AT&T Logo Guidelines |
When looking at a well designed logo, it's hard to imagine how really
difficult it may be to create this small, elegant, seemingly simple
symbol. Even after you got the basic idea right, you still have to spend
quite a time adjusting your logo for different uses and design
environments. AT&T's guidelines on using its corporate logo present an
engaging insight into what it all really takes. Because of its size and
diversity, the company's designers are having major headaches trying
to ensure that all of AT&T's departments and contractors use the logo
the way it was designed. This document has lots of do's and dont's on
the use of the familiar AT&T's globe in white on black and black on
white, in large and in small sizes, in paper documents and on product labels,
etc. etc. There's even a section on common logo usage errors!
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The Halloween Document |
The ever-escalating war of two different software development
philosophies, "open source" vs "commercial" (for lack of a better word),
has just resorded a landmark episode. An internal
confidential study of open source phenomenon was leaked from
Microsoft and published by Eric Raymond, the editor of the Hacker's
Jargon File that I linked up earlier and a very
influential speaker for the Open Source community. Not surprisingly,
Microsoft's intended strategy as per this document is to swallow (sorry,
"embrace") as many open standards and protocols as they can lay their
hands on and then spoil them by incompatible MS-only extensions. Even
for casual reader, this document and Raymond's commentary present a very
instructive and lively insight into the inner life of both enemies'
camps. | |
Chomsky's Propaganda Model |
When I was studying linguistics at St.Petersburg University, the name of
Noam Chomsky meant one thing for me: the creator of one of the most
important linguistic theories of our century, generative
grammar, lying in the foundation of all modern computer translation
systems. Recently, thanks to the Internet, I discovered The Dark Side of
Chomsky previously unknown to me: He's also an unconventional political
thinker and the author of a number of controversial books on both
current issues and philosophy of politics. In fact, I find it
natural---when scientists become interested in politics, their
long-trained manner of thinking often makes them dissidents (thus, the
most renowned opponents of the Soviet regime were of mathematical and
physical background). Here's just one example: in a lively radio
interview, Dr Chomsky argues that it doesn't take someone's
malice to impose a substantial---and real---censorship on mass
media, much as it didn't take divine intervention to carry out evolution
whose fruits seem so intelligently designed.
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10 Newspaper
Design Myths |
Design is a very versatile and multifacetous field, and designing web
sites is but a small corner of the design continent. When studying
some particular design province, you can benefit very much from visiting
your neighbors and learning from the problems they face and the
solutions they've found. This article offers a
succinct and involving breakdown of some of the most important issues in
newspaper design, which has some interesting parallels with web
design---being "material," this media is nevertheless even more fluid
than most web sites, and the obvious "less art, more information"
newspaper bias reminds me of the well-known bandwidth and accessibility
restrictions in web design. | |
Cyber-Punctuation |
Finally, I've found an authoritative word of advice on the pesky
punctuation problems that emerged after the practice of including
e-mail and web addresses into everyday correspondence became common.
What is the best way to break URLs across lines? What if you have to
end a sentence with an electronic address but don't want the period
to be mistaken for a part of the address? The answers offered by
Bill Walsh in
his Curmudgeon's
Stylebook may be considered preliminary and
arguable, but they at least give some guidance while most printed
sources haven't yet caught up with the issue.
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From Russia with FAR |
After some delay, I'm back with new Dessert Links! Go visit Eugene
Roshal, a Russian programmer and author of two extremely useful
programs: RAR (Russian ARchiver), definitely the best file archiver
utility around, and FAR (file and Archive Manager), a really
neat (albeit text-mode) and powerful file manager for
Win95/NT. (Poor souls still struggling with Explorer are
welcome to check out what they're missing.) FAR's
configurability and design thoroughness are immense, and although it
draws a bit from Norton Commander (an old DOS shell once incredibly
popular in Russia), it's gone really FAR from that prototype!
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Leading Internet IdNetities |
Finally, a design-related link found its way to this page.
(You know, I've been trying to variegate my Dessert Links as much as
possible, keeping in mind that broad perspectives can only improve
your design sense.) This is a survey of identities,
shown in both their concepts and implementation, of a number of
prominent Internet-related companies. An identity (or
"IdNetity," a neologism coined for "Identity on the Net") is more
than just a logo; however, a
logo is often in the center of a modern corporate identity.
This report is a bit outdated, but still very interesting as it
shows the featured identities dynamically, tracing their origins and
development.
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Get That Spammer! |
Some time ago I used to send out an angry response to every spam
e-mail I got. Now, I only try to avoid reading more than one
line of a junk message and kill it at most a second after
receiving. But that's not because I capitulated---I do hope
that those socially conscious will someday successfully
fight this incredible annoyance. For everyone interested (and
I suspect nearly anyone is interested these days), here's
definitely the most informative page I've found on the
subject. Not only it gives lots of practical advice, it is
also an engaging reading as it reveals Internet's intricate workings
of which many of us are unaware.
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On the Pleasures of Made-Up Science |
If science is the driving force of the modern civilization, then
Science Fiction is the modern saga. Yet it is an amazingly rare
ability, even among the best SF authors, to persuasively show (or
even understand?) how modern science works and to engage the reader
with the thrill and fatigue of scientific exploration. This short
essay by Matt
McIrvin explains why the "science" part is as important to this
genre as is the "fiction" part; it is included in the reviews
collection of one of my favorite SF writers, Stanislaw Lem.
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Hackers'
ASCII |
Since ancient times, alphabets have been in the foundations of
cultures. Our modern computer-centric culture is no exception;
its alphabet is called ASCII,
the basic character set standard used on virtually all computers
around the world. This article summarizes all known nicknames
of ASCII characters and presents tons of other historical material
that has been stratifying for decades over this computer
artefact. This is an entry from the Hacker Jargon File, the
premier resource on the rich and versatile culture of hackers'
communities of 1960s and 1970s. An inspiring reading for
computer addicts!
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An Introduction to Mitki |
An artistic and lifestyle movement originated in mid-80s in my
native St.Petersburg, the Mitki have
since stayed surprisingly unconcerned about both the agonizing
Soviet environment and the aggressively pushing Western
culture. It is easy to conclude that the childish and
primitivistic flavor of Mitki is alien even to St.Petersburg
itself---commonly perceived as an austere, classic, not-too-human
city. But the visible singularity of the Mitki phenomenon is
actually deeply rooted in Russian and, particularly, St.Petersburg
culture.
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Lessons from a restricted Turing test |
If a machine ever becomes intelligent, how can you tell? The
solution proposed in 1950 by Alan
Turing is a test where an independent judge chats with a human
and a computer without knowing which is which; if it turns out
impossible to reliably distinguish the two, we have to admit that
the artificial intelligence has equaled the natural one. The article
by Stuart
Shieber reports on a recent
attempt to partially implement the Turing test and persuasively
argues about the validity and usefulness of this undertaking.
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Ark Debate |
The issue of the Biblical Flood and the Noah Ark is one of the relatively
minor skirmishes of the notorious Creation vs. Evolution war.
Still, this transcript of a public TV debate is a very engaging reading,
if not for the depth and consistency of argumentation, then at least for
the true passion and bizarre drama (or is it a comedy?) of this
unfalsifiably lifelike dispute. | |
Dangerous
Words |
If you're an advertisement copywriter, here's your ultimate
inventory of cliches for web advertisement. But if you want your
words to make sense and not only glitter and dazzle, take this list
compiled by Jutta
Degener as a good opportunity to question many usage patterns
plaguing web pages. It really takes constant efforts to guard
yourself against sayings that are literally "in the air." I, for
one, not unfrequently find myself composing something along the
lines of the first sentence of this paragraph...
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SETI
news |
A report of one of the researchers at the SETI (Search for
Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) project. Without much hype, the
project of listening to distant stars via radiotelescopes, launched
back in the 1970s, is now in its maturity. Intensive computerized
search is underway in a number of observatories around the
world. Big news may arrive anytime soon; meanwhile, read an
informal diary of the everyday SETI activities.
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A Logotype Machine |
I never could envision that such a use can be made of my logo
tutorial. A student at the University of Ulster in North
Ireland has written a paper on
the possibility of creating a computerized logo designer---a smart
application to assist and guide an artist throughout a logo
project.
It's only a vague outline so far, but interesting nevertheless, and
it uses the categorization I developed for my design lab article.
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Gender-Free Pronoun FAQ |
Can you guess how many ways are there to say "he or she" in one word
without being sexist? As much as 212, and the first artificially
created gender-free pronoun (ne, nis, nim) is dated 1850! For this
Achilles heel of the English language, lots of people have been
offering lots of solutions, from simple "they" used as singular to
the awkward semi-abbreviations like s/he and to the unutterable
"xe," "zie," and even "smrtz." The author has taken great pains to
collect (seemingly) all information that has ever existed on the
subject, and his (oops - checked an impulse to say "his or her" :)
passionate attitude makes for an engaging reading.
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Daniil Kharms.
Things That Happen |
An English translation of my favorite Russian writer's short
stories. A very funny, deeply shocking and really sublime
reading. (The translation by Nicholas Sushkin is not
perfect, but nothing better is available on the Internet. Or
wheresoever, I'm afraid.)
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Symbolics Guidelines for Sending Mail |
A guide on writing email messages, dated 1984. An informally
written style guide, with lots of now-incomprehensible jargon
and implications, but very interesting nevertheless. It was
created for internal use at Symbolics, the legendary artificial
intelligence company of the 1980s.
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