The transformer (Marie Neurath) at work Today a long awaited booklet arrived in the post: The transformer, principles of making Isotype charts written by Robin Kinross & Marie Neurath. It is inspiring in its modest but precise description of unorthodox working methods developed by philosopher, sociologist, and economist Otto Neurath and his associates. To produce […]

I’m in Stuttgart for a week to teach a workshop. In the school library, I read Eye Magazine.

Of course we discuss now and than amongst ourselves, whether it is better to change ‘Open Source Publishing’ to: ‘Free Software Publishing’ (FSP…), or maybe: ‘Free, Libre and Open Source Publishing’ (FLOSP!). Reading Rob Myers text ‘Open Source Art Again‘ makes me bring it up here: The name Open Source was deliberately chosen for its […]

Philosopher of science, Bruno Latour, opened the recent Networks of Design conference with a keynote address: A Cautious Prometheus? A Few Steps Toward a Philosophy of Design. In his lecture, Latour linked the growing importance of design with his idea that “matters of fact” have become “matters of concern“.

Dave Walden from the TeX User Group introduces his excellent TUG Interview Corner as follows: “technology is created by and evolves with use by people, and the points of view and backgrounds of the people influence the technology” The ever growing list of interviewees include Barbara Beeton, Donald Knuth, Herman Zapf and numerous other less […]

In a déjà old interview (2000) by Advogato, Donald Knuth (TeX and Metafont author) answers in his sometimes-very-short sometimes-generous style. In the middle of these all interesting things, a few exchanges about relations between mathematics, fonts, free and money. Enough close to some parts of talks at Wroclaw, like the Dave Crossland’s one, and some […]

Issue Magazine launch: Friday March 21 18:00 – 19:30 Log on via: http://mixedsources.tk/ For the launch of Issue Magazine, Stéphanie Vilayphiou and Alexandre Leray are hosting an on line round table with Arie Altena, Jouke Kleerebezem and Harrisson.

David Reinfurt’s essay Making do and getting by departs from the work of Muriel Cooper and Anthony Froshaug, and relates their critically engaged practice to contemporary projects such as Juerg Lehni’s Scriptographer. In this way, he convincingly shows how designers can and should reclaim a more intimate relationship with the digital production of their work. […]

While looking for designers writing about their relation to tools, I discovered the excellent William Morris Archives, part of the Marxist writers’ Internet Archive. To Morris, to own his means of production, was the only way a designer/workman could find back pleasure in work, and this in turn he considered a prerequisite for the production […]

“It may well turn out that one of the most important effects of open source’s success will be to teach us that play is the most economically efficient mode of creative work.” (Eric S. Raymond, postscript (2000) to The Cathedral and the Bazaar)

View from Les Rencontres de Lure (Lurs, France) Welcome back! OSP is about to start a busy year, but before we begin… here a fresh take on the application of Open Source methodologies in design: “An open source methodology could aid us in moving in this direction for it provides a contemporary justification for a […]

We hope you are as much inspired by these texts as we are. You should read this! We think these texts are essential. These texts need to be seen in context of their time. Would this be of any use? Will you read this please? Please do not take their advice literally! We hope you […]

“Neurath’s pictograms owe much to the Modernist belief that reality may be modified by being codified – standardised, easy-to-grasp templates as a revolution in human affairs. But the templates themselves, or the code, may end up in their turn aestheticised, reified, in need of a further round of de-cryption, a paradigm common also to failed […]

The Institute of Network Cultures published an insightful study on the culture of new media work by Sociologist Rosalind Gill. Technobohemians or the new Cybertariat? New media work in Amsterdam a decade after the web, is based on 40 ‘semi-structured’ interviews with practitioners (designers, developers, artists, information architects, …). Her study reveals the often precarious […]

Appropriation has been a recurring and accepted strategy in defining typography as activity and business. We can pinpoint four cases where appropriation has definitely been key in defining landmarks in the history of type, not only aiding the breaking of technical and creative boundaries but also helping to question legal and moral ones.

We’ll go on to briefly analyse the current situation in typography, focusing on the approach to the subject by corporations, users and designers. The current business model (digital foundries, font files with copyrights) is, as we’ll argue, a remnant of a time where a typeface filled a whole drawer and fails to account for the necessary changes that the information age demands; we’ll conclude with the definition of an essentially contradictory business model that has very strong stands against “font forging” and copyright issues, although it has historically – and now, more than ever – thrived on constant, and often uncredited, appropriation of ideas and designs.

Stroom Den Haag started their year long project After Neurath with a public symposium. After Neurath looked/looks at the relevance of 1930’s philosopher and information activist Otto Neurath, and as you can imagine various familiar issues came up. More information about Otto Neurath: http://www.stroom.nl/webdossiers/webdossier.php?wd_id=3530772 The project is curated by Steve Rushton. Speakers: Frank Hartmann, Robin […]

Constant’s contribution to OknoPublic01, May 26 2006 New media curator — information architect — theater maker — science fiction writer — data base programmer — media designer or software artist: we use computer programmes to write, read, listen, publish, edit and play. More than often we do all these things at the same time and […]