How Cities Use Design to Drive Homeless People Away
Saying "you're not welcome here"—with spikes. Anti homeless floor studs. So much for community spirit :( pic.twitter.com/Yz8VF7Ryid — Ethical Pioneer (@ethicalpioneer) June 6, 2014 Earlier this month, someone tweeted a picture of a series of metal spikes built into the ground outside a London apartment building. The spikes were intended to discourage homeless people from sleeping in the area, and their presence sparked a public outcry. It has been encouraging to see the outrage over the London spikes. An example of an everyday technology that’s used to forbid certain activities is “skateboard deterrents,” that is, those little studs added to handrails and ledges. The point is that it’s easy to imagine a non-skateboarder walking by skateboard deterrents every day and taking no notice of them at all, remaining entirely unaware of the social role of these devices. An example of a pervasive homeless deterrence technology is benches designed to discourage sleeping.
How to Design Our Neighborhoods for Happiness, by Jay Walljasper
Biology is destiny, declared Sigmund Freud. But if Freud were around today, he might say “design is destiny”—especially after taking a stroll through most modern cities. The way we design our communities plays a huge role in how we experience our lives. You don’t have to be a therapist to realize that this creates lasting psychological effects. Of course, this is no startling revelation. One of the notable solutions being put into practice to combat this problem is New Urbanism, an architectural movement to build new communities (and revitalize existing ones) by maximizing opportunities for social exchange: public plazas, front porches, corner stores, coffee shops, neighborhood schools, narrow streets, and, yes, sidewalks. But while New Urbanism is making strides at the level of the neighborhood, we still spend most of our time at home, which today means seeing no one other than our nuclear family. The benefits of a living in such a community go farther than you might imagine. YES!
Mega Skyscrapers That Eat Pollution Are Coming to China
It looks like China is taking on Saudi Arabia for the “world’s tallest building” crown. When construction on the Phoenix Tower, a pointy two-building complex in Wuhan (in central China), is finished, one of the mega skyscrapers will match the Saudis’ Kingdom Tower in height. But the 3,280-foot-tall building will do more than just pierce the atmosphere. It will eat pollution floating in the air. Designed by U.K.-based architecture firm Chetwoods, the towers will be covered with a smog-eating coating. Air quality is so bad in the Asian nation that earlier this month the government announced plans to yank thousands of cars off the roads. “The most amazing thing for me is that in the U.K. we strive as designers to get things built, and there’s a lot of red tape, but the Chinese seem to have a different view of things,” the architecture firm’s founder, Laurie Chetwood, told FastCoExist. Construction is expected to be completed in 2017.
Raster? Vector? What file format do I need my logo in again? » Jackrabbit Design
Often times a client will come to us with an existing brand. They’re looking to punch up their graphics and marketing, while keeping their well established logo and identity. No problem! We’re happy to help, but first, let’s go over some graphics basics. Ensuring your logo looks its best Depending on your familiarity with graphic file formats, this may be all news to you or just a friendly mental refresh. A logo in vector format can be scaled infinitely and never lose quality. Why is that? Assuming you worked with a design studio for your logo, they should have supplied you with a vector format of your logo. But… I just have .jpg format Vector format is great for logos and a variety of graphical elements, but is not the only choice on the block. Without getting too technical and geeky, computer graphics are all set up on a grid of tiny dots of colors called pixels. Resolution is often noted in “DPI”, or “dots per inch”. The popular .jpg format is an example of a rasterized image.
