What is your opinion on the spread of HTML in email? I can see the legitimate uses of bolding and italics, but more often then not even this minimal use of formatting seems to be overused. When it goes into fixed font sizes and cluttered graphic backgrounds, it becomes restrictive at best, especially for people with poor eyesight, and at worst all but unreadable even to someone with keen eyesight and much more patience than me. There are plenty of other reasons to favor plain text over HTML, such as bandwidth waste and security exploits, but what it really comes down to for me is that like all other forms of information junk, it stresses decorating the words more than the content of the words themselves.

I wanted to draw people's attention to what I think is an excellent piece of representation- the Ski resort maps they produce in France.

This is about the best scan I've found (and it's not brilliant), and I can find no information about them at all, but they are clear, easy to read, represent all the relevant data, and most impressively of all, manage to represent multi-valley systems in a way that preserves the pattern, arrangement, curvature and length of lifts and slopes. They are obviously a gross distortion, but they work brilliantly.

Does anyone have any more information about these maps?

There was a discussion about you today on the SIGIA mailing list. It seems that you said in your seminar that "a good web design means that you don't have to user test"... This is a very interesting view. How do you think one can reach such a good design without knowing the user needs and capabilities? Do good designers just have it intuitively, like the romantic artist of the XIXth century? Or maybe does good design not include usable design (what is "good", then?)

On a related matter: how long can a web design last? Is it possible for a web interface to be so perfect, in terms of interaction, that would just stay forever, although the technology is always changing. Of course, there are trends in graphic design and the use of technology: one day it's CSS, the other Flash, etc. But on the level of interaction, can it be possible to reach perfection on the web? Any examples come to mind?

Thanks a lot!

Sylvie

Is there a way to use virtual reality or manipulate images so that a doctor visiting a booth can have a "hands on" experience with a case study or float around a mechanism of action to get a real "feel" for it. There are meetings that use people but it's not always suitable to do so because of privacy issues etc.

Would there be a way to make this information come alive? But not be alive.

I go back all the way to 3D movies at the movie theater and I guess I'm trying to recreate some of that but in a modern, utilitarian way.

Thank you so very much.

Norma-Jeanne

On a recent trip to the National Air and Space museum, I noticed an exhibit about Patty Wagstaff, a well-known (in the right circles) aerobatic champion. Part of the exhibit includes one of her winning routines, documented in Aresti notation. Pilots competing in aerobatic competitions submit these routines to the competition judges, who then score the pilot; each maneuver has an associated difficulty which also figures into the score.

The Aresti key was later revised/updated by CIVA.

Thought these types of displays make a good companion to the diagrams of dance notation available in Tufte's book Envisioning Information.

For many years I've been using this Tidelog almanac, both for amateur astronomy and for sport fishing. This log has charming visual representations of ordinarily 'dry' data and it presents dynamic relationships between tides, the moon and sun in a way that is enjoyable and immediately understandable.

The website itself somewhat less than satisfactory; it uses poor quality JPEGs of the actual product rather than an image file made specifically for the web, but you can get an idea of what the design looks like. The actual log is quite well printed and bound nicely.

http://www.tidelog.com

David/sf

See this review of Nicholas Crane, Mercator: The Man Who Mapped the Planet for the immense distortions resulting from the achievement of rectilinear rhumb lines in translating the spaceland of Earth to the flatland of paper.

Except for a few leftovers, this thread has been replaced by PowerPoint Does Rocket Science,

My band is preparing to record our first full-length album, and I decided it would be helpful to prepare visualizations of our (complex) song structures for the producers to accompany our demo tape. My goal is to help the producers become familiar with our material as quickly as possible, while also spotting problem areas ("there are no drums here, so we'll need a click"), and providing a reference during mixing.

I whipped up a design for this and am looking for two things:

INPUT ON THE DESIGN

How is it? Can anyone recommend ways to improve it? Please keep in mind that I am on a very tight timeframe -- so anything highly elaborate is out.

REFERENCES TO SIMILAR WORK

Has this been done elsewhere? I would love to see other visualizations of song structure for this purpose.

Any input is greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Ryan