Iodinated seafood party together ignoring the scale

It’s half past three in the morning and I write this post while the book about use of iodized salt in bakery is printed. Infographics and tables I wrote about couple of weeks ago (Infographics Howto: Iodide! Iodate!) were used on the pages of this book. Some of them changed a bit, others changed a lot after discussions and specifications of charts targeting. Furthermore there happened to be two books not one as it was expected at the beginning. The second one is thinner about use of iodized salt in Denmark. I’ll write about changed charts at first and then I’ll describe the books makeup process.

Infographics

Some graphs wished to stay on certain places on the pages of the book so it would be easier to read them. Other graphs were disturbed with the fact they can visualize more information they visualized in the prior editions. More graphs just wanted to be even more handsome.

Culinary treatment impact on iodine contents in seafood (Fig. 1, page 8)

Usage of iodinated additives to impact iodine concentration in bakery (Fig. 2, page 23)

Captions on this graph were moved below so they won’t mess with the figure caption.

Impact of iodized salts on dough smearing (Fig. 3, page 30)

The long way I made selecting and composing the appearance of bars ended with simple solution. Though it looks obvious all prior steps were needed not just for this graph but also for other charts with bars in this books, including the first one described above.

Impact of iodized salts on gasification ability of the flour (Fig. 4, page 31)

As long as numbers are too close that would be to impossible with just scaling them to feet the page width. That’s why the bars have the parallel similar parts withdrawn so the difference is shown zoomed in. The skipped parts are properly marked.

Growth of the diameter with the lapse of time (Fig. 6, page 33; Fig. 7, page. 34; Fig. 9, page 36)

All three charts visualizing the growth of the diameters of colonies and mycelium with the lapse of time changed too. They now look less avant-garde while colour coding and captions are now more readable and obvious. I would send the prior edition to biennale while letting the second to find its mission in book.

Layout

Finished book in Russian is available for download in PDF (1,5 Mb). It is also available in miniature:

I start with the statement I was in a horrible rush and even though I tried my best to work on every line I’ve must have skipped something. I understand it’s not ok but I’ll try to live with that. I was in a lack of about a week and about a box of Portuguese vino verde ;)

I have a thing and a pony who helped me. Pony is bo, who edited the whole text way more readable than it was in source. The book is ‘Manual for Publisher and Author’ by Milchin and Chelcova.

Everything started with the grid which was then implemented in second book too.

Grid is flexible enough to work for one and two column layout (mouse over spreads to see the grid for them)

Grid works for one column layout with wide external margin and two column layout with equal margins. Two column layout is used particularly for appendix which is the separate document to show it is not part of the book text while it is part of the whole book.

Graphs and tables in both layouts are wider than text part. That makes reading more dynamic and pleasant. They are also placed after the text they illustrate to make reading more straightforward and one-directional.

Some tables were rotated 90° to make them more readable. The contents of table cells was aligned the way it would be easier to compare the data.

(Table 3, page 27)

I removed some obvious column headings to minimize redundant information.

There seemed to be a problem when I started working with appendix. As appendix is a separate document it has the separate page numbering. I spent and hour and a half to force Indesign to make it automatically but hand to place page numbers by hand ;) Appendix page numbering is placed on top of every page aligned to external edge.

Hint for Mac OS X users: you can use default application called Grapher (Applications › Utilities) to format mathematical formulas. After the formula is edited in Grapher copy it to the clipboard and paste as PDF to any application that supports that.

After I was to tired to even look at the book I made I started the creation of table of contents. As I worked with Indesign styles it was easy to compose TOC in couple of clicks but I wanted to use the whole spread and make something more creative.

I finished with way more traditional TOC so readers won’t be distracted starting from the third page.

The same decoration was used for appendix table of contents.

‘Dutch’ Book

This book in Ukrainian is also available for download (PDF, 706 Kb) and can be the fist for the eyes in miniature

The main problem with this book was insufficient number of pages that’s why one column is stretched on two column width. The tables don’t hang wasn’t so expressive but still dynamic.

Though the tables were more readable then in first book I still had to edit them.

(Table 3, page 10)

I united age groups with colour, made the left column more readable and changed the header so the table was easier to use.

It was a pity I had no source of the chart so I had to work with what I’ve got. To place make it more appealing and fit it into the layout.

(Chart 1, page 11)

I retrieved chart from PDF, made bars width equal and added marks on the left so the reader could estimate data concentration.

(Table 4, page 11)

One more long table was separated in two columns and it’s subheading was contrasted. Changes made table more readable and thus easy to use.

***

I saved all the fils, sent them to publisher and didn’t look at them for a couple of days. And now, when I am not sick looking at them, at three thirty in the morning I finalized the story of book creation. Pretty, usable and readable book made out of not so clear for the reader sources.

Sign on the door of the office I share with Bo

I wrote a column for Yeti News about branding using game technologies which is a mix of one and a half clever thoughts and something stupid. If you’re good in reading in Russian, you are welcome to read my column.

Please excuse the photo quality because it was taken with some Android HTC phone first generation iPhone

As you may know I’ve broken the glass on my iPhone 4 16Gb that was bought in Great Britain and was never locked. After that it was replaced with brand new front glass and I broke the back glass. So the back part of my iPhone now looks pretty much like decorated with stained glass and doesn’t cut the user because it’s very cool glass that looks quite stylish. As the glass was broken by me one can be sure it is designer’s edition of iPhone. As opposed to other designers I’ll sell my edition much cheaper than iPhone 4 costs here in Kiev (even if you decide to replace the back glass the final price would be still lower than used iPhone). You are welcome to contact me on this matter.

And if you still vague if the back glass is so important here is a story for you I wrote this winter. Thanks to it you would be as sure as I am that iPhone is not just about the back glass but more about user experience and being and iPhone.

Yet another story about every detail that matters

It’s cold in here, must be winter — paraphrasing pick up joke. I wear gloves already because I like wearing them and I don’t like to have cold hands. This morning I was in a hurry going down the street and listening music using default headphones attached to my iPhone 4. In a rush I was in I felt an overwhelming need yo know what time it was. As I wear no watches because I have clock in a phone the first impulse was to take the phone out of the pocket, slow down and look at it. Not the sort of things you do in a rush. Almost not thinking about what I was doing I just squeezed mic on default headphones wire to turn on voice dial and yelled angrily: ‘What time is it?’ in Russian Realizing what I was doing while asking the phone I expected ‘i don’t understand what you are asking better luck next time’ tone but was surprised to hear ‘The time is ten hours twenty four minutes’. The reply was in Russian too. Know what? That just brightened my morning!

I don’t know if other phones have this option but know I expect my phone to answer any question I have. I’ll start with: What’s the answer to the question of life the universe and everything?

***

I am not joking, my iPhone 4 is for sale. Please email or leave a comment below. Thank you ;)

Not so long ago me and my fellow antique, travel and glamour photographer from Minsk started a project called Walkyrie. Time passed by and here we are with helveticized vintage photo number 100. One-wow-hundred. It’s not just some kind of milestone or a reason to have some champagne but also some kind of a birthday.

As we are going to print the catalogue of walkyries in the nearest future but not today and we wanted with all two of our hearts to do something special to celebrate we’re 100 walkyries high, we decided to create the thing we’ve never saw before — ebook stuffed with artistic material like any printed design or art catalogue. The format chosen was ePub. You can read it with reader on your mobile device or computer. There are two versions of album (every is about 15 Mbytes): Walkyrie × 100 which should work with any and every reader and the iBooks special edition Walkyrie × 100 Interactive. You can always find links to both versions on walkyrie.org. I recommend to download interactive version if you’re using iBooks on your iPhone, iPod or iPad. Here is a tip how to add ePub to iBooks from Apple. And while the file is downloading let me tell you how it was creating the interactive art catalogue.

Why so interactive?

The idea of creating interactive ePub that can be viewed with default applications on idevices captured my mind long ago but I didn’t pay much attention to it. One day Ameagari asked in his twitter if anyone saw an interactive ePub. I didn’t and didn’t find any true interactiveness on the web. So I made one now ;)

It wasn’t so easy

My friend got a special t-shirt from NYC with lettering ‘fuck rude people, fuck subways, fuck rain, fuck high prices…’ and so on. I can make such t-shirt after creating and testing Walkyrie × 100 Interactive for iBooks. The words except ‘fuck’ would be ‘webkit’, ‘z-index’, ‘font-family’, ‘jquery, ‘iBooks’ etc. I’ll tell you why.

The interactivity of our artistic album is in the ways you browse it and get information. You can use it as an ordinary ebook but you can also click the circle (SVG image to look good on every screen resolution) and get a walkyrie fortune — random of 100 pages with pictures. It’s like fortune cookie.

Another interactive future is the ability to see the transcript if you can’t read it on the image.

Both things are nothing special but we didn’t want any more. May be in the next version ;)

Interactiveness doesn’t work almost anywhere except iBooks and even iBooks are not so good with it. You have almost no control on font choice, size and text align. You can’t control z-index (overlapping of elements) without tricks. You can’t control items layout some times (I had to use bloody tables, back to 2002). You can’t control if items will fit one page or more. The known bug is that sometimes, when one is leafing the catalogue backwards in iBooks on iPhone and then one does it the normal way blank pages may appear but not on the regular basis. Remember the t-shirt?

Tips

I think some of my beloved readers and you, the pretty girl from Korea, who googled this page, will find the following information interesting. There would be just lines of technical info so everyone not interested can skip to the next chapter.

Any ePub file is the zipped collection of some stuff and .xhtml’s with CSS, Javascript and other stuff you need on the pages like images. I made ePubs using Sigil for two reasons. First is it has perfect name that suits my needs and magic. Second is it works and has version for Mac OS X. Also it’s opensource if that matters for you. The shortened structure of the book in unusable and hard to edit tree view (hello, opensource) is below.

To work with elements I used jQuery. To react to touches I used this code:

1. $('#transcript').bind('touchstart', function(e){
2. …
3. });

To hack the issue with z-index (iBooks just acts if it was Internet Explorer 3 to it) I had to call webkit for help:

1. var tra=$('.help').height()+30;
2. $('.help').css('-webkit-transform','translateY(-'+tra+'px)');

That’s all nothing more interesting there. I think everyone interested is capable with embeddin SVG image with all that Midxmidymaxymidy ;)

Read don’t interact

All the readers I tested on touch devices aren’t capable with interactivity you can provide in book. They don’t expect you to interact with the book as they have to provide you interaction with the application. So when you have an interactive area on any page of you ebook and user taps it it’s quite not obvious if he expects it to interact (as he may be not used to interactivity and know nothing about it) or just wants application to show menu or some information. While iBooks handled everything not bad I had to remove showing the tip when you tap the photo and create the separate link. The reason is in the tests: I myself accidentally tapped the photo when I wanted to flip the page and though I was touching just the right side of the screen. And as you can control almost nothing the creating of interactive ux is quite a challenge. Also iBooks doesn’t provide any back/forward navigation so if you even clicked a link in an ordinary book to see the notes there is no simple way to get back to reading.

Anyway!

Get our walkyries on your device and enjoy having them with you. You can always impress you friends, colleagues or have something to look it while eating pizza.

As it is and art object our walkyries catalogue is notable on every bookshelf even if it’s virtual!

***

This is the second ebook challenge for me in last week and a half that was made not much longer then previous. Something is in the air.

Yes that’s the screenshot of the site described below

Know how to make ideal strawberry crème? Take fresh strawberry, little bit of blender, three smiles, cream, something listed in recipe, vanilla and make it to cooperate somehow. We don’t have any strawberries, and have bunch of smiles and photos taken while walking and made to look a little bit vintage. As in an old joke, we just had to add Helvetica texts and serve. So take your mental spoons, my dear intellectual foodies, because we are serving to the table of your imagination the Walkyrie = photo × helvetica.

Today was the day to buy cider and meet bear in the grass. Real cider and toy bear. Couple of weeks was the time to draw a logo with “anime like fox” and company name. As to me my drawing suits Firefox loving mac-nazi t-shirt more, but logo consumer was happy. And I was and am happy. Leave you to taste cider.

So Apple announced it’s iPad that looks much like iPod that was rolled and now supports 3G networks. Though I expected normal Mac OS X on it, not awkward iTunes syncing clumsiness called iPhone OS or something much like it, I think that this product is a big step forward. No, I won’t buy it now or in the next generation, but I can see positive trends.

First of all, there is a dock that is also a keyboard. I think that bluetooth keyboards would be supported too. That’s a real rush forward and I’ll tell you why. Furthermore, developing bigger variety of iPad’s Apple can make the screen size bigger, add camera, install normal OS on them, call the whole line of products iPad Pro and — voilà — replace notebooks and iMacs! Why do you need them if you can take your computer with you literally everywhere. Take it to your work, place it in the dock and work. Take it to your girlfriend and watch latest The Big Bang Theory episode lying in bed. I think this trend would rock. Especially if they add the keyboard to that fancy case.

Second, they’ve shown that normal applications can be made to run under OS that controls iPad. There is iWork already. I don’t expect for Adobe Photoshop or Final Cut Studio but that’s already enough for those who need notebooks just for presentations, movies and pictures. And I think it’s not less then 80% of users.

Nevertheless right now Apple just reinvented the photo frame. You’ll ask me “But what about all that innovations?” That’s what reinvention was about.

Every time when I start doing something for periodical publications I can hardly choose between blue-black and black-blue combinations. This color combinations is diluted by grey, which makes it more — hahaha — delightful. Newspapers are mad about blue. Magazines are mad about red. It’s a good news that guys who made press color schemes didn’t paint our world. Otherwise we would live in the world without photosynthesis because there would be no green. We would choke — we can’t breathe without the oxygen.

Same here: we choke because of unbelievable variations: white letters on blue or red plate or red/blue letters over the photo. Wow! And now to something completely different — red letters with black decoration. Sometimes when we are good enough they give us orange — same as red but more yellow. Ok, guys, it’s too hard to think about more then one or two colors. Then make it black and white. Adding perfect photos and info graphics would do the trick. I still can’t get why the are just two options. Option one — red. Option two — blue. I am quite sure that according to some triangle shaped matrix of emotional connections to colors (that marketers like so much) red is drawing attention and blue looks quite serious, but there is one more thing… I remember how I, feeling myself like Paulo Сoehlo, explained the obvious things: highlighting everything means highlighting nothing.

Existing medias got their style but it can be freshen up with new ideas. Take a look at this couple of good examples from colleagues to get inspired ;)

Times Online added vivid color that made their pages fresh and eye-catching

It’s ok not to choose one lifetime-color for your unique media. You can choose a set of colors or, the situation I like moor, create logo that is recognized in any color variations.

Title on Esquire covers can be red, blue and other ;)

Logo on BG cover can be colored any way designer want though reader would recognize it anyway

***

This is not “How to create design for your Media in 5 easy steps” tutorial. This is not quite fresh new about colors. There are not just blue and red, there are a couple… millions colors more. The most overwhelming thing is that you can you them! Как оказалось, повоевать за синий цвет — трендовое стремление!

“Warsaw zombies attacking Berlin pedestrian” on flickr

How were things invented couple of ages ago? You tied key to kite, set under the apple tree and waited while physics did its work. Not the most laborious process. You just had not to mix up what to tie and where to sit. Inventions are much easier nowadays: google it, find it, twitter it and here’s you fresh baked invention!

Nevertheless there are some freaks who glue keys to the hedgehogs, launch pines to the orbit, sit under different objects, clap the desolate falling tree in lonely rainforests with one hand and act even more meaningful trying to find something unique and interesting. So new and useful that everyone would say “ORLY!!!” and understand how the Universe is working.

Such a perfect intro and it’s in vain.