Sun, January 15th 2012
The universe is 13.75 billion years old—which might be a little difficult to comprehend—but it becomes a little easier to grasp if it’s mapped over a century. Inspired by Carl Sagan’s Cosmic Calendar I have mapped the lifetime of the universe onto a Facebook Timeline. At this scale the Big Bang took place on January 1st, 1912.
Tue, December 6th 2011
Christmas can be a stressful time of year, especially when there is less than three weeks to go and you have a geek in your life to buy a gift for. This year I thought I would share some of the cool things the talented people I follow on Twitter have made.
The Elements of F*cking Style – $9.99
The Elements of F*cking Style drags English grammar out of the ivory tower and into the gutter, injecting a dull subject with a much-needed dose of color.
Today Is The Day – $14.00
The Today is the Day pocket planner looks like those old hardcover books with gold lettered-titles. The Art Deco-inspired interior planner pages include full-page typographical illustrations of quotations by Emily Dickinson, Emily Bronte, John Gardner, Anthony D’Angelo, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and others.
The spine reminds you to “write every day”, and the back cover exhorts you to make it happen.
Young Me, Now Me: Identical Photos, Different Decades – $8.98
Ze Frank asked fans to recreate their favorite old photos using the exact same people and poses. The results are interesting, funny, and heartwarming.
Bandito Design Co. Prints – From $5.00
Ryan Brinkerhoff’s illustrations are beautiful pieces of work and that is why you should buy his prints.
Luke Beard Art Prints & Posters – From £7.00
Luke Beard designs pretty posters, some with Barney Stinson and Steve Jobs quotes. Awesome.
Rory’s Story Cubes – £9.99
Rory’s Story Cubes are a remarkably simple and effective means for inspiring creative thinking and problem solving in all of us. Simply toss all the dice, examine each of the nine face-up images and let them guide your imagination through a story that begins with “Once upon a time…”. It is quite simply the most fun you can have with dice.
Droplet – £6.95
Droplets are multi-coloured, poop-shaped vinyl toys. If that doesn’t intrigue you I don’t know what will.
sugru – From £11.50
sugru helps gadget lovers repair their cables, mount components, customise controllers, tidy their leads and protect their phones with bumpers. It’s basically magic.
StickyGram – $14.99
StickyGram is a personalised printing service that turns your Instagram images into lovely little magnets.
The Manual – $25.00
The Manual beautifully chronicles the maturing of design on the web. Every issue captures the voices of six authors who each write two pieces: a substantial article and an illuminating life lesson. Each article is paired with the work of a top, talented illustrator. It’s good, so it is.
8 Faces Magazine – £8.00
Printed on heavy stock, with a foil-blocked cover, and pressed at just 2000 limited editions, each issue is a true collector’s item. 8 Faces will be more at home on your bookshelf than in your magazine rack. Who said print is dead?
Tattly™ Designy Temporary Tattoos – $5.00
Tattly is a temporary tattoo store for design-minded kids and kids-at-heart. When you have such an all-star line up of designers submitting designs, there’s not much that can go wrong.
POPA – £49.99
POPA is the big red button for your iPhone camera. Push POPA onto your iPhone 4 or iPhone 4S and the free POPA app springs to life so you can start snapping photos like you used to – with a lovely big button! *drool* buttons…
QRapping Paper – $14.99
Even terrible gifts are worth opening when they’re wrapped in QRAPPING PAPER™, the world’s most interactive wrapping paper. Behind each QR code is an original holiday video that can’t be seen anywhere else. Over 50 in all, turning any gift into a tiny holiday film festival. Vive la QR Codes! Sort of.
Here’s a list of places to find even more gift ideas, along with a few gifts that didn’t fit above.
Fri, November 18th 2011
Another year, another cracking conference organised by Mr. McMillan. This year the attendees were lucky enough to hear Erik Spiekermann, Scott McCloud, The Standardistas, Josh Brewer, Wilson Miner, Craig Mod, Jeremy Keith, and Simon Collision talk about a whole host of topics. There was an undoubtable thread which tied each talk together resulting in a much more cohesive narrative than I have ever experienced at a web conference.
The main themes focused on the importance of our craft, story-telling, passion, and the beauty of serendipity. Wilson Miner especially imbued a sense of meaning in what it is we do as craftsmen and craftswomen of the web with a beautifully crafted address; marrying spoken word, moving visuals, and carefully selected audio which captivated every attendee in the conference hall. You could have heard a pin drop. As Frank Chimero quite aptly put it,
If @wilsonminer’s talk at #buildconf didn’t stir something deep within you, fuck you.
At the end of the week I, and the others I talked to, came away revitalized and inspired by what we had heard and the people we met along the way. Good luck topping that, Andy.
My brother @fillyc did a fantastic job of capturing the essence of the conference from start to finish should you wish to relive the memories, or see what you missed.
For Build this year I decided quite late on that I wanted to put together an infographic, similar to the Build 2010 Standardista’s Open Book Exam infographic I made last year. With my stats at hand I powered up Illustrator and began to structure my layout from my sketches. It wasn’t until I began laying elements out that it struck me I could just as easy put my visuals together in HTML and CSS. This would allow for a responsive, dynamic result which would be much more interesting than a boring flat. Below is the finished project:
It is a little rough in places and it’s pretty ugly under-the-hood as I was trying to get it live before Build kicked off. If I find the time I will go back and tie up any loose ends. As always, I’d love to hear what you think. Hit me up on the Twitter.
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