Creativity

Creativity

…qualities like quiveriness and vulnerability come to mind when I think of creativity… creativity requires a sense of smell, a palate to taste the scents that make brilliance. All life feeds upon the random. Creativity is the haute cuisine. – Douglas Hofstadter ...
Colour etymology, naming light

Colour etymology, naming light

A complete quote from the book The art of looking sideways by Alan Fletcher: Colour words are acquired by cultures in a strict sequence according to anthropologists who analysed 98 widely differing languages. All languages have black and white. if there are three words, the third is red. If there are four, then it is ...
The difference between science and engineering

The difference between science and engineering

In science if you know what you are doing you should not be doing it. In engineering if you do not know what you are doing you should not be doing it. Of course, you seldom, if ever, see the pure state. – Richard W. Hamming ...
Piet Hein: astro-gymnastics

Piet Hein: astro-gymnastics

Go on a starlit night, stand on your head, leave your feet dangling outwards into space, and let the starry firmament you tread be, for the moment, your elected base. Feel Earth's colossal weight of ice and granite, of molten magma, water, iron, and lead; and briefly hold this strangely solid planet balanced upon your ...
da Vinci: love

da Vinci: love

One has no right to love or hate anything if one has not acquired a thorough knowledge of its nature. Great love springs from great knowledge of the beloved object, and if you know it but little you will be able to love it only a little or not at all. – Leonardo da Vinci ...
dodecahedron

Platos sacred geometry

Plato's sacred geometry: In  Euclidean geometry there are five Platonic solids. Each of them was associated with an element, and since there are five, one of these shapes were considered sacred by the old Greeks, and to know the shape, and to share that knowledge was punishable. Platonic solids have clear definitions, to quote Wikipedia: ...
Piet Hein: the paradox of life

Piet Hein: the paradox of life

A bit beyond perception's reach I sometimes believe I see that Life is two locked boxes, each containing the other's key. – Piet Hein (scientist, mathematician, inventor, designer, author, and poet extraordinare) ...
Piet Hein: what art is

Piet Hein: what art is

Art is this: art is the solution of a problem which cannot be expressed explicitly until it is solved. The shaping of the question is part of the answer. – Piet Hein (scientist, mathematician, inventor, designer, author, and poet extraordinare) ...
Guerrilla communication, street talk

Guerrilla communication, street talk

Guerrilla communication is a form of streetart, or simply a sense of humour that uses objects around us and makes us see a little differently. Here are some examples I have collected over the years. You might have to look close to see it... Certain forms of graffiti and scribbling on walls have been described ...
da Vinci: flight

da Vinci: flight

Once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return. – Leonardo da Vinci ...
Piet Hein: pennies and indecision

Piet Hein: pennies and indecision

Whenever you're called on to make up your mind, and you're hampered by not having any, the best way to solve the dilemma, you'll find, is simply by spinning a penny. No — not so that chance shall decide the affair while you're passively standing there moping; but the moment the penny is up in ...
superegg lamp

Piet Hein, danish design and the super-egg

Piet Hein was a modern danish renaissance man. He was born in 1905, died in 1996, studied mathematics, started art studies he never finished, started studies in theoretical physics and never finished that either. He wrote books, poetry ("gruks"); did illustration, designed objects and public spaces, researched mathematics and was a cosmopolitan. He is famous ...
Piet Hein: the nature of efficiency

Piet Hein: the nature of efficiency

In some instances, "efficiency" is the same as reading a sundial with the help of a flashlight. – Piet Hein (scientist, mathematician, inventor, designer, author, and poet extraordinare) ...
Interfaces, their buttons and the village idiot

Interfaces, their buttons and the village idiot

I stared at my friend's washing machine. It has a million buttons, a big wheel, a digital display and a pile of little red and orange lights, with the odd green thrown in. I consider myself not a complete idiot, but have little patience with domestic appliances. They are here to make our lives simpler ...
Visual science: the periodic table

Visual science: the periodic table

Oxygen tries to play nice with the other elements in the playground ...
Kingdom: animal

Kingdom: animal

(According to Linnaean taxonomy, there are three kingdoms: vegetable, animal, mineral) After you have exhausted what there is in business, politics, conviviality, and so on - have found that none of these finally satisfy, or permanently wear - what remains? Nature remains. – Walt Whitman The ultimate inspiration. Nature, the largest multivariate network there is ...
da Vinci: the development of a complete mind

da Vinci: the development of a complete mind

Principles for the Development of a Complete Mind: Study the science of art. Study the art of science. Develop your senses – especially learn how to see. Realise that everything connects to everything else. – Leonardo da Vinci ...
"Next station! Pituitary Gland!"

“Next station! Pituitary Gland!”

Over at http://rangelmd.com/ there is this genius post: Human anatomy as subway map ...
Douglas Hofstadter: creativity

Douglas Hofstadter: creativity

…qualities like quiveriness and vulnerability come to mind when I think of creativity… creativity requires a sense of smell, a palate to taste the scents that make brilliance. All life feeds upon the random. Creativity is the haute cuisine ...
Life network

Life network

Take the things that are interesting, and see if you can connect the dots. This is made in Gephi, an open-source network visualisation tool. This will eventually be an interactive browser for my other blog ...
What good old days?

What good old days?

Note: this is a post I wrote a few years ago, but it is still valid. I have been reading Design Observer on and off for a few years. Sometimes it's desperately navel-gazing, sometimes is preaching to the already converted, sometimes it's talking to a few insiders. Sometimes, it is good. The last time I ...
John Maeda: skill in the digital age

John Maeda: skill in the digital age

Skill in the digital age is confused with mastery of digital tools, masking the importance of understanding materials and mastering the elements of form ...
Beautiful statistics

Beautiful statistics

Hans Rosling, the hero of beautiful statistics, showing us the world as it actually is. By making statistics beautiful and demonstrating that the impossible is possible. Oh, and btw; you can play with the Gapminder tool yourself ...
Visual complexity: in defence of hard

Visual complexity: in defence of hard

In defence of hard is a splendid post from P.J. Onori, over at Adaptive Path. He argues eloquently that simplifying the visually complex is an affront to the human capacity; that the tendency for treating people like idiots makes us idiots. You are allowed to demand something of people: not everything is simple, and we should ...
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