Portrait of a Towel Salesman
“French Towels, Turkish Towels, Bath Towels, Welsh Towels, Swedish Towels, Towels of all Kind.”
Note the salesman is wearing clothes made of towels (love the pants), and is holding a bell. This vintage picture ranks high in the strange department.
(via neil-gaiman)
social journalism: to turn a quote or a line from a story into an image
“I tractor tractors.”
What grasp of pictographs.
I feel like logic must have been out to lunch when they came up with this one.
You guys, this video is TEN YEARS OLD and STILL AWESOME. I first saw it in 2002. My friends and I used to quote this INCESSANTLY back in high school to the point where our social group actually imposed a moratorium on mentioning or showing it.
TEN YEARS OLD.
I am officially Ancient On The Internet.
(Well, have a nap - ZEN FIRE ZE MISSILES!)
Can’t help reblogging this. Because… come on. Excellence.
(Source: nathankemp, via purplehairedwonder)
My cousin’s child
In my arms
The rabbit
Grey.
I point. “Look, soft—“
Apple-blossom cheek
Rests against mine
Tiny neck cranes
To see— then
It is gone.
We are silent,
Frozen.
Hummingbird breaths
In tiny lungs
And my own.
The stillness
Of rabbits
Is contagious.
Elizabeth would choose
The Middle Ages
when cathedrals grew
like stalagmites
out of hard ground,
and rainbows coalesced
to stained glass.David would choose the 17th century.
He’d whisper in the ear
of Galileo about dark matter
and space explorers; he’d tell him
never mind The Church,
…
I love infographics, but I love this even more.
- Lack of clarity. Infographics should ease and speed the consumption of information. If you take something you can express in 25 words and turn it into 1000 x 3000 pixels of eye-watering garbage, it’s not an infographic. It’s a waste of paper.
- Lack of data. Infographics used to communicate data. Like this. Now, apparently, I can turn a fax machine manual into a poster and get it posted to 55 different infographics directories. Retch.
- Low information density. An infographic is more effective than words describing the same subject. Otherwise it’s art. Which is cool and all. But it’s not an infographic.
- Lack of flow. An infographic should lead me from introduction to conclusion, somehow. It should help me solve or understand a problem. If it doesn’t, it’s a graphic, minus the info. This Visually piece is a great example of infographic flow.
- Flatland (read Edward Tufte’s work for the full description). It’s a two-dimensional drawing that describes two dimensions of data. Look at this chart showing Napoleon’s army as the Russian winter destroys it. How many different dimensions are there? I counted at least four.
- Chartjunk (again, read Tufte): Extra crap that doesn’t help me understand the data.
- Yeck. It’s as visually appealing as a spit wad.
- You stole your data. Infographics cite their sources. If you didn’t cite, it’s a stash, not an infographic.
- It’s pointless. Just go read Mark Mapstone’s post. You’ll see what he means.
- Terrible writing. ‘Graphic’ doesn’t mean ‘you have permission to write drivel.’ The writing has to be extraordinary. It can’t be awful.
- Someone who can’t even use Excel told a room full of people, “Let’s create an infographic!” and everyone nodded sagely. You might get lucky, I guess, and still create something worthwhile. It’s more likely, though, that the result will have all of the above problems.
The last four years of patent wars in cell phones, visualized – shown by filmmaker Kirby Ferguson of Everything Is A Remix fame at TEDGlobal 2012.
(Source: , via maschup)
QR codes in action at the Chicago Field Museum. I thought this was particularly well done.
Alas, I do not have a smart phone, so I couldn’t check the link. But the presentation gets full points.
