Apparently my life can be summarised in a single image. These images are from a program called nexus that links in with my Facebook account. They are the same image with a Black and White variation. On the dynamic site I can scroll over and see the groups and how they are ordered by name and profile. This info via the very nice website infosthetics.
One of the things that I really love about Information Architecture is that it is firmly rooted in the Arts rather than Science. Like any art form, there’s room for best practices and conventions in there, but the real beauty lies in the knowledge of convention and subtle disruptions and improvements on that best practice that add to an overall picture.
One of the things that makes IA an art in the way that anthropology is part of the Arts Faculty in a university is understanding the cultural viewpoints that lead to websites. For example I have been looking at the Beijing Olympics website a lot at the moment, and there is a clear tendency towards what seems to be somewhat of an Eastern mindset that the page value lies in how much information is available in one space and the variety of the media that is used to portray that information. It is why the official Beijing 2008 website sits on the hefty side of 500 or so kilobytes. But this whole subject has led to looking at some of the Olympic posters from the years gone by. And this in turn provided the forum to look objectively at the way that different cultures dealt with providing a poster (piece of advertising) that would encompass such a grand global occasion. It is really an interesting case study into a subject where a static medium – in this case a poster to represent the Olympic Games – has been treated across different cultures. In a similar way that XHTML and CSS combine to portray a front page or a contact page and what is valued in that data across the many cultures of the world. But have a look and see the progression through the decades and also the subtle nuances of culture.
One of the things that I love about being an Information Architect is when things in general cross boundaries and combine to make something new and different. Examples of this could be when someone uses something in a functional and useful way that maybe wasn’t the way it was originally intended to be used
- ie.
1. Google Maps API keys that get used to do mash-ups with You-tube and Flickr.
2. Ikea cupboard being used for a hideaway computer workstation.
3. Playstation 3 with Linux installed
But in this case it’s with two different genres of film. This Start War vs. Saul Bass Video is two genre’s coming together where the parts were already pretty damn cool (Star Wars + Saul Bass) but the sum is somehow much cooler.
Disclaimer - when I refer to Star Wars as ‘cool’ I am of course referring to the original three ’sequels’ Episodes 4, 5 and 6. Not that other junk that George Lucas tried to feed us a few years ago.
Here’s a sketch that I put together when I needed a bit of creative out time with no consequences. It is 1000 x 150 which means that it shouldn’t take up too much room and should work well on a 1024 x 768 format screen (which is currently the majority of the world apparently). It’s nice and generic and comes in four different colours for your header viewing pleasure. The style is a little bit grunge mixed with the slightest amount of web2.0. If you want to download the zip file with all four different colours it is in the downloads section.
I am involved with Victoria University at the moment working on a project in conjunction with industry corporates predicting the future of technology. Anyways, I’m going to keep the word count down, as I don’t want to violate the NDA. Below is a sketch of some of the current ideas floating around.
I'm an Information Architect working in Wellington New Zealand who deals a lot with web standards, conventions and best practice every day. This is the place where I place findings, musings and facts as a repository for myself and anyone else who might benefit.
