Printed Antimatter

More exemplary infographics

From www.stevencloud.com:

From www.tremble.com:

If you have any similar examples of infographic perfection, please send them my way...

Creating furniture out of thin air (and a million-dollar rapid-prototyping machine)

Check out this cool video in which a Swedish design group called FRONT sketches furniture in the air, and then rapid-prototypes that sketched furniture. It's cool as a proof of concept, but it has a couple of problems:

1. Despite the computer graphics in the video, the sketchers do not seem to have any visual feedback. I bet it takes a lot of practice before you can casually air-sketch a usable piece of furniture.

2. That chair does not look comfortable.

3. What's up with that soundtrack?!

This is a very neat application of technology, and a great way to show that technology can actually serve to free up the design process rather than limit it, but I don't think it is intended as anything more (or less!) than art. FRONT seems to be one of those studios that uses the language of design to experiment and stretch boundaries, rather than populate a Design Within Reach catalog... But I would totally buy this bunny-lamp.

Sony made a TV for men AND women? Amazing!

Last night a combination of exhaustion and Sapporo made me receptive to my TiVo's helpful offer to show me ads for the Sony Bravia HDTV. It is rare that I deliberately expose myself to advertising, but I have been considering making the HD leap. And while I did learn a little about the product, I learned even more about the ad firm that Sony (SNE) hired. Specifically, I learned that they came up with the bizarro idea of marketing the Bravia as a TV for men AND women. (Here's the campaign in web site form.)

Since when are TVs gender-specific? Now, I'll accept the thesis that men tend to spend more on TVs and prefer larger sizes, but Best Buy does not have a men's TV department and a women's TV department. Selling the Bravia as if it bridges the chasm between the sexes is ridiculous. But, as it turns out, it's also totally brilliant.

Advertising gets personal... in a bad way

Deceptive ads are nothing new, but some cross the line: My brother Darryl gets a mysterious missive from an unknown benefactor.

This is like the meatspace version of those spam emails I get from some random name with a subject line like "hi eric," which are hideously annoying because I'm forced to click on them. Sure, I'm 99% certain it's spam, but what if some person I never heard of is really trying to get in touch with me? But it always winds up being some stock tip. Yeah, that's who I want to invest in. I've often wondered about advertising techniques that must alienate more people than they intrigue... How are they sustainable?

Irrational and transcendental UPDATE

A reader makes a startling discovery with respect to recurring patterns in pi. Check it out.

Borat graphics update

So I saw the Borat movie this weekend, and it was-- as expected-- hilarious. And as for the graphics I enjoyed so much, they topped themselves with the end credits-- A soviet-style propaganda film accompanying the (fictional and bawdy) Kazakhstan national anthem. Check it out:

Other nice bits: The remainder of the end credits were entirely in Cyrillic (which was then overlaid with English translations), and the final frame is a notice from the Kazakhstan Censorship Board proclaiming the film to be unsuitable for children under the age of 3.

The iPod Shuffle's upcoming disappearing act

Now that our cynical IT guy has let me upgrade my work machine to iTunes 7, I'm running out and getting Apple's (AAPL) new iPod Shuffle. I'm not sure why; I already own one of the older ones, and I hardly use that. Oh wait, I know why-- 'cause it's so freaking cool.

The first Shuffle was already teeny. The new Shuffle is so small that it's pretty much hit the threshold of diminishing returns. If it gets any smaller, its controls will become too difficult to use. That's why I have the feeling the next Shuffle will just disappear completely.

Remember the current iMac's ad slogan, "Where did the computer go?" Apple had scrunched the computer so much it was able to fit inside an enlarged monitor case. The object disappeared into its own peripheral. I think the next Shuffle will do the same thing. It's already so small it can be built into a light, folding pair of headphones. Memory chip and controls in one earpiece, battery and mini-USB port for charging and syncing in the other. (Sure, poking your ear to skip past songs might look weird at first, but so did white earbud wires once.)

This is not a new idea. Both old and new Shuffles have been hacked into headphones. But an Apple version would be sleek, svelte, stylish, and easy to use... To the extent that idiots like me who don't need them will buy them anyway 'cause they're so freaking cool.

What is Time's Bush cover really saying?

Sometimes, a magazine cover's image is at odds with its words. Sometimes that's the result of last minute changes, or unintended interpretations. And sometimes-- just sometimes-- it's because the image can say something that the words can't... or shouldn't.

This occurred to me when I saw the Oct. 29 issue of Time (cousin publication to Business 2.0). The text reads:

THE LONE RANGER
He's faltering in Iraq.
He's out of favor with his own party.
He's increasingly isolated.
Why this election is
all about George W. Bush
and the world he's created.

The image is an AP photo of the man in question, stripped out of his surroundings, so that he strides through an empty, featureless space. This is a clever and economical (both conceptually and monetarily) way to get the idea across. Except for one thing-- He's actually walking off the page.

If I were working on this cover, I would have suggested that the image of the president be shrunk down and centered along the bottom edge, to better suggest the isolation by having empty space reaching further on all sides. But by making him exit stage left, the image is no longer just about his isolation-- it's about his departure.

Of course, no matter what happens next week, Bush the man is still going to occupy the White House. But if what everyone thinks is going to happen does happen (and it probably will, barring Diebold-ish hijinks), Bush the Era is over. And of course, it would be irresponsible for a magazine to pre-emptively pronounce the end of a sitting president's political career (especially so soon after a sickeningly fawning Man of the Year fluff-job). But sometimes-- just sometimes-- a magazine can say what it thinks without using words.

The best infographic ever

I have no idea who to credit for this. Hat tip to Chris D.