Design
Most economical printer
As everyone knows, manufactures give away printers almost free in exchange for the steady revenue of expensive, tiny ink cartridges. That's the "give the razor, sell the blades" strategy for the new economy, and it works. I use my printer less and less, but I still print enough pages in a year to go through an alarming number of high-priced disposable ink cartridges. The pain is not just overpriced cartridges; the machines rarely allow cartridges to fully empty, vastly decreasing their actual efficiency. (See this PC World article which says as much as 60% of the ink is wasted.)
I'm sick of surrendering to this economically and environmentally costly habit, so I set out to find the most cost-effective inkjet printer I could find.
Printer models are on a fast cycle of obsolescence, so there is little across-the-board comprehensive testing for ink cartridge efficiency. Based on manufacturer's specs and the comparative testing by PC World magazine, my research points to the HP Officejet K5400 as having the most cost-efficient ink supply right now. The estimated cost per page of black ink for the K5400 is 1.4 cents, and color is 5.9 cents per page. My previous printer ran 10 times that. I have not been able to find a lower page rate for any other desktop machine.
The bulkier the ink container the more likely the cost per page will be lower. In my studio I have a workhorse of a printer, the Epson 3000, now 15 years old, that uses big fat bulk ink cartridges. I use this industrial printer for printing large scale photographs, but I can print a decade's worth of office printing on a single cartridge -- and have. You can buy one of these venerable machines used, and still get cartridges, but the beast is the size of one-yard steamer trunk. It's overkill for most folks. Alternatively, there are kits which you can purchase to modify your desktop printer using fine capillary tubes connected to exterior ink bottles to drastically lower ink costs. Yeah, it works, but it's a messy hack, and you'd need to be printing a real lot to warrant it.
The Officejet K5400 is a decent compromise. It costs $130. I've been using it for three months now and am delighted with its performance. It prints extremely fast, faster than any desktop printer I've seen. It runs reliably, and prints with near laser-quality for office stuff. It's not the ideal photo printer, but does okay. Most importantly, judging from the ink status box, after 3 months I still have 80% of the ink in the first set of cartridges left. But this unit is not small. It's about the size of a roller carry-on luggage. I expect to get 10 years out of it.
A true evaluation of printing costs should include the cost of the printer, amortized over the number of pages printed in its lifetime. For some people with very minimal printing needs, the price of expensive ink cartridges is canceled by the zero cost of a free printer. Go for it! For those who need to print more, such as contracts, manuscripts, maps and other currently unavoidable paper copies, the HP Officejet 5400 is the most cost-efficient way to deal with ink.
-- KK
HP OfficeJet Pro K5400 Printer
$130
Available from Amazon
Manufactured by HP
Related items previously reviewed in Cool Tools:
VersaLaser
Smart Power Strip
Dymo Labelwriter Turbo
Folding fruit basket
These ingenious collapsible baskets are made out of recycled chopsticks. Beyond the "green" aspect, we love them because they fold flat, so they're easy to put away. Very transportable for camping and potlucks. They come in four sizes. We have a Large Tea Stained one that is out on the kitchen counter year round for fruit and veggies, and a Medium Natural basket for the overflow during the summer. They hold a lot of fruit, which doesn't seem to spoil as quickly because of the airy design -- makes it easy to clean, too. We have given several as gifts and notice they get used!
-- Kelly Powers
Recycled Chopstick Folding Baskets
$18 - med.
$24 - large
$52 (all four sizes)
Available from Kwytza Kraft
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Uncommon Fruits for Every Garden
Green Cone
Tilia Vacuum Food Sealer
Guide to secret iconography
CIA paparazzo Trevor Paglen is a thorn in Uncle Sam's side. Known for snapping telephoto candids of CIA planes and Area 51, the artist also gathers "patch intel," which he's collected in this provocative book (main title: "I Could Tell You But Then You Would Have To Be Destroyed By Me"). The fruit of several Freedom of Information Act requests, Paglen's book proves that classified black opps concoct esoteric team insignias just like other military divisions. The photo-driven work presents 75 de-classified patches with colorful eagles, skulls, swords, dragons, wizards and even aliens (!). Surveying iconography that was never intended for your eyes is both exhilarating and frustrating. Decoding them is often impossible, which only leads back to the obvious: How else are our tax dollars being spent in secret? Unlike grainy, questionable YouTube clips of UFOs, Big Foot and Loch Ness, in this case, seeing guarantees believing.
-- Steven Leckart
I Could Tell You But Then You Would Have To Be Destroyed By Me: Emblems from the Pentagon's Black World
Trevor Paglen
136 pages, 2007
$14
Available from Amazon
Sample excerpts:
"Triangulum" is reported to designate a variation on the RS6b SENIOR SPEAR sensor system built into some versions of the U-2 spy plane. The Triangulum system allegedly uses twelve antennas along the aircrafts' fuselage and an antenna on each wing.
The Electronic Warfare Directorate is the primary EW test organization at Edwards Air Force Base. Electronic warfare consists of defensive and offensive avionics and includes the so-called "Infowar" revolution in military technologies Commenting on information-warfare, Air Force Chief of Staff John Jumper told Aviation Week and Space Technology that "we're rapidly approaching the time when you can tell an SA-10's [surface-to-air missile system] radar that it's a Maytag washer and put it in the rinse cycle instead of the firing cycle." The first letter of each word in the phrase "Nitwits Rubes and Oafs" spells out the agency responsible for this patch: the NRO, the National Reconnaissance Office. Furthermore, "OAFS" could be an acronym for Onizuka Air Force Station, an Air Force Space Operations base in Sunnyvale, California colloquially known as the Blue Cube. It is unclear what the collection of three white stars and one black star represent, although they may be related to the collection of four triangles from the NRO's "We Own the Night" patch...The phrase "Setec Astronomy" figures prominently in the 1992 film "Sneakers," in which the phrase is an anagram for "Too Many Secrets."
This patch is from the Phillips Laboratory Military Spaceplane Technology (MiST) Program Office at Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico. The original version of the patch sported an "X-Wing" fighter from the Star Wars movies. When lawyers representing George Lucas delivered the unit a cease and desist order, the aircraft on the patch was changed into the shape that appears in this patch.
The letters ATOP depicted on this patch stand for "Advanced Technology Observation Platform," whose first flight was on October 28, 1990. The Latin phrase "Furtim Vigilans" translates as "Vigilance Through Stealth." No further information about this patch or program is known. Officials at the Flight Test Center at Edwards Air Force Base claim that the program depicted "isn't one of ours."
This was the original version of a patch commemorating a flight test series involving a B-2 "Spirit" stealth bomber. The lower case Greek sigma symbol on the test shape's outline signifies the unknown RCS value. The number "509" refers to the 509th Bomb Wing, which operates the United States' stealth bombers from Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri. The alien is a reference to the 509th's lineage. In 1947, the 509th was based at Roswell, New Mexico, home of the infamous "Roswell incident," which ensued after the 509th's commander, Col. William Blanchard, issued a press release whose headline stated "Roswell Army Airfield Captures Flying Saucer on Ranch in Roswell Region." The dog-Latin phrase "Gustasus Similis Pullus" translates as "Tastes Like Chicken." Note the knife and fork. This patch was eventually modified when Air Force officials insisted that the phrase "Classified Flight Test" could not appear on the design. In an updated version of the patch, "Classified Flight Test" has been replaced with the words "To Serve Man," referencing a classic episode of "The Twilight Zone."
Related items previously reviewed in Cool Tools:
9/11
Dictionary of Symbols
The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Representation
Wild, elaborate stitchin'
This photo-driven book documents the life and work of legendary tailor Nudie Cohn, whose eccentric pieces of wearable art were worn by countless country, rock and pop musicians, everyone from Elvis to Elton John. The free-for-all that is Japanese street fashion is undeniably more outlandish, but if you keep in mind how Nudie made everyone look like Liberace (even macho country boys in the conservative '50s!), his work becomes all the more inspiring. There are numerous, thicker retrospectives with glossy snapshots of flashy rodeo wear, but this is the only book that focuses entirely on Nudie. His story is so enticing I really wonder why no one's written a comprehensive, narrative non-fiction biography about him: after immigrating from Russia, he became an amateur boxer, spent time hitchhiking coast to coast and eventually started fashioning clothes and costumes out of his garage in the '40s. If you're a serious seamster or occasional stitch 'n bitcher, his embroidery will get your juices flowing. If you're a home crafter or tinkerer with big aspirations, here's another fine example of what's possible.
-- Steven Leckart
Nudie the Rodeo Tailor
Mary Lynn Cabrall & Jamie Lee Nudie
2004, 160 pages
$10+
Available from
Amazon Marketplace
Sample images:
Related items previously reviewed in Cool Tools:
Brother Sewing Machine
Fruits
Tie-Dye!
Little art collections
Keeping tabs on the art world is tough and time-consuming. Being a collector is tougher -- and downright expensive. This site does all the work for you and allows you to amass your own hip, limited edition prints for cheap. Sign up for the newsletter and once a week you'll receive a heads up about the artist whose work will be available later that day for $20 a pop. They usually make only 100-200 prints and it's first come, first serve. The first piece I bought on a lark sold out in less than 15 minutes! I discovered the site nine months ago when a friend gave me a gift certificate. Although I've already spent my gifted wad, I still check the newsletter religiously, almost obsessively. Stumbling on amazing art(ists) is wonderful. Decorating our home with little, unique prints is very satisfying. And part of every purchase is donated to a charity chosen by the artist, too.
-- Steven Leckart
Tiny Showcase
$20/print
Available at TinyShowcase.com
More...
3D mathematics
The Gyroid
Cool and useless. That's my definition of art. These very cool 3D mathematical sculptures by Bathsheba Grossman are very nerdy art. Cleverly manufactured by a new type of 3D printing, they manifest bizarre mathematical notions. Bathsheba starts with her own complicated CAD designs, which she then sends to an Ex One printer. The printer stacks up layers of stainless steel powder hardened with a laser. Bathsheba trims and polishes each final form by hand. Lot's of brilliant designs, some like alien seeds. Others are like Escher paradoxes in 3D. These mini ones are only a few inches wide, and not cheap. It's art. It's mathematics. Many are shapes never before made or even imagined -- simply because they were impossible to render before. Bathsheba also does laser etched images deep inside of glass crystal. Check her news blog for some really dazzling larger pieces. I've ordered several things from her and have been happy.
-- KK
Quintron
Beth Sheba Mini Sculptures
$80
Available from Bathsheba Sculpture
How things start
The most comprehensive, and most comprehendible analysis of patterns in nature and the nature of patterns.
-- KK
The Self-Made Tapestry
Pattern Formation in Nature
Philip Ball
1998, 324 pages
$49
Available from Amazon
Excerpts:
The Paris Metro is a branched network with a fractal form.
*
When shaken vertically, a shallow layer of grains can develop complex wave patterns, including stripes, square and hexagonal patterns.
*
The adult zebra Equus grevyi (b) has more and narrower stripes than the adult Equs burchelli (a). This is thought to be because the striped 'pre-pattern' is laid down on the embryo of the latter at an earlier stage: after twenty-one days for Equus burchelli (c), but after five weeks for Equus grevyi (e). The smaller embryo supports fewer stripes, and so by the time it is of comparable size (d), its stripes are wider.
Library of possible life forms
Long a favorite of designers, this 1904 album of diverse little-known creatures and plants drawn by German biologist Ernst Haeckel has usually been reproduced in black and white. This edition is of note because while still inexpensive it retains the color plates of the original portfolio (although many of the 100 plates remain monochrome). Art Forms in Nature is a library of possibilities. Artists, engineers, and natural scientists use this album for inspiration, since each of these bizarre forms is a living highly-evolved organism. It's hard to believe all these species are earth found; why look to other planets for weird life forms?
-- KK
Since Haeckel's work is in the public domain, there are a few sites where his worked has been scanned and posted online. Here is a German site with some nice hi-res scans of some of the more specatular pages. Unless you want to make them huge, the book is still a cheaper way to "print" them out. Scans
Art Forms in Nature
Ernst Haeckel
1998, 139 pages
$16
Available from Amazon
Sample excerpts:
Tafel 17. -- Porpema
Siphonophorae. Staatsquallen.
Tafel 63. -- Dictyophora
Basimycetes. Schwammpilze.
Tafel 85. -- Cynthia
Ascidiae. Seescheiden.
Ingenious but useless mechanical devices
Cool and useless. That's my definition of art. A midnight engineer and MIT professor creates totally useless machines. They are exquisitely beautiful. They do absolutely nothing. At best they whir and click and shake. A genuine artist, he also has filmed his machines obliquely, only partially seen, behind a veil of mystery. You want to know how they work, what they do, how come? No answers. Only peeks at cool and useless machines in marvelous varieties and cleverness, turning, turning, turning. Utterly riveting, supremely inspiring, and very geeky. Show this at a party, and everyone stops transfixed.
-- KK
 
Arthur Ganson Presents a Few Machines: Created between 1978 and 2004
70 min.
$20
Available from Arthur Ganson
Street fashion free-for-all
Wouldn't the world be a better place if everyone wore more colorful clothes? You can get a glimpse of that heaven in this never-boring album of Japanese street costumes. Like its predecessor volume Fruits, this sequel, Fresh Fruits, preaches freedom of color and is meant to be browsed while standing in your closet tossing out the black.
-- KK
Fresh Fruits
Shoichi Aoki
2005, 272 pages
$20
Amazon
Sample excerpts:
Showcase of nerd art
In one tome, a glorious collection of visual trickery, the best I've seen. Optical illusions of the most ingenious types -- using mirrors, type fonts, murals, globes, junk, and of course paint. It is a grand demonstration of nerd art.
-- KK
Masters of Deception
Escher, Dali & the Artists of Optical Illusion
Al Seckel
2004, 320 pages
$25
Available from
Amazon
Sample excerpt:
"Lunch with a Helmut On," welded forks, spoons, 1987, 73 x 31 x 42 inches
This shadow sculpture of a motorcycle is built entirely out of 848 welded forks, knives, and spoons. It is based on an earlier concept that Fukada exhibited in his 1965 show, "Toys and Things Japanese." Fukuda wanted to create a three-dimensional object in which the shadow, as opposed to the actual form, represented the object. Fukuda was to remark that it is extremely difficult to create a three-dimensional object in this fashion that allows light to penetrate evenly. A movie of this sculpture is on Seckel's website.
*
Hamaekers holds an impossible cube, which is based on the figure in M.C. Escher's print "Belvedere," in 1985. A movie of this sculpture rotating is on Seckel's website .
*
"Spools of Thread, " Colored spools of thread, 2001, 32 X 26 inches
This is Ken Knowlton's portrait of, tribute to, and gift to Aaron Feuerstein, the president and owner of Malden (fabric) Mills in Lawrence, Massachusetts. In 1995 a devastating fire destroyed three main buildings of the mill complex. However, instead of collecting the insurance money and closing up shop, Feuerstein kept workers on salary during the recovery. His response to the situation has been widely acclaimed as a stellar example of decency in business.
Knowlton's portrait consists of 945 inch-long multicolored spools of thread alternately oriented vertically and horizontally. They give the impression, from intermediate distances, of woven fabric. This artwork, therefore, has three levels of interpretation: a portrait, a woven fabric, and spools of thread.
Dashboard oracle
I've raved before about Brian Eno's wonderful creative boost called Oblique Strategies. It's a set of cards you use to get unstuck when you confront a design standstill. You follow the advice on a card picked at random. Surprisingly the action (or inaction) it suggests is usually just the right thing to do to get you going again. The cards are slick, well-crafted but expensive. This Mac OS Tiger dashboard Widget implementation of Oblique Strategies is the most handy yet I've seen. It sits right there only a click away. What to do? Let's see, it says "Abandon normal instructions."
-- KK
Oblique Strategies
Free from
Apple
And for the rest of you, here is a site linking to Palm and Windows versions;
AcquireStrategies
Paper 3D-printer
 
A great compliment to "Sketchup" is a handy little product from Japan, "Pepakura". This tool creates a printable, origami-like pattern from which 3D models may be translated into paper "reality".
Here at the University of Texas, I write 3D games that deliver educational content for middle-school children. I use Sketchup as the starting point in my workflow for all the 3D buildings and many of the other objects that the kids move through, as they navigate within their virtual world. For $38, this gadget allows me to push my models through a color printer -- I fold the output and paste a few ends together with a gluestick, and I have something to hand to the kids as an incentive when they finish the program. They think it's neat to hold something in their hands that they had just been interacting with in the virtual world.
Nearly anything that you can model can be printed and brought into this world, in all of it's 3D glory.
-- Charlie
Pepakura
PC Windows
Free (Shareware)
Available from Tamasoft
Superb design visualization tool
This software is the opposite of CAD--- Computer Aided Design--- which is detail-driven. SketchUp gives you total flexibility messing with the FINAL look of something. You work directly with the vision you have, learn what's wrong or right with it, and keep trying variations or starting down new tracks.
You can flick details in and out. How about a corrugated steel roof on the house? No, try standing-seam metal, um, in red. Not bad. Could the pitch of the roof be steeper? That's better. Where should the chimney go? Here on the peak? No, put it over the wall corner for a corner fireplace. Going inside, how would a kiva fireplace look in that corner? It would be better if it was bigger, like that. Plop a couch in there for scale. Better move the doorway over a bit. Yeah that's good enough for now.
I came to this program because I was designing a house I want to build, and I could NOT draw a convincing hip roof. Suddenly with SketchUp I was drawing the whole house, and a basement, trees, and an adjoining building and visualizing the whole site with textured surfaces, in wireframe, in X-ray, with sun shadows, at night with lights on, in walk-through mode. I tried a clerestory my wife fancies and found that it probably wouldn't work with this design. I tried a house based on an existing barn's dimensions and found that wouldn't work either.
Check out the longer feature-tour video. That's what sold me. This is one powerful program, shockingly intuitive to use. It works for a lot more than buildings--- landscapes, worlds. Video game designers use it. Architects use it but don't let their clients touch it for fear of being replaced. There's a whole online community of people creating new downloadable components and textures for it--- humans, pets, kitchen sinks, cappuccino machines, beds, wallpapers, stones, masonries, cars, trees, fences, doors...
The full version, SketchUp Pro 5, costs $500. It's a bargain. Works on Macs and PCs.
--Stewart Brand
SketchUp is unbelievably good. It's everything software *should* be, but isn't: intuitive, productive, stable, and fun. Using a remarkable technology they call "inferencing," SketchUp has an uncanny ability to figure out which direction you wish to draw; using "locking," you can fix that direction and then reference it to other points in the model.
My productivity is skyrocketing. My ability to freely experiment with designs without punishing amounts of rework, and the sheer thrill of seeing what I'm imagining quickly and precisely come to fruition, has me raving to all and sundry about this great product. There's an eight-hour demo available. The product is pricey, but if you do any sort of commercial work, I swear it is going to pay for itself within days. It is simply that good.
-- David Priest
SketchUp Pro 5
$500
Google SketchUp
Free
Lateral strategies for innovation
This overpriced book contains a set of 40 design strategies for inventing. It is a summation of engineering design principles devised by a Soviet patent examiner in the 1960s who extracted these principles from a study of 200,000 patents. This guy, Altshuller, says that the 10% most innovative patents would use one of these 40 strategies for their novel solutions. Altshuller then went on to construct a system to help engineers consider these elemental strategies for the problems they were working on. His system is called TRIZ, and it has a cult following among process engineers. I like to think of it as Oblique Strategies for engineers.
To employ the system you apply a principle (from the list) at random to the problem, no matter how unlikely, in the hope that this lateral mode of thinking will hatch a novel solution. The best inventors combine these heuristics intuitively, and many veteran engineers have their own set which they have developed over the years. But if you are just starting out as an architect, tinkerer, engineer, hacker, designer, and do-it-yourselfer, you may find this a good place to start. I did, and have already added to the 40 some additional heuristics that work for me.
You can find the entire text of the 40 Principles posted on the TRIZ website; the only advantage of the book are some crude drawings and handy reference format. However I did find the small additional illustrations and real world examples helpful in grokking the often cryptic rules.
-- KK
TRIZ 40 Principles
40 Principles Extended Edition
Genrich Altshuller
2005, 144 pages
$55
Available from
Amazon
Sample excerpt:
Pencil input
I don't use pen and ink anymore. I use a Wacom tablet and stylus to draw directly into Photoshop, Illustrator, etc. It's really the only way to draw with computers. I met a cartoonist who was drawing using a mouse; I have no idea how he did it. He was like a mountain man. I use the smallest of Wacom's Intuos tablets (about 4 x 5 inches) to plug into my laptop so I can lean it against the tray tables on airplanes.
-- Scott McCloud
Intuos3 4x5 Tablet
$219
Available from Wacom
or $209 from Amazon
Decimal Inches
I've been creating designs in Adobe Illustrator and executing them using shop tools. One problem with Illustrator is that it doesn't really support eighths, sixteenths, and smaller divide-by-two subdivisions of an inch. It uses decimal fractions of an inch.
So, I went looking for an inch ruler which is subdivided decimally. The best I found so far is the Alumicolor Engineer, which has six scales, including tenths and fiftieths, and is extremely well made.
-- Charles Platt
Alumicolor Engineer Scales
$10
Mister Art
How nature moves
Spirals. Vortices. Waves. Cyclones. Turbulence. Ripples. An engineer collected all the classic photographs of hydraulic movement he could find in old scientific volumes and self-published a reference book for engineering students. He's been surprised that mostly artists, animators and poets have been buying it. I'm not surprised.
-- KK
An Album of Fluid Motion
Milton Van Dyke
1982, 176 pages
$15
Available from Amazon
Sample excerpts:
Hexagonal smoke ring. The growth of waves around a vortex ring is often called Widnall instability, after the researcher who first analyzed it. Here it has produced a remarkably symmetric pattern of smoke in air at a Reynolds number of about 1000.
Instability of a round jet. Smoke gives a different view of the flow above, at a Reynolds number of about 13,000.
Airplane model in free flight at M=1.1. Shadowgraphs show a winged model launched into atmospheric air from a gun. The bow wave is marginally attached at this slightly supersonic speed. In the plan view above, the wings are lifting, as shown by trailing vorticles from the tips. In the side view below, the herringbone pattern is produced by pressure pulses from grooves in the wing that trip the boundary layer to make it turbulent over the rear half.
Lots of fonts
You can never have too many fonts. Here are hundreds of wonderfully creative ones which you might need once in a lifetime -- and since they are free, why not be bold?
-- KK
For Mac and Windows
1001 Free Fonts
Instructional Design
I thought I was the only one in the world stealing the safety instruction cards from airline seats because of their terrific folk graphics. For radically clear thinking nothing can beat a really good set of wordless diagrams; hundreds of examples from around the world are paraded here. Designers of the world, please heed.
-- KK
Open Here: The Art of Instructional Design
Paul Mijksenaar and Piet Westendorp
1999, 144 pages
$6
Joost Elffers Books
Amazon
Excerpts:
Desktop cutout and engraver
VersaLaser is a desktop "printer." However instead of printing on paper, this 20-watt laser device etches marble and ceramic, and precisely cuts thin sheets of wood, plastic, fabric, paper, glass, leather, and rubber, etc. (but not metal). For less than $10,000 you can fabricate complex parts in your shop based on a computer drawing. So now instead of struggling with a Dremel to carve out pieces for a dollhouse, I can compose my artwork on an ordinary drawing program (we're using Corel Draw), then select "print" and the type and thickness of the material, and the magic begins. VersaLaser's VL-200 can transform material as large as 16 inches by 12 inches. Their printer driver for Windows leaves a lot to be desired, and you'll have to work around it until a better one comes along. Optional, but very wonderful, is the powerful base unit that vacuums away smoke or dust created in the laser burning process.
 
It is easy to recall how few people had desktop scanners only two or three years ago. Today, desktop scanners have dropped in price to a mere $100 or less and have become ubiquitous. It seems clear that in the near future, as more of these laser devices evolve and decrease in price, many people will be printing their own products at home!
-- Dan Dubno
This device works wonderfully on thin sheets of non-metallic material, but its $10,000 price tag obviously makes sense only for someone doing frequent small part fabrication, serious engraving, or prototyping functions. It's become a hit in architectural firms which need very detailed models, and for businesses personalizing almost anything -- you can etch a logo, name or design onto almost any object. One very creative use was a stencil artist who uses it to create exact and complicated stencils. Because of its current high price this machine might be a co-op purchase for a model making club, or a cool addition for a school shop.
-- KK
VersaLaser VL-200
$7,500+
Available from Universal Laser Systems
Do-your-own vision
Sometimes, despite all pressures toward normalcy, people are compelled to construct their own worlds. The old lady who over the years arranges broken bottles into a house, or the man down the road covering his barn with tiny quotes from a channeling spirit--each glues raw symbols into a whole that makes sense for them. This happens all over the world. I've collected an entire stack of books about self-made worlds, and this one is the best for sheer exuberance, geographic inclusion, and variety. Science fiction author William Gibson says these worlds remind him of elaborate personal Web sites--and vice versa, Web sites are really self-made worlds; to me they are distant lands, with their own cultures.
-- KK
Fantasy Worlds
Deidi von Schaewen, et al
1999, 340 pages
$40
Taschen
Amazon
Excerpt:
The design approach to life
Design is hip these days. Long before it was hip, Charles and Ray Eames pioneered the design approach to life. Nowhere is their legacy so well represented as in this single-volume exhibit covering every project in their life's work. The Eameses were probably the tech-friendliest designers ever, without ever being hi-tech. They certainly were the first on the frontiers of exhibit, museum, and informational film design. They designed types of things that had never been designed before. This book, together with the multi-volume DVD of their brilliant short films, makes it clear that the Eames pursued their passions first. As design goes commercial in a big way, theirs is a mighty inspiring stance. This is the most comprehensive and graphic record of not only their work (3,500 images) but perhaps of any designer's work. I use this book to expand my notions of what can be designed.
-- KK
Eames Design
The Work of the Office of Charles and Ray Eames
John Neuhart, Marilyn Neuhart, and Ray Eames
1989, 456 pages
$64
Amazon
The Films of Charles and Ray Eames
From Amazon, $22 each:
    
Vol. 1 "Powers of Ten" and "901: After 45 Years of Working." 21 minutes
Vol. 2 "Toccata for Toy Trains," "House: After Five Years of Living," "Lucia Chase Vignette," "Kaleidoscope Jazz Choir," "The Black Ships: and "Atlas." 62 minutes
Vol. 3 "The World of Franklin and Jefferson," "The Franklin and Jefferson Proposal Film" and "The Opening of an Exhibition."
Vol. 4 "Design Q&A," " IBM Mathematics Peep Shows," "SX-70," "Copernicus," "Fiberglass Chairs" and "Goods." 59 minutes
Vol. 5 "Tops," "IBM at the Fair," "A Computer Glossary," "Eames Lounge Chair," "The Expanding Airport," "Kepler's Laws," "Bread," "Polyorchis Halpus" and "Tops."
Rentable from Netflix
Also available from Eames Office
310/396-5991
Excerpt:
Young viewer watching a Mathematica Peep Show. These films were called "peep shows" because they were first shown in devices designed to accommodate one viewer. They were intended for a short attention span; each two-minute film explored one mathematical concept and could be seen as many times as a viewer needed to understand the idea.
The Moebius Band with its traveling red arrow. The arrow is started on its path by pushing a button. 1961.
A large drum made in the Eames Office demonstrated how calendar years and feast days are determined. The drum was divided into horizontal strips, each of which represented one solar year, with the succession of days and full moons marked. The drum charted certain seasonal celebrations--Christian Easter, Orthodox Easter, Passover, Rosh Hashanah, Ramadan, Islamic New Year, winter and summer solstices, vernal and autumnal equinoxes, Thanksgiving and leap-year day--and showed how their dates change from year to year.
How to make your web site useable
Here's a cure for badly designed web pages. (This is major news since everything is now on the web.) Follow Krug's key heuristic: "Don't make me think." It works. His manual is a model of what it preaches. It is the best, clearest, most succinct hands-on guide for amateurs and pros engaged in making the web a useable public space. You don't need a consultant; you need this book. I pray everyone reads and obeys.
-- KK
Don't Make Me Think
Steve Krug
2000, 195 pages
$24.50
Amazon
Excerpts:
When you're creating a site, your job is to get rid of the question marks.
*
We don't read pages. We scan them.
*
Create a clear visual hierarchy. One of the best ways to make a page easy to grasp in a hurry is to make sure that the appearance of the things on the page -- all of the visual cues -- clearly and accurately portray the relationships between the things on the page.
*
Jakob Nielsen and Tom Landauer have shown that testing five users will tend to uncover 85 percent of a site's usability problems, and that there is a serious case of diminishing returns for additional users.
*
How to paint like a photograph
Follow artist David Hockney as he chases a ridiculous idea: the reason why Dutch masters, beginning with Vermeer, could paint so uncannily photographically was that they were using lenses secretly. Hockney chronicles his research step by logical step, and the seeming outrageous looks more and more reasonable. The theme is that art is governed by technology. �Yet there is a hand inside the camera,� Hockney claims. By hacking up crude lenses and optical mirrors, using color copiers, photoshoping images, and filling walls with digital prints, Hockney turns art into detective work. In the design of this book, Hockney elevates his astonishing research into a work of art itself. This is one of the best books about art ever, and one of the best books of art ever.
-- KK
Secret Knowledge
David Hockney
2001, 296 pages,
$42,Viking Studio
Available from Amazon
Excerpt:
These photographs show the process in more detail. At the top left you can see the projection on the paper as I make my initial marks, the two stages of which you can see top right. After making the measurements, I take down the paper and complete the drawing from life. The subject, who sits outside throughout, can see very little of what is going on in the room. He is not even aware that the mirror is there. I have been told by some art historians that there are written accounts of similar set-ups in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, but as yet I have not located them.
Best advice on how to do art
Astoundingly brilliant (and blessedly short). Easily the keenest insight into making art that I've ever read. One continuous aahhaaa.
-- KK
Art & Fear:Observations on the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking
David Bayles & Ted Orland
2001, 122 pages
$11, The Image Continuum
Available from Amazon
Sample excerpts:
This book is about making art. Ordinary art. Ordinary art means something like: all art not made by Mozart. After all, art is rarely made by Mozart-like people - essentially (statistically speaking) there aren't any people like that. But while geniuses may get made once-a-century or so, good art gets made all the time. Making art is a common and intimately human activity, filled with all the perils (and rewards) that accompany any worthwhile effort. The difficulties artmakers face are not remote and heroic, but universal and familiar.
*
Art is made by ordinary people. Creatures having only virtues can hardly be imagined making art. It's difficult to picture the Virgin Mary painting landscapes. Or Batman throwing pots. The flawless creature wouldn't need to make art.
*
Making art and viewing art are different at their core. The sane human being is satisfied that the best he/she can do at any given moment is the best he/she can do at any given moment. That belief, if widely embraced, would make this book unnecessary, false, or both. Such sanity is, unfortunately, rare. Making art provides uncomfortably accurate feedback about the gap that inevitably exists between what you intended to do, and what you did. In fact, if artmaking did not tell you (the maker) so enormously much about yourself, then making art that matters to you would be impossible. To all viewers but yourself, what matters is the product; the finished artwork. To you, and you alone, what matters is the process: the experience of shaping that artwork. The viewers' concerns are not your concerns (although it's dangerously easy to adopt their attitudes.) Their job is whatever it is: to be moved by art, to be
entertained by it, to make a killing off it, whatever. Your job is to learn to work on your work.
*
The function of the overwhelming majority of your artwork is simply to teach you how to make the small fraction of your artwork that soars. One of the basic and difficult lessons every artist must learn is that even the failed pieces are essential.
*
Artmaking has been around longer than the art establishment. Through most of history, the people who made art never thought of themselves as making art. In fact it's quite presumable that art was being made long before the rise of consciousness, long before the pronoun "I" was ever employed. The painters of caves, quite apart from not thinking of themselves as artists, probably never thought of themselves at all. What this suggests, among other things, is that the current view equating art with "self-expression" reveals more a contemporary bias in our thinking than an underlying trait of the medium. Even the separation of art from craft is largely a post-Renaissance concept, and more recent still is the notion that art transcends what you do, and represents what you are.
In the past few centuries Western art has moved from unsigned tableaus of orthodox religious scenes to one-person displays of personal cosmologies. "Artist" has gradually become a form of identity which (as every artist knows) often carries with it as many drawbacks as benefits. Consider that if artist equals self, then when (inevitably) you make flawed art, you are a flawed person, and when (worse yet) you make no art, you are no person at all! It seems far healthier to sidestep that vicious spiral by accepting many paths to successful artmaking - from reclusive to flamboyant, intuitive to intellectual, folk art to fine art. One of those paths is yours.
*
Those who would make art might begin by reflecting on the fate of those who preceded them: most who began, quit. To survive as an artist requires confronting these troubles. Basically, those who continue to make art are those who have learned how to continue - or more precisely, have learned how to not quit.
*
The truth is that the piece of art which seems so profoundly right in its finished state may earlier have been only inches or seconds away from total collapse. Art is like beginning a sentence before you know its ending. The risks are obvious; you may never get to the end of the sentence at all - or having gotten there, you may not have said anything. This is probably not a good idea in public speaking, but it�s an excellent idea in making art.
*
Talent, in common parlance, is "what comes easily." So sooner or later, inevitably, you reach a point where the work doesn't come easily, and - Aha!, it's just as you feared! Wrong. By definition, whatever you have is exactly what you need to produce your best work. There is probably no clearer waste of psychic energy than worrying about how much talent you have -and probably no worry more common. This is true even among artists of considerable accomplishment.
*
A brief digression in which the authors attempt to answer (or deflect) an objection:
Q: Aren't you ignoring the fact that people differ radically in their abilities?
A: No.
Q: But if people differ, and each of them were to make their best work, would not the more gifted make better work, and the less gifted, less?
A: Yes. And wouldn't that be a nice planet to live on?
*
The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality. His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the "quantity" group: fifty pound of pots rated an "A", forty pounds a "B", and so on. Those being graded on "quality", however, needed to produce only one pot -albeit a perfect one - to get an "A". Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity. It seems that while the "quantity" group was busily churning out piles of work - and learning from their mistakes - the "quality" group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay.
*
Art is human; error is human; ergo, art is error. Inevitably, your work (like, uh, the preceding syllogism) will be flawed.
*
What you need to know about the next piece is contained in the last piece.
*
Filmmaker Lou Stouten tells the painfully unapocryphal story about hand-carrying his first film (produced while he was still a student) to the famed teacher and film theorist Slavko Vorkapitch. The teacher watched the entire film in silence, and as the viewing ended rose and left the room without uttering a word. Stouten, more than a bit shaken, ran out after him and asked, "But what did you think of my film?" Replied Vorkapitch, "What film?"
The lesson here is simply that courting approval, even that of peers, puts a dangerous amount of power in the hands of the audience. Worse yet, the audience is seldom in a position to grant (or withhold) approval on the one issue that really counts - namely, whether or not you're making progress in your work. They're in a good position to comment on how they're moved (or challenged or entertained) by the finished product, but have little knowledge or interest in your process. Audience comes later. The only pure communication is between you and your work.
How to hide with wit
An exhilarating kaleidoscope of artists fooling around, making visual puns, tricking society, and conjuring up novel solutions - all tucked into the margins of this astonishing untold history of military camouflage. I had no idea that both Picasso and Matisse assisted their navies in designing new camouflage patterns. This collection of visual wit is really a how-to book on the best way for serious people to employ artists.
-- KK
False Colors
Art, Design and Modern Camouflage
Roy R. Behrens
2002, 223 pages
$28 postage paid
Bobolink Books
Dysart, IA
Amazon
Hand-drawn metamorphosis in which Beethoven becomes a clarinet
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Access to the full diversity of fonts
Someone from Europe posted me a letter and I fell in love with the text's unusual font. It turned out to be Scala Sans, a font created ten years ago by a Dutch typographer, Martin Majoor. I bought a copy of the typeface on MyFonts and now use it everywhere I can - except on the web, where typography is still in the dark ages.
It wasn't too long ago that only about 271 people in the world cared about typographic fonts and kerning and serif trapping. Then PCs turned typography from a black art into a tool for the masses. Getting and installing a particularly distinctive font is a no-brainer on the web, and yes, one can learn to use it with grace. (See The Elements of Typographical Style elsewhere on this site).
The best portal into the world of typography is the website My Fonts. They have over 23,000 fonts from just about every known foundry (many just one person shops), and a pretty good way to navigate among all those choices. Their "more fonts like this one" option is helpful. With a forum for newbies the site is very friendly to those just starting out and for pros, too.
There is one small weirdness about type that is worth pointing out. The differences between two fonts may be hardly noticeable in their details, although the effect of each font is pronounced. It's a lot like wine; it's hard to describe why good ones are good. If you find a typeface in a magazine or brochure that you really like it can be extremely difficult to identify that face by name. There is no working heuristic for identifying fonts. You may be forced to ask a type maven, if you know one. Or, you can try a new service of My Font called WhatTheFont? Scan your typeface and submit it to the site; it will identify it.
--KK
MyFonts
Totally inspiring street fashion
Anti-fashion snatched off Tokyo's streets. Pages and pages of exuberant color and wild forehead slapping design. Clothes made at home, altered from the store (called "kustom") or piled on without regard to previous styles. You get the ugly and the brilliant. There's little text, just full-page snapshots of real kids with other-wordly outfits unfettered by normalcy. This is one of our favorite books at my house. We open it up every month or so, giggle, and feel inspired to loosen up a bit. Blue, yellow, and pink? Why not, color is free. This is what clothes could be, or ought to be.
-- KK
Fruits
Shoichi Aoki
2001, about 200 pages
Phaidon
$20, Amazon
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Useful dilemma prompt cards; a portable oracle
How to get unstuck. Pick a card at random and either 1) do what it says or 2) let it lead you to another idea. It's amazingly effective. This handsomely boxed stack of cards was created by the lateral genius Brian Eno and good friend Pete Schmidt in 1975 to get themselves and other musicians unstuck in the studio. It's been through four updated editions since.
I use this tool in any design situation to think differently. In life I've found it more productive than throwing the I-Ching or staring at the wall.
This fifth printed edition on heavy silky stock will pop your rut. Or, you can click on over to an Eno-fan web site where a button will reveal a random card on the screen. Go to enoweb
But the form of Oblique Strategies I currently find most useful is a tiny desktop utility that pops up on my computer screen on demand. A click on the beautiful silver card will produce a random rule. Since I do much of my work at the screen, having the digital cards "always on" is perfect. This little gem is free, but only runs on MacOSX. The one improvement I crave is to be able to add my own strategies -- I have a bunch. Ideally, there'd be a place to share and swap oblique strategies.
More than you wanted to know about Oblique Strategies in its various editions and forms, plus links to digital versions for other platforms including Windows and the Palm (!) are available at this amazingly complete fan site: Oblique Strategies
-- KK
Oblique Strategies
One Hundred Worthwhile Dilemmas
5th Edition
30 Pounds, or about $50
From the Eno Shop
enoshop
Oblique Strategies
MacOSX software
Free from
curvedspace
A guiding philosophy of type
For a long while I've been looking for an expert who could guide me through the complex world of typography. I didn't need another artsy typographical design book. I wanted a reliable friend who could introduce me to the philosophy of type and then also practically guide me through the jungle of fonts to ones that work best. Mr. Bringhurst is that guru. Under his apprentice I understood for the first time how to architecturally shape a page with text, as if I were building a house. I figured out when to kern, or not. Now I find myself drawn back to his study every time I need to craft a book, a webpage, or format a report. The wisdom and experience in this book is astounding. It's for anyone who makes words visible. That's all of us. The book is regularly updated. Blessings on Bringhurst.
-- KK
The Elements of Typographic Style
Robert Bringhurst
2001, 350 pp
$30
Amazon
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