27 Jul 2005
Note to self.
Live CSS editing is all fun and games until someone loses half an hour of rather intense work because they forgot that live CSS editing doesn’t include a “save” feature, and resets if you accidentally click a link to open in a new tab.
I’d recommend Firefox Web Developer Extension should bear warnings to this effect when using live CSS editing, but it’s entirely possible no-one else has such moments of monumental stupidity. I’m beginning to think that this tool has become a little too integrated into my development process… (but that’s only because it’s so completely indisposably awesome)
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.
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…)
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)
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 Beingâ€.
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!â€, 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?â€
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?â€, Guildenstern’s answer to him is simply “Till events have played themselves out.â€
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.
