Thought of playing with images

That's Mumbai local train the life line of Mumbaites. Thought of playing with it. And here it is.

Awwww to many assignments

Hardly getting any time out of the assignments to drop in a line here. Still managed some here. Woof.
I'll go and complete them first.....

Ill, does that read 3, well it's Ill (ohh)

Typography, plays a very important role in day to days life. Apart from verbal communication we have only written communication to express our feelings concisely. Verbal communication has an advantage of adding emotions by means of various sounds but written lacks it. It may not convey what needs to be. And in this the kind of fonts (typography) you use is a critical factor of deciding what information is passed. As you can see in the title there are 3 l. The reason I have chosen to write in this font is to distiguish between I and l. Oh they are not 'l' but it's Ill rather ill(case made a difference here). So you see wrong selection of font can lead you to such a situation. And that's why as a designer it's very important to study typography.

Actually, i was ill since last two days and trying to jot down my experiences in hospital (for the first time). But I encountered this typography problem when writing blog and my designer mind clicked (he he he, the semester is going to end and I have roughly become a designer).

May be I can write about my illness later. The topic became a typographical issue this time.

Beginning of exams

Today our exam started. I was not feeling tensed as I used to be in school or even college. Everything seemed to be going good. Nothing to mug up and nothing to study. Just taking out what all have we learnt during the semester.

The question paper was also like that. It asked us to write down the process we followed for our final project by illustrations and what we learnt during that. That's it. And it was for 3 hours. Never in my life have I seen a question paper like this. It was really cool one.

Now eagerly waiting for tommorows exam.

Why do I write when I don't intend to...

I have wondered many a times, why do people (including me) write blogs. Well even though I have answers to this, I keep wondering searching for more reasons.

"I want to highlight my work, my thinking, my thoughts and ideas, to live and leave mark on this virtual space...." and so on are some of the reasons which come straight to my mind. No wonder that people write blogs to move away from their boredom too.

Last night I was going through an interesting article (an assignment given by our professor). It was a compilation of excerpts from a book called "Work and Leisure" by Alsoud Huxley. He talks about the world of previleged who enjoys leisurely time today and the future when it'll be privilege of all to enjoy more free time. With the advancement of technology and machinery performing tasks of human, the working hours will shrink and man will get more time to spend on his own activities (we call this state as leisure). He asked one simple question "What is it proposed that human beings shall do with the leisure which social reorganization and perfected machinery are to give them?" Some of the thinkers answer this by saying "...the human beings of the future would fill their long leisures by contemplating the laws of nature". Hmmmmm, interesting. I think it would be so but not to the extent that only this will prevail.
People will write blogs. he he he.
The author also gives present example of the privileged ones who have lot of time to enjoy their free time and what do they do in it? They go to beaches, party, dance, enjoy long vacation and that's it (Monte Carlo is the place where this happens every year for around 4 months). So where does the notion of work go??
The author gives few hints on what could be the prevalent pass time activities,
"...If tommorrow or a couple of generations hence, it were made possible for all human beings to lead the life of leisure which is now led only by a few, the results, so far as I can see, would be as follows: There would be an enormous increase in the demand for such time-killers and substitutes for thought as newpapers, films, fiction, cheap means of communication and wireless telephones (the author seems to have forgotten internet, blogs, messaging); to put it in more general tem, there would be an increase in the demand for sport and art...."

And I liked this sentence where he talks of saturation from enjoying leisure...
"The interest in the fine art of love-making would be widely extended and enormous numbers of people, hitherto immune from these mental and moral dseases, would be afflicted by ennui, depression and universal dissatisfaction"

However to Tolstoy the whole idea of universal leisure seemed absurd and even wicked. (He should have visited India in present time to see what leisure means here and how people steal time for it). What seemed to Tolstoy important was not that workers should get more leisure but that the leisured should work. Excellent..
And the last statement.
"Leisure is only profitable to those who desire, even without compulsion, to do mental work."

Whoaaa. I think I have enjoyed enough of my leisure and have to get back to studies 'coz my examz are going to start from Monday.

so happy reading in leisure :-)

Visit by Stuart Constantine - founder - Core77

Today we had a visit by the founder of Core77 (www.core77.com). We had some 2 hour long open session with him during which he took us through the evolution of core77. Well core77 is a design website. You'll ask "what's big deal of being owner of just a site". It's not just site. It's renowned and respected in designers community. You find portfolios of budding and well-known designers posted here. And healthy talk of design going on her. So during the talk he told us about his journey of how core77 came into existence. It was there final semester project at Pratt Institute, New York (Pratt Institute is another well known design institute). They took the project of developing a website. Huh, you say. But it was before some 11 years when www was not so prevalent and thinking of owning a web space was dream. And then later they have to drop their main thesis project and take up this one as the main one. Till now core77 has undergone many reforms. Their path was not going up always. Many a times they got mails of taking down their site when they had changes. Many creative things are found here. Even if you are not a designer do take a glimpse. You'll find some of the very simple but exciting applications.

Signs and Symbols

I was kind of wondering of how these signs and symbol came to life. Obviously there goes a rich history of this and much more is written about it compared to what I may be saying.
This point came to my mind when I was looking at different icons on my laptop. So I should rather be saying how the symbols/icons in the software came to existence and why of particular shape and colour. Even today they are not changed much. Why so? Exploring my laptop desktop and open applications the "X" sign caught my attention.

These red crossed thing is used everywhere in software to indicate "close/exit/error" in the system. I didn't know why. Why is red color associated with something that is wrong or going to exit/end in software applications. May be it's not like that in other Operating systems or software applications. But this is the most used one. To explore more I went to Wikipedia and found information on different types of crosses prevalent across world, but with religion in perspective (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Cross_symbols).

And then this came before me http://www.guidebookgallery.org/icons/components
A very good link showing different types of icons in different Operating systems that too with year. So in one screen we get an idea of how these icons have evolved. Though it has not answered my query as of now, I'm ending my note here 'coz of time limit. I'll be searching for it though.

Aeromodelling workshop

It's a dream of every human to fly and reach the sky. Either in terms of glory or literally. If you ask children about their dream most of them would want to become a pilot. This aspiration to be in the wind and above all gives thrill. And when you can't do so you resort to objects and make them fly. Well talking this in today's world may seem obsolete but it's still true that common man live the dream to fly by flying kites and small aircrafts (scaled down) rather than flying in the actual one, which is a bit expensive.
My indulgence of aeromodelling also has the same background. I have always wanted to fly, either a small plane or fly in a big one. I had been making static aero models and small flying gliders to see that I can also fly (my miniature planes). But they were kinda work of novice. No formula no parameter checking. It was all based on trial and error basis. I would make a glider, test fly it and see how it acts and then make modifications accordingly to make it stable in air. I knew different concepts of making the glider stay in air, but how they worked was little know.
We had an aeromodelling workshop on 4th Nov, at IIT. I participated in it and was thrilled by the process of making a balsa wood glider, calculating equations for different parts of the plane.

Following is a photo synopsis of what I did in the workshop.

It all started with two strips of balsa wood and other apparatus. Balsa is a special kind of tree with large vaccum tubes running through the lenght making it porous. At the same time it's stiff too. And hence it's famous among aeromodellers as an idle material to make a glider. Very light, dense and stiff material.

We got the equations and different jargons.
Wing, fin, rudder, ailerons, horizontal tail, wing span, wing loading, drag, thrust blah blah.

Loaded the equations with actual number of our model and got the dimensions of each part of the model.

We drew the blue print on paper. We had quite a big discussion on the kind of glider we want to make. The one that flies more, takes longer distance or an unconventional shaped which glides to some distance.

We concluded that simple is the best. And then the cutting shutting and sanding of balsa started.



And that's the final product. It was gliding great in calm winds.

Photo communication

One of the most important aspect of design is the ability to observe, see and visualize the unexplored. A designer is one who is able to capture and work upon, what others just see and forget. Photography has taught me the sensitivity towards these things. With the camera in hand the person behind view finder becomes someone who filters out the noise in the world and captures that is important rather that needs to be important. The lens is the third eye of a photographer.