl Larsson

Beautiful illustrations by Carl Larsson (1853-1919)

pedalboard Trainspotting

I didn't know this was a hobby (profession) but it seems there's people out there taking pictures of other people's pedal boards. For die-hard hardware fans. Me, for one, I like seeing this stuff. It's like technical porn :)

great site about futurism (not the art movement)

Nina sent me this site. It gives great insight in the shape of dreams and visions of the future. Technique driven utopia's and social structural societies. Beautifullly illustrated aswell

nice animation

http://icono-clast.blogspot.com/2007/06/supercool-animation.html