Bridging the analog/digital gap is a worthwhile consideration in designing today’s products and experiences. There are definitely cost, availability, scalability, and ease issues associated with digital products, but the digitization of an analog experience often loses a key element of the story.

Poladroid is a fantastic cross-over from the analog space to the digital realm. Highly recommended and very fun to use.

This is application for Mac users that converts a digital image into a very good imitation of a Polaroid photograph. Not only does the application make the noise of a Polaroid taking a photo, but you even have to wait for the image to “develop.” It’s funny, because Polaroid is “instant” film which was supposed to be an improvement on celluloid film, but in the digital age, Polaroid has been replaced with truly instant photography and now the formerly-known-as-instant Polaroid process is relatively time-consuming.

But seriously, download this application. It’s great. If you use a PC, it is supposed to be available some time in November.

(Thanks to Wummer. Hey, your Phillies did alright.)

Small collection of Royal insignias.

Apparently, someone else has been playing around in Adobe apps… Almost every major news source had run an image of an Iranian missile test that has since been called “apparently digitally altered.” New York Times has the scoop.

(A rare political post on Perpenduum, via Telstar Logistics)

“we only use small characters because it saves time. moreover, why have 2 alphabets when one will do? why write capitals if we cannot speak capitals?”

I’m glad that wallpaper has been making a comeback.

I was browsing Issuu this morning (thanks, David!), when I came across the preview of Work/Life, a “directory of Canadian Illustration & Photography”, which is currently enjoying an eponymous exhibition at UPPERCASE, in Calgary.

Canadian self-portrait (detail) by Kirstie Tweed

The idea behind Work/Life is to celebrate (and promote) Canada’s best. From the introduction:

Work/Life is a book celebrating Canadian illustration and photography…Participants were interviewed about their creative focus and artistic technique as well as their inspiration and aspirations…

Each participant was asked to provide a list of their top ten dream clients and the book will be sent to this master list on their behalf. We’re happy to report that some of our participants have already been commissioned, based on the links to their portfolios that we listed on the Work/Life project website.

Awesome!

One of the illustrators who caught my eye was Renata Liwska. Her pencil sketches and illustrations of lovable reminded me of curling up with and losing myself in a colorful picture book as a child, rather than the grim, black-and-white texts we adults are supposed to prefer.

Igor Beaver by Renata Liwska

Her portfolio is at wronghand.com.

Loewy was anything but modest. He was something of a dandy and terribly egocentric, so it is no wonder that he wrote an autobiography. The book is entitled Never Leave Well Enough Alone. In it, he describes his youth in France and his engagement in World War I, where he was a captain and earned seven medals and four citations for action in combat. At a point, he had dug a trench where he was stationed for some time. He had elaborately furnished the dugout with things from wrecked houses including chairs, red carped, a mirror, flowered wallpaper, drapes, and tufted pillows. He and a friend even planted geraniums. Loewy notes that he was displeased with the government issue military trousers, so he made his own.

I enjoyed going into action as a well-dressed combatant

Raymond Loewy’s storytelling is quite amusing and I most enjoyed his reminiscing on childhood days. His recollections are vivid and engaging and offer the reader a humanizing view of the design legend. I must say that the book is sparse in actually discussing design, although I enjoyed his statement that

Industrial design as far as I am concerned is 25 per cent inspiration and 75 per cent transportation.

The book is certainly worth a look. It’s light and pleasant reading and by the end you will feel like Raymond’s chum.

I’m reading The Wisdom of Crowds right now and couldn’t help but think about how it illustrated what seems so obvious from Surowiecki’s crystal prose: aggregating diverse ideas generally produces the best results. Sure, there sometimes needs to be a mechanism for picking the best, but that works pretty well for Linux, the Iowa Electronic Market, and, evidently, the Royal Mint.

Related: Get Helvetica Off Our Money

Event details are on the Whiskey & Chat page.

For those Woody Allen fans out there, I also just found out (via NotCot) that the typeface used in all his film credits is EF Windsor Elongated.

The hotel has their own pencils which are black with brass-colored eraser couplings and pink erasers. The pencil is stamped with the hotel name in white Futura typeface. It’s perfect. Born in 1924 via Paul Renner, it is one of the most widely used sans serif fonts. It can even be found on the moon.

You can learn more about the font and its usage and history on Typophile or Wikipedia, but I’ll leave you with two fine examples of Futura via Flickr: