Blog
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Ben Saunders: North 3
We’re just finishing off work on a very exciting website for polar explorer Ben Saunders, who’s just left the UK for Canada to embark on a North Pole speed record attempt. Ben originally contacted us back in June, saying “I’m looking for a design agency to help with a few slightly unusual web and print projects.” Needless to say, when Ben went on to explain that he intended to walk nearly 500 miles solo to the North Pole in just 36 days we were eager to get involved.
Following an identity project and exhibition graphics we produced for Ben in collaboration with Studio8 Design in November, we set about creating a site that would enable people to follow the expedition over the course of 6 weeks. The first issue to tackle was the fact that due to the extreme latitudes it’s impossible to get high bandwidth connections from the poles, since the satellites are geo-stationery around the equator: the further North you go, the weaker the signal. So live daily webchats and glorious photography were out. We needed to build the site around data that could easily be sent back at the expense of a few kilobytes of bandwidth.
The final site with all the live data and infographics (pictured above with dummy data) will launch on or around Tuesday 15th March, when Ben sets off. Ben’s GPS co-ordinates will be sent back every hour along with distance travelled per hour – posted live on the site and to Ben’s Twitter page. A live countdown clock will display the time remaining, and a cumulative graph of daily stats (latitude, distance travelled, sled weight and temperature) will show Ben’s progress. Ben will also send a post back at the end of each day, with an image.
The new site went live yesterday (less the forthcoming live data-rich homepage above), featuring a video by Temujin Doran.
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Edinburgh Civic Survey – 1949
I stumbled across this civic survey and plan for Edinburgh from 1949 whilst on a city break up there a couple of weeks ago and had to buy it. This huge book (280 x 360mm & 111 pages) is full of the most incredible post-war maps of the city.
Prepared by Patrick Abercrombie and Derek Plumstead for the Town Council, the book contains detailed data for traffic, health, education, recreation, population density and so on, beautifully depicted in a series of maps, charts and diagrams. This page for example, shows the distribution of authority (red) and non-authority schools (black) in Edinburgh.
Each dot on the map represents a pupil, solid for secondary and outline for primary, also colour coded to indicate whether they attend an authority or non-authority school.
This page compares pre-and post war traffic accidents.
The supporting text concludes “from the number, size and colour of the symbols it is at once apparent which are the most dangerous points in the road system where accidents occurred in 1937 and recurred in 1946…
…while the coloured portions of the segments indicate the number of times an accident occurred at any one of these points during the two years.”
The typography is a treat…
…as are the compasses that sit at the foot of each map under the key…
…the illustrations…
…the historic street plans (this one dates from 1819)…
…and the detail in each of the 25 fold-out maps.
The greatest surprise though, were the 3 biggest maps that were hiding in a sleeve inside the back cover.
The biggest one is a land use survey of the whole of Edinburgh, at a scale of 1:5000 its over a metre wide. This’ll be framed and on my wall at home before too long.
Edinburgh is full of really interesting second hand bookshops. This book was found at the back of Edinburgh Books in West Port. I recommend paying them a visit if you’re ever in town. Full set of photos on our Flickr.
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’93, 4AD & Me
I was flicking through my record boxes recently, which doesn’t happen very often these days, and found an old favourite from 1993 – the Isabel Bishop EP by Unrest (I also found a questionable amount of Acid Jazz records that we’ll speak no further of). I thought I’d share this on our blog, if only because the artist Isabel Bishop, who inspired this record, is worth reading about.
It’s a record that’s very nostalgic for me, both because of the music and the sleeve design. In ’93 I’d been studying graphic design for about a year, and my interest in music was also escalating, and so my delight in discovering the record label 4AD was two-fold – aural stimulus provided by artists such as Belly, The Breeders, Pale Saints and Unrest, and the visual stimulus of their sleeves designed by heroes of the day Vaughan Oliver, V23 and Chris Bigg.
I still enjoy the music on these records, and although I’m not as enamoured with the sleeves as I once was, at the time they gave me great pleasure and inspiration – I remember spending a significant amount of time, to no avail, trying to make photographs like Jason Love’s for The Breeders’ Cannonball cover shown above.
Unfortunately my little trip down memory lane was cut short as my 2yr old daughter has managed to detach and hide the stylus for my turntable, however, through the modern miracle that is Spotify I can share the title track with you here.
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Vintage Retro Reclaimed
The ok corral was started by Steve and Joy Jolliffe and their daughter Holly, Isle of Wight friends of Applied Works partner Joe Sharpe. We rather like their stuff and wanted to share it with you, so we asked them to send us some words and pictures for the blog. Enjoy.
The ok corral began because we have a problem. Our problem is a lack of space. We just can’t resist poking about in other people’s stuff. Our little collection of favourite bits is now a big collection. The many odd plates and pots sadly no longer fit into the kitchen cupboards.
But there’s more great stuff still out there and it’s all irresistible but there’s no more room here. So, we decided to share with everyone else and this became the solution.
At the ok corral, Steve designed and now manages the website and generally keeps it in tip top condition. Holly takes considered photographs of humble objects and releases their inner beauty. Joy writes about our finds and gets the chance to wax lyrical and transmit her enthusiasm.
Now, we can all just keep on searching for those amazing things in a calm and guilt free way because they’re not for us any more, they’re for you.
The ok corral – born 25 May 2010 on the Isle of Wight.
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All aboard the Gingerline
In each episode of Mr Benn, the animated children’s television series from yesteryear, Mr Benn leaves his home and visits a fancy dress costume shop where he is invited in by the shopkeeper to try on an outfit. At this point Mr Benn enters a world appropriate to his costume – last Friday night I had a remarkably similar experience at the hands of the Gingerline team.
One of London’s more recent pop-up restaurants, Gingerline brings to the mix imagination and creativity, constructing events fit for a theatre as much as a dining table.
A twenty minute ride on the Gingerline (London Underground’s former East London Line, and the same thread that stitches every month’s event together) found us in New Cross Gate outside a costume shop, window shutters on. The door opened, we were greeted with top hat and tails and we stepped inside to the backstage of a Siberian Circus.
I’m not sure where to start with trying to explain what I witnessed for the next four hours. Swinging ladies on a perch, colourful characters feeding us popcorn and vodka, and all set off with the background sounds of a Ukranian accordion player.
It would be an injustice not to mention the fun my tastebuds had with three of the finest courses I’ve had in a very long time. Wild boar dumplings, venison goulash, spice poached apples and ice-cream and shot after shot of all varieties of vodka.
The evening’s memories were taken away along with the menu – a limited edition print for each guest to keep. Mr Benn may have had some amazing adventures, but I doubt he ever feasted this well.
Photographs by Emli Benxiden taken from Ginerline’s Facebook page.
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The Future of Social Networking?
I was tempted to call this post ‘The Future of Facebook’, but considering all the anti-Facebook rhetoric out there at the moment I didn’t want to send the wrong message. I like Facebook. I’m in touch with a lot of people I otherwise wouldn’t be because of it, and for that alone I’m grateful. Falling out with Facebook feels like the adolescent trend of falling out with your parents when you realise people aren’t perfect. So this post isn’t about the future of Facebook per-se, but since they’re the biggest social networking game in town, it also sort of is.
Before we go on, let me set out my stall: a few years back, when Facebook reached its tipping point, an old friend signed up and was blown away by what he saw. The words he used to describe it have stuck with me ever since and they form the bedrock on which all my opinions about social networking are built. He called it “Email 2”.
I had to agree with him. Inadvertently, Facebook took everything that was wrong about email and fixed it while at the same time taking a lot of what was good about email and made it better. So I no longer get 200mb emails of photos of some distant relative’s trip to the German Occupational Health & Safety Exhibition clogging up my inbox. People put them on Facebook and I can ignore them there.
I’ve also seen a huge reduction in those über long emails sent to five or more people, who all reply at different times, so coherent conversation is quickly stripped from existence and all you’re left with is something that reads like Lindsey Lohan at an after party. Now, Facebook keeps one continuous thread and all correspondence is more or less organised. Organised enough for me at least.
And then there’s Messages, which isn’t as good as Email 1 in many ways, but I’m sure it’ll get better.
For me though, what’s most important is that I get all that stuff I wouldn’t have otherwise got before because it just didn’t feel like email material. So now I get chirpy little updates when some girl, usually “the one that got away” enters a relationship, sending me into a cycle of critical self assessment and heavy drinking. I know when someone I sort of know, but not well enough to call a friend, is having a party that I can crash. And thanks to Facebook, I’m dynamite at remembering birthdays now too!
And I get all this info in a non-intrusive, passive way. Which works really, really well.
Now Facebook clearly wasn’t the first social network to come along, but it was the first to do social networking well. It could be better, but if history tells us anything (which it doesn’t) it’s that it could also be a lot worse. Facebook also isn’t the only social networking platform on the block. There’s LinkedIn and Twitter to name two very successful ones that are also completely different. And herein lies a problem. For all that Facebook is good at, it’s not so good at what LinkedIn does. I find that there’s some cross over between the two which leaves a gaping hole in Facebook’s and LinkedIn’s collective usefulness since the two are mutually exclusive for the most part. With email, I can communicate directly with anyone else with an email account.
There are many other areas in which Email 1 is better than Email 2 at the moment, but for now I’ll focus on this point; the ability to communicate with people on different social networks is important.
To solve this problem, we need a distributed social networking protocol (DSNP), like the email protocol or HTTP which is how all those webpages get to where they need to be. There needs to be a standard on which all social networks are built. The good news is, people are already working on it, like this guy.
A DSNP would allow people to treat their social network like they treat their email. It means you’d be able to up sticks and leave Facebook to join another social network, and take all your important info with you. You wouldn’t be tied to anything and you wouldn’t lose anything in the move. I also predict a wealth of web based, mobile and desktop social networking applications that present your social networking content in different ways, allowing you to choose a service that best suits your tastes.
There is, however, one very big obstacle standing in the way. Facebook, and its $50 billion valuation.
First of all, this would mean a complete rebuild of Facebook, and right now, what’s the point? They’re king of the hill.
Secondly, there’s no economic incentive to motivate Facebook to make it easy for you to leave. I’m not implying that they’re anti competitive and therefore they’re evil, but they are a business with investors, and they’ll be just as resistant to change as the record labels were to digital downloads. No right thinking business will willingly harm its bottom line. In fact, doing so is illegal in most countries.
But here’s the rub. That’s YOUR data, and there are reams of data protection laws that mean you’re entitled to your data at all times. And since all that is needed to get access to every little bit of data in your Facebook account is your email address and password, there’s no reason why transferring all your current social networking to another couldn’t be automated.
So that’s my prediction for the future of social networking. Diversity and portability enabled by a distributed social networking protocol. As for Facebook, they’ll take a big hit, as will LinkedIn and Twitter, but they have a huge head start so if they’re responsive to change in a positive way, there’s no reason they couldn’t carve out a very profitable chunk of the market for themselves. If they don’t they will fail.
People tend to think of the web as a destroyer of old school business models, but it moves so fast that brand new, state of the art business models that are still in beta can be eaten up just as easily. The more popular the trend, the faster the momentum, and social networking is definitely ‘on trend’ right now. It’s here to stay, of that we can be certain. The top and tail of all this however is that Facebook’s $50 billion valuation is untenable. Its business model won’t survive if a DSNP gains any sort of traction. If that happens, someone’s going to lose a lot of money.
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Eric Gurney
First post of the new year is some illustrations from a book called ‘How To Live With A Calculating Cat’ by Eric Gurney, published in 1964. He also did a pop-up book of cats that was amazing.
I have a few other old gems lying around from my childhood that I’ll be posting separately (it fills the radio silence nicely between proper ‘grown-up’ posts).
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20 Things About Browsers
The Google team, or more specifically the Google Chrome Team have posted a wonderfully quaint introduction to browsers at 20thingsilearned.com in the form of an illustrated e-book. Putting aside the funky typesetting decisions for a moment, it’s interesting for three reasons.
Firstly, all those fancy page turn transitions and little animations (traditionally something people would use Flash to accomplish) are all implemented with CSS3 which puts this squarely in the HTML5 camp. Online magazine/book style viewers have been around for a few years and while their overall usefulness and usability can be called into question, this does further illustrate the constantly decreasing relevance of Flash.
Secondly, it’s a reminder of just how important browsers are to Google, and how important it is that ordinary people know what one is. On the face of it that may sound crazy, surely everyone knows what a browser is these days. However, If you’ve ever had a friend of family member “lose the internet” because they misplaced the “blue e” icon then you’ll know what I mean. These are the people who create most of Google’s revenue and to maintain a competitive advantage with the tools and services they offer, they need to somehow let the masses know that the “blue e” isn’t the Internet, and that Google Chrome is a better, more advanced window onto the World Wide Web.
Thirdly, Google is going head to head with Microsoft and Apple these days as they attempt to pitch the open web as the operating system. As far as I know, Google Chrome is the only browser to ever have its own dedicated TV Ad Campaign so they’re clearly ready and willing to spend a lot of cash promoting their strategy, but the need to explain something so ubiquitous illustrates just how unique a problem they have to tackle. You don’t see Microsoft publishing “This is a computer” articles and there’s no owners manual with iPhones or iPads. It’s odd that something most people use hundreds of times a day is still so greatly misunderstood.
Back to the article in question though. It’s an interesting read and even hyper-super-giga-geeks like me should give it a once over. It never hurts to brush up on the fundamentals and what with all the new frameworks and buzz words being bandied around these days it’s easy to lose track of what the internet is and what it’s for.
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The Times George W Bush timeline
Timeline of George W Bush’s tenure in the Whitehouse, produced for The Times for thetimes.co.uk and iPad Edition for today’s world exclusive. Viewable on The Times website here.
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Intro sequence for Eureka iPad app
The Times have released an iPad special edition of their monthly science supplement Eureka Magazine, featuring an animated intro sequence by Applied Works.
The sequence builds on the app’s graphic interface of interconnected hexagonal buttons, which act as the main navigation. Animated lines ‘spawn’ branches of hexagons, one for each of the app’s five sports science topics – engineering, medicine, psychology, human physiology and biology.
As well as providing an elegant bridge between the opening masthead and navigation screen, the animation also provides the user a glimpse of the content and an explanation of the interface. Original music and sound design by Adelphoi Music.