Computer screen DPI myth and other misconceptions

27 Jul 2005

Or, an article denouncing the “web is smaller” graphic design mantra. Apparently, it’s all about size…

Today I received an email from a graphic designer we’re [base10solutions, that is] collaborating with in building a website, and this comment about source images and computer screens came up:

I know we said to make the flash ones a really hi res picture… but you cant view more than 72dpi over the net anyway.

It’s not as though people who say this are just stupid: the whole “72DPI” myth has been propagated for… a bloody long time. It’s one of those things stuck in the collective unconsciousness of the world’s graphic designers, especially those who have flirted with design for the screen only occasionally.

The designer we’re working with is great… this isn’t in any way against her, but her email provided an opportunity to jump up and down, and there are two reasons for that.

Firstly, monitors don’t all display the same number of DPI, or, more accurately, PPI. I think the emergence of a plethora of display technologies, as well as falling costs in recent years of all kinds of displays, has meant that we’ve seen a huge move away from 15″ screens being standard (I’m hardpressed to find any 15″ CRT monitors new, and even the LCD market is shifting towards 17″ screens) — and “sensible” resolutions on these (1024×768, max) have similarly been abandoned. This means, of course, that the common wisdom regarding display resolution has become irrelevent, and ultimately false.

Let’s do some maths for a second. I hate this as much as the next person, but… well, it’s required.

I’ve got a 1280×1024 screen. It’s roughly 13.3×10.6 inches in size (17″ diagonally), which equates to about 96dpi. Try this:

1280÷13.3=96.2dpi
1024÷10.6=96.6dpi

It’s not horribly complicated maths, but apparently much of the graphic design world hasn’t even bothered to do that much for some time, instead accepting what Photoshop or ImageReady says in all its wisdom when it advises that “72dpi” is for the web. Yeah, okay.

Having said that, an image 600 pixels wide will (in 90% of cases) always be 600 pixels wide when published to the web. This means that it’ll always take up about 58% of an 1024 pixel wide screen… it also means that it’ll take up only 46% of a 1280 pixel wide screen. An image’s embedded resolution has absolutely no impact unless it’s being printed and the software spooling it to the printer understands this.

So, I suppose you could say I’m getting hung up over words (again) — but I’m not really. There’s a perfectly valid reason to provide higher resolution creatives to your web people (if you’re a graphic designer) — they want source resolution just as much as you print junkies do. For the website we’re building, we were going to construct a Flash animation that had a spinning image in it. If we’ve got higher resolution source, it’s possible to do more funky stuff with that (because, in this case, it really is purely about eye candy), just like it is in print (though without the static nature).

It’s worth remembering (especially when a web team are developing end-to-end creative deliverables) that the client is ultimately responsible to some extent for the quality of the finished product. An eye for design isn’t necessarily their sphere of influence, but providing resources to facilitate good design is. And good design is best achieved with good resources.

There’s a common misconception, it seems, that web designers only want creatives supplied in PNG or GIF format. Most print designers realise JPEG images are fairly lossy, so that hasn’t ever been too much of a problem (for me)… but certainly the PNG/GIF thing is. At any rate, just so the world knows, us web people don’t mind more than single layer rasterised images or mockups when building sites.

And we certainly don’t need you to splice the website up for us… that’s been another concern in the past. I’ve spent two hours piecing a supplied website design back together before I even start pulling it apart (again) for CSS treatment!

In fact, in my experience (such that it is), it seems that the less graphic designers think about the fact that the creatives they supply are ultimately ending up on the web, the happier everyone is. So here’s my recommendation: don’t think of it as web anymore. Any web development agency worth their salt should know what to do with whatever source material you throw at them, and if they can’t use it then it’s their job to say, not the designer’s to guess.

Whole school photo and being backwards

26 Jul 2005

Today the whole of St. Andrews converged on Sydney Square for a whole-school photo that’s now happening approximately once every five years.

Inevitably, a little stupidity ensued:

To quote Ben, with a little bit of… creative subediting:

Finding the day: five weeks.
Getting 1100 students to behave: two hours, three detentions, and an airbrush tool.
Whole school photo: priceless.

…For everything else, there’s the St. Andrew’s VISA card. (I hope they’re not still doing that, but such a beast did exist at one point…)

The dangers of quoting from utterly unrelated songs

25 Jul 2005

From an MSN conversation. (8) is an emoticon that appears to be a musical note.

[19:24:32] Tori:
(8) mysterious as the dark side of the moon (8)
[19:24:36] Josh:
that was the most bizarre assembly
[19:24:42] Tori:
(8) i think i have the emotional capacity of a slug(8)
[19:24:45] Josh:
LOL!
[19:24:46] Tori:
(different song:P)

Essay: Contemporary shadows

24 Jul 2005

Is the contemporary transformation you have studied anything more than the shadow of the classic text on which it was based? 1019 words.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, Tom Stoppard’s transformation of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, is a shadow of the original work from which it draws its inspiration, by design. Stoppard shifts focus in his 1967 appropriation of the original to highlight the minority roles of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in order to achieve his purpose, which should not at any time be considered analogous to that of Shakespeare in the original work.

Certainly, elements between plays are common, the most obvious being the characters used. Even this, however, is done in such a way that there is little common in the characterisation between texts: the characters in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are but a shadow of the shadow-characters in Hamlet. They are nothing more than a shadow of the original characters, for they are characters in their own right. Shakespeare renders a sketch of these figures sufficient to empower them as supporting figures only: they cannot exist in their own right, given the power balance in the play – namely, that royalty are depicted as a dominant force throughout the play and bear full responsibility for the chain of events leading to tragic demise as a result of upheaval of the imperturbable Elizabethan notion of a “Great Chain of Being”.

For Stoppard, however, these two characters stand alone – though they exist primarily as a representation of the common man – they direct or, significantly, fail to direct the events that unfold in this play, simultaneously depicting the plight of Hamlet and those who hold power (the royalty of Hamlet) as something common to all people, whilst, through this, conveying the existentialist ideology that Stoppard proclaims.

Hamlet’s own uncertainty and farcical behaviour confers the point Stoppard attempts to make centuries later through his “shadow” of a text: his lack of control is manifest not only in Hamlet’s eventual demise, but also in his actions that lead to this and the clear instability of this character. It is possible to assert that Hamlet’s declaration “When the wind is southerly/I know a hawk from a handsaw” is a suggestion his madness is contrived, and yet, if this is so, his earlier questioning of the consequences of suicide are even more irrational. Indeed, the irrational behaviour of Shakespeare’s protagonist is a core element of both the original play and its subsequent transformation, though for completely different reasons.

Shakespeare’s Hamlet depicts a protagonist deeply affected by his father’s death, due to the disruption of the “natural order” of things. Conversely, in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, Hamlet is depicted as being in control, relatively empowered: “He murdered us!”, Rosencrantz complains. This transformation is but a shadow of the original work, and, more than this, it is an unfaithful shadow. It does not even pretend to honour the sentiment put forth by Shakespeare, but blithely ignores his characterisation and thematic influence, with a shameless Stoppard instead appropriating (as in theft) the established elements of Shakespeare’s play to form his own corrupt shadow, or appropriation (as in transformation). When Hamlet is presented in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, he is chiefly in a dominant role: there is, for example, no presentation of him deep in philosophical monologue of uncertainty that dominates much of Shakespeare’s original work; but Stoppard preserves Hamlet issuing instructions to the Players in his play-within-a-play act of satire against the establishment, as well as Hamlet unequivocally beating Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in a conversation designed to solicit information: “Twenty-seven-three” being the final score.

Control is something neither Rosencrantz nor Guildenstern appear to have much of. They are depicted by Stoppard as being entrapped in this absurdist-reality drama, in which their fate is inexorably committed and unchangeable. Throughout the whole play, their dialogue is incessant and ultimately meaningless – In the last scene, an irate Guildenstern shouts at Rosencrantz: “Shut up! I’m sick of it! Do you think conversation is going to help us now?”

Conversation, ironically, had never helped them: it merely served to aid them in their procrastination, which is itself another “shadow” of the original play retained by Stoppard in his contemporary work. The idea that they are waiting for the inevitable is delivered in fierce style by Guildenstern in the closing act, whose vicious declaration against the fallacies of the acting profession appears to be wholly in response to a melodramatic tradition – one comparatively common in Elizabethan theatre – and the idea that something must always happen. Even earlier in the play, when Guildenstern instructs Rosencrantz to “Tread warily, follow instructions” and Rosencrantz asks in response, “For how long?”, Guildenstern’s answer to him is simply “Till events have played themselves out.”

The pun inherent in “played” is clearly a critique of the values of theatrical tradition such as that respected and followed by Shakespeare’s Hamlet, especially when viewed in light of the sentences that follow: “There’s a logic at work – it’s all done for you, don’t worry. Enjoy it. Relax.” Guildenstern continues a while, before an ellipsis and the question “Do I contradict myself?” Yes, he does. Stoppard uses lines such as these to establish a connection between the tangible threads of the original work from which he delineates his “shadow” reflecting the influences of the culture and philosophy of his time.

Without a doubt, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead is but a shadow of the original work composed by Shakespeare many centuries prior. Its setting in the wings of a canonical work such as Hamlet expose it to criticism, yet to view it as inferior is invalid. Whilst Rosencrantz and Guildenstern remains a shadow of the work upon which it builds, the view that it is “nothing more” than this is narrow-minded, and fails to recognise the ideological contributions that Stoppard has imparted upon the original text in adopting a view of the text through a twentieth-century mindset, and by the foregrounding of what were once minority characters.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern fails to accurately represent Hamlet, with deliberate purpose in mind: The depiction of a new set of values and ideologies shaped by those of Stoppard’s contemporaries and popular thinking of that period, over those presented by Shakespeare through his original play, Hamlet.

Beyond reason

24 Jul 2005

This is a post that I’ve been wanting to make for a while now, but haven’t, because the facts still weren’t clear and there’s a part of me that aspires to journalism beyond pure blogging.

July 23, 2005. “Bomb suspect shot dead on Tube”.

July 24, 2005. “Police gunned down innocent man”.

Notably, police did not gun down “Bomb suspect”. Shoot first, ask questions later. Okay, whatever. They screwed up, they’re only human. So why am I jumping up and down about it (value of human life aside — because we know thousands of people in non-Western countries are being killed everyday and no-one blinks)?

If nothing else, their reasoning. The apparent lack of recourse.

“For somebody to lose their life in such circumstances is a tragedy and one that the Metropolitan Police Service regrets,” police said, acknowledging they had shot the wrong man.

They are now trying to get the body of murdered Brazilian, Jean Charles de Menezes, back to his home land in accordance with the wishes of his family.

“The government expects the British authorities to explain the circumstances that led to this tragedy,” a Foreign Ministry statement said.
The Brazilian was “apparently the victim of a lamentable mistake”, the statement said.

Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim issued a statement in which he states his expectation the British authorites explain the events that unfolded. This is important: there has been no mention from the British of any further investigation or inquest into the death of Jean Charles de Menezes.

The actual nature of the killing itself, however, is also in need of explanation. Police, apparently, assessed the risk and determined the actions that would result in the murder (I use that word unflinchingly, for that is what this is) of an innocent man. Let us pause to collect what we know of the situation, from the statements of eyewitnesses.

The police were in plain clothes. Other passengers on the train had absolutely no way of knowing with any degree of certainty that the men weilding guns were, in fact, members of the London Metropolitan Police Service. Without indulging in conspiracy theory, to this day the only way the public can “know” this is by the [later, rather delayed] statements of the police force itself: the actual killers could quite easily have been a covert British force that unseen agreements neccessitated the blame being placed upon the Metropolitan Police.

The “Metropolitan Police Service”, wearing plain clothes, weilding several “heavy”-looking handguns (according to eyewitness Mark Whitby), start chasing after this man.

If we cut through the ideological obfuscation about how “terrorism has no effects on the population” whatsoever and “insert name of attacked city here will be strong!” rhetoric, just for a second, it’s pretty self-evident that terrorism does have very real effects, manifest in (amongst other things) a prevailing sense of paranoia. Terror, conceptually, is based upon the irrational. You are not statistically likely to be killed in a public place in London, but the fear is there. Similarly, a man wearing a New York tee-shirt and a coat that “looked out of place in the hot humid weather” (also Mark Whitby) would not, without the context of previous days, be considered a suspect, chased into a train carriage in a public place, and shot in the head at close range five times.

Terrorism, clearly, does have effects. Ignore the population: it has effects upon rational government. It makes our leaders pass ineffective laws that hamper the population but do little to prevent terrorism. In Sydney, about a week ago, the media started issuing demands that “radical” books in Islamic bookshops be — and I quote — “burnt”.

I’m sorry, did I miss something? Why is an increasingly “liberal” Western population reverting to burning books? Whilst we’re at it, can we burn all the works of Hitler, Mao, Stalin, Marx, a host of other communist leaders, and, if we were to continue, the works of various French revolutionaries that would unequivocably be considered anti-establishment? Who cares what the establishment is — political violence is political violence, is it not?

Oh, no, apparently not. But everyone avert their heads from Vietnam and other instances of US-sanctioned political violence, just in case. That wasn’t about democracy, it was about stopping communism that had turned North Vietnam into an industrialised state with the fastest-growing economy in the region to which aid from Russia and China decreased whilst similar aid to South Vietnam increased and they became progressively more dependent upon the US.

But that was, of course, a huge digression that just threw me into a big pit full of Leftist writers. Ah, quick, let me out.

So let’s ignore the politics behind it for a second, and look at raw emotion. A man was shot in the head five times at close range on public transport. SOMEBODY, BLINK! I’m sure I’m missing something that makes all this perfectly fine — and don’t say prior acts of terrorism, because that’s been proven to be unconnected, remember? Terrorism has no effect on the population! Oh, what was that? I’m assuming imposed ideologies? Yeah, maybe.

Whilst I’m on this whole rant, I thought I’d mention tomorrow I’m going to blow up the Sydney Harbour Bridge…

…and the only reason I’m capable of doing this, is that I don’t yet have a national identity card to act as a restraining force upon me. I’m imagining they’d come out now, and the force it would have on me as I walked towards the center of the bridge wearing a large backpack… Oooh!!! It’s pulling me back!!! I can’t possibly detonate this bomb, because that would mean I’d destroy this beautiful work of holographic, biometric, forensic perfection! Oh, yeah, and they’d be able to identify me as the person who did it if it survived the blast. Because, seeing as I’m a suicide bomber, I do actually care a great deal about that.

To the Australian Government: whoever decides this is a good idea should be taken out on an excursion to Sydney’s public transport network. They should be pursued by people in plain clothes calling out to them to stop, weilding handguns. The public should obligingly step out of the way and accept this as normal. The member of the public service who is being pursued will trip, and fall to the floor in the doorway of a train carriage. They will cower, whilst three armed men come to the doorway of the train, and raise their guns in the air, pointing to the head of the person who is now powerless beneath them.

One.

Two.

Three.

Four.

Five.

The floor of the carriage is red. “Everybody, please leave the carriage. This person was a suspect.”

Twenty other — now uniformed — people come running.

Two days later, a statement is issued. But we already know the ending. It has been realised in the actions that recursively lead to the the death of this pulpy combination of blood and flesh. A death of public freedoms has been realised, and the people have calmly left their carriage of liberties without further question:– afterall, the guns are held by someone else.

The terrorists have won.

If I were to write that in my HSC exam, as a short story or a work of fiction, chances are the paper would be considered a non-serious attempt, as has happened previously in at least one widely-publicised case with ‘excessive’ violence (If memory serves me correctly, this instance detailed a school shooting, I think). This violence is not only on our streets, and in our televisions: it is so pervasive in society that the institutions once assigned the role of preventing such now facilitate it gratuitously and without need for explanation. Remember, in all this, that the British government and bodies that constitute their public service (including the police force) have not identified the need for any further investigation into the procedures that have allowed this brutal murder to take place, and neither has any further investigation into why this man in particular was shot. As of the time of writing, the most recent press release available on the Metropolitan Police website is from the previous day:

“I can say as part of operations linked to yesterday’s incidents, Met police officers have shot a man inside Stockwell Underground Station at approximately 10am this morning. London Ambulance Service and the air ambulance both attended and the man was pronounced dead at the scene. I understand Stockwell tube station remains closed.

The information I have available if [sic] that this shooting is directly linked to the ongoing and expanding anti-terrorist operation. [Emphasis mine] Any death is deeply regrettable. I understand the man was challenged and refused to obey. I can’t go any further than that at this stage…”

– Sir Ian Blair

This information has since been proven incorrect, yet there is a prevailing silence from the authorities. Democracy requires a degree of openness that has not been allowed, here. Irrespective as to any “ongoing and expanding anti-terrorist operation”, announcing that an investigation is proceeding into this specific event is not only of no detriment to “anti-terrorist” operations, but a requisite aspect of democracy.

BBC article
SMH article
Someone who knew Jean