Digital Ephemera for Wednesday, October 5, 2011

Another Wednes­day has rolled around, so here’s my weekly col­lec­tion of inter­est­ing dig­i­tal ephemera I’ve found pok­ing around the vast Inter­net waste­land. Think of me as your guide through the eclec­tic dig­i­tal desert…

Today’s Menu

• Art & Design
• Motion Graphics & Video
• Marketing
• Social Media
• Something Cool
• Something Strange
• Something Terrible
• Three Sites Worth Checking Out (Chess Edition)

Art & Design

The Evolution of Baseball card Design 1887-2011
This is a fun collection of Baseball Cards from designer Stacy David Wallingford. Just like the players, I’d have to say that even the graphics seem to have beefed up dramatically. I’m guessing they’d test positive for PhotoShop.

Case Study: The Revenger’s Tragedy Initial Design
Okay a bit of a shameless plug for my own article, but it’s a nice post that exposes my design philosophy and methodology. Take a look at how I came up with a design for GreenStage’s production of The Revenger’s Tragedy.

Motion Graphics & Video

Teal and Orange – Hollywood, Please Stop the Madness
A great rant on the overuse of color correction from filmmaker Todd Miro on the desaturation of the palette in Hollywood films of late. I don’t totally agree, but it’s a great rant nonetheless.

L.A. Timelapse
This is beautiful, and as John Nack says: “Colin Rich has done the nearly impossible: He’s made me find Los Angeles beautiful.”

LA Light from Colin Rich on Vimeo.

Table 7
A very cute, clever and well executed short film. -via Neatorama

John Dies at the End
Okay, I don’t know what this is about even after reading this article. But I sure want to see it!

Marketing

Seth Godin’s Blog

Many people have heard of Seth Godin, if you haven’t you should! His daily missives on marketing, communications and humanity are not to me missed. A truly invaluable inspiration for those navigating the murky waters of modern marketing.

Social Media

What Was There?

This site is an experiment in collective history. Using google maps and user submitted photographs they aim to create build a visual history of the world. A worthy goal!

Something Cool

Digital Dead Sea Scrolls

After over 24 centuries, the work of archaeologists, scholars and historians the Dead Sea Scrolls will be accessible to everyone thanks to Google’s technology. Google and The Israel Museum, Jerusalem have teamed up and are celebrating the launch of the Dead Sea Scrolls online. As reported on Google’s Blog:

Now, anyone around the world can view, read and interact with five digitized Dead Sea Scrolls. The high resolution photographs, taken by Ardon Bar-Hama, are up to 1,200 megapixels, almost 200 times more than the average consumer camera, so viewers can see even the most minute details in the parchment. For example, zoom in on the Temple Scroll to get a feel for the animal skin it’s written on—only one-tenth of a millimeter thick.”

Something Strange

Cthulhu vs. the Sith (or the Carrot Monster Revenge)
A cute, if strange stop motion animation involving vegetables, legos and the unmentionable horror from beyond the stars.

Something Terrible

Worst Band Ever Butchers Pink Floyd
So bad, it’s almost good… almost!

Three Sites Worth Checking Out (Chess Edition)

• It’s Your Turn. My favorite online chess (and other board game) site. If you want to challenge me at chess challenge Ulysses 2004.
• The Chess Website YouTube Channel. Great video chess lessons and lectures.
• US Chess. The US Chess Federation official site.

A Map of the Underworld according Virgil’s Aeneid Rendered as a Subway Map

Design Something Everyday 11/365: In honor of my love of maps, information graphics and Virgil, I decided to imagine Aeneas journey as if it were a subway map. So enjoy. Don’t forget your subway token’s for Charon!

I have always loved maps, as a child I would look at our world atlas and ponder the far flung reaches of the globe. Then I discovered a historical atlas at my school and realized that maps could not only take you horizontally across the globe but also vertically in to the distant past.

A period I found particularly fascinating was the Roman Empire. I’d gaze at the maps showing the roads stretching out from Rome like a web uniting the disparate corners western world under the the banner of The Senate and People of Rome – SPQR.

The great poet Publius Vergilius Maro, better known to us today as Virgil wrote his masterpiece the Aeneid at the same time Rome was nearing the apex of it’s power and confidence. This magnificent poem was written to, amongst other things, create a mythologized past for the Romans of the first century CE, particularly for Virgil’s patron, the Emperor Augustus. As such, the poem depicts the Romans  as a people not great at skill in art, destined to rule.

Let others better mold the running mass
Of metals, and inform the breathing brass,
And soften into flesh a marble face;
Plead better at the bar; describe the skies,
And when the stars descend, and when they rise.
But, Rome, ‘t is thine alone, with awful sway,
To rule mankind, and make the world obey,
Disposing peace and war by thy own majestic way;
To tame the proud, the fetter’d slave to free:
These are imperial arts, and worthy thee.”
–The Aeneid, Book 6 Translated by John Dryden

This passage takes place during a conversation between Aeneas and his dead father Ancheises in the underworld. This is direct allusion to Homer and The Odyssey. In Homer’s work must his hero Odysseus must visit a cave where he will summon the dead seer Tiresias (amongst other dead celebs). By doing this he will gain the knowledge to compete his quest and finally reach the far shores of Ithica.

In the Aeneid, Aeneas has the same quest but he actually has to travel through the land of the dead, instead of just waiting at the gate like Odysseus. This is one of the most important and vivid parts of the poem. His journey has inspired artists and poets for centuries, now it has inspired a daily design and underworld subway map!

Links & Sources:

• The basic outline of the map was taken from Alice K. Turner’s truly amazing book A History of Hell. It would be devilish of me not to recommend it.
• The Aeneid translated by John Dryden via The Internet Classics Archive at MIT. The recent Robert Fagels translation looks really good too.
• Free Audio Version of  The  Aeneid via Libravox.org (also the Dryden version… yeah Public Domain!)
• Underworld & the Afterlife: A good article about Greco-Roman ideas of, well the underworld & the afterlife via Carlos Parada of Greek Mythology Link. I used a little of this for the subway of the underworld map.