Will more people take the stairs if they act as a giant piano? Will more people use public recycling bins if it also becomes an arcade game? Fun Theory shows that you can make the world better and have more fun at the same time.
The Art of Bookmaking
December 1st, 2009
Abigail Uhteg brings us through the process of handmaking her own book in this delightful stop-motion video and reminds us how much thought can go into a process that we rarely stop to think about.
How the H1N1 vaccine is made
November 24th, 2009
Understanding why it takes so long to produce and distribute vaccines on a national level.
Ben Fry and GE Visualize…
November 23rd, 2009
Projects Update
November 22nd, 2009
Some typography posters I made last year for the Ivy Film Festival.
Additionally, I’ve finally got around to updating and documenting my projects with sketches and final product pictures. I think I did a pretty good job with just my desk lamp and floor. I really need to take some professional photography classes…
Visualized: Choose Your Own Adventure Books
November 15th, 2009
Definitely one of the most intriguing items to come out of the 80’s were the Choose Your Own Adventure books. As tacky as they were, it was a very interesting effort to make books more “interactive.”As a kid, they offered countless hours of entertainment. I would read them over and over again so that I could figure out every possible ending. Recently, Christian Swineheart put together a very elegant visualization and analysis of the beloved CYOA books.
NyTimes – Interactive Narrative about Jobs
November 6th, 2009
Statistics can be boring. It’s crucial that we have them in news articles to put facts behind the story but I always though reciting numbers in a paragraph is such a waste. Statistical data takes a lot of work to generate but when you just list the numbers, it’s a bore to readers who view the data more as a necessity than part of the story. The New York Times shows us again that the numbers themselves can be the story.
Update: Find how people like you have been affected by the recession.
A Step into Sustainable Eating
November 6th, 2009
It was probably a bad idea, in retrospect, to start by telling everyone I would become a vegetarian. I was half-way through an environmental science class my last year at Brown University and I had just discovered how environmentally unsound meat-consumption could really be. Recently, Michael Pollan asserted, “A vegan in a Hummer has a lighter carbon footprint than a meat eater in a Prius.” While this might not have been factually sound, it’s hard to deny that with the astronomical amounts of food that the human population consumes, what we choose to eat can have a large impact on the environment. I have always strived to be a pretty environmentally conscious human being (coming from Berkeley, its hard not to) so I decided that I needed to think more about my eating habits.