Russell Davies

word clouds gathering

If you have a blog, I can recommend ZoomClouds, as shown in the column on the right. Obviously it's an interesting way of navigating a blog but it also teaches you which words you tend to overuse. Something like that would be really useful for regular writing. Can you get a tag cloud for your desktop or a word document - stuff like that? That would be instructive.

As you can see, I overuse 'obviously' and 'stuff'.

Ah. I've done it again.

bring back the shields

A simple, but effective bit of research from Monochrom (via information aesthetics) illustrates the power, or otherwise, of various logos.

Seems like people have some affection for the shields.

I like a shield too.

Nothing wrong with a bit of corporate heraldry. All that lowercase mildness seems disingenuous from a business like BP. Sorry. bp.

videosift

You're probably as addicted as I am to strange stuff on YouTube. Especially selections like this from MusicThing. There's a desperate need to explore quickly before it all gets whipped away.

But if you don't want to spend your whole life typing odd search terms into YouTube then videosift is a great alternative.

howtoons

Saul Griffith is talking at TED. Which reminded me how good howtoons are. (And Instructables.) If you've not seen them you should, both as an example of great information design and as fun stuff to do. This is my favourite.

Technorati tag: TED conference

gapminder

I'm at the TED conference, listening to Hans Rosling of Gapminder. Absolutely fascinating. And really instructive about the presentation of data - great charts which use animation to massively increase understanding. You can download many examples from the site. And you should.

He's kind of like Edward Tufte but less puritanical.

Technorati tag: TED conference

information aesthetics

I have a cold and my back hurts. So I'm too ill to come up with any original thoughts today. (For which you're probably grateful.)

So, in the meantime, here's a fantastic site to visit - information aesthetics. I particularly liked this conversation table (shown above). This might change the dynamics of some meetings.

vote early, vote often

Apparently I'm featured in the Battle Of The Ad Blogs. Which is very exciting. You have to scroll down a bit to the planner/theorist section. Vote, vote, vote and I'll go back to my constituency and prepare for government. (Perhaps the most obscure reference I've ever put on here, apologies to all my non-British, non-over 35 readers.)

geekerchief

Found a lovely geek-oriented handkerchief at Magma books in Covent Garden today. It's made by Sukie but doesn't seem to be with the other hankies on the Sukie site.

revising music

Just found this lovely minimal music site in Moscow (via warren ellis). It's called Deep Mix and it's perfect for working to. There's something about the textures which keeps your brain alert without distracting. (Like Bach.) And if anyone asks what you're doing you can say you're doing cultural research on Russia. As we should all be doing.

worth looking at

from ihaveanidea:

Are you in need of a challenge?

Here's one. Take a relatively new brand and make it famous. Very famous.

The cameras are ready to roll and convert your idea into television reality.

TigerGaming.com needs a new advertising campaign, and somewhere within you lies an incredible T.V. idea!

Whether you are an advertising creative, account executive, planner, photographer, producer, director, marketer, or someone who has always wanted to make your own television commercials, this advertising challenge will test and push your creativity to the limit.

More details here.

And maybe, with any luck, you can also get an old git of a creative director to quit at the same time. (That's me, editorialising, not ihaveanidea)