“The Entire Communications Industry, in Less than 200 Pages… The 2007 Digital Economy Fact Book is a tightwad researcher’s dream: In-depth, statistic-heavy, well-cited, and freely-available online. One could hardly ask for more.
This report covers so much ground that any sentences I try to write about it are positively littered with commas and semicolons, and quickly become confusingly long. So instead, I’ll just list out some of the topics covered to give a feel for the extent of the info available here. Bet you can’t get to page 188 without learning something new…”
“This website attempts to walk you through the long and diverse history of a particular aspect of human endeavour: The translation of ideas, stories and concepts that are largely textual and/or word based into a visual format, i.e. visual communication.”
“The gifts and paper goods of Knock Knock tap into the vernacular with their dead-on vintage aesthetic and thoroughly modern wit. Each snarky piece is lovingly concepted and written by founder Jen Bilik, who oversees Knock Knock’s design studio in Venice Beach. Bilik talks with Alissa Walker about answering her creative calling, reality TV and the beauty of overdue correspondence.”
“Bringing together leaders in visual thinking for the first time in one location, the VizThink ’08 Conference (http://www.vizthink.com) is an opportunity for executives to understand ways of incorporating visualization processes into business, learning and communications strategies to gain faster and more effective results. Hosted by Portland, Ore. based VizThink LLC, the conference will include breakout sessions and forums facilitated by some of the most recognized names in the visual thinking space, including the distinguished Bob Horn from Stanford University, renowned author and artist Scott McCloud, award winning designer Nancy Duarte of Duarte Design, most notably known for her work in Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth, and Nigel Holmes formerly with Time magazine. The conference will be held at the Westin San Francisco Market Street Hotel from January 27-29. Registration (http://www.vizthink.com/reg.html) is open now.”
“The Eames’ best-known film is the 1977 Powers of Ten, the zooming visual explanation of scale which has no doubt been shown in more than 10^4 classrooms and 10^2 science museums. In their much earlier film A Communications Primer they describe the application of Claude Shannon’s model of communication to familiar media experiences, along with some that aren’t very familiar nowadays, such as telegraphy. There are very nice iconic images deployed, as well as shots of media technologies in use.
In about twenty minutes the film covers not only Shannon’s basic model for communication but also details how digital information is represented and, via the analogy of the halftone photograph, how it can be built up to represent data that is arbitrarily detailed.”
“Cartographies of Imagination, by me, Sarah B. Nelson, is about navigating the world of collaboration, through methods, tools, techniques and ideas. I’ll share methods, tools, and ideas to inspire you to draw on the collective wisdom around you. I’m an interaction designer and design strategist at Adaptive Path.”
“Graphicology is the continuing education of a mulitdisciplinary designer. Here, you’ll find resources, inspiration, current events and material that challenges what it means to be a strategic & creative communicator in today’s world. Art directors, graphic designers, engineers, photographers, typographers, writers, producers, cinematographers and others are encouraged to comment and check in regularly.”
“Researching the Human Genom[e], they say that all present humans are very close; and perhaps started from a family in Africa. But taking a hundred thousands years in different locations on the earth, their cultures and the languages have diversified; now communication difficulties happen among them. Humans are social animals; can’t survive without communication. In the beginning era, how did people make a mutual understanding? Looking back at the ways and taking their wisdom would help to build natural EL. Because the ways work even now when a language is useless. My proposal for the concrete EL system is referred to the primitive methods and ideas of main writing/communication systems worldwide…”
From Khoi Vinh and Liz Danzico: “A Brief Message features design opinions expressed in short form. Somewhere between critiques and manifestos, between wordy and skimpy, Brief Messages are viewpoints on design in the real world. They’re pithy, provocative and short — 200 words or less.”
This week, the newly formed XPLANE Press achieved its first milestone: The reprinting of Bob Horn’s classic book Visual Language. Horn’s book makes the case that visual language is truly an emerging international language, and — like all languages — it has an inherent order, syntax, and grammar that can be learned and applied. While the world of information design has come a long way in the 10 years since Visual Language was first published, the book’s core message remains relevant today.
Visual Language has been out of print for the last few years, but is now back on the market via the XPLANE store. We will soon be offering it on Amazon as well, where used copies have been selling for upwards of $100. Here’s more from XPLANE founder Dave Gray.
