Compact Calendar 2010 by David Seah
David Seah has updated his Compact Calendar for 2010 and posted it for download (both XLS and PDF versions) on his website: Compact Calendar 2010. At that link you’ll also find numerous international versions and last year’s version, too. [Note: If you feel compelled to spend $50 on a more typographically pleasing calendar, visit aisleone and slap your dough down on the table. I’ll stick with Mr. Seah’s solution. Thanks to him for making it available gratis.
The Ideological History of the Supreme Court of the U.S. (SCOTUS) - TargetPoint
Andrew Martin (Washington University, School of Law) and Kevin Quinn (U.C. Berkeley School of Law) devised the Martin-Quinn scoring system to gauge the ideological flavor of courts. Alex Lundry applied that scoring system to the SCOTUS to create a fascinating visualization showing the conservative/liberal tendencies of each justice since 1937, along with an overall score of the entire court: The Ideological History of the Supreme Court of the U.S. (SCOTUS) - TargetPoint.
Book Staircase
I love books and creative design. Unfortunately for some, space is very tight and finding room for their books can be a challenge. Rather than pitching out the books, Levitate (London), cleverly folded their architectural skills and creativity together to make a Book Staircase. The sides are almost flush with the forward shelf edges. The steps alternate. Overall, a very nice job. I wonder if there are any lights (cable lights, maybe?
Create and Use Barcodes to Simplify Your Book List
In keeping track of my books, I have been looking for a simple way to generate barcodes as individual graphics that I could embed in my book list. I think I’ve found it: Dan Bornstein’s Barcode Server, which I found at the BarcodesInc’s UPC/EAN Barcode Generator.While the online version is nice, I wanted something a little more flexible and robust, so I downloaded the C source code. I haven’t tested it using a label scanner, but it looks real enough!
New Feature: Typekit support
I just updated the site with 2 new fonts from Typekit: Chunk for the headers and Droid Serif for the body copy. You can also see which faces I’m using. Although it’s an experiment for now, the potential looks tremendous. After I read that the Harvard Business Publishing is using Typekit on their HBR website, hbr.org, I thought it would be worth a trial run. What are the benefits? How much does it cost?
Staffordshire Hoard: The Book
I just received my copy of the British Museum book on the Staffordshire Hoard. Although it’s a bit shorter than I’d like (but matches the page count listed on the BM site), it has some lovely pictures, a concise history, and an overall adequate summary of the find itself. Glad to support the work going on there. Some day, I’d like to see the artifacts in person, but until I get across the pond, I’ll have to settle for this book.
I Love Typography: The Rather Difficult Font Game
This is pretty nerdy, but I’m getting to really love typography – serif this, ascender that, kern this, forge that. It all sounds so… foreign. Oooohh. So, when I heard about I Love Typography’s new little online game, cleverly titled “The Rather Difficult Font Game” I had to give it a go. There’s even an iPhone version! While spending time playing the game, I like to think I’m honing my typographic skills (such as they are!
Interactive data visualizations with R
Jeroen Ooms, a visiting scholar at UCLA’s Department of Statistics, has been very busy with R – he has two wonderfully slick online apps where users are able (for free) to visualize datasets using R’s ggplot. If you’re interested in R, stocks, or just data visualization, you’ll find something of real value in his applications. The older of the two apps, his Stockplot, lets you view stock performance over time, using R and ggplot2 to display historical details of these stocks.
the preservation of favoured traces | ben fry
I’ve always enjoyed a nice graphical diff, like WinDiff, WinMerge, or KDiff3 – something that shows how a document has changed since some previous incarnation. Ben Fry, father of Processing, has taken this idea to an extreme with Darwin’s Origin of Species by showing how Darwin’s book changed with each revision, graphically depicting the variations in the document by chapter with each revision. A static picture can’t do the app justice – enjoy the treat of watching the book unfold over time.
Typedia: A Shared Encyclopedia of Typefaces
Typedia: A Shared Encyclopedia of Typefaces is “a resource to classify, categorize, and connect typefaces” providing a wealth of information, links, visuals, and sources for many typefaces. Navigate the fonts by type (humanist, poster, sans, etc) or search by name or creator. Each font page links to: Designer(s) Foundry(ies) Release Year Country of Origin Classification Original Format Distributor(s) Tags It also provides a background/history for each font, as well as linking to examples “in the wild.