I think the name speaks for itself. LINK »

Greetings, People of the Internet

Since you like the comic and/or charts and/or typos, some things to keep in mind:

• I sell prints! For $10 + shipping you can have your very own poster of this or any comic on the site.
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I’ll be at New York Comic Con in Artist Alley This Weekend

Remember, me! Shirts! Prints! Pins! Stickers! High-fives! Hawk! NYCC Artist Alley! SEE YOU THIS WEEKEND!

Our table is Artist Alley P-10, listed under “Ross Nover” or “Rosscott”. If you come by the table and say the magic word (“kerning”) you get a free sticker or pin while supplies last. Free things, just for coming by the table and remembering a word! Can’t beat that with a stick. Unless you have a stick. In which case I guess you could.

Some notes on the comic:

So I did actually find a list of common types of typos. I have no idea how official this list is, but it looked official enough. I had no idea there were so many formal ways of doing things wrong.

UPDATE: If you like this one, this is not the first comic about typos. Check out these two “Great Moments in Typo History”. (1) (2)

Also, thanks to Systemics Marty “Fn” Day and Rachel “Design Valkyrie” Mooney for chatting online and sharing their typo-related thoughts. Also for being bad typists, it helped.

ANOTHER UPDATE: No new comic for Friday, I’m pretty busy with New York Comic Con prep. See you at the con, and see the rest of you Monday!

Wouldn’t you be if your presentation software was that great?

Venn F%*king Diagrams may be a shirt soon. Thoughts?

UPDATE: Venn F&*king Diagrams is now a shirt! Click below to learn more / purchase from our online store:

Ever navigate using the tags with each post? I do a pretty good job on sorting them. Check it out!

This is actually going to be the featured graphic on my new set of business cards I was working on the other night. This and 3 others like it. I figured you shouldn’t have to see me to see how awesome this is, right?

Btw! If you ever submit a comic to Reddit, Digg, whatever, post the link to the submission in the comments so others can help it out! Big surges in traffic from those sorts of things really helps me get the comic out there, and does wonders for my always-fragile ego.

If you ever have trouble picking a typeface, check out this handy flow chart that leads you through the process. It’s not just handy, it’s also really funny. “Everybody loves Garamond” and the like.

• Via Inspiration Labs »
• The Designer’s site »
• Link to the big chart »

Also one on the trustworthiness of beards. Thanks to all the people who sent this in!

• Link to the big image »
• Link to the creator »

Thanks to Systemic MichaelK42 for posting a link to this awesomeness in the (still raging) comments section of the “Bike Rep” comic from Friday. Too great to not share and bring up. Thanks, MichaelK42!

Next up is an infographic spotted about the overuse of infographics that aren’t really more than a chart or graph with some pretty colors on top. This is only the top section to give you a taste, go check out more here. LINK »

Finally, check out this Awesome Parfait by Carolyn Sewell! It’s pretty awesome. LINK »

I’m just gonna quote the post:

Last fall a group of CCA architecture students, led by Landscape Architect David Fletcher and Rebar art and design studio shared a meal together at a local taco truck for a class assignment.  Our research seminar explored San Francisco’s food and wastesheds. Our premise was that a seemingly simple, familiar food like the taco truck taco could provide visceral insight into the connections between the systems we were exploring.

Turns out it was pretty tough. Big twist, right? Anyway, there was a talk that we already missed, but the chart is still sweet, even at the small size it’s shown. If anyone finds more about the talk let me know. LINK.

In case Monday’s comic on curling whet your tastebuds for curling (check out the comments), here’s a great infographic from GOOD about how curling works. I’m not seeing any “curl”. LINK.

My brother says this is begging for the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, but that would ignore all my friends in the world of social sciences. Instead, the Observer Effect works just fine, which gets at the root of the issue.

UPDATE: Systemic MikeASchneider has alerted me to the similarities between this comic and one done by XKCD. No piracy was intended, and I maintain that this one is prettier and better kerned. While I’m a fan of XKCD, I can’t say I’ve read every one. Great minds think alike, I suppose? For those wondering where all the graphic design jokes have gone, stay tuned. They aren’t far off.

UPDATE-UPDATE: I know what you’re thinking. The equation is crap! Here’s how you can help me fix it!

Everything you need to know to calculate the true size of the gadgets you carry. There are way more factors than you may have considered. I invite you to calculate yours, and post in the comments. Use standard metric system for all measurements. As for Planck’s Apple Constant (based on his original work on Planck’s Constant), everyone knows that’s a physical constant used to describe the size of the smallest iPod available used in the pricing of running arm bands and quantum mechanics.

Systemic Harris has helped us better define the Full Gadget Ratio, with an equation that has now been reflected in the above image. Here’s his breakdown:

On the FGR of Mobile Devices:

Clearly, FGR should be a measure of how bulky/inconvenient the object is, amortized over how useful it is. So:

FGR, the base term at first glance should be affine in S,A,B, as these all contribute more or less additively to bulkiness. T is an issue, though for now we can add it in as well. I see lots of people use S*T or some such, which is clearly not right, though my S+T isn’t much better. Really, the question is whether S is a volume, or the bulkiest dimension, or maybe, it’s the largest face divided by the opposite direction (screen size divided by thickness, say). The question is whether S should be a measure of useful dimensions vs. non-useful dimension, like the latter, or a general matter of how bulky something is to carry around, so a simple volume, or the bulkiest dimension. The interaction w/ T then plays into that. Not sure the best way to handle it. The most accurate would be to break S into the three dimensions and apply T directly, recomputing the volume, but that will complicate the device enormously. So for now we leave it linear.

If a device is twice as useful, it’s clearly functionally half as bulky, so divide by U.

Higher H makes it more useful, but how? On the one hand, H should essentially contribute to higher U, as you can’t use it if the battery is dead, so will use it more. But only past a point, as if it can do, say, 24 or 48 hours w/out recharge, it’s not an inconvenience to recharge every so often. So replacing 1/U by (1 + 1/H)/U is good for bulkiness, as low H decreases effective usefulness a lot, but past a point high H is diminishing returns.

Additionally, though, H plays off against A, as the longer it lasts w/out power the less you need to carry the power adapter around. So perhaps replace the A term by A/H, that is, the bulk of the adaptors is reduced by you maybe not needing to carry them around. Really this should be a threshold effect of some kind, though, where either you are carrying the adaptors around or you aren’t, so maybe multiply A by an appropriate shifted Heaviside function of H. Still, the linear approximation is ok for now. And of course, that you rolled chargers & adapters into the same category muddles the issue.

The worry factor increases bulkiness, presumably linearly. But, if newer versions are out, you don’t mind it breaking as much because you want to buy the new one. So there should be a W/N factor in there (where obviously we must count N as the number of generations at least as new as this one, to avoid division by 0). Again, though once it is old enough you don’t worry at all, but this shouldn’t go to 0, so it should be (1+ W/N).

And the constant should definitely be used as a multiplier, to get the units (whatever they are) to come out right.
So maybe:

FGR = (S + T + A/H + B) * (1+1/H)/U * (1 + W/N) * h, or reordered to look a little nicer

FGR = h(1+W/N)(1+1/H)(S+T+A/H+B)/U

This is why I outsource the really mathy stuff. It’s just easier that way.

UPDATE: As always, if you want a print of this comic (or any comic), they are all only $10 at our online store, Hilariawesome.com!