Tangled Mind

Shall I bring Understanding Comics and Reinventing Comics along to Signs of Life tomorrow?

I have been using them for the last couple of years along with the Tufte books on how to design effective graphical information as excellent guides for web designers on semiotics and perception. They form an excellent counterpoint to the Nielsen/Tog usability axis.

Transmetropolitan is brilliant. And nearly over. Damn. What will Ellis do next?

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I have Understanding Comics and Reinventing Comics ... somewhere ... have even read the first one!

And yes, though I hadn't really thought of it, they are an excellent primer in layout and semiotics. Hmm. Will review.

What/where Nielsen/Tog?

You can't get Transmetropolitan in the City of London.

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but you will bring the camera, won't you? ... utterly unimpressed by various film-processing outlets this week.

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In the backpack already...

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Usability gurus. Jakob Nielsen, Donald Norman and Bruce "Tog" Tognazzini. Right a lot of the time. And certainly interesting to argue about with design folk...

This is their company's site (http://www.nngroup.com/)

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Nielsen is the 'less is more' chap, yes? Used by me and no doubt many others as an excuse for a simple site?

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Yes, that's a reasonable summary of his work. However I believe he misses out crucial issues - especially the concept of "flow", which is it at the heart of interaction design. There's more to web design than simplicity (just as there is a lot more than "skip into").

Which reminds me.

The official collective noun for web designers is a skip intro. So, "see those blokes with number 2s and dark glasses? No, they're not vampires, it's a skip intro of web designers..."

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These are the sma eguys that Geoff Ryman goes on about. Have you talked to him about his web useability/disability access work? Lil

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ooooh look, an Anonymous Lillian!

Why aren't you a real person? Oh go on. Show yourself.

No, haven't really chatted about that sort of thing with Geoff - way more likely to be archaeology and (ahem) slash right now ...
... have just had Horrid Image of Archaeological Slash. Carter and Caernarvon [??]. I really wish that hadn't happened.

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... so I wish you hadn't thought of that as well.

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Heh. I went to Gosh at lunchtime to pick up the new issue...

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And no, it is not 'just the same as Sandman').

Hmm, got anyone in mind when you say this? :-)

And I do still think that in American Gods he's going over the same themes he's already treated in Sandman, good though the novel is (I felt the same about Neverwhere).

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I'm not so sure about that. All three do have one linking concept - humanities relationships with the otherworldly, perhaps even with the numinous. However they do exlore very different relationships in different ways.

Sandman, like Terry Gilliam's classic trio of films, is about story. How we create stories, and how they create us. Neverwhere, in its distorted and mythical London, is about place, and how it shapes the world around it. And finally American Gods is about gods, the gods we make, and the resulting baggage societies carry around with them.

Actually, thinking about that, the theme is actually humanities relationship with itself, looking at three of the mirrors/filters/whatever we throw up to the universe.

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He's right you know

[punctuate why]

Gaiman is using some of the same symbols, themes etc but he is telling very different stories in the three books. They are all rooted in myth. But Sandman is about - sorry, 'about' - moral law (like Greek tragedy is 'about' moral law) ... Neverwhere is 'about' the patina of legend that builds up in a city, and how it builds up latterly, post-Victorian ... and American Gods is, heh, about gods.

And America.

No, it's kind of about that same clash of modernity and myth, but it's also to do with adaptation, and with how a sense of belonging is acquired.

Or maybe I mean "I don't know ... ask Neil".

[By the way, I am not disagreeing with Simon here - they're also all about story ...]

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You see this is why I don't do reviews for Matrix ...

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... including the BBC. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/uk/newsid_1925000/1925780.stm)

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I think not.
That is ... 'twas the Beeb site that sent me there. And him on the Front Page, too.

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