• Filmographies
• Wikipedia Reader

The Filmographies section comes from the recent wish to co-relate my practice as a designer with other experiment i could learn from; movies being one of those external sources. The series of pages is inteded to help me list and take short notes about movies, as well a collect and reconnect links from my various electronic presence where i can develop in a different form than listing.

The Wikipedia Reader is an old project of mine I started to (re) develop a few months ago: it is a collection of Wikipedia pages assembled with the reason why I browsed them. The original idea was linked with the Url Bar Logging project; a kind of GTD/notepad using exclusively the url bar of a browser.

Both sections are (at the moment) essentially using Gogle spreadsheet to maintain the listing. The idea is based on the initial Common Knowledge website we are setting up and designing for Will Holder, for the On Purpose exhibition. Will is going to share the whole book collection of his London’s home at Arnolfini durinf the time of the exhibition.

You searched for the word defibrillator on Twitter.
You found me.

That’s already (kind of) strange enough but that was not enough:
You subscribed to my updates on Twitter.
I received an email alerting me about it.
I check your Twitter page; not much info.
I check your website links (top right hand corner)
You manage a ICD user group blog in the Bay Area (SF I supposed)
I almost cried reading a few posts on your blog: it felt so close of what I experienced not so long ago, all the questions, the doubts… physically and mentally.
I read more and find this pictures of a tree encapsulated.

* picture by Hugo Campos - found here

I always found these natural behaviour beautiful - suddenly it struck my mind and realise why this picture is there, on your blog: the same thing is happening inside my body. I have a an embed object inside too, encapsulated.

I republished your picture on R-Echos: the tree and its metal protection.
It is a beautiful metaphor.

I twited about it and say hello.
You twited back with a link: a google map where those trees are, Google includes a 360 view in this area (not that common here yet) and suddenly I feel like super close to your reality knowing perfectly you are thousands of kilometers away.

I had to say it: It’s a strange feeling of closeness.

*

a few other places about Electronic Presence:
• Capacity
• None
• Electronest

We came trough a range of ideas including tiny micro type from the end of the 90’s developped for on-screen reading for and by flash designers; we also thought about the work of Louis Emile Javal (wikipedia notes on Javal work). Javal was an ophthalmologist who worked on character differentiation to increase legibility; he worked on the mainly on the counter-form of the letter, the shape created by its absence. the work on the lower case “o” is quite remarkable: it is a simple middle dot which helps draw the circle of the letter just by opposing contrast to surrounding letter-forms.

Interestingly, my quick searches lead me to a nice blog post Typographie Font Minuscule introducing a typeface designed by Thomas Huot-Marchand (of 256tm); he re-worked the principles developed by Javal according to contemporary technologies.

source for the image

I read about an article in the Typographisches Monats Blätter covering this font but i couldn’t get my hands on it - this page mention a pdf, i would love to see more of the specimen; i really like the intelligence of the demonstration below:

Bloody smart, isnt’it?

Finally, there a few more resources on the subject:
* Typophile has a node about the Javal, and mention the work on the Minuscule typeface as well.

** Patrick came back this morning with the idea of using QR code (or something similar) which is brilliant: it lets you embed more information than a simple surface could ever contain. That’s all the Meat Data thing! I love this idea…

*** writing this post reminded me of our own attempts with Pierre Terrier at designing a small size characters which remains legible: the Jawut; a mix between the Javal and the Newut from André Baldinger. This typeface has been designed for the Analog Information Books projects documenting the installation Analog Information: 2 computers talking to each other using speech to text and text to speech technology.

**** Some forms of this Minuscule typeface are analogous to the one we developed for the typographic experiment we developed for our Futura Domus, a contribution to Domus 917 (September 2008) - it’s really nice to see the sphere of influence a non designer production can have on a wide variety of practice…

On Purpose: Design Concepts Exhibitions Sat 13 Sep - Sun 9 Nov, 10am - 6pm (Except Mondays) Free Åbäke, Droog Design, Daniel Eatock, Electronest, Ann-Sofie Back, Will Holder, Peter Jensen, Onkar Kular & Noam Toran, Metahaven, Alex Rich, Savage, Yuri Suzuki On Purpose: Design Concepts looks at conceptual design practices, the emergence of ‘meta design’, and the question of who or what can define something as design. The exhibition will present interventions and work by a selection of the most interesting and ‘speculative’ designers today. In recent years, the field of design has evolved significantly having embraced conceptualism and technology, and is now offering advanced parallel theoretical practices to contemporary art. Yet the renowned principle that has been given to design in order to differentiate it from contemporary art is still a point of contention - that it should have specific purpose. On Purpose looks to investigate this tension around the definition of design, questioning whether ‘purpose’ is actually its ultimate constraint. Focussing predominantly on interventions within Arnolfini, some of which may become semi-permanent, On Purpose will also be used as an opportunity for designers to offer proposals to reshape the existing infrastructure of Arnolfini. It will look at every public facet of the institution - physical and virtual - and will aim to rethink it afresh. On Purpose is the second in the Concept Store series of projects at Arnolfini, exploring the realms of marketing, design and experience economy.
Arnolfini | On Purpose: Design Concepts