PUBLIC MARKS with search exercise

Every time you open a new tab to check out one of the following websites, stop. Get up from your computer and do the exercise associated with the site you were going to visit. After you complete the exercise, reward yourself by going to the website.

You know how powerful maps are – to communicate, to convince, to plan, to dream. But existing mapping tools make hard work of a good map. General-purpose graphics programs know nothing about mapping and can be an exercise in frustration. And GIS» geographic information systems (GIS) are used to manage and analyze geospatial data; though powerful for those purposes they often produce unattractive “GIS-looking” maps!have a steep learning curve, are expensive, and lack high-quality presentation graphics.

“It’s a good way to get exercise and see the city,” said Mr. Montelongo, who is working on a series of GPS drawings based on the beloved video games of his youth. “You end up going on these streets that you would never otherwise go down.”

The point of this exercise was mainly to show how thinking of the New York Times Topics as a controlled vocabulary, that can be serialized as a file, and still present on the Web, could be useful.

Welcome to the microsite for the new Si Begg 4 Track E.P. 24-Bit Error Collection. This is a new exercise in music distribution. I ask you what you want then give it to you. simple as that.

Would you like the MP3's for free.

or...

Would you like to £buy the limited edition beautifully crafted box set including 24bit 44.1khz wavs and exclusive DJ Remix Toolkit, which consists of all track layers and sound samples from the 4-track E.P.

All distributed data should be accessed and used relatively to the GeoBase Unrestricted Use Licence Agreement. With this licence, users are granted a non-exclusive, fully paid, royalty-free right and licence to exercise all intellectual property rights in the data. This includes the right to use, incorporate, sublicense (with further right of sublicensing), modify, improve, further develop, and distribute the data; and to manufacture and/or distribute Derivative Products. The Licensee shall identify GeoBase as a data source.

Two clients of ours from Bethel University, Mark Erickson (Director of Web Communications) and Michael Vedders (Director of Web Technology), came to mStoner’s Chicago office for two days earlier in the month to work directly with us on the Bethel strategy document. The idea was that two days of intense collaboration and discussion would produce a more cohesive report, better suited to Bethel’s needs.

It Doesn’t Get Any More Old School than Paper and Scissors

Part of this two day process was an exercise that I like to call paper wireframing, or Pwireframing. It’s an idea that came to me based on a link that my colleague Laurel Hechanova sent me: The Design Police Visual Enforcement Kit. If you take a look at this page, it’s essentially a print-it-yourself sticker kit, laying out a bunch of funny “laws” you can stick to a piece of communication.

MiniLight is a minimal global illumination renderer. It is primarily an exercise in simplicity. But that makes it a good base and benchmark for development and experimentation. And it just might be the neatest renderer around (on average, about 570 lines). There are translations into several programming languages.

Once the tasks are prioritized and in the bullseye, you can organize, arrange and add structure. You can start to see relationships, which may indicate a different priority. You can start to see categories, which may affect iteration planning. You can begin to add structure. The outcome of this exercise is an easily understood diagram showing the project’s priorities. For teams that aren’t comfortable assigning a number to a task, this is a good alternative to try.

Something more interesting than the usual Excel sheet

Although much of this stuff is hard to hear (in part because some of it echoes what's said privately at Adobe), the site is a valuable exercise.

A Brief Message features design opinions expressed in short form. Somewhere between critiques and manifestos, between wordy and skimpy, Brief Messages are viewpoints on design in the real world. They’re pithy, provocative and short — 200 words or less.