Ikea Changes Their Typeface

Ikea, the Swedish home furniture chain, recently changed their typeface from a customized version of Futura to the more commonplace font Verdana. The change has caused an uproar in design circles. Complaints focus on the fact that the company, known for innovative and affordable design, has chosen a typeface invented by Microsoft for the computer screen. In his blog, Seen&Done, Jamie Latendresse laments “Why Verdana, Why Ikea, WHY?” In The New York Times, Ikea, surprised by the outrage, explained that the new font is more effective for use on the Internet and in different languages.

Irving Penn: June 16, 1917 – October 7, 2009

Photographer Irving Penn died this week. Penn was considered one of the twentieth century’s most influential photographers. He was most famous for his photographs of fashion models and celebrities. Penn had a long working relationship with Vogue magazine and collaborated with two of the most inventive magazine art directors of the era, Alexey Brodovitch and Alexander Liberman. He also photographed still lifes (see below) and the not-so-famous. The Getty Center in Los Angeles  is currently showing an exhibition of Penn’s photographs of tradespeople with the tools of their profession.

"Ripe Cheese." The image is from the book Still Life by Irving Penn, available in the VCUQatar Library.

Recent Journal Articles on Qatar

The Interim Dean of Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar, Mehran Kamrava, recently published an article on Qatar, “Royal Factionalism and Political Liberalization in Qatar,” in the Middle East Journal about the internal politics of the ruling family. The summer 2009 issue also contains two other articles on the State: “Qatar’s Labor Markets at a Crucial Crossroad,” by RAND analysts Claude Berrebi, Francisco Martorell and Jeffery C. Tanner, and “Qatar’s Relations With Israel: Challenging Arab and Gulf Norms” by Uzi Rabi of Tel Aviv University. Full text of these articles can be accessed through the main campus’ electronic resources using your eID.

Tariq Atrissi’s Blog

The Lebanese-born graphic designer, Tariq Atrissi, has been blogging about visual culture and design in the Arab world since 2005. Now located in the Netherlands where he runs his own design studio, Tariq Atrissi Design, Atrissi focuses on Arabic graphic and typographic design. He says, “the challenge lies in creating a design and typographic language that is truly unique to the region, with a strong local design flavor and not as a typical western design style, with the Arabic part of it added as an afterthought.” He most recently blogged about the first-ever graphic design week in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Those in Qatar might recognize the work he did for the tourism association in 2004 (below).

HTH (hope this helps) – websites to help decipher text-messaging shorthand

Text messaging shorthand has become increasingly common, not only in text messages and on Twitter, but also in emails, both personal and professional.  For those of you who come across acronyms that you are not familiar with are a number of websites that offer translations for terms like WOMBAT (waste of money, brains and time) and HAND (have a nice day). NetLingo.com has a list of acronyms and text shorthand, while LG’s DTXTR.com has a glossary translator that deciphers texting shorthand. These sights are popular with parents who want to know what their teenage children are saying to their friends. It is also helpful for professionals who want to be tech savvy and stay current with today’s trends. In fact some texting shorthand has been included in 2009 editions of the Merriam-Webster Dictionary and AP Stylebook. BFF (best friends forever) and IMO (in my own opinion) are in the stylebook, the dictionary includes LOL (laugh out loud).

Smart Answers

One of the most highly anticipated new search services is not a search engine but a computational knowledge engine.  WolframAlpha does not search the Internet for web pages, but instead searches its vast collection of data and facts and computes the answers to your specific search queries. Type in your birth date and you will retrieve a page full of statistics and facts about the day, including what time the sun rose and what phase the moon was in (a waning crescent moon on the day I was born). It can analyze the nutritional information for a type of food and tell you who wrote a particular song. What it won’t do is return a list of links to web pages on the Internet. Visit the examples page for additional information, organized by subject, on the types of searches it can do. If I search for the number of calories in a chocolate chip cookie, as shown in the image below, it will tell me the amount (142) and the percentage of the recommended daily amount of allowable calories.

Google’s similar image search

Google Labs recently unveiled its Similar Images search. Google Labs is a first phase for the company’s new products where users can test new features and give feedback to the engineers and researchers who developed them. The Similar Images search is currently one of more than a dozen prototypes, some will be eventually merged into Google while others will disappear.

The feature allows users to search for images using pictures rather than words. You start by searching for a word, then click the similar images link beneath the thumbnail photo to retrieve additional related items. Below is a search for Qatar roundabouts.

UNESCO World Digital Library

The Education City Central Library is one of the contributors to the UNESCO World Digital Library, which recently launched its website with an initial collection of about 1250 cultural treasures from around the world – books, maps, and other cultural items. Visit the website – in English, Arabic, and five other languages – at http://www.wdl.org/

Map from the collection of the Education City Central Library

You can save images in high resolution or share them through numerous social links.

Encyclopedia of Islam

The library has a new online resource, the Encyclopedia of Islam. The resource includes articles on influential Muslims, tribes and dynasties, past and present, plus geographical, historical and scientific information as it relates to the Islamic world. The database is accessed through the library homepage. See the library service desk for the username and password. (You do not use your VCU eID to access this.) Below is a portion of the entry on riyal. Did you know the word came from the Spanish word for silver?

Encyclopedia of Islam

Book Cover Archive

The Book Cover Archive is a collection of hundreds of book cover designs. The site is searchable by title, designer, art director and genre to name just a few options. But what I think is the coolest, and most relevant to us as a design school, is you can search the designs by typeface. Below is a sample of book covers using Bodoni.

The site also contains a blog on book-cover-related news and links to related websites and online portfolios of book cover designers.