November 30, 2011
Steven Heller (b. 1950) is an American author, and editor who specializes on topics related to graphic design. He is author and co-author of many works on the history of illustration, typography, and many subjects related to graphic design. He has published more than eighty titles.
For thirty-three years Heller was a senior art director of ‘U&lc’ magazine, a publication devoted to typography. As of 2007, he is co-chair with Lita Talarico of the MFA Designer as Author program at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. He has collaborated on books with graphic designer, Louise Fili, who is his wife, as well as with others including the Design Dialogue series.
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November 30, 2011
AIBO was one of several types of robotic pets designed and manufactured by Sony from 1999 to 2006. AIBO is able to walk, ‘see’ its environment via camera and recognize spoken commands in Spanish and English. AIBO are autonomous robots since they are able to learn and mature based on external stimuli from their owner, their environment, and from other AIBOs. Artist Hajime Sorayama created the initial designs for the AIBO. AIBO’s sounds were programmed by Japanese DJ/avant-garde composer Nobukazu Takemura. The International AIBO Convention takes place every year at Sony Robotics Tower in the Shinjuku prefecture.
AIBO runs AIBOware on a pink Memory Stick, which allows the robot to be raised from pup to fully grown adult while going through various stages of development as its owner interacts with it. AIBOware allows the owner to interact with a fully mature robot able to understand (though not necessarily willing to obey) 100 voice commands. Without the AIBOware, the AIBO will run in what is called ‘clinic mode’ and can only perform basic actions. Many AIBO owners enjoy teaching their pets new behaviors by reprogramming them in Sony’s special ‘R-CODE’ language. AIBO’s complete vision system uses the SIFT algorithm, to recognize its charging station. The newest versions are equipped with a Wi-Fi connection, allowing them to send the pictures they take via email which led to the Roblog.
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November 30, 2011
In telecommunications, 4G is the fourth generation of cellular wireless standards. It is a successor to the 3G and 2G families of standards. Speed requirements for 4G service is 100 Mbit/s for high mobility communication (such as from trains and cars) and 1 Gbit/s for low mobility communication (such as pedestrians and stationary users). By comparison, 3G’s speed requirement is 200 kbit/s (0.2 Mbit/s). The International Telecommunication Union (ITU), an agency within the UN sets requirements for what is marketed as 4G. ITU recognized that current versions of LTE, WiMax and other evolved 3G technologies that do not fulfill the requirements could nevertheless be considered ‘4G,’ provided they represent ‘a substantial level of improvement in performance and capabilities with respect to the initial third generation systems now deployed.’
The nomenclature of the generations generally refers to a change in the fundamental nature of the service, non-backwards compatible transmission technology, higher spectral bandwidth and new frequency bands. New generations have appeared about every ten years since the first move from 1981 analog (1G) to digital (2G) transmission in 1992. This was followed, in 2001, by 3G multi-media support, spread spectrum transmission and at least 200 kbit/s, in 2011 expected to be followed by 4G, which refers to all-IP packet-switched networks, gigabit speed, and multi-carrier transmission.
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November 30, 2011
Neville Brody (b. 1957) is an English graphic designer and typographer. He is an alumnus of the London College of Printing and Hornsey College of Art, and is known for his work on ‘The Face’ magazine (1981–1986) and ‘Arena’ magazine (1987–1990), as well as for designing record covers for artists such as Cabaret Voltaire and Depeche Mode. He created the company Research Studios in 1994 and is a founding member of Fontworks. In 2011 he headed the Communication Art & Design department at the Royal College of Art.
As an undergraduate, his tutors often condemned his work as ‘Uncommercial,’ often putting a heavy emphasis on safe and tested economic strategies, as opposed to experimentation. By 1977 punk rock was beginning to have a major effect upon London life and Brody’s work and motivation, which was not well received by his tutors. At one point he was almost thrown out of the college for putting the Queen’s head sideways on a postage stamp design. He did, however, get the chance to design posters for student concerts at the college, most notably for Pere Ubu, supported by The Human League. His first-year thesis had been based around a comparison between Dadaism and pop art.
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November 30, 2011
123Klan is a French graffiti crew, founded in 1992 by husband and wife Scien and Klor. Since 1994 the crew have also worked in graphic design, inspired by the work of English graphic designer Neville Brody, and started to apply it to their graffiti (and vice versa). They describe their art as ‘when street knowledge meets technology and graffiti melds with graphic design.’
Scien has said, ‘The great thing about graffiti is its impact on the streets. But most of people don’t like graffiti, simply because they don’t understand it. In a city you have probably less graffiti than advertising, and most of it is certainly uglier than certain graffiti pieces – so to come up with something that gets an impact on people in this visual jungle, it is a real challenge.’
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November 30, 2011
Société Bic (pronounced ‘Bick’ in English) is a company based in Clichy, France, founded in 1945, by Baron Marcel Bich known for making disposable products including lighters, ballpoint pens, and shaving razors; they also manufacture magnets and watersports products including surfboards, kayaks, and dinghies.
The Bic pen, more correctly the Bic Cristal, was the company’s first product and 50 years later is still synonymous with the name Bic. The company’s US subsidiary accounts for more than half of the worldwide company’s sales.
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November 30, 2011
In finance, leverage (sometimes referred to as ‘gearing’ in the UK) is a general term for any technique to multiply gains and losses; common ways to attain leverage are borrowing money, buying fixed assets (non liquid assets such as real estate) and using derivatives (contracts to buy or sell something, such as call and put options respectively).
The most obvious risk of leverage is that it multiplies losses. A corporation that borrows too much money might face bankruptcy during a business downturn, while a less-levered corporation might survive. An investor who buys a stock on 50% margin will lose 40% of his money if the stock declines 20%.
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November 29, 2011
Nelsonic Industries is the name of an electronics manufacturing and development company that operated from Queens, NY in the early 1980s and throughout the 1990s when it was acquired by the watch-manufacturer, M.Z. Berger. Nelsonic produced numerous toy-themed wrist-watches during their existence, often targeting younger audiences with likenesses of characters from popular franchises such as Barbie, the Ghostbusters, and Mario. Nelsonic became notable during the early mid-1980s for being the first electronics company in the United States to produce game-watches (multi-purpose electronic devices capable of functioning as both a time-piece and as a typically electronic game). Today the original Nelsonic Game Watch line has entered the secondary market and individual Game Watches have become highly sought-after collectibles that often fetch high prices on online auction websites.
Throughout its existence, Nelsonic produced pop-culture-themed wrist-watches for children and young adults. The chronograph digital watches, typically made of molded plastic, invariably featured an alarm and utilized LCD display-screens to display the time for their wearers. In time the company began manufacturing multi-purpose units that used the LCD screen to combine time display functions with simple video game functions. These simple video games were variations on the theme of the Calculator watch.
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November 29, 2011
A calculator watch is a watch with a calculator built into it. Calculator watches first appeared in the Mid 1970s introduced by Pulsar and Hewlett Packard. Several watch manufacturers have made calculator watches over the years, but the Japanese electronics company Casio produced the largest variety of models. In the mid-1980s, Casio created the Data Bank calculator watch, which not only performed calculator functions, but also stored appointments, names, addresses, and phone numbers. The modern eData version of its Data Bank watch has greater memory and the ability to store computer passwords.
When mass produced calculator watches appeared in the early 1980s (with the most being produced in the middle of the decade), the high-tech community’s demand created a ‘feature war’ of one-up-manship between watch manufacturers. However, as the novelty of this new electronic fad watch wore off, they became, much like pocket protectors and thick glasses, associated with nerds and today are no longer considered to be in vogue. Recently, they have come back in style and are worn ‘ironically’ by hipsters.
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November 29, 2011
The Dymaxion [dahy-mak-see-uhn] car was a concept car designed by U.S. inventor and architect Buckminster Fuller in 1933. The word Dymaxion is a brand name that Fuller gave to several of his inventions, to emphasize that he considered them part of a more general project to improve humanity’s living conditions. The car had a fuel efficiency of 30 mpg, and could transport 11 passengers.
While Fuller claimed it could reach speeds of 120 miles per hour, the fastest documented speed was 90 miles per hour. Japanese American artist Isamu Noguchi was involved with the development of the Dymaxion car, creating plaster wind tunnel models that were a factor in determining its shape, and during 1934 drove it for an extended road trip through Connecticut with congresswoman Clare Boothe Luce and actress Dorothy Hale.
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November 29, 2011
A jalopy [juh-lop-ee] (also clunker or hooptie or beater) is a decrepit car, often old and in a barely functional state. A jalopy is not a well kept antique car, but a car which is mostly rundown or beaten up.
As a slang term in American English, ‘jalopy’ was noted in 1924 but is now slightly passé. The term was used extensively in the book ‘On the Road’ by Jack Kerouac, first published in 1957, although written from 1947. The equivalent English term is old banger, often shortened to banger, a reference to older poorly maintained vehicles’ tendency to backfire.
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November 28, 2011
Rat bikes are motorcycles that have fallen apart over time but been kept on the road and maintained for little or no cost by employing kludge (ad hoc) fixes. The concept of keeping a motorcycle in at least minimally operational condition without consideration for appearance has probably characterized motorcycle ownership since its earliest days. The essence of a rat bike is keeping a motorbike on the road for the maximum amount of time while spending as little as possible on it. This calls for adaptation of parts that were not designed to fit the model of bike in question. Most Rat bikes are painted matte black but this is not a requirement.
‘Survival bikes’ are bikes that may appear to be rat bikes, but are not. They are influenced by the ‘Mad Max’ films. The term survival bike itself originated in the British motorcycle press particularly ‘Back Street Heroes,’ and the now-defunct AWoL in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
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