Instead of asking people directly how to be creative, they have examined the psychological conditions of creativity. It’s like instead of looking directly at the sun to work out where it is, you watch the shadows thrown across the ground.

• From How to Be Creative by Jeremy Dean

A Brief History of Title Design

NYTimes: Designers Make Data Much Easier to Digest

In an uncharted world of boundless data, information designers are our new navigators.

In a Stamen graphic of Twitter traffic during an MTV awards show, the number of tweets about celebrities was reflected in the size of their photos. They are computer scientists, statisticians, graphic designers, producers and cartographers who map entire oceans of data and turn them into innovative visual displays, like rich graphs and charts, that help both companies and consumers cut through the clutter. These gurus of visual analytics are making interactive data synonymous with attractive data.

And:

Visual analytics play off the idea that the brain is more attracted to and able to process dynamic images than long lists of numbers. But the goal of information visualization is not simply to represent millions of bits of data as illustrations. It is to prompt visceral comprehension, moments of insight that make viewers want to learn more.

Bingo. It’s great to see what we designers do get recognized by the mainstream press.

NYTimes: Paterson Teacher Suspended Over a Post on Facebook

A first-grade teacher in Paterson, N.J., was suspended on Thursday after she posted on her Facebook page that she felt like a warden overseeing future criminals, district officials said.

From some of the stories I’ve heard from people who teach, it’s very likely this woman wasn’t exaggerating. Just saying.
She just needs to work not broadcasting that inside voice of hers on the biggest social network in the world.

PSFK: John Gerzema: Edison Was Right

Two blocks off Detroit’s Woodward Avenue, inside an industrial building on Burroughs Street, a half-dozen engineers who work for Nextek Power Systems gather around a whiteboard where they have scrawled notes based on read-outs from a computer screen. They are analyzing data on the performance of an innovative power system based on Thomas Edison’s preferred form of electric supply–direct current. Also called DC, direct current is the juice that comes out of batteries, fuel cells, solar panels, and other sustainable energy sources. Because it is difficult and expensive to transmit over great distances, Edison’s DC lost out to alternating current–AC–when the electric age began. AC, promoted by George Westinghouse and Nikola Tesla, allowed for a single huge generating station to supply power for homes and businesses spread over hundreds if not thousands of square miles. To make use of this system, lights, appliances, and motors were all built to operate on AC, and it became the standard.

I find it interesting that the future of energy could potentially parallel the future some of proposing for farming – local. I’ve been hearing more and more about vertical farming in cities, now comes growing your own energy.
Sign me up.

Do you need web site hosting? If so, let me recommend who I’ve been using since 2002 (wow, really? Nine years now?)
They’ve just given me some discount codes:
524730250129
362507699357
479359181135
058773812719
545697422681
Plug one of these codes into the “Promo Code” field on this form: https://signup.dreamhost.com/
Sign up for 1 year, you’ll get $15 off. Sign up for 2 years and you’ll get $100 off.
*If these codes don’t work for you it probably means someone beat you to it.

I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned how awesome Just A Car Guy’s site is.
There. I said it.

I remember seeing some of these illustrations by Josh Cooley a few years ago. They’re so awesome.
via Neven Mrgan

László Moholy-Nagy – Pneumatik, 1924
via Le Container

via this isn’t happiness