mapping meaning and definning spaces

Fuse 14: Cyber (1995)
A berlin based group developed a really interesting typeface that challenges readability and a attempt to bring emotion into the medium of cyberspace. It's like a coded message that can only deciphered if you really take the time and analyze it. What I found interesting about the reading was main aim of semantic typography is to arrange the structure of the text visually and to bring forth meaning. As a mediator of messages the graphic designer or typographer must recognize the the " layers of meaning" this plays a vital role in the dissemination of the information. A additional layer of meaning can be explored other than literal meaning, recognition through cultural contexts through the alphabetic forms not just through the word.

alphabet (1992) for Fuse
What was very intriguing and experimental about this typeface was that it employed the human body as a physical 'sign', and taking into account gestures and expressions to give the reader clues for the letter they represent. Wow, a alternative to the visual grammar that we are so accustomed to seeing. Alphabets are supposed to read and at the same time a set of individual photos expressing a second linguistic narrative based on the sitter's cultural and social identity through the clothes they wear.

p.72-73 thinking with type & Evidence {artist, Candy Jernigan}

Katherine Mccoy {graphic designer} imploded the traditional dichotomy between seeing and reading.Her approach challenged readers to produce their on meaning which elevated the status of the designer with in the authorship.The words can be preceived as icons, forms, patterns through the use of ambiguity and complexity. She developed a model of typography as a discourse in which the designer and the reader actively interpret an author's text.

Evidence: artist {Candy Jernigan}

This book evidence is the most interesting book I have seen on the subject of collecting and documentation of ephmera and found objects. Candy Jernigan decided to make a book when she traveled to europe that would contain any and all physical "proof" that she had been their : ticket stubs, postcards, restaurant receipts, airplane and bus and railroad ephemera. On successive trips, these collections grew to include food smears, hotel keys, found litter, local news, pop tops, rocks, weather notations, leaves, bags of dirt- anything that would add information about a moment or a place, so that the viewer could make a new picture of the remnants. For Candy objects emerged as "icons" for particular cities and these objects became the material for the book.

One of the many documentations of ephmera in this book I find especially interesting is "Blood of a Vagrant" in the section of urban evidence. In Blood of a Vagrant she writes: "An unknown man, apparently the victim of a knife attack, collapsed on the sidewalk where he lay motionless until an ambulance took him, in a greatly weakened and in fact unconscious state, to a nearby hospital. The voluminous quantity of blood that he left behind gradually seeped into the sidewalk and was further diminished , two or three days later, by an earily morning rain." Blood of a Vagrant moves me because I sense Candy's identification with the victim, I feel the shock of how easily life can slip away, and how the last tangible evidence of life which was a pool of blood can just slowly vanish into nothing. I really enjoy her use of diagrammatic dotted-line signaling where the ambulance came and left and also the hand written information oppose to a font.

Ideas on 72dpi, & weblinks

72dpi is all about taking risks, this book is available in the Hamilton library.

Task of designers is a professional bridging of the gap between self expression ( the artist ) and the problem-solving (the engineer). Design is about understanding and using form and content, not the debate about them.

Good design is also a question of inspiration and courage. The contributing factors for new concepts are created from chance, play, an evening out clubbing, music, film, love, sex, daydreaming together with experience, sampling and the constant exchange with friends checking, weaving further.

The methods which have extraordinarily offensive creative potential are chaos, coincidence, deconstruction, storytelling.
You have to consider when designing for the net the demands for new methods for storytelling. These are now being added by the parameter of interaction. The symbiosis between information and emotion is storytelling. We are also transporting visual and emotional knowledge alongside with the facts. If we are telling a story by digital means then, we have to consider all the media at our disposal, such as video, typography, sound, animation and graphics.

"Inspiration comes from everything. The problem is not where to obtain it, but where not to." (Eddie Pak)

How do signals become information and how does information become knowledge?
A example of this is train schedules which usually consist of a disordered databank including train numbers, connections, departures and arrival times and special service offers. Once this data is structured it turns into information, in other words when its disordered state is transferred into a ordered state. Then the interpreter receives this information who understands the meaning of the train connections and draws his or her on conclusions. If the data does not make sense then it can not be assimulated. Information turns into knowledge when that information is internalized by the interpreter, which is then turned into knowledge that can be acted on. This phenonmenon bound to individuals (brains as knowledge depots) is commonly understood as knowledge.

"Knowledge is a dynamic mixture of structure experiences , values, context information and expert insight that provides a framework for evaluating and incorporating new experiences and information."

{some websites I found interesting that push the envelope}
www.volumeone.com
www.thekohlheart.com
www.nitrada.com
www.2ndrec.com
www.lineto.com

interchange design

design is what you think it..