Inaudible Nonsense

Photo

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 11:37:56 -0500

"We promise it will have the most beautiful presentation of legal stats you have ever seen!"

Tue, 16 Feb 2010 11:39:23 -0500

“We promise it will have the most beautiful presentation of legal stats you have ever seen!”

- From Immigration Equality about the new annual update. Go take I look, it’s my design.

Comment spam, climate change edition

Tue, 16 Feb 2010 11:35:00 -0500

Rule29, a creative agency in my hometown of Geneva, Illinois, enters the fray about whether massive snow in the mid-Atlantic mean that “global warming isn’t real.” It’s an odd argument that seems to be percolating. My response:

Or a case of bad branding? The trouble is “global warming” — which all evidence by any peer-reviewed scientist indicates is happening at an alarming rate — sounds like everything (all seasons) should be getting warmer. And while they are. It also means that there will be extreme weather, horrible storms that dump massive amounts of snow on areas unused to it.

“Global climate change” is a term that aligns more with our experience of living in a warmer planet better. (And by “our” I mean those in North America, ask drought and heat plagued Southern Hemisphere about the heat thing. Australia may be uninhabitable the situation is getting so dire there — they are running out of water and suffering under massive wildfires.)

The issue is not whether global warming or global climate change is real, but how are we going to deal with the extreme weather, the pressures it puts on fragile international networks of people: more war, starvation, island nations and coastal cities lost to rising sea levels, and yes massive snow storms.

But we can spend time arguing about word choice too. As long as we make some hard choices about our consumption patterns and how our ecological choices reverberate around the globe.

Pruned has an entire series of under spaces, reconfigured,...

Sat, 13 Feb 2010 00:42:41 -0500

Pruned has an entire series of under spaces, reconfigured, re-imagined, repurposed spaces under viaducts of which this example from Milwaukee is just the latest.

New York City has a lot of these dead spaces that are too often used as parking, (and often not even that) that slice through formerly connected neighborhoods.

(I’m thinking specifically of areas under the BQE or the elevated trains in Queens or the Metro North line through Harlem.)

The examples at Pruned offer how these spaces might be returned to the community as gathering and linking spots instead of just blight.

via Pruned

Historic preservation and not really understanding the difference between "economic development" and "building a local economy"

Sat, 06 Feb 2010 08:44:24 -0500

Historic preservation and not really understanding the difference between "economic development" and "building a local economy"

Temporary sculpture (Bronx, NY)

Tue, 26 Jan 2010 11:09:39 -0500

Sculpture is still graffiti-free in Bronx neighborhood where tagging is common

Realism in UI design

Fri, 22 Jan 2010 07:06:22 -0500

Realism in UI design

I noticed the print ads for in amNewYork yesterday for The Pump,...

Thu, 21 Jan 2010 13:32:28 -0500

I noticed the print ads for in amNewYork yesterday for The Pump, a new healthy NYC mini-chain restaurant. Here they’ve stretched their advertising dollars by creating what amounts to ad, but releasing it as a YouTube video. Smart.

Do You Eat Crap? Like Punching Sandwiches? (via ThePumpNYC)

Design solutions for the MTA

Tue, 12 Jan 2010 21:11:00 -0500

Students in SVA’s Interaction Design MFA program took a stab at design challenges within the system. Several of the projects I felt created problems where there weren’t any in order to come up with something clever.

However the ReDirect project by student Russ Maschmeyer found an obviously problematic information design question and created a very elegant solution.

Of his project he comments:

“Service changes are bad. Very, very bad. They often involve doubling, sometimes tripling the time it takes you to get where you’re going. To add insult to injury, the accompanying service change signage is such a riddle of dates, times, and re-directions that it often requires multiple readings to glean even a basic understanding of the change. For any transit system experiencing redirects, there are four key messages that need to be conveyed: alert the riders to a change, provide a quick overview of that change, course correct any wayward travelers, and finally, guide riders through the hallways to the proper platforms. If done right, no one should have to stop to study a sign, but study them we do. Currently, the MTA employs a single, densely packed sheet of 8.5x11” paper to convey an entire set of messaging. This is a problem worth solving.

Amen to all that. Simple, clear, and fixed something badly in need of fixing.

A bad color corrected scan of a beautiful post for a day of...

Mon, 21 Dec 2009 12:09:58 -0500

A bad color corrected scan of a beautiful post for a day of celebration for then new Dept of Transportation.

via Rebuilding Space in the Urban Space

Horror and beauty on an urban expressway

Fri, 18 Dec 2009 23:45:28 -0500

But he doesn’t romanticize the roadway; in the notes, he calls it “a dark, spotty, viral, cancerous, bronchial, pneumatic, and convoluted mass of gray matter, at best.” What fired his imagination was not love, but horror. To him, the highway represents the nadir of American transportation culture and the melancholy triumph of the dark lord Robert Moses.

The BQE as muse.

Image and quote via New York Magazine

"An organization that wins through dirty tricks starts to lose the ability to win by doing better..."

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 18:59:36 -0500

“An organization that wins through dirty tricks starts to lose the ability to win by doing better work.”

- Paul Graham

At Newly Nerfed, my write-up on National Disability Mentoring Day experience

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 18:18:14 -0500

At Newly Nerfed, my write-up on National Disability Mentoring Day experience:

The post looks great, and Joey added sweet pics of the interior of Bloomberg LP. (My DMD location.) Many, many thanks to Joey and her blog for posting my review.

Is there any place that’s doing better interactive data...

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 10:27:20 -0500

Is there any place that’s doing better interactive data visualization? Another fantastic piece from the New York Times: The Jobless Rate for People Like You

via FlowingData

A new installation challenges our preconceptions concerning...

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 08:45:00 -0500

A new installation challenges our preconceptions concerning heroism, not least because of its location on the walls of The Guards Chapel, spiritual home of the Household Division of the British Army

via Creative Review

How an economist's cry for ethical capitalism was heard

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 17:54:34 -0500

How an economist's cry for ethical capitalism was heard:

Hertz falls into the pragmatic tradition of philosophical left, as such I find her fascinating.

A newspaper (welcome kit?) with more depth

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 00:51:00 -0400

A conceptual idea for opening up data to residents and new neighbors:

The data.gov.uk Newspaper [newspaperclub.co.uk] is a tangible prototype of a potential service targeting people who recently moved into a new area, and shows information about the area, such as local services, environmental information, crime statistics, travel times, transportation options, education and healthcare.

via information aesthetics

The new American Dream: Renting

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 13:05:06 -0400

The new American Dream: Renting:

Thomas Sugrue on accepting that home ownership is not always a good goal and curtailing the enormous programs fueling that ambition.

Captioning news from HearingMojo

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 10:00:00 -0400

Via HearingMojo, web video captioning is finally getting the attention it deserves from the top: the hosts and the developers.

Make the walls invisible, for just one night

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 16:57:22 -0400

Make the walls invisible, for just one night:

Brooklyn projected image project, highlighting interior usages of industrial buildings in Williamsburg/Greenpoint area.