The Hickensian

20.04.06

I heart people who send me art

I’m a lucky boy. Twice people have sent me digital art that floats my boat. Late last year, Siobhan sent me this, based on one of my photos on Flickr:

Siobhans art

I have a real thing about vertical lines (thats what the tree thing was about on the last site design), and I love this. After a lot of email communication, I finally got to meet Siobhan back in February and I now have a large photographic print of this beauty, as well as a new friend. Here’s a post where Siobhan explains the process.

At one point I was ready to use this in a revised site design, but then Veerle redesigned and scuppered that with her bars at the top of every page.

Kunal Anand has been busy with a Python script he wrote to create visualizations from xml file output of people’s de.licio.us tags. I was so glad he asked me for my xml file, and a copy of my (then) logo as a vector artwork, because here’s the result, and I think its fantastic:

(click the image for the full-sized view)

Thanks Siobhan and Kunal!

Comments | RSS

No.1

Tim B said 1171 days ago:

Great use of colour! The vivid green line down the middle does it for me!

No.2

Marc KÃ¶hlbrugge said 1171 days ago:

by-data-generated visual stuff really rocks :), if you want to get a new hobby try Processing (www.processing.org), it is a really simple programming language for creating all kind of cool things. (I don’t know if my description is very accurate, I still have to try it myself.)

No.3

Ramin said 1171 days ago:

some of you design guys make me sick at how easy you make these things look. simple yet hard work, i’m sure.

anyway just a note that i like the new brown navigation on the site. i only noticed the change last night. nice work.

No.4

Kalle said 1171 days ago:

Oh my lord, these are wonderful! The second one would be goregous as a desktop background!

No.5

Nick Harris said 1171 days ago:

so you’re a paul smith fan then Mr Hicks? :)

ooh, digging the brown nav… definitely very groovy

No.6

josh said 1171 days ago:

I thought you might be posting about the Firefox bus by now. The post title in my newsreader gave me that impression. Did you not see the photos? This isn’t too off topic because the bus painting could be like someone sending you art but indirectly.

No.7

oliver said 1171 days ago:

Oh! oh! I want he first one as a desktop! Please…?

No.8

Stefan Hayden said 1171 days ago:

Kottke has had vertical bars on his site for a while. I don’t think anyone owns that visual element yet.

No.9

Jon Hicks said 1171 days ago:

@ NIck – very much so! I wish I coul afford one his suits…

@ Josh – yes I saw the photos!

@ Oliver – I guess thats a request for siobhan! I did try it as a desktop, but its a little too stimulating!

No.10

paul haine said 1171 days ago:

Vertical stripes are great, and very slimming.

No.11

Andy Croll said 1171 days ago:

Brown is most certainly the new green around these parts, love the way the logo plays into the brown navigation. I’ve also just noticed the little drop shadow on the upper part of the race track – was that there before?

Didn’t have anywhere to comment on the latest changes to the redesign. Here’ll do?

The second one is a bit Design By Fire-d – bizarrely calming.

No.12

JaX said 1171 days ago:

Man those are awesome! I think we have similar taste. It’s inspiring.

The brown is exactly what your site needed. You’re the man. =)

No.13

Siobhan Curran said 1171 days ago:

You have no idea how glad I am that I accidentally managed to get some brown in that.

No.14

Eddie Sowden said 1171 days ago:

Vertical stripes are indeed quite nice. They are not as fattening as horizontal ones.

Ooo I am liking that new brown navigation box over there. That must be a new edition because i cant remember seeing it. Your logo looks really nice as a background like that.

No.15

Pat said 1170 days ago:

the new nav box looks nice..

lines aren’t really that hard to make.. you just select a row of pixels and then use transform to drag it _

No.16

Michael G said 1170 days ago:

I’m liking the vertical piece very much, would be interested to see the original pic which was used.

No.17

goodwitch said 1170 days ago:

does it count if I showed you how to send the art to your mobile phone???? (ooooo please say yes….)

No.18

YOP said 1170 days ago:

Just select a row of pixels and then use transform to drag it===== But really very beautiful .

No.19

simen said 1170 days ago:

Since comments are closed on the previous entries, I’ll just have to say it here: I like the new logo. The last one was a bit defensive, I think. Also: sexy brown menu!

On the art: I don’t “get” the first one, it’s probably to abstract for me. The second one is nice, though.

No.20

Mark said 1170 days ago:

now it makes sense to me.

your new logo looks gorgeous on brown but very alien on white.

No.21

Ben Darlow said 1170 days ago:

Another similar idea to Processing for creating randomised art based on some data source rather than arbitrary human doodling is the Context Free Design Grammar (http://www.contextfreeart.org/wiki/). There is a huge gallery of works here: http://www.chriscoyne.com/gallery/ – the really cool thing about this is that as they’re all based on a relatively simple syntax you can poke around with somebody else’s creation and use it to make something else entirely. True open source art!

My own limited attempts (from quite a while back) include this one (http://www.chriscoyne.com/gallery/view.php?id=1301230195312499968) which I’m quite pleased with. I’m certain something like this could be used to make fancy background images and inspire site designs.

No.22

boere said 1170 days ago:

I love the second one, like a node infestation

No.23

the messenger said 1170 days ago:

Your new ID is definatly coming together, especially the cell/organic nature of background under the brown… The nature influnce is still there which is nice… I t i s much nicer over the brown, -when I first saw it on the bare white I thought it looked little like:

http://www.magmabooks.com/content/bookshop/book.asp?disp=0&id=3250&page=1&cat=7

I wonder if the recent changes to the site will continue as an evolutionary process? I’m sure there would be much to be gained from using such a process as opposed to the usual complete redesigns of a site… It might make sense considering the dynamic nature of the web.

Back to the art, you might appreciate artist/designer Angela Lorenz http://www.alorenz.net/

Continue the good work,

No.24

Martin said 1170 days ago:

Hm, vertical lines? Very Bridget Riley-esque!

No.25

Jon Hicks said 1170 days ago:

“when I first saw it on the bare white I thought it looked little like:
http://www.magmabooks.com/content/bookshop/book.asp?disp=0&id=3250&page=1&cat=7”

OH SHIT! Its almost identical! Bugger, I hadn’t seen that.

Too late now!...

No.26

upps said 1170 days ago:

I love the second one, like a node infestation

No.27

Alan Orozco said 1170 days ago:

They both look great! Congrats on the guys who made them ;)

No.28

Stephen said 1169 days ago:

Reminds of Cantus Firmus by Bridget Riley, a copy of which hangs behind me.

No.29

Olav said 1169 days ago:

Funny, I’ve never had a thing for vertical lines.. ;)

No.30

Adam Rowlett said 1167 days ago:

I’m in love. Hot design on the new site. Congrats.

No.31

Veerle Pieters said 1167 days ago:

I’m very sorry I spoiled your idea for using these lines, it would have been very nice. It’s hard these days to come up with an original idea. Even if you haven’t seen certain things before, people will point you to some design and say it looks alike. The link you mention of the shape is a good example. I had a similar situation once with a logo, luckily I never showed the client these proposals since I discovered that in time… but it’s very weird you create something yourself and than out of the blue you see almost a copy of what you have designed. I was stunned! Well I do like your logo and I think it suits you well. It has a strong shape, I like the ‘never ending’ effect and the bright colors in combination with the brown background…. I think it’s very you, that’s probably because you often wear those brown t-shirts :)

No.32

Mark Lawler said 1166 days ago:

Love the new Hickdesign v8, certainly fits the new logo nicely =D Just a suggestion, there still seems to be a little inconsistency with the journal and the other pages on your site. I noticed on the extra page you have used a pseudo-iframe effect to keep everything on the page without scrolling. Perhaps a better idea would be to scroll the whole page (so there isn’t extra scroll bars) but keep the hicksdesign link bar in the same position, so sort of like a frame effect but using css. Similar to the way the last design of Dave Hyatt’s surfing safari blog worked.

Anyhow, just a suggestion not a criticism! Love the new work =D

No.33

Jon Hicks said 1166 days ago:

No Mark, I don’t want to do that. The Journal pages need to have the body scrolling, as they are such long text pages, but the rest doesn’t need to be. I don’t see it as inconsistency.

No.34

LittlePixel said 1166 days ago:

I don’t really see what the fuss is about with the vertical stripes. I mean it’s pleasant to look at but hardly art. Anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of Photoshop can do these so either Siobahn is a little nÃ¤ive or pretentious. Either way I could rustle these off at a rate of 10 an hour but would never have the audacity to call it art.

1) Get an image
2) Select a 1px row in it
3) Crop it so that it’s one px high
4) Resize the height so that it stretches the 1px to a reasonable stripe.

That’s it. Not art. Simply process.
I’d be a millionaire if this was art.

Image linked here took me 5 minutes last night and it’s got a longer process. Just don’t show it to Peter Saville… :)

http://www.littlepixel.info/wave_01.jpg

No.35

Pierce said 1166 days ago:

I dunno, LittlePixel. Your one is pretty ugly. :)

Maybe you’re the one who’s being a little nÃ¤ive if you think art is just about technique? Haven’t we all had this discussion about abstract art a hundred times before?

No.36

Jon Hicks said 1166 days ago:

@ Littlepixel – the art is choosing the right row of pixels. Seriously. Each row gives a different result, and it can take time to get the right result. Sure, anyone can do this, but not everyone would get a good result. Siobhan is neither naive or pretentious, but someone who made me something that rocked my world.

“Either way I could rustle these off at a rate of 10 an hour”

I’m sure you could, but art is not judged by the effort involved.

“Iâ€™d be a millionaire if this was art.”

So art is solely about making big bucks then, yes?

Also – what Pierce said.

No.37

Gordon said 1166 days ago:

Liking the vertical stripes a lot. And I had a play around at creating my own and.. yeuch. Picking the right pixels is definitely ‘an art’.

As for the logo, still loving it, more so on the brown background, but then I’m a graphic illiterate who uses dingbats to create “logos”... never really mastered that one.

No.38

reese said 1166 days ago:

I love these because they merge fine art with the digital age-I hope we see more of this.

I found this excel project interesting in a different way. I’d never have the patience to do that kind of work but admire those who do.

Siobhan’s work is lovely, in great part, because of his love for it and the care he took on passing it into you. If art was about making big bucks, the world would be out a lot of beauty. (Sorry, I could not figure out new paragraph tags in textpattern).

No.39

LittlePixel said 1166 days ago:

Blah. I don’t think art is about money nor is it entirely about technique. But sadly it is about money in the real world and someone who’s discovered a ‘new technique’ that is old news rankles me a bit that’s all. I’m not naÃ¯ve – I know it’s all about ‘choosing the right row’ but it’s amazing that if a sixthformer did one exactly the same as one by Hirst the sixthformer’s one would only be ‘pretty cool’ yet Hirst’s would be “A Groundbreaking fusion of Art and the Digital realm” or some such other Art-crit nonsense. I suppose I’m just pointing my ‘Pseuds Corner’ raygun back at ourselves to see what happens. Seems you all bought the “Artist Schtick” to me.

No.40

Jon Hicks said 1166 days ago:

One important thing to note here Little pixel, is that they aren’t calling themselves artists – I’m calling them that. Thats how I see them.

I know the problem you’re referring to, and I agree. But that problem is not here.

No.41

P.J. Onori said 1165 days ago:

I absolutely adore data visualizations and the Kunal Anand piece has me salivating at this point. Amazing work – in my opinion, this area of art is still so open for growth.