BRITISH LIBRARY DELIVERS..

An early Christmas present was delivered by the British Library this week. It unveiled a million images that it has placed onto a free to use Flickr account.

Anyone can now browse, download, re-image or edit through the collection of illustrations. Each illustration is taken from the massive British Library resources of 17th to 19th century books it has in the archive in London.

I had an hour of browsing and curated my own collection of interesting map images below.
Click an image and it will open the British Library collection in a new tab.

#1: Leonardo Da Vinci's World Map. Da Vinci produced this between 1513 and 1515 (exact date not known). This is an incredibly important map as it is a) the first to name 'America' on it, b) the earliest map showing the West coast of America unconnected to Asia.
Drawn on a strange construction of what are known as Da Vinci-Reuleaux triangles. This is one of the two maps that when placed side by side make up two halves of the globe as Da Vinci saw them - a lot different to our usual representation of the world on a flattened cylinder.
This style of map based on Reuleaux geometry inspired Cahill Butterfly projection maps in the early 20th century.

Image taken from page 84 of 'A larger history of the United States of America to the close of President Jackson's administration ... Illustrated, etc' published 1885

#2: A very nice illustrated Edinburgh map, still showing agriculture in the city centre!
Image taken from page 279 of 'Cassell's Old and New Edinburgh ... Illustrated, etc' published in 1880


#3: The Earth as imagined by the Greeks in the time of Homer (not Simpson, the other one!). Interesting to see how they got the Mediterranean pretty spot on in mapping terms. 
Image taken from page 18 of '[The Countries of the World: being a popular description of the various continents, islands, rivers, seas, and peoples of the globe. [With plates.]]'


#4: A really detailed map of the Balkans - love the simple use of colour for internal political boundaries. Also note the European side of Turkey (Eastern Thrace) is called Rumilla - something I cannot find any links to on the web? Research for another day..
Image taken from page 159 of '[History of the Russian Empire from its foundation by Ruric the Pirate to the accession of the Emperor Alexander II ... With ... engravings.]'


#5: An interesting collection of lakes and inland waters in Eastern Hemisphere (shame they didn't have the plate for the West included in the collection). Shows the truly massive scale of both the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea.
Image taken from page 101 of "[Appleton's European Guide Book illustrated. Containing ... maps, etc.]" published in 1879


I may put up a second blog post in a few days with other types of images - but I love maps so this was an obvious first choice.

There are so many interesting plates/scans in there that you really have to go and take a look yourself if you have any interest whatsoever in illustration or early graphic design.

Next year the British Library are going to launch a crowdsourcing ability or app so that anyone can go and look at the collection, and append notes to the diagrams/illustrations etc

Thank you British Library!

iOS7 - Iconic?

Before I start on this iOS stuff, I'd like to put a plug in for a great Blog that should interest any of you that have any feelings whatsoever for Manchester. Manchester UK that is, not Manchester, Ontario or Manchester, New Hampshire or any other part of the world that shares a city or town with the same name. 

It's called Skyliner. Written by someone I don't know personally but regularly read - great stories of little known parts of the city, buildings and long lost moments. If you live in Manchester, I'd say you need to have a browse through it. It will change your view of the city.

So, on with iOS7.

The download? Where to begin?

I know I live on a far flung hill, high above Manchester and the internet connection is as good as it gets for the peace and quiet it affords (actually not so bad these days at 1 Mb+ down) but how long?????? It took from 8pm last night to 11:30 for the upgrade to come in and install itself. You have been warned.

As you can imagine I was expecting a fanfare when it re-booted and some sort of dancing ladies show.

The very first thing I really liked about iOS7 is the fact that they have enhanced 'Find My iPhone' - the iPad I use cannot now be reset or cleared without using the password that only I know. I'm sure there will be ways around it for the most hardened thief and their gangs, but if you ever lose or have your device stolen it should serve to make accounts secure for a while longer whilst you go in and reset the passwords.

Didn't get the fanfare though.

However, the icons and the colour gradients are (mostly) beautiful. Operating systems have long been stuck in trying to make every icon and menu item look as shiny as possible with eliptical layers but not iOS 7. Instead they have gone arty and 'flat'. Gradients and colour phasing is everywhere. I like it I must say. Here's an example.

They have also simplified the look of almost all icons too. I'd say successfully. Some might take some getting used to, but in large part, they are still very obvious what they relate to though one or two are too simplistic and miss the point. Example 2 here clearly is about Videos? 

But why oh why didn't they include a play symbol like all other video/mp3 icons everywhere on the web? After all, the play button has been around a long long time.

That would surely be better?

One icon I really REALLY (get it Google?) don't like now is the one for Google Chrome that I use rather than Safari - being mainly a PC user and having an Android phone - it has a white background and when sat on the quick launch bar at the bottom simply looks out of place. I'm sure that will change quickly.

SHAPE SHIFTING - OR AT LEAST A LITTLE NUDGE?

The one change that I didn't get straight away was the fact that someone has come up with a great idea to slightly shift the background image if you move the iPad. This creates a 3D illusion effect. Just as 3D TV is going out of fashion (did it ever really come in?) Apple have decided to bring their home screens to life. I like it, not necessary, but aesthetically very pleasing. Design for designs sake almost - not my usual reaction to this - but I just keep finding myself wriggling the iPad slightly to witness the effect. It is probably better on my setup as I have a close up photo of grafitti on a wall so the icons literally look like stickers on the wall. With a photo of a cute dog or a family snap it probably doesn't work?

USEFUL NOTIFICATIONS - AT LAST!

Apple had never managed to match Android on the use of notifications but iOS 7 now allows you to swipe the alert from Facebook or Gmail and go straight to the app. Finally, don't just tell me about it, let me do something about it.

The notification panel is a bit too much for me, but I'm sure some will really like the integration - and apparently it is better on the iPhone with missed calls/texts etc. I like the inclusion of weather - though it isn't a patch on Android tablet offerings to be honest.

The bottom swipe panel is also much much improved. Now you can swipe on the iPad and turn bluetooth or wi-fi on and off quickly rather than having to resort to settings all the time.

The AppStore or clunkily named iTunes Store 'look and feel' is brilliant - you can tell this is where they make that recurring income!

There's more, much more - like the ability to shoot square Instagram friendly photos... I'll be back to review the deeper things I find in a few days time.

STREET (de)SIGNS..

As you wander any part of the planet you are surrounded by street signs and furniture. In a short leap of time since the first formal signs started going up in the world we now have literally thousands of varieties of sign that say essentially the same thing but in different languages, with different graphic design and in different colours.. How come?

I'm going to make an effort to start taking lots more photos of these things on my travels from now on. You could easily start a blog just about the photos you gather as you wander (in fact someone did right here) - but I'm not going to do that. If you do have an urge to upload pictures, live or travel in the US and they are of older signs you can do that here.

Instead, I travelled the world today sat behind my 21" screen armed with Google Images to bring you a quick bunch of sign images that struck me as particularly well designed.. So, here they are..

And from New York, a series of Haiku styled road signs to make people think..

Not so 'well designed' but at least it does what it says on the tin.. of paint that was used to do it?!

And this has to be included as a statement of the obvious and scare tactic..

And that's that.

Except for this. A very funny story about one of my favourite roads and an artist who did a piece of "guerilla public service" or "public service performance". 10 out of 10 to him. Los Angeles was transformed forever.

  

A TALE OF 3 CITIES..

Trams... Not many places have the benefit of them in the UK.

This is especially surprising since a lot of towns started their adventures into commuting and expanding housing estates with horse drawn, then electric powered tram systems shuttling people backwards and forwards.

Those days are gone. Dead and buried some thought. Then came a resurgence in light rail systems during the 90s - across Europe as well as interest in them in Britain.

Just one or two cities had retained their systems; London obviously (the Underground is classified as a light rail/tram system in the Census), the Newcastle area has benefited from the excellent and very far stretching (47.5 miles of track) Tyne and Wear Metro since 1980 - it was the first modern light rail system to be opened in Britain and is the longest but is not technically a tram system.

GLASGOW SUBWAY
Perhaps more surprising is Glasgow's Subway, opened in - wait for it - December 1896 - powered first by cable pulleys and then by electric.

In fact, Glasgow's subway system is the third oldest metro system in the world (London Underground 1863 or 1890 depending on what you take to be an underground system, Budapest Metro May 1896).

However, technically it is not a light rail system and is classified for UK regulation as an underground railway system. For that reason I shall shut up about it. Nice colours and design to the logo though!

MANCHESTER METROLINK
Manchester was quick out of the blocks and the first part of the Metrolink system running between Manchester Victoria railway station and Bury 9 miles to the north was in fact converted over from standard railway rolling stock (with an electrified third rail) to a new overhead electrified line in the summer of 1991.

At the same time, work was undertaken in the city centre between Manchester Piccadilly station and Victoria and out of the city in a south west direction to another large satellite town Altrincham. The line was opened in April 1992 after some delays but allowed travel from Bury to Altrincham and linked the two main railway stations of Manchester together for the first time (plans for an underground rail tunnel and a monorail system between the two having been discussed and dropped in the 1960s and 1970s).

Manchester's network was expanded further in 1999 and 2000 (Phase 2 to Broadway and then extended to Eccles), and again in Autumn 2010 (Eccles extension to MediaCityUK at Salford Quays), July 2011 (a South Manchester extension to St. Werburgh's Road), June 2012 (Victoria to Oldham, north east of the city) and December 2012 (a further extensnio from Oldham out to the very edge of Manchester's urban area at Shaw). This latter line was extended to its full planned length in February 2013 and now reached as far as Rochdale. Another line running directly east from the city centre, the unconfusingly named East Manchester line, was opened in February 2013.

By the time new lines to East Didsbury (summer 2013), Ashton (winter 2013/14), Oldham and Rochdale town centres (2014), and Manchester Airport via Wythenshawe lines (2016) are complete, the network will cover 95km (59 miles), more than three times the original 30km (18.5 mile) network that opened in 1992.

Recently redesigned and the logo is looking slick. Well, this is Manchester. What did you expect?

SHEFFIELD SUPERTRAM
Sheffield followed suit and started building its own system in 1991 with the first tram running in March 1994  between Fitzalan Square and Meadowhall shopping centre.

The network currently runs out along three lines from Park Square/Pond's Forge on the eastern edge of the city centre. North easterly bound services go past the Don Valley Stadium and onwards to Meadowhall shopping centre, northern services (2 lines) past the University and on to Hillsborough (football ground) and Middlewood where there is a large Park & Ride facility. Southbound services link Sheffield railway station and Sheffield Hallam University into the network and go on past the very suburban Crystal Peaks district to Halfway Park & Ride scheme 7.5 miles out of the city centre.

It was announced in January 2013 that a new line will be built from Meadowhall to Dore south west of the city centre. This line will link into the planned Meadowhall High Speed railway station on its completion. Other planned extensions have been dropped in favour of investments in local bus services.

Dog awful logo. Colours are fine but what idiot picked that font? And why do Stagecoach have to print their authority all over the company?

NOTTINGHAM NET 
Nottingham's system is called NET, standing for Nottingham Express Transit.

It was a relative latecomer to the tram scene of northern(ish) England towns, opening in March 2004.

However, as I will show you later, it has been extremely successful indeed. The original system consisted of just one line running between Nottingham railway station on the southern edge of the city centre north to Hucknall 7.5 miles to the north of the city.

Phase 2 is under construction and extends the coverage of the original line southbound from the railway station with two lines - Line 2 to Clifton town centre and a large Park and Ride scheme that will allow a fast commute route in and out of the centre for those living further out, and the second southbound from the station and running past NG2, a large Business Park site, the Queens Medical Centre and University to Toton and another Park and Ride scheme (Line 3).

Logo a bit bland on this network don't you think?

MIDLAND METRO
A System I am not going to cover here is Midland Metro, running 12 miles between Wolverhampton and Birmingham Snow Hill railway station with a very short section 'on street'.

Other street level lines are planned but it is doubtful where the money will come from for construction at this stage. Nice easily recognisable logo though?

So, to measuring success?

Let's just look at the three new systems in place in the north of England (all £ figures in 2013 prices)..

Manchester
opened: 1992
cost: so far... £1.4 billion = Phase 1 £223.7 million, Phase 2 £200.75 million, Phase 3 £994.4 million (Phase 3b in progress will add £124.5 million by 2016)
length of tracks: 43 miles (59 miles by 2016)
frequency: 1 tram every 6-12 mins
network: 65 stops, 5 national rail interchanges
daily use: first full year 11.3 million 1993/94, 21.8 million 2011/12

Nottingham
opened: 2004
cost: Phase 1 £229 million. Phase 2 underway, max cost £570 million.
length of tracks: 9 miles
frequency: 1 tram every 5-6 mins
network: 23 stops, 3 national rail interchanges, 5 Park & Ride sites
daily use: first full year = 8.5 million 2004/05, 9 million 2011/12 (exceeded 10 million in 2007 and 2008)

Sheffield
opened: 1994
cost: £276.2 million
length of tracks: 18 miles
frequency: 1 tram every 5-10 mins
network: 48 stops, 2 national rail interchanges, 4 Park & Ride sites
daily use: first full year = 5.3 million 1995/96, 15 million 2011/12

[due to new lines in Mcr and Nott stats are subject to major revision during 2013]

But, my favourite way of judging things is to use graphics. Maps in particular.

Take a look at this below (click the image for a full size version) which shows the % of population at 2001 Census and then again at 2011 Census that were using light rail/tram systems to commute daily.

There is only one significant shift in behaviour in the three north of England cities. That occurs in Nottingham (bottom right with the place pin in for my non-UK readers) where comparison of the two dates show a much higher proportion of people using trams in 2011. This is a great result given that Nottingham's trams started almost half way through the period 2001-2011 and the other systems were in operation throughout the decade. For that reason, and despite being the smallest at the moment, it for me is the most successful.

Oh wait, Manchester Metrolink have been 100% powered by electricity sourced from a renewable energy company since 2007, and hydropower at that! None of the others get close. That's success of a different, more visionary, kind.

DIRTY FEET...

Every once in a while you have to do very little on a blog to create an impact!

This is one of those posts. A great and engaging infographic, with colour, attraction and loaded with information. Enjoy.

Global Carbon Footprint infographic

WAKEY, WAKEY...

A great infographic find in this morning's browsing. First snooze button on a clock in the 50's? 

The History of Alarm Clocks – An infographic by the team at OnlineClock.net

ILLUSTRATING

On a non-political and lighter note than usual.. this morning I stumbled on a website page about creating charts in a more professional way. I'm a real Excel veteran, given that I started using spreadsheets back in the days of Lotus 1-2-3 on DOS based PCs with only a keyboard and no mouse in sight - no really! But, those Excel charts can only be pushed so far - and modelling the whole of the UK's water resource flows and stocks was about as far as you could go! I do use dashboards and can create interesting effects in Excel, such as this..


..but their presentation is growing tired I must admit. Enter three options. First is to use an add-in to Excel to increase its design look and feel. Already noe that though, and regularly use Xcelsius. It's ok, a little lcunky but good for 3-D'ing charts I guess.

Second is to ditch Excel (or rather use it to do the heavy computing and modelling) and use another output format such as Business Objects standalone packages. Expensive. Good output, but still not that pro edge and editability I want.

Third is to go to a full fledged vector graphic format. Cue Adobe Illustrator. We use Creative Suite 3 in the office and it is installed on my PC. But I tend to stick to the web-design bits of CS3, Dreamweaver and Fireworks mainly with a (very small) bit of Flash thrown in. Illustrator doesn't fill me with dread but I haven't a clue what I'm doing in it! Anyway, I stumbled on a page about 3D graphs and using Illustator's in-built charting tool.. which led me to doing this in around 5 minutes..


So, be prepared for more to come as this is seriously easy to do, can be applied to a full chart, has lots of options and can use any graphic to overlay and create a really professional look and feel.

More later. Illustrator is about to take up a good few days of my time!

SAT-NAV FOR DUMMIES!

This was in the news today..

about A Level exams in England and Wales..

"The Reform group claims exam modules have created a "learn and forget culture" - which it likens to using a sat-nav rather than map-reading skills."

I really like this analogy. For some time those that know Polko will have heard my many groans about stupid people who plug in a little black box and drive without even consulting a map or double-thinking their route beforehand. Then they moan because they are late, cannot find a property or the sat nav goes into an area without coverage (of which for some unexplained reason there seem plenty on this little island). My attitude is that sat nav's really are one of the least needed pieces of 'technology' we have ever invented as a human race.

But my concern is deeper than worrying about whether a delivery driver can find my house or not - since I live in a relatively rural postcode sector that is actually home to around 200 properties a sat nav will take you to the centre point of the postcode only - a mile away. doh! Those that use sat nav can suffer their own fates. I care very little about them turning onto a rail line or into a canal if they are that dumb.

But, what I really care about is the slow drip-drip of dumbing down and loss of skills in our society - running right through from the ability to read a map to small DIY jobs around the house to inter-personal skills. For example on this latter one, I was recently astounded to hear a barge of groundless diatribe coming out of somebody's mouth in an otherwise friendly happy environment just because that person thought they were being clever - some call it sarcasm. But when that's all you do, it's just plain ill-thought out bad manners and tiresome to be honest.

..Which brings me to a great hero of mine. This time last year Mrs Polko and I had the fortune to find ourselves in Scottsdale, an outer suburb of Phoenix Arizona. We visited Frank Lloyd-Wright's desert home Taliesin West. Lloyd-Wright's central idea and concern was the ongoing loss of skills that was befalling US and world societies during the first few decades of the 20th Century - these he saw being translated into mass manufacturing techniques, mono-culture building design and the basic onset of greying of the population, or dumbing down as we now call it.

Taliesin is a plot of land he moved to with his wife and a few followers (who made up his then fledgling architects business) in 1911. When they arrived there was nothing there. Not even a water supply. After many years of driving over the desert and fetching buckets of water to mix up earth/mud/clay mixes and setting stones that were lying around he and the clan Lloyd-Wright built a fantastic desert home and office complex that housed a large and by now renowned architects practice. It's still there today. And is still part of the Lloyd-Wright Foundation.


Simple but clearly very functional. No need for mod-cons there - the home built around the environment, not fighting it off as we try to do today. A work of art - as much for its ingenuity in embracing and harnessing the values of a clearly barren and harsh place as for its beauty in blending into the environment rather than trying to make a bold look-at-me statement.

So, there we have it. A triumph of 'embracing and accepting' over an ever expanding 'look-at-me culture'. I wish the people with sat nav's and the rather unclever despite thinking they are the most clever people around had thought in the same vain. The world would truly be a different place.

CAMPARI TIME

It is a little known secret about me (err... until now that is) that I am particularly fond of a Campari and Soda on a hot summers evening. Just the thought of the drink brings back evocative memories of all sorts of squares and pavement cafes strewn across Europe with my money left in exchange for the slightly fizzy, brilliantly red and very bitter drink. Served long and with a straw of course.

My other passion - good industrial design and elegant items that hold everyday objects (what? you didn't know about that either? shame on you!) - is cross-fusef with my love for Campari in a strange way too.

Campari bottles that are on the shelves of supermarkets worldwide do not tell the true story of the drink. The smaller 10cl bottles that you can find in Italian cafe bars and good cocktail bars across Europe are at the root of a design excellence hat stretches far back, into the 1920's in fact. These bottles (see picture below) were designed in 1932 and are still unchanged to this day.

Product CampariSoda 10cl bottle, 10% abv
Designer Fortunato Depero
Year 1932
Company Gruppo Campari, Novi Ligure, Italy

Since it is interesting (to me!) here's a little more about the company and product.

Gaspare Campari was born in Castelnuovo, Italy in 1828 and by the time he was just 14 was working as “apprentice maitre licoriste”, a type of highly skilled and knowledgeable barman, in Turin. In 1860 he founded Gruppo Campari in Milan. Campari's business model was almost Coca Cola-ish in its aggresiveness - he would only sell his product to outlets displaying “Campari Bitters” posters, which themselves became design icons when Davide, Gaspare's son took over the business during the 1920's. This brand focus - notably decades, indeed almost a century, before the concept became embedded in advertising culture sometime around the late 1970s - meant Campari quickly became established as a strong brand across Italy and set the stage for what is today a global brand selling over 30 million bottles per year to make the company the 6th largest operator in the global beverages marketplace. For all the stats click here.

Secrecy surrounds the drink. Even today only one person knows the entire formula of ingredients, Luca Garavoglia the Group's managing director. One of the main known ingredients is bark from Cascarilla trees that grow in the Bahamas.

The CampariSoda bottle in the picture was designed by Fortunato Depero, an Italian futurist artist in 1932 and a now infamous poster featuring a dancing clown inside a peeled orange was designed by Leonetto Cappiello in 1921.

ON THE FIRST DAY..

"The Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And God said, 'Let there be light,' and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. God called the light 'day', and the darkness he called 'night'. And there was evening, and there was morning, the first day."

Or so says Genesis 1:2-5.

Polko says bullshit. But lights there are. And plenty of them! Here are a few of my current favourites:

This is called Once (In The Blue) and made by Flos of Italy. It has two bulbs inside a 1m x 2m resin and aluminium asymmetric ball. One is a white halogen for traditional lighting, the other a black light that gives a fantastic effect at night. Big and beautiful.

This is Ari Grande by Axo Light. In a single line as here, or clustered together in a block or circle. Mmmmmm.

Blò IC, designed by Roberto Pamio for Oty Light, a smallish single halogen plasterboard fixed clear glass unit. With rough beaten steel backsplash panels behind work surfaces I think these are among the best kitchen designs ever.. unfortunately, we have nine halogen points in our kitchen and so the total cost would add to over 1,300 euros..

And then, my big favourite.. Campari Light by Ingo Maurer, one of the finest and quirkiest lighting designers of the moment.. Real Campari in bottles, suspended by an adjustable Campari bottle crown. Too much to buy at 240 euros but I reckon I can do something similar for a room I'm currently finishing at home!.. though I do like Campari so may have to resort to coloured water?!