king talk

The whole design concept of the decoded conference is based on a graphic coding of words. The code creates generative forms which represent the name of the speaker, mottoes or any text you want.

The visual coding concept consists of few specified rules for each single letter. The basic geometrie is based on a triangle, each corner stands for a letter within the prompted word. All characters are located on a specific angle of a circle depending on the last position. Triangles are always built on two existing corners together with the currently created vertex. Furthermore this means that new triangles always have a same side with the previous triangle. For shaping the generative appearance the triplets of letters are therefore more important than single letters.

Color and shapes are based on the letter frequency in german. The letter »E« (17,4%) occurs more often then the a »Q« (0,02%) for example. For this purpose the guiding principle is, that less frequent letters need a more noticeable graphical change. Coming back to our example the »Q« has a more saturated color than the »E« which is setting an emphasis within the whole generative structure.

If you want, you can try to type in your own name:
http://decoded-conference.com/generator

Today is the release date of the brand new book called »Generative Gestaltung«. It was written by some people which I know back from the good old days at HfG Schwäbisch Gmünd. It´s a comprehensive and monumental book about generative design. If you want to learn more about typography, you probably will pick »Lesetypgrophie« by Friedrich Forssman and Hans Peter Willberg. If you want to know more about generative systems, you have to pick this one. 500 pages full of experiments, tutorials and tons of code. It will cost about 75 EUR at amazon. An english version will be released soon…

You probably know the website wefeelfine.org. We Feel Fine has been harvesting human feelings from a large number of weblogs. Every few minutes, the system searches the world’s newly posted blog entries for occurrences of the phrases »I feel« and »I am feeling«. Jonathan Harris has written a book about it now. You can see a preview about that on the official website. It contains some inspiring infographics. This one will be released on 1st of December and will cost about 20 EUR at amazon.

Not long ago, we announced that I will be holding two classes at HfG Schwäbisch Gmünd in the coming term. Now we couldn’t be happier to confirm that Markus and I will also be lecturing at the FH Joanneum in Graz – the very university we both graduated from.

There will be one evening lecture and a two day workshop. Both are titled »Code = Design«, meaning that we will explore the variety of ways in which programmed patterns can enhance, facilitate or just speed up different kinds of design processes. We’re going to talk about generative design for screen, print and installations as well as about prototyping and hacking. For details have a look at our Flyer.

While the workshop is specifically targeted to students in their first term, the lecture will be open to anyone including non students. So if you are around Graz on October 16, make sure to drop by at Alte Poststraße 152 – it’s free! Lecture will start at 18:15, so be punctually.