The following two graphics are my seminal finds for the week. I hate using that word, seminal, but sometimes it is the correct one to use. Unfortunately the word oval has another meaning or I would be promoting that as a better word to describe items or ideas that are seeds for novel conceptualizations.
The first one, the conversation prism, may look like a color wheel at first glance, but it is much more layered and contextually rich with information about relationships between elements of common digital communication tools. Look at it, download it, study it. Most infographics do not actually add value or information to the subjects they depict. This one does. The linked site is well worth bookmarking and then checking out for updates every once in a while.
Malcolm Gladwell irritates some with the cultural condensations from which he spins off his books, but I adore ideas, patterns, and playing with explanations for correlations between the two. Thought is good. Observation is good. Reasonable conjecture is exercise for the mind. So I like Gladwell. His Tipping Point was best, in my opinion, but Outliers points out some generalizations worthy of note as well.
To become an expert takes lots of work. Success is more fickle.
Word Cloud Web-based App for Wordless Wednesday
Word Cloud Images
I did a great post on Hill Research Services for which I could not find an appropriate accompanying image, so I used Tagxedo to create this. Cool, no? Zip on over to my business site to see how it looks in the actual article that is also a good read about the Old Pueblo.
Word clouds shaped by images are hot, and this is one of the ways you can make them for FREE. They work great as custom images or graphics for your blog
I did this one from using this website’s url and a shape I uploaded.
I DO NOT like that the developer of the app claims copyright to anything his app spits out as this image is impossible without words that describe my site with a silhouette that I created. Other than that, a great free app. I presume that when the app becomes available in a pro format that I will be able to change the copyright field to a Creative Commons license.
Candy Skulls and Femicide for All Souls Day
Halloween is candy and costumes. All Souls Day is a day where this world is obscured by misty memories , when flashes of what lies beyond spit and sputter into and out of our awareness, and when those we once loved travel back to visit on slanted beams of autumn afternoon light. But in the part of the world where I live the folks who have lived around here for a few hundred years have melded the two into a celebration of those who have gone on.
I knew as soon as I saw this photo that I had to share it for a wordless Wednesday post.
Glen Van Etten posted this image with a Creative Commons attribution license in the Creative Commons section on Flickr.
I’m juxtaposing the Mexican celebration and the Mexican femicide before the observation of All Souls Day so as not to disrespect a cultural celebration of reverence and love by mixing it with horrific murders of women just over the U.S./Mexican border in Chihuahua. This image moved me so much I just had to share it and the story behind the representation.
Background:
The featured image of a person walking across the street in Tucson, partially dressed as a skeleton, before the All Souls Procession is of my friend Mary. License: Some rights reserved by Willow&Monk.
Classic Commercial Art Posters from the Late 19th and Early 20th Centuries
It is yet another Wordless Wednesday and today I want to share one of the neatest commercial advertising art books I’ve run across since I regularly began searching through the Internet Archive. If the absolutely amazing resource is properly searched using the advanced search function, it is relatively easy to search for material containing images that are out of copyright.
Many of the classic commercial advertising images that are familiar to us, and often reproduced, are available in this volume. Artists include Mucha and Parrish, and other top commercial artists from the turn of the 19th to 20th Century.
Source of Images
Posters; a critical study of the development of poster design in continental Europe, England and America (1913)
Author: Price, Charles Matlack
Subject: Posters
Publisher: New York : G.W. Bricka
Freebie Digital Background Images and Textures
I love playing with graphics. I talk about this love at least once a week it seems. So even though I posted some images yesterday, I want to share some textures I created. Yes, I am working on an Autumn-themed project. I created these images using Gimp, a free to download, open source drawing program. Just call me a frustrated digital artist.
Tiling, Seamless Textures (some repetition evident)
The first two can be scaled, and repeated in an endless pattern where distinct stops and starts cannot be discerned. Perfect for background textures.
This yellow canvas could be used for an autumn or spring digital craft project.
A Halloween or traditional fall fabric.
Abstract Named Images
If these images are tiled or repeated on a background there are easily discerned distinct images. These images were created to capture a feeling, place, or event. The level of abstraction varies greatly from image to image.
Digital Creativity and Artistic Expression
I began creating “companion” textures when I was decorating homes in the virtual world of Second Life®. I didn’t want to spend any money on this game without an objective so I learned how to create the visual representations of material objects and the colors and patterns I wanted to use in the “world.”
In this pursuit of free or low cost self-created digital content I learned quite a bit about 3D modelling and about expressing myself through creation of these “textures.” I wholeheartedly encourage you to try the medium if you have not. I do not do all that much with virtual worlds any longer, but I am continuing to fulfill one of my creative drives in creating digital art. I suspect I will use all my creations in augmented reality ads and information products within a few years.
10 Early 20th Century Advertising Images
It is Wordless Wednesday, so today I’m reproducing some advertising images from 1910.
Source
Poster advertising : being a talk on the subject of posting as an advertising medium, with helpful hints and sensible suggestions to poster advertisers, and with thirty-two pages of full color reproductions of posters used by national advertisers (1910)
Author: Hawkins, George Henry Edward
Subject: Advertising; Posters
Year: 1910
The digitized/scanned book is available on the Internet Archive.
Images
It is really difficult to believe that lead paint or cottonseed-based foodstuffs celebrated these features of their products. But some of these ads show early versions of what became and still are household brands.
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I just noticed that the Capitol is featured on this last Quaker poster. Maybe the Congress needs to go back to simple food like this and they wouldn’t want to shut down government. 2nd day of U.S. Government Shutdown.