Helvetica is like a celebrity, (no really it is, it’s in a movie). It’s so highly regarded among designers and never hated on like Comic Sans or Arial.
I’ve discovered a brilliant crafty exploration, showing Arial vs. Helvetica side-by-side. You’ll notice that in most cases Helvetica is the simpler, more elegant of the two. (see the angles of the r, t and c).
You might also noticed that there’s only 10 characters listed here, is it because all the others are identical? Some investigation needs to take place! Anyone up for the challenge?
Turquoise, the 2010 Color of the Year, is PANTONE 104-2-3 C in Goe and PANTONE 3258 C in PMS.
“Turquoise inspires thoughts of soothing, tropical waters and a comforting escape from the everyday troubles of the world, while restoring our sense of welllbeing.” (via Pantone.com)
I’m loving it, it’s probably one of my most favourite colours, especially for home decor.
Recently, I have seen I a lot of news about a Ralph Lauren model who was airbrushed to look reeeeeally skinny and then fired for being fat.
As a result, there has been a lot (more) of talk lately about this topic and thus some French legislators are pursuing the idea that all digitally enhanced photos should carry warning labels saying that they just that.
Now nobody needs to be told that the photo above is altered, but there are definitely too many cases where you can be mislead believing you’re looking at a “real” image. Now, there’s nothing wrong with altering images and creating interesting illusions, but it’s gone a little too far with human portrayal. N’est pas?
They’re here! The official team outfits for Canada’s 2010 Winter Olympics team were revealed, Thursday morning by the Hudson’s Bay Company, the official supplier for the team. They sure are classically Canadian, what are your thoughts on them? It scares me that they’ve already been called “Hoser Chic” but, they’re definitely much better than Beijing, right?
You can now add an application on Facebook where you express what mood you’re in, via various pantone colours. Sure it’s a little bit useless, but I find it a fun addition for artistic graphic designer types such as myself.
There’s a limited colour palette at the moment, but if you check their page soon, there should be more colour trends coming, they say that they rotate the palettes.
Released in Singapore, these ads are cute and effective with a little dark side. Although these ads do make me wonder how safe Play-Doh really is, because i’m sure almost every kid has atleast tasted Play-Doh in their lifetime. (Mmm salty.) Does anyone know how true their “non-toxic” labeling is?
It’s official, India has released an electric car. It’s name is Reva and it comes in a variety of loud colours.
REVA Electric Car Company Private Ltd. (RECC), based in Bangalore, India, was established in 1994 as a joint venture between the Maini Group India and AEV LLC, California USA, to manufacture environment-friendly and cost-effective electric vehicles. Seven years of R&D earned the RECC recognition in the form of 10 patents and a globally accepted product. REVA, India’s first zero polluting Electric Vehicle for city mobility. (taken from website)
Hopefully this zippy little car will change the ever growing pollution issues in that part of the world …. and the rest of the world for that matter…long live the electric car…for real this time…I hope.
(As a side note to this topic, I watched “Who Killed The Electric Car” the other day…if you haven’t, you probably should too, even if it leaves you as confused about the car industry as I was.)
If you’ve been following the Wireless Electricity Saga since the late 1800’s, then here’s an update for you: Eric Giler powering your cellphones, tvs and mobile devices wirelessly, and he’ll explain how it works and wheather it’s safe for you. Tesla would be proud.
One of our programers here just asked me about this, so I thought this would be a good candidate for ActionScript 3 tip #2: How to access a variable in the Flash embed code.
In AS 2 it was easy:
_root.variableName
Now, you need to use the loaderInfo class. The loaderInfo class provides information about a loaded SWF or image. You can use it to access things like the file size, dimensions and url of the loaded content. Using the parameters property, you can access those variables that you pass to the SWF in your embed code:
root.loaderInfo.parameters.variableName
Here’s a fleshed-out example of how to load an xml file who’s path you define in your embed code, from within a class:
package
{
import flash.display.Sprite;
import flash.events.Event;
import flash.net.URLLoader;
import flash.net.URLRequest;
public class Test extends Sprite
{
public function Test()
{
var loader:URLLoader = new URLLoader();
loader.addEventListener(Event.COMPLETE,
initXML);
var request:URLRequest = new URLRequest(
root.loaderInfo.parameters.xmlPath);
try {
loader.load(request);
} catch (error:Error) {
trace("Unable to load document.");
}
}
private function initXML(event:Event):void
{
var loader:URLLoader = event.target
as URLLoader;
if (loader != null) {
var data:XML = new XML(loader.data);
trace(data);
}
}
}
}
I recently found an interesting article that seems to explain that there is financial success behind the usage of social media for marketing.
“Those brands that were the most engaged saw their revenue grow over the past year by 18% while the least engaged brands saw losses of negative 6%.” – ReadWriteWeb.com
