Urbanized is a feature-length documentary about the design of cities, which looks at the issues and strategies behind urban design and features some of the world’s foremost architects, planners, policymakers, builders, and thinkers. Over half the world’s population now lives in an urban area, and 75% will call a city home by 2050. But while some cities are experiencing explosive growth, others are shrinking. The challenges of balancing housing, mobility, public space, civic engagement, economic development, and environmental policy are fast becoming universal concerns. Yet much of the dialogue on these issues is disconnected from the public domain.
Who is allowed to shape our cities, and how do they do it? Unlike many other fields of design, cities aren’t created by any one specialist or expert. There are many contributors to urban change, including ordinary citizens who can have a great impact improving the cities in which they live. By exploring a diverse range of urban design projects around the world, Urbanized frames a global discussion on the future of cities.
Urbanized is the third part of Gary Hustwit’s design film trilogy, joining Helvetica and Objectified.
The film looks at many cities around the world and focuses on particular issues or projects which are happening under the given local circumstances. Particularly interesting are the views and opinions presented by Jan Gehl on mobility in Copenhagen, the analysis of slum developments in Mumbai and the dramatic review of the Stuttgart 21 development.
Gary Hustwit has clearly illustrated his appreciation of community led and influenced projects. In the vast range of projects the consistent theme is public collaboration. This is something I also feel passionately about. The urban environment is used by everyone and there should be a strong focus on identity and indentify-ability for the user. When designing we should not push simply for a single utopian state. Urbanity is a complex and constantly developing organism which is crafted by the people for the people. The designer must edit and synthesise the wishes and ambitions of the people. It is through this collaboration that rich and diverse urban environments are created and developments focussing on geometrically organised master plans, such as the suburban american developments presented in this film, are avoided.
This is a fantastic film which I would recommend to everyone – designer or not.
Its been several months now since I set up my tumblr account, but I have only posted 7 times so far. Although it is an excellent platform which is unbeatable for gathering, curating and publishing things quickly I have been hesitant to use it as I wanted to integrate it properly with this site. After spending quite some time trying to find out a way to cleanly display my tumblr posts on a separate page I have had to accept that this is not easily achieved. But I have found a clever little widget which can display the 4 most recent pictures in the sidebar. The widget plugin is called Tumblr Recent Photos and only takes a minute to set up. So now that I have found a solution I shall get on with actually publishing my inspiration.
If you do happen to know of a way I could display the photos that I blog on my tumblr account on a separate page here on this site, in a way similar to how it is displayed on the tumblr page itself (simple grid layout), I’d love to here from you…
I have often been disappointed by the colour output of my printed panels when preparing for presentations. In this short post I will explain the problems with colour reliability and explain how to avoid disappointment and costly re-printing. (I must stress that due to the range of variables – printers, paper media, software etc – there may be further parameters which could affect the colour output. However, since following these steps I have always achieved accurate results.)
Colour Models
The main problem with achieving accurate colour output is that digital displays use the RGB model and printers use the CMYK model. This is because digital displays blend three coloured light beams (Red, Green and Blue) to create the colour spectrum. It is an additive model as combing all three light beams at full intensity will create white. On the contrary, printed material is created by blending Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and blacK (The K actually stands for black Key plate, however when I first learned about CMYK I found it useful thinking of it as the K in black for remembering the four colours). It is a subtractive model as it works by partially or entirely masking colours on a lighter, usually white, background. The ink reduces the light that would otherwise be reflected so white is created by not applying any ink.
Unfortunately both these models are only able to create a certain space of the colour spectrum visible to the human eye. Those colours not covered by both colour models will therefore change slightly when converting. As shown below the bright greens in area A will be less vibrant when converted to CMYK, and the the turquoise in area B cannot be reproduced by digital displays using the RGB model. The colours in area C are covered by both models and can therefore be reproduced accurately by both displays and printers.
Softproofing
The best way to ensure that colours are printed reliably is to softproof images in photoshop. This is very easy to do and simulates how the image will appear in the destination colour space. It can even highlight exactly which areas in the image are changed.
This is done by simply opening an image in photoshop and from the main menu selecting View > Proof Setup. From list of options choose ‘Working CMYK’. Using cmd+Y you can now switch between the RGB and CMYK. The current colour mode is always displayed next to the image title.
By clicking cmd+shift+Y you can switch on and off ‘Gamut Warning’ which will mask in gray the areas on the image where colours are changed.
I recommend using an image with very strong colours when trying out this technique as it will be most obvious.
This technique clearly won’t fix the issue but just make you aware of what the effects of printing/converting will be. Nonetheless, once you are aware of how the image will be changed you can modify it (for example changing the hue and saturation) so that it prints reliably.
Exporting PDFS from InDesign
If like me, you use Photoshop and InDesign in your workflow, then it is not necessary to convert the images to CMYK in Photoshop before placing them in InDesign. Instead, you can simply convert all images when exporting the final PDF in InDesign. This is done as follows: File > Export, then choose where you want to save the PDF and click Save. In the Export Settings dialog box go through the various tabs on the left adjusting the settings as required for your project. The only thing that needs to be changed for the conversion is under Output. Here you must change Colour Conversion to Convert to Destination and choose a Destination colour space. I use the Coated FOGRA39 profile as this is a common european profile which is available on most computers and printers. (Some copy shops and online print suppliers will actually specify which colour profile they need the document in.) Also important is that you change the Profile Inclusion Policy to Include Destination Profile.
When plotting the file you can then actually specify which colour profile you wish the plotter to use. However the printer settings dialog boxes vary dramatically so I would ask you to either search through and find this setting for yourself or check the manual. Important is that you set the same colour profile as the one you specified for the pdf conversion. That way no further conversion will occur.
As already noted, there are several further factors which can affect the colour output. Make sure that your printer or plotter is set for the correct paper media which is inserted and that you use good quality inks.
I hope these techniques will allow you to achieve more accurate colour results the next time you print. Let me know what your experiences are.
A presentation by Bjarke Ingels from BIG on a selection of his practice’s work. This presentation opened an exhibition of BIG work at the Technical University Munich in January 2011. The video was uploaded to vimeo by the TUM Faculty of Architecture.
We Mac users like things to be neat and tidy. Unfortunately though some of us still need to use Microsoft Office and surprisingly Microsoft don’t seem to have the same interest in simplicity. Therefore they do not seem to have a problem with the irritating ‘Microsoft User Data’ folder which is created in your documents folder. As you may have noticed simply deleting this folder does not actually have much of an effect as it just appears again later. However, there is a solution: move it to Users/(yourusername)/Library/Preferences.
To do this I suggest opening two finder windows – one with the source folder (your documents folder) and another with the target folder (Users/(yourusername)/Library/Preferences). This has become more difficult under Apple’s new Lion operating system as the library folder is hidden as standard. However, you can still quickly open the user’s library folder by holding down the option (⌥) key while clicking on ‘go’ in the menu bar.
You will then be able to select the ‘Preferences’ folder and drag ‘n’ drop the irritating ‘Microsoft User Data’ folder across. This should do the trick and ensure you no longer have to put up with it in your Documents.
Thank you to Danny Chang for his article on moving the Microsoft User Data folder and to OSX daily for their article on showing the users library folder in OSX Lion.
I have been spending some time over the past weeks adding projects to the portfolio section of the website. The first drafts of the three projects up so far can be viewed now in the portfolio section. Your comments are most welcome.
So far I have only added one design project and getting it to function correctly has been the majority of the work. Using the Mudshiftcontent javascript templates created by Mudcorp I was able to create the slider effect. I specifically chose to use javascript for animation effects to ensure it will work on iOS devices. I hope you like this feature as I am already in the process of setting up further projects using the template I have created.
The written work – dissertation and competition report – are basic text layouts for now. When I get bit of time I will add footnotes and images. I will also have to read through them again and further summarise the work as it is currently a very long read.
Recent Inspiration
