Output Communicators Blog2012-05-21T16:20:31ZOutput Communicators BlogCopyright 2012, Output Communicators BlogSPHPBLOGKindle typography offends But what about the typography? It's mostly justified, except where it isn't. Dashes appear without letter spaces either side, so they look like hyphens and thus change the meaning of the text. Has anyone else noticed? Does anyone else care?
Yes, they do. Searching on 'Kindle + typography' yields a cool 1.5 million results. Grabbing a fact at random (all those years working in PR; what do you expect?) I see that reading from a Kindle is 10% slower because the eye and brain must work harder to interpret the text.
I acknowledge all the advantages of ebooks but when I read fiction, I read for pleasure and good typography is part of that pleasure. That's the way I am; you could say it's my default setting. ]]>http://www.outputcomms.co.uk/blog/index.php?entry=entry110524-1057112011-05-24T00:00:00Z2011-05-24T00:00:00ZPicture this - Bigger Trees Near Warter It fills one whole wall of the gallery and all day long people are popping in and out to sit with it for a while. I went to see it, loved it, then had to go back after the local paper printed a small monochrome image. It looked different; shapes and shades which I hadn't noticed in the vast, full-colour version had somehow become obvious in a much more restricted medium.
It's not that surprising. Words can do the same thing, moving effortlessly from a web page to a brochure, from a poster to a swing-tag. Each one the same, every one just a little bit different.
Always assuming that you started out with the right words in the first place ...]]>http://www.outputcomms.co.uk/blog/index.php?entry=entry110404-1515202011-04-04T00:00:00Z2011-04-04T00:00:00ZFebruary, and the living is easy... This writer's life moves with the seasons and today I've passed an important point. For the first time this year, I've had to lower the blind because the sun was shining in my eyes when I started work. There's a patch of sunlight on one end of the office sofa, so I sat in it, like a cat, to have lunch. OK, so I'm still wearing a pulse warmer on my mouse hand to keep my wrist off the somewhat cool desk top (writers can sit for a very long time, hand on mouse, just about to make that critical edit).
On the windowsill, the African Violets are soaking up the sun and rewarding me with intense, almost luminous flowers. I keep wondering about that sunny window ledge. Should I have some sort of solar recharger on there so I can ripen the BlackBerry for free? Or would I have to use it for a million years in order to offset the energy used in making it?
Oh dear. The sun's just gone it. At least that's one problem solved. ]]>http://www.outputcomms.co.uk/blog/index.php?entry=entry110210-1348072011-02-10T00:00:00Z2011-02-10T00:00:00ZStatistical greetings and a happy Bear-mas to one and all Based on this year's Christmas card haul (not yet complete, but a very convenient number which makes the maths easy), here are my design and content findings:
Of all cards received, 82% are secular and 18% have some Christian connotation. Of the latter, 66% feature the Magi in some style or other.
Of all cards received, 38% feature snow scenes. This is pretty much like looking out of the window for most of the country - or like looking out of the window a couple of centuries ago. No-one has sent a snowbound Heathrow card.
Of all cards received, only 6% feature robins. This development has been welcomed by the Non-Exec who, for some reason, doesn't like robins.
Of all cards received, 32% depicted creatures other than robins (including kangaroos!). Of these creatures, the largest single species was bears (25% of all creature cards.)
So, what does that all mean? You tell me. Suggestions, please, on a Christmas card...]]>http://www.outputcomms.co.uk/blog/index.php?entry=entry101220-1108372010-12-20T00:00:00Z2010-12-20T00:00:00ZDon't be so tweeting rude! Now before he stood up,the organisers put up a hash tag, so that people could tweet the meeting. How very cutting edge. So what happened? Instead of living in the moment, actually listening to what the person in front of them had to say, certain audience members began tweeting the fact that they were at a seminar.
And what were they tweeting? Truly absorbing stuff, like "I'm here at X listening to Y." No you're not. You're fiddling with your phone!
If the whole audience had done it, we could have been a trending topic by the time the guy sat down. But then, no-one would have listened to what he had to say.
]]>http://www.outputcomms.co.uk/blog/index.php?entry=entry101115-1827382010-11-15T00:00:00Z2010-11-15T00:00:00ZWhat attention span? It's an education. He puts on headphones, plugs in, turns on and this huge wave of jealousy washes over me. It's so glossy, so sparkling, so responsive. (To clarify, I'm not talking about the water spaniel at this point.) He watches a cartoon; he flips into eBay, a keyboard pops up, he does stuff I don't understand; he does other stuff; he goes back to the cartoon. Now he's watching at a film. He's settled on one thing, at last.
Minutes go by. It must be a good film, because he's sticking with it. It doesn't look all that interesting though - just highly groomed young Americans smiling their way through anodyne routines. And maybe it isn't... because Headphone Man isn't actually looking at the screen any more, he's looking over at my book!
It puts me in mind of a great Charlie Brooker article (is there any other kind?) in last week's Guardian about the problems technology causes for writers trying to concentrate. Clearly it's a problem for readers / viewers / listeners too. Doing one thing at a time is now too much of a luxury, even in leisure time. ]]>http://www.outputcomms.co.uk/blog/index.php?entry=entry100918-1543392010-09-18T00:00:00Z2010-09-18T00:00:00ZLondon Shophound - an app is born But now the game moves on. Now I have a friend who's written (built? produced? devised?) an app. Called London Shophound, it's a shopping guide to ...well, work it out. It's for people who, having bought an iPhone, want to use it to buy lots of other things. It was only published (released? uploaded?) a few days ago and already it's bouncing around Google, appearing in Japanese travel listings, putting itself about.
See the difference? The books are on the shelf. The app is out there hustling. ]]>http://www.outputcomms.co.uk/blog/index.php?entry=entry100705-1801042010-07-05T00:00:00Z2010-07-05T00:00:00ZFalling in love again It goes like this.
I am moving a much loved piece of vintage furniture and notice part of a label on the inside. The label has a logo and initials which are not familiar to me. Curious, I put the initials and a bit of other info into Google images. This eventually leads me to name and a logo and -yes - it's the same as the one on my furniture.
I Google the name of the firm, which is now defunct, but eventually come up with PDFs of all their catalogues, at a site called the High Wycombe Electronic Furniture Archive, thoughtfully put online by Buckinhamshire New University. Scrolling through the pages of the manufacturer's 1933 catalogue, I find photographs of my furniture. I now know who made it, where and when.
How amazing is that? Without the net the task would have been almost impossible, and it's certainly not something I could have done from start to finish in an hour on a wet Sunday afternoon.
Internet and archivists: a marriage made in heaven - or, in this case, High Wycombe. ]]>http://www.outputcomms.co.uk/blog/index.php?entry=entry100614-1602482010-06-14T00:00:00Z2010-06-14T00:00:00ZInto each life a little ash must fall This could go on for weeks,or months - life changing stuff. Aside from the many thousands of stranded and/or disappointed people,we now have the imminent shortage of airfreighted exotic foods and the collapse of all sorts of just-in-time supply chains.
What will we discover about the way we live and work?
Let's hear it for teleconferencing, local foodstuffs, supply lines which are short and secure, and companies who don't shirk responsibilities to customers when the chips are down.
How is a civilisation with the collective attention span of a swarm of gnats going to cope with a news story which just goes on and on and on? What will the politicians do - because you can't negotiate with (or spin) a volcano. Primal forces just don't do deadlines.
This story isn't yet a week old. Watch and learn.
]]>http://www.outputcomms.co.uk/blog/index.php?entry=entry100418-1705472010-04-18T00:00:00Z2010-04-18T00:00:00ZI'll have a Ping gin Because we're all grown-ups and we're all writers, the talk is not of sex, drugs or even rock'n'roll. Instead the conversation hovers around writing, clients, editorial angst, the unfortunate rise of the reflexive pronoun in customer service dialogues,that sort of thing. Even blogs enter the conversation.
Then the question is raised. Do you use Pingomatic? What? It sounds as if we've been gatecrashed by a 1960s soap powder ad. For whiter whites and bright brights - use Pingomatic!
Except it's not a soap powder. It's a cute little online tool for promoting a blog - like this one. And two of us didn't know about it... and we felt so excited by the prospect...and how sad is that?
If girlies sit around in smart city bars talking about promoting their web sites, I guess Don Draper isn't ever going to come over to buy us drinks.