pikemurdy

Gay Street Buildings

Goat and Charlie

A few examples of awesome 1940s typography in this Retronaut collection.

Color Photographs of Billboards, Nashville, 1940s

Computer generated bods

H&M designs a body that can better display clothes made for humans than humans can, then “dresses” it by drawing on its clothes, and digitally pastes on the heads of real women in post-production.

I have to admit, I’ve never heard of H&M. I also have to admit, I probably would not have noticed that the models were computer generated, as it seems like every photo I see of a fashion model is so heavily airbrushed, it might as well be computer generated.

So it’s not really surprising or new, just the next step down the path we’re already on.

H&M Puts Real Model Heads On Fake Bodies

Of Nasty Moose and Antisocial Elephants

Odd bit of research on infant morality.

They were following a simple rule: “helpful moose = good moose”. But the eight-month-old babies were savvier.

Infants prefer a nasty moose if it punishes an unhelpful elephant

Building trust with your website

“Trustworthy” is a word that gets thrown about with little care these days. I recently read an article titled Building trust is the key to promoting your organisation online.

It’s the typical marketing/SEO/Let’s-do-some-business tripe that crosses the internet constantly. To be clear, there is nothing specifically dangerous that is mentioned in the article. It’s the vacuous ‘sentiments’ masquerading as business help that I find annoying.

For example, one tip for success mentioned is to use “quality photography”. There is not a thing wrong with this advice. Indeed, it’s good advice. At least it’s good advice in the same way “Don’t wear sweat pants to work” is good advice. It’s obvious. It’s so obvious that it need not be stated.

Keep your website fresh. Get your copy right. Treat your customers well. All good advice.

Other advice is just odd, “Include an About Page”. Again, there’s nothing wrong with this. Sure, include one, I have one too.

Allow me to give a bit of my own very, very obvious piece of advice: The internet is fast. Attention spans are short. You have (anecdotally) about two seconds to capture a user’s attention. The user should know what your site is about, and by extension what you are about on the entry page. If they have to go looking for an about page, you’ve lost them. Keep it, sure. But don’t expect it to build trust for you.

The problem with these sorts of articles is that they offer advice that is tied up in neat, pretty packages. They’re the self-help business books of the internet. You can’t really argue with them because they’re not really saying anything.

Elvis Costello’s Box Set

Writing about his own new box set:

Unfortunately, we at http://www.elviscostello.com find ourselves unable to recommend this lovely item to you as the price appears to be either a misprint or a satire.

Steal This Record

Were you to ignore Costello’s request, you can buy the record at Amazon..  They also have what Elvis recommends.

Inside the Sketchbooks of Famous Artists

A peek at the sketchbooks of Andy Warhol, Guillermo Del Toro, John Lennon, Tim Burton and the like.

Terry Gilliam Talks about Spielberg

It’s Gilliam’s birthday, so I’m linking to this. Gilliam comparing Spielberg and Kubrick.