Helvetica or Arial?
Whilst I’ve been out and about looking for Helvetica, I’ve run into a lot of it’s evil, but non-identical, twin Arial. Sometimes it’s a little tricky to tell them apart, but this is what I look for:
- c: straight cut ends on Helvetica, Arial’s are slanted
- a: Helvetica’s has a tail, Arial’s does not
- t: flat top in Helvetica, diagonal in Arial
- G: Helvetica’s has a little stalk, Arial’s does not
- R: oh come on, they look completely different
- Q: Helvetica’s line on the Q is straight, Arial’s is… odd
- s: the ends are horizontal in Helvetica, and slanted in Arial
Right, well now you can test yourself on this Helvetica or Arial quiz. It’s quite difficult.
Carnivore
Carnivore is a surveillance tool for data networks
. It is a piece of open source software (ok, free software; quiet down back there Richard Stallman) that allows you to map network traffic between machines.
That’s nice, but there’s more to the internet than machines passing data to each other — there are people out there. And there are treasures. And beasts. How do you map all of that? And much like the bottom of the sea, I suspect that much of it remains unexplored. Which leads me onto an idea I’m having for my project this year…
Helvetica hunt begins
Helvetica is in all spaces, big and small — my shaky hands and trusty megapixels are going to seek it out. I’ve put the pictures I’ve got so far into a Helvetica hunt photoset on Flickr.
Game adverts that don’t show the game
The advert for Halo 3 doesn’t show any footage from the game at all, the entire thing is a diorama of figurine soldiers. Which is interesting. Motiongrapher have an article about the video that explains it better than I ever could (or using a lot more words, anyway).
Back in the day, games avoided showing the graphics too much because, well, they were rubbish (but we had imagination, so it was ok). Currently, in the ‘next generation’ the games are looking pretty spiffy and so the decision not to show the game itself must be based on something else. I’m not going to join in with the ‘games as art’ discussion, but I’d say we’re definitely into ‘games as a valid and worthwhile form of entertainment’ territory. Anyway, read the Motiongrapher article; they know that they’re talking about.
Helvetica; it’s all about the capital R
Adam bought me a book about Helvetica for my birthday, Helvetica: Homage to a typeface by Lars Müller. This quote stuck out a little:
The capital R is the only part of Helvetica that disturbs me. The odd bell-bottom curve of the leg reminds me of that photograph by Robert Mapplethorpe of a guy in a three-piece suit with his pants unzipped, exposing this huge, curving penis. The R is both the penis and the three-piece suit in one.
Shift
Shift is a game by MLAers for the games module a few years ago. It’s a point-and-click flash game that takes a few pointers (boom-tish) from Myst and the Lucasarts games, like Monkey Island. It reminds me a little bit of Samarost. It’s not that original — it’s a point-and-click game — but the production is great; the artwork is really nice and the soundtrack adds to the chilled out feel of the game.
It’s lovely, but we’re going to make something better (sorry Han)!
Web 2.0 logos
After careful study (well, I looked at that picture of about 400 web 2.0 logos for an entire two minutes), I’ve deduced that the components of a web 2.0 logo are:
- lower-case letters
- gradients
- #F01085
- #CBE861
- #3398C3
And so, I made my own…
Michel Gondry
New (academic) year, new blog — but I’m skipping the usual “hello world” to post a few links about Michel Gondry, a director whose ideas I intend to steal appropriate this year (in the right context, of course). Just in case; he’s the guy who did Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and the Daft Punk video with the dancing skeletons.
- Wikipedia entry for Michel Gondry
Well, it’s always a good place to start.
- The work of director Michel Gondry
Double-sided DVD of music videos and other stuff. Highlights include; the Star Guitar and Around the World videos, seeing Dave Grohl with giant hands and I’ve been 12 forever — which is a sweet little film about how Gondry steals all of his ideas from his own childhood.
- La Science des Rêves (the Science of Sleep)
A film starring Gael García Bernal (you know, that guy from Motorcycle Diaries, Y tu mamá también and every foreign film ever) about a shy man who escapes into a world of dreams. It’s very Gondry, it’s got drumming and spin-art and everything!
