Monday 20 August 2018

think different

Though we are all probably intimately familiar with his branding work, we might not have recognised the name of the individual Paul Rand (Peretz Rosenbaum, *1914 - †1996) who was one of the first Americans to adopt and champion the Swiss Style, a typographical offshoot of the Bauhaus movement, of graphic design without news of an upcoming auction of his creations. Rand fashioned iconic logos, the cohesive and unifying stuff of corporate identities, and advertising campaigns for Westinghouse, Yale University Press, the United States Postal Service, and Apple as well as for IBM and ABC television, whose emblems in one form or another are still in use.

rosy fingered dawn

Reopened to visitors after restrictions were lifted due to damage sustained by an earthquake strike two years hence, an inaugural group of photographers hiked into Kikuchi Valley nature preserve before the sun rose to capture the elusive effect of rising mists broken by divine beams of light. Known as kobo (ๅ…‰่Š’), witnessing such rays certainly provide a transfixing experience and would be well worth the early morning trek to experience and share. Visit Spoon & Tamago at the link above for more.

Sunday 19 August 2018

7x7

tarnkappe: world’s first graphene jacket gives it wearer super-powers

like my mom used to say, if you need calcium, eat a milkman—yep, she said it: Ze Frank (previously) returns with true facts about carnivorous plants, via The Art of Darkness

67/p churyumov-gerasimenko: peruse one hundred thousand striking images of the alien landscape of the comet that the Rosetta probe rendezvoused with

global statesman: former United Nations Secretary-General and Nobel laureate Kofi Annan has passed away

forever blowing bubbles: a look back at the financial crash of 2008 and realising how little things have changed

pulsars: instructive and interactive coding tutorials on creating generative art (previously here and here), via Waxy

take care, tcb: some superlative obituaries and appreciations on the passing of Aretha Franklin 

Saturday 18 August 2018

attention generative adversarial network


Miss Cellania has given us a home work assignment that’s going to occupy us for the next few hours at least in the form of Cris Valenzuela’s laboratory’s latest artificial intelligence generative image maker. Earlier iterations of its kind sought to caption images submitted but this programme attempts to paint abstractions of text entered. Here are a few that I requested. Learn more about the methodology behind the demonstration project, and give it a try yourself (I think it might be overwhelmed at the moment so do give it a go later) at the links above and be sure to share some of your results.