nuzzaci - an online journal

Background, Mr Cookie at made-in-england.org asked me if I knew of a way to change the size of the images published to his blog via Flickr. It’s not a case of Mr Cookie being lazy or not capable of resizing images — he’s on holiday and are sending photos directly from his phone to his Flickr account, that then in return post the photo to his blog.

When setting up your blog on Flickr you can select from three sizes; 500, 240 and 100 pixel wide. Most people, like Mr Cookie, find that 500 pixels is a bit to wide. A 500 pixel wide post area forces the lines to run long and extends the recommended 66 characters / 10 words per line (unless, of cause, if you set a really large font-size). 240 pixels and 100 pixels are normally a bit too small if it is a main post image.

Thoughts, The quick fix on Mr Cookie’s blog was a CSS workaround; added a max-width to all the images within the a post — .postclass img{max-width:460px}. But IE 6 and older browsers don’t support max-width.

My next thought was to write a javascript function. But I’m no big fan of the onload flickering behaviour. A webpage need to be fully loaded before any javascript kicks in, so everything done with javascript that changes the look of the site will be noticeable for the trained eye. An example on this is my external link script. Even if there may be ways around the flickering onload behavior, it didn’t feel like the right job for Mr javascript.

Solution, So, let me present the nuzzaci Width Watcher wordpress plugin. It fairly straight forward.

This plugin will look through your posts before they get displayed and make sure that no images are wider than a desired maximum width (specify desired width in the nuzzaciWidthWatcher.php file). If an image is too wide, the plugin will add a height and width attribute to the image so that it will be displayed with the desired width while still keeping the correct ratio. It will ignore all images that already have a width or height attribute and/or if the size is less than the set maximum width. This plugin doesn’t touch the original image or the database.

View the script here, and download it here.

Instructions, Download the file, edit the max width variable, upload it to your plugin folder, log on to your admin section and activate it.

I’m using wordpress 2.0.5 and I have tried it on v2.2, but don’t see why this one shouldn’t work on all versions.

Via Nathan’s rubbish blog i found this article, titled; São Paulo: The City That Said No To Advertising. As the title implies, São Paulo last year passed the so-called Clean City laws after being fed up with the “visual pollution” cause by the city’s 8,000 billboard sites.

I’m speechless. So refreshing. Who would have guessed any city would take this route.
A round of applause, to the mayor, Gilberto Kassab.

Definitely worth a read. The topic is even worth a google.

Below are some quotes from the article.

The law was hailed by writer Roberto Pompeu de Toledo as “a rare victory of the public interest over private, of order over disorder, aesthetics over ugliness, of cleanliness over trash… For once, all that is accustomed to coming out on top in Brazil has lost.”

Dalton Silvano, the only city councillor to vote against the laws and (not entirely coincidentally) an ad executive, was quoted as saying in the International Herald Tribune. “Advertising is both an art form and, when you’re in your car, or alone on foot, a form of entertainment that helps relieve solitude and boredom,” he claimed.

Oh, please. Common. What? Why would anyone say such a thing. Just because sex is pleasurable, doesn’t make sexual abuse a good deed.

In a lot of places, Piqueira says, this has led to the removal of posters but not the structures on which they were displayed. “It’s a kind of ‘billboard cemetery’. I guess they’re waiting to see if the law will really last. If the mayor keeps the law for a year or so, people will start to remove them and the city will, finally, start to look better.”

Photographer and typographer Tony de Marco has been out documenting this strange hiatus in a sequence of images published on Flickr.

The law also regulates the dimensions of store signs, and will force many well-known companies to reduce them substantially by a formula based on the size of their facades. example, example

It’s like design guidelines.

Meanwhile, according to Augusto Moya, creative director of ad agency DDB Brasil, the ban is forcing agencies to be more inventive. “As a creative, I think that there is one good thing the ban has brought: we must now use more traditional outdoor media (like bus stops and all kinds of urban fittings) in a more creative way,” he says. “People at all the agencies are thinking about how to develop outdoor media that do not interfere so much in the physical structure of the city.”

Moya takes an enlightened view of the law. “As a citizen, I think that future generations will thank the current city administration for this ban,” he says.

Dear Google,
I previously send you a message asking for a marker to be added to Google Maps to locate the Royal Collage of Arts temporary home in Kensington Garden. I received nothing more than an automatic replay thanking me for the message. I feel therefore, that I should take further actions in order to resolve this issue.

I will create the marker myself…

Robert Sollis(.com)

Nicolas Roope over at VI-R-US just posted a comment on a mobile application called MizPee. MizPee finds the closest, cleanest toilet and gives you entertaining reading material once you get there. As Roope says; Basic yes, but quite handy.

MizPee reminded me of a similar idea I had a while back called PTDB (Public Toilet Data Base). The idea was to build a database filled with information (location, rating, comments etc) on public toilets. Basically the same as IMDB (Internet Movie Data Base) but for toilets.

The idea was born during a visit to the toilet at Häagen-dazs on Leicester Square, London. It’s an absolutely fabulous toilet.

So, if you find yourself in central London and in need for no. 2, go to Häagen-dazs on Leicester Square. You might need to order an ice-cream before using their facilities, but it’s worth it. If it’s panic, just throw a few quid on the counter.
The toilet is on the ground floor.

Even though the iPhone hasn’t been launched yet, Apple announced a few updates:

CUPERTINO, California—June 18, 2007—Apple® today announced that iPhone™ will deliver significantly longer battery life when it ships on June 29 than was originally estimated when iPhone was unveiled in January. iPhone will feature up to 8 hours of talk time, 6 hours of Internet use, 7 hours of video playback or 24 hours of audio playback.* In addition, iPhone will feature up to 250 hours—more than 10 days—of standby time. Apple also announced that the entire top surface of iPhone, including its stunning 3.5-inch display, has been upgraded from plastic to optical-quality glass to achieve a superior level of scratch resistance and optical clarity.

link

The above photo is taken of the blackboard in the entrance to our block (our flat is in a converted school) the day after Liverpool lost the 2007 Champions League final against AC Milan.

I don’t follow football, but thought the note was brilliant.

After the WWCD (World Wide Developer Conference) 2007, where Steve Jobs gave a sneak preview of the next version of Apples operation system Mac OS X Leopard, apple.com got a fresh look and feel. The presentation of Leopard and the new look and feel of the website proves the rumors about the death of Aqua. Aqua is the name given to the previous GUI (graphical user interface) for Mac OS X operation system theme. Aqua got introduced in 2000 with the first version of the operating system, Mac OS X Public Beta, and was intended to complement the look of the original semi-transparent plastics of the iMac. It has lived with us for almost a decade, way beyond the semi-transparent hardware, so I believe it’s the right decision to move on.

Apple.com is, to me, a bit of a blue-print for how to do a website correctly. It is as well put together as any of their products. Most if it is basically just simple prioritisation and common sense, but, I’m afraid, on today’s world wide web, that is becoming a rare thing… thinking about it, it’s not just websites, quality in general is getting less common and less appreciated. Anyway…

The advantage Apple has is that they are their own client; they have experience; they know what they are doing and they have something to communicate and their website is not financed by advertising.

There’s no distractions. Links and promos are contextual. They force the use of their navigation. They are not afraid to use the fact that visitors like to interact with the interface. They guide their visitors to content, and don’t just make sure everything can be accessed from everywhere all the time.

So, having said all that, one of the most notable changes when visiting the new apple.com is the new navigation bar. The mother of all tabs has left the building together with the Aqua style. The Aqua tab navigation can be tracked back to as early as February 2000, a few months ahead of the introduction to Mac OS X Public Beta. That’s about the same time as I got my first Macintosh, a Apple Power Macintosh G4 400 MHz.

The nice thing with the navigation on Apple.com is that users actually use it.

The new navigation has not only changed appearance, it has been slimmed down a bit. The sub navigation has been removed, as well as Quicktime, .Mac and Mac OS X from the main navigation while iPhone, Mac, Download and a search field has been added.

So from this:

1. Main navigation
   1. Home
   2. Store
   3. iPod + iTunes
   4. .Mac
   5. QuickTime
   6. Support
   7. Mac OS X
2. Sub navigation
   1. Hot News
   2. Get a Mac
   3. Hardware
   4. Software
   5. Made4Mac
   6. Educations
   7. Pro
   8. Mac@work
   9. Developer
   10. Where to Buy

To this:

1. Main navigation
   1. Home
   2. Store
   3. Mac
   4. iPod+iTunes
   5. iPhone
   6. Downloads
   7. Support
   8. a search field

A second thing I like to highlight is the newly added mega-bread-crumb footer. This not only shows you where you’re at, but where you can go and what’s related to where you are.

Even if this might seem a bit dull, it is an innovative navigational device. They decided to put the “dull” (or less current) stuff at the bottom instead of cranking in a massive complex and confusing header navigation at the top.

Last, and third, the javascript candy. It’s juicy. And it’s add to the overall experience and behavior of the site. And even if they introduce new user behaviors, they haven’t underestimated the intelligence of the visitors.

This on going debate about the quality of the Olympic logo, and how the media has decided to play the public’s opinion, has gotten on my nerves in quite the same way that the english media is obsessively handling the Formula One rookie Lewis Hamilton. I feel a need to share my opinion on both the logotype and on the McLaren super-sensational super-rookie, starting with this post on the logotype.

The lack of visual craftsmanship; not good. Epileptic colors; not good.
No, the logotype is not aesthetically appealing “for 5 pennies.”

However, does that then mean that it is a bad logotype?
Is it one of the primary functions of a logotype to look good and blend in?
What is the primary purpose of a logotype?

As a Londoner I have to say that the logotype is the best thing that has happened to the 2012 Olympics up to this date. Until the logotype got presented two weeks ago, the Olympics had only been about miscalculated budgets and east London property prices.

Now, post logotype launch, all of the sudden people are standing behind the Olympics. Protecting it. It’s about Our Olympics. Yeah, it’s Us now, not just Them anymore.

The logotype used for the bidding process (shown above), designed by Kino Design, with The Thames flowing through the word London, is probably what most people expected to be the logotype, or that the official one would go down these lines. But, with all due respect, that logotype has as much of a back bone as disco music, Helvetica, Back Street Boys and Kate Moss.

No thanks.

Alternative options of the logotype has been floating around the web during the week. The one most people seem to be sending around is the one displayed above on the left, designed by Daniel Eatock.

“Look into my eyes, look into my eyes, the eyes, the eyes, not around the eyes, don’t look around my eyes, look into my eyes”

The one to the right was designed by Winkreative for an interview on BBC Breakfast show.
Like they say, brilliant minds do think alike.

A small update: Willow pointed me to an interesting post on this subject and I thought it was worth coming back and update this entry. The interesting post is titled Long overdue post about the London Olympic 2012 logo and is written by Ben Terrett over at Noisydecentgraphics. Ben and I seem to be on the same side of the fence on this one — the side that likes the logo — but besides that, he touches on things I haven’t and that ties in with Tyler Brulé being on the BBC Breakfast show.

Which brings me on to a wider point. Whether you like the logo or not the way our industry has responded to this has been dreadful. Using terms like “knocking up” on BBC air time don’t help designers win more boardroom time. Not liking the logo is one thing, but comments like “£400k? My kid could have done better…”

end of update

Looking back, Montréal and Los Angeles had graphically nice logotypes, and München graphic profile by Otl Aicher was stunning and i’m sure if they ever have an Olympics in Bern, Zürich or Geneva, everything would look very Josef Müller-Brockmann’ish like — graphic designers would get a hard-on and base their next design on it and others would look at it, nodding in agreement, concurring, thinking ‘yes’, and then just get on with it.

But london is london.

Stephen Bayley said in an article in this weekend’s Observer that Wolff Olins had underestimated the public’s taste. I think the public shouldn’t underestimate the competence of a professional branding agency either.

I do believe that the logotype designed by Wolff Olins will get the job done. It’s not like Wolff Olins don’t know what they are doing. They are professionals. And as any good client we should trust them and let them do their job and support them in their decisions.

I’m prepared to put my balls on the table and say in 5 years time the logotype will have the public on it’s side. By then, more values will have been poured into the logotype and the branding will be more established and finalised. The shock will have passed.

All the attention that the logotype has created and received does suggest that Wolff Olins has succeeded in getting people involved and engaged.

Yeah, In my world, something ugly can be right.

Just got the above photo emailed from the boys “back home“. It made me smile. Love the colors of the north Swedish pre-summer forest. The Norrlands Guld beer can in the background is just the dot above the i. So much love.

The story is that they feel they are getting a bit to old for the street style skateboarding and have now gone into “pension” e.g longboard.

It’s not very often I come across things that absorb me like this TED talk by Blaise Aguera y Arcas on Microsoft Photosynth. It’s truly something.

Link to video