Bob Noorda, an internationally known graphic designer who helped introduce a Modernist look to advertising posters, corporate logos and, in the 1960s, the entire New York City subway system, died on Jan. 11 in Milan, his adopted city. He was 82.
The cause was complications of head trauma suffered in a fall, said Duska Karanov, a designer in the Noorda Design studio in Milan.
“Don’t bore the public with mysterious designs,” Mr. Noorda once said, and he put that dictum into practice. He was a master of spare, elegant and logical designs that caught the eye, from minimalist corporate logos for the Italian publishing house Feltrinelli and the ENI Group of Milan to impressionistic posters for Pirelli, the Italian tire maker.
Mr. Noorda’s best-known work in the United States was for the Metropolitan Transit Authority, which in 1966 commissioned his firm, Unimark International, to modernize and unify the look of the subway system’s signs. The firm had been recommended by Mildred Constantine, an influential design curator at the Museum of Modern Art
With Blogs there is the tendency to get to the end or close a story prematurely and write an opinion. I hope this blog is more about traveling and collecting stuff as I move to firmer ground for the occasional useful statement.
How we unfold or project the earth often depends on what we want to get at and sometimes it depends on the limits of the tools we have on hand. The difference between “what we want to get at” and “limit of the tools we have on hand” can tell us more about the gap.
Each projection is self-consciously 2-Dimensional.
[ Gapminder ] Unveiling the beauty of statistics for a fact based world view.
The Activist Cause
I want to look back at Hans Rosling’s now very famous presentation at the 2006 TED-conference for a moment. In this presentation Hans is hocking this “Ah-Ha” moment to the audience. He knows what he is pedaling and he knows its ramifications. Does this moment fit in the history of progressive “Ah-Ha” efforts? I think so.
Many of the great achievements of the “progressive” movement, in America, came from those who answered oppressive conditions supported by neglect, power and wealth with extraordinary discipline of research and evidence. Some examples are found in W.E.B Du Bois’ survey of Philadelphia’s Seventh Ward in his 1899 classic book, The Philadelphia Negro work in Philadelphia, and Jane Jacobs’ book The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961) writtten during height of “Urban Renewal.”
It appears Hans’ visualization tool sits well within this tradition, his scope however, widens out to the early reaches, and future projections of statical analysis of DATA. What I find interesting about Hans’ work is the certain manner in which he strolls through his subject matter. It reminds me quite a bit like Jane Jacobs approach with the Urban build environment.
Geography benefits from the study of specific histories, sites, and memories. Every estuary, landfill, and cul-de-sac has a story to tell. The task of the geographer is to alert us to what is directly in front of us, while the task of the experimental geographer—an amalgam of scientist, artist, and explorer—is to do so in a manner that deploys aesthetics, ambiguity, poetry, and a dash of empiricism. This exhibition explores the distinctions between geographical study and artistic experience of the earth, as well as the juncture where the two realms collide, and possibly make a new field altogether.
Going back 166 million years to see each of the branches where we share common mammalian ancestors. The PDF is available for download, and is very detailed. You need to zoom a long way to even see that there is text naming each of the known mammals in existence today. It’s a radial family tree that also represents a timeline as you move outwards from the center. Here we are:
ABC TV in Australia did a short video on the family tree hosted by Dr. Paul Willis, and he literally walks around the infographic describing different parts. Well done, and seemed very reminiscent of Carl Sagan in some of his shows. The video credits Robin Beck, a Mammalian Systematist as the University of NSW, of creating the family tree. Here’s the link to the ABC page where you can watch the video, or you ca click on the image below.
There is a whole genre and cottage industry that has developed around visualizing and explaining the natural phenomenon of DNA replication. People are fascinated with this area of science, just as they are fascinated with the exploration of outer-space and the visualizations of the birth of the universe - the big bang. So it is not unusual that popular medical illustrations and animations would follow aesthetically the tradition of the visualization of outer-space. Both traditions draw from the Romantics of the 19th century and popular fantasy images.
