Complication made easy

The easiest way to learn anything is to try and break things down into small parts and add to those small parts with more small parts as understanding increases. It’s the same with teaching.

One of the most complex and difficult things the human mind has conceived is ‘Particle Physics’, ‘String Theory’ and the origin of all things.

Watch the animation below for an example of how to make something complex a series of simple thoughts, explained through repetition. Not only is a very complicated idea explained in a way that is easy to understand, it’s also a wonderfully stylish and compelling animation. It’s well worth 11 minutes of your time…

http://www.tenthdimension.com/medialinks.php

I’m probably going to buy the book.

Blackle – Energy saving Google?

When I first read about this I thought the maths must have been wrong. The idea is that a black screen consumes less power than a white screen, thus saving a lot of electricity and being kinder to the environment.

So is Black the new Green? Not really. As the Wall Street Journal was mentioned in the original article, they looked in to it themselves. It seems it won’t make any difference to a modern machine, with an LCD monitor, which is what I thought. A further comparison with recent LED screens would be interesting. In fairness what they are trying to do is out lined here.

Whilst it’s a nice idea, I’m sure Blackle is just a browser for Goths.

Fontbook

Thanks again to DD. There is a new version Fontbook available. Working in Prepress I find this volume invaluable. More often than not I’m trying to recreate something and while services like Identifont certainly have their uses – continually updated as opposed to a static resource – the benefit of having such a rich and varied reference to hand is an undeniable benefit to designers. It’s expensive, it’s worth it, but don’t leave it lying around in the studio. They have a habit of walking.

http://www.fontshop.com/products/fontbook/

More Vapour Ware

Some readers may remember me writing about an image editor with an interesting interface and speculating about the new UI for Leopard in this article.

Thanks to DF for the reminder today, it appears that they haven’t shipped yet. Here’s what they have to say about it.

I hope they make something available soon, and preferably not a public beta.

Gibson Guitar Town

This has been impressing me every time I walk past it, around it and through it. An amazing display of creative talent and stunning design.

A great gallery of photos can be found here and here’s a rather poor quality one I took with my phone.