Apr 20, 2011

When perception meets visual accuracy

This got us thinking this morning. Only when we see a graphic demonstration of something do we actually see the truth. We love a good information graphic as much as the next man here at Everybody, but sometimes one is worth mentioning

Living in Europe we are used to seeing three dimensional representations of the globe from a “Eurocentric” perspective. This means that Africa is often wrapped around the bottom of the globe, which means we don’t really see just how huge the whole continent is. I mean, the Netherlands is small, the UK is also small, but Europe is huge right?

Nope.

If you look at the graphic we stumbled upon earlier today (don’t ask, we found it whilst looking for chocolate… again, don’t ask), which demonstrates just how epic in scale the continent of Africa is. Now, whilst I’m quite worldly wise, in terms of travel and Geography, it still surprised me. I know Africa is “big”, but it isn’t until you define “big” that you see just how much land mass it actually is.

The reason for this is that in the Northern Hemisphere we’re used to a specific projection of the globe. The “Mercator projection” is named after the Flemish Cartographer who produced it originally as a Nautical map, as it allowed rhumb lines to be shown as straight segments. (Click here for more on this – there’s real maths behind this so I’m not going into it!)

If you click on our (deliberately cryptic) small version of the graphic we refer to, you can see the full sized Graphic, produced by Kai Krause, and see for yourself, just how Africa could swallow, China, the United States, India and most of the European Countries and still have room for more!

.

Apr 19, 2011

Digital versus Mechanical: 4N-MVT01 watch.

Once again it’s a wrist based time piece which we’re talking about in the office here. This brilliant watch looks like a mess of numbers until you closer and see that it is actually made up of a series of discs which rotate in the same way a hand would do on a traditional watch. You can see the movement above which lets this happen.

This means the watch has a Digital look display but is completely Mechanical.

The French companies, 4N and Renaud & Papi have merged their abilities to create this watch which they call the MVT01. Using a wide variety of materials in the production they offer the watch with a “self fastening strap”. The level of detail is very high, (quoting the press release). it uses “520 hand decorated components, which reflects the daring and mastery of this independent and young brand”

Whilst being a bit of a watch snob and loving the Tag Heuer Monaco (which you can read about here) this one strikes a note with me, which means it goes into our little blog as a winning design for it’s novel design, but, personally, I can’t help thinking it could be a bit smaller, maybe a bit more “classic” in its look. Still wouldn’t say no to one though!

As usual, you can take your mouse to clickville on the image above, to go to their website for more information.

Now, about the numbers… what typeface should they be? Discuss.

.