What is it: A 62-slide summary pack about the past trends in web design right up trends in 2010 by Tijs Vocker.
Why is it cool: It’s entertaining, enlightening and relevant to our specialty: communications. It also showcases slideshare.net which is filled with business-targeted slideshows, so you should browse to your heart’s content for almost instant gratification.
Where to find it: here!
Submitted by: Rosemary Butcher
What is it: A Harvard psychologist theorises that dreams are basically extra “thinking time”, but thinking that it is more visual and ‘free’, making it better suited for solving problems requiring “projected visualisation” (e.g. innovating a device) or thinking “out of the box” (e.g. approaching a problem from outside the conventional wisdom).
Why is it cool: Evolutionary principles suggest that biology tends not to be wasteful. So, for something like dreaming, which has been around for millions of years, it must have some functionality – and certainly empowering creatures with a second mode of thinking would be an advantage! Besides, it’s a cool way to explain waking up with one of those “ah ha!” moments!
Where to find it: here!
Submitted by: John Cucka
What is it: An interactive visualisation of the changes in grocery shopping over the last three decades. In Britain ready meals and tins are replacing fresh fish, baked beans have stayed pretty constant, and pure fruit juices have made a massive appearance… Click on the link to see how it works (do it, it’s fun!)
Why is it cool: An engaging way of bringing behaviour longitudinal behaviour change to life. While it’s a well-designed and compelling graphic though, it does not reflect the rise in consumer food culture, such as the commonality of “eating out”.
This kind of thing could be used to show how issues such as sustainability and carbon footprints are associated with the changing food over time.Some general estimated food miles/ embodied energy and carbon might provide a good way of demonstrating the environmental impact of people’s food choices.
Where to find it: here!
Submitted by: Gemma Enright
What is it: A (now disappeared) zoomable panorama of historic, old Sydney.
Why is it cool: Look at how it has changed and how much hasn’t changed. With everything we do it is important to have an understanding of where you have been to help pave the way forward to the future.
Where to find it: panorama here! more images here!
Submitted by: Erin Hearn
What is it: The Hayden Planetarium has developed a Digital Universe Atlas, which stores, and continually updates, the most accurate observations of the known objects in the universe, including locations and movement (ie it’s four-dimensional!).They’ve developed this data into a video tour of the universe, starting at the biggest natural feature on our planet (the Himalayas), zooming out to the extent of our knowledge of the universe, and then back.
Why is it cool: Humans are visual creatures, and often the sheer scale of the universe overwhelms our ability to perceive just how big, in both size and time, the universe is. This video helps our comprehension just a little bit, and in doing so gives us a bit more perspective on the universe and our place in it.
Where to find it: here!
Submitted by: John Cucka
What is it: A short piece drawing attention to the way in which fashion advertising plays on the tension between outrage and sexuality. The blogger suggests that this is an attempt for advertising to render itself immune to subversion and ridicule by becoming ambiguously outrageous – its own parody.
Why is it cool: The advertising (and advertiser) deliberately avoids standing for anything except ‘look at me’; what one might call the art of vacuity. It raises some interesting philosophical questions about contemporary values and the extent to which we are actively discouraged by the ‘insiders’ from taking a stand for or against anything – the ultimate ‘whatever’ mindset.
Where to find it: here!
Submitted by: David Tunnicliffe
What is it: A compilation of sketch drawings by people (of various demographics and vocations) describing what the internet “looks like”. There’s also facilities for uploading your own sketch.
Why is it cool: The internet can be likened to a mini-cosmos, where matter is created and destroyed constantly, and the true size, whilst ever expanding, is never fully known. Our understanding of it is limited to virtual perceptions, and being vision-centric beings, begs interesting questions like what shape it is and how are things positioned relative to each other.
Where to find it: here!
Submitted by: John Cucka
What is it: A new study has found that the colour of a sport team’s uniform will actually influence a referee’s split-second decision making ability. When people are wearing red they tend to get more favourable treatment from refs.
Why is it cool: How many leading brands are red? While we know plenty of stuff about how the symbology of red (energy, power etc) can influence emotional reactions to brands, this is a good example of how colour can influence people even when they are trying their best to be rational and unbiased. Obvious applications for packaging research.
Where to find it: here!
Submitted by: Liz Pridham
What is it: A colour wheel where the names shown are the aggregate responses of english speaking people around the world when asked to name a randomly shown colour.
Why is it cool: Aside from being a fascinating look at the way language maps to “fact”, it also supports the need to qualitatively explore meaning from surveys.
Where to find it: here!
Submitted by: John Cucka
What is it: This is an article looking at interactive light displays in cities. Some are for art’s sake, but some are tied to real data, such as one that beams the emotional state of participants in a city onto a building. In this way, traditional advertising has a foil – something owned by and representative of the people. The article underscores the contrast:
‘Advertising dominates the public space, points at our shortcomings and tells us what we need in order to feel good. Our economy is an “economy of deficiency”, based entirely on dissatisfaction,’ KriKortz explains. ‘Through this light installation, the city’s denizens can demonstrate collectively how they feel. The result is a psychological diagnosis of society.’
Why is it cool: With all the work we do with advertising and communications, tapping into people’s emotions to help sell things, it’s nice to see a different way of using emotions to communicate.
Where to find it: article is here! one of the sites mentioned is here!
Submitted by: Mandy Ayles
