Jonathan Dobres

There’s been a lot of chatter around the design blogs about the NYC subway map. New York has what is arguably the most complex subway system in the world: 468 individual stops, not to mention all those different routes and schedules. Plus, this all runs beneath the New York City street grid, which is not crowded or confusing in any way. Oh, and the map needs to be useful for NYC’s many tourists.

The NYTimes has a nice little history of the subway map problems. In short, the MTA usually eschews the preferred world standard of 90 and 45 degree angles on a white background in favor of a geographically accurate overlay of the city. In the 1970s, Massimo Vignelli introduced a map that went the 90-45-white route, but since it included almost nothing of the aboveground city it proved massively unpopular, despite being easier to read. It was quickly replaced with a geographically accurate design. That brings us to Eddie Jabbour’s inspired pet project to get the best of both worlds. His map (in the comparison shots, current official map on the left, Jabbour’s project on the right) is 90-45 with a city overlay. It distorts geography to make the subway lines play nicely, but not as much as Vignelli’s map did. I particularly like that each individual route is given its own line, clustered together by color. The amount of information that needs to be presented in the NYC subway map is pretty close to ridiculous, and I think Jabbour’s version is the most readable.

If you couldn’t tell, I find the whole issue of information design and usability very interesting. Subway maps in particular are a perfect example of why this area of design is so necessary, important, and nuanced. Take Boston’s subway, for instance. In comparison to New York it’s an order of magnitude simpler. I’ve always liked the MBTA’s newest subway map, which was introduced a few years ago. Still, I have to wonder if we’d get more use out of it if, like New York’s map, it included more in the way of aboveground information. Though Boston’s transit system may appear so simple as to not warrant that level of attention, it turns into a real mess once you include the buses, and those bus maps are truly hideous to look upon (particularly the idiocy of a poorly drawn John Hancock Tower jutting up from a flat overhead map). A map that has a basic street grid, subway, and bus routes in one could be tremendously useful to Boston citizens and tourists alike. It might even get people to travel in the city more. Alas, such a project is way, way beyond my skills and free time.

That is all.

As a kid I was really into special effects. I think it started with Terminator 2. Although the visions of a white hot nuclear holocaust terrified my ten year-old self, it was the shape-shifting T1000 that first caught my eye and stuck with me. My interest in special effects persisted for many years after the image of Sarah Connor’s burning skeleton clinging to a playground fence had faded from memory. (Man, how many times in my life will I ever write a sentence that cool?)

For a while my favorite TV show was the Discovery Channel’s Movie Magic, which was like a detailed effects documentary for a different movie every week. It was a far better show than the superficial effects segments on Entertainment Tonight, where the commentary usually amounted to, “So you used a computer? Really?”

Some kids dreamed of being astronauts. Me? I wanted to work for Industrial Light and Magic. Working with computer generated imagery was expensive back then but I dabbled in whatever I could. These days I’m a humble digital warrior, using my Photoshop powers for good instead of evil. I know of at least one kid who lived the dream, Ryan Weber, whom ILM hired after the internet debut of Ryan vs. Dorkman. If you’ve never watched this unbelievably polished lightsaber duel, please do so. Now.

Sure, we all remember the glowing sci-fi broadswords and liquid metal assassins, but there’s a saying in the industry: the best special effects are the ones you never notice. So have a look at this making-of reel from Buzz Image. I’ll bet you never thought Brokeback Mountain needed effects work.

Oh, and Terminator 2? I watched it recently. The special effects still hold up.

Dear Champagne-Colored Sedan Across the Street,

While I am not the type to compose open letters to entities that are unable or unlikely to respond, I feel that your activities in the early morning of January 2nd must be addressed formally. This would be the early morning of one of my few frivolous days off.

To refresh your memory, the events to which I am referring began at precisely 4:00AM. The noise that you emitted at that hour took the form of a high pitched wail, unbroken, unrelenting, and utterly different from the standard car alarm noises that I can sleep through. We shall hereafter refer to it as The Noise. The Noise shook me from an already hard-won slumber.

I initially mistook The Noise for my alarm clock, because if you were to draw a line from my left ear to your location on the street, the line would pass right through my alarm. After mashing every dial and button on my clock (including “Adjust Brightness”) and futilely trying to muffle it under my comforter, I eventually ripped it from the wall. The Noise lived.

At this point you had been sounding your torturous note for a continuous half hour. I ruled out fire alarm, carbon monoxide detector, haywire air conditioner, and unreliable microwave. My house guest, equally perturbed by the alien wail, determined that it was a malfunctioning car horn, located somewhere within your champagne-colored hood. We longed for a sledgehammer.

We debated calling the police. Is this the sort of thing that one bothers a uniformed officer about? Apparently it is, because one arrived midway through our conversation. He was easy to see from my bedroom window, as you are located so very, very close to my building. After gazing at you as if you were a wounded puppy, gently petting your hood at one point, he returned to his vehicle, no doubt thinking, “I can’t believe I’m up at 4:30 in the morning babysitting a broken car.”

A tow truck arrived in short order. I’m sure you thought that, being parallel-parked, there was no stopping you. Humans, however, are marvels of ingenuity, and I got a distinct sense of pleasure out of watching this man attach a chain to your front bumper, roll his truck backwards, and thus un-parallel-park you. You were dislodged from the parallel position like an uncooperative baby tooth. This fixed whatever was wrong with you and The Noise ceased at 5:00AM. It was too late for apologies, however, and you were promptly towed away, never to be seen or heard from again.

I believe I speak for all the residents of my block when I say I hope they crush you into a cube and hand you back to your owner in the same boxes they use for Chinese take-out.

Sincerely,
Jonathan Dobres

I work as a researcher at a hospital. Prior to starting work there I assumed, as I think many do, that doctors simply materialize in these places to diagnose and treat the patients. Either that or they live there. As a former patient, I’d never quite realized that doctors commute and hospitals have human resources departments (trust me, they’re just as misguided as anywhere else). These mundane, workaday facts are very far from the minds of the patient and family. For them, the hospital is not part of the daily routine, but instead an unwelcome disruption of “real life”. Patients understandably want to be done with the hospital, and its bland food, and its medications, and its small beds, and its beeps and bells, and its lonely nights, as quickly as possible. In the best case the patients are able to tolerate the disruption with good humor and frequent visits from family members. In the worst case, the patients feel trapped by the hospital, resent the healthy staff, and refuse to participate in the healing process.

This is, by the way, in a rehabilitation hospital, where the focus is on long term recovery, the initial health crisis having passed. Imagine how much worse all of this is in the acute facilities, where the chemotherapy has just begun, the blood clot is still a time bomb, the wounds from the accident are still bleeding, and the surgery is tomorrow. Now imagine that you are a child in this place, surrounded by monitors and needles, forced to undergo all kinds of unpleasant daily routines, forced to spend nights without mom and dad. Everything is uncertain, and as a child you may not really understand the reason for any of it. Though the fear is terrible, the boredom can often be just as bad. Hospitals, despite the greatest efforts, just aren’t kid friendly places.

When I had my surgeries at the age of six I experienced all these things. It was 1988. Winter, I think, but it’s been a long time since I’ve been able to remember anything detailed from my multiple operations and long hospital stays. Most of the memories I’ve retained have to do with the rare fun moments. The ceramic bunny I painted alongside the kid with spina bifida. A brief flash of riding a tricycle down a corridor in rehab. The heated therapy pool that was run by a physical therapist who, I learned later, was blind. The weird little doll I made out of the same material they use for casts. The thing I remember most clearly? That would be the day someone on staff wheeled in a little TV, connected to a Nintendo Entertainment System. It was my first experience with Super Mario Brothers, but not the last. We got a Nintendo for my recovery at home. The music drove my mother insane but she put up with it. Family friends all bought me games for my birthday, despite the protests of my parents over what was then perceived to be the outrageous cost of cartridges. Mario made the hospital bearable for a few brief nights, and made my long-term recovery–trapped in full leg casts that were molded like a pair of inflexible pants–much, much easier.

Where did videogames begin for you? After all this time, after a literal lifetime of Final Fantasy, Mario, and Doom, I’d nearly forgotten that for me, videogames began in a hospital. My life is so much better for it.

All of this is a long-winded way of telling you that you should donate a little money or Amazon toys to Child’s Play, the annual charity drive started by the heroes at Penny Arcade. It can be as simple as Play-Do, which usually has to thrown out after each individual use in the hospital. So donate. Even something small will make a huge difference to the kids. Trust me.

So there was a series of amazing iTunes/iPod announcements this week. Movies on tap at the store. The Nano has mated with the Mini. The Shuffle finally looks cool. Also, iTunes got a slew of new features, including Cover Flow.

Cover Flow might seem like a piece of superfluous fluff added to an already bloated program, but it’s so much more. Its primary purpose is, I think, to draw attention to the fact that Apple isn’t just in the business of sound anymore. Album art is one way of reminding us that Apple traffics in photos, TV shows, and soon, feature films. More importantly, however, Cover Flow adds a certain tactile charm that’s been missing from the mp3 experience for as long as there have been mp3s. Using Cover Flow is almost, almost, like flipping through a rack of LPs or CDs.

I didn’t think much of it until I successfully added the album art for all of my Jethro Tull. Staring at the old covers, I was instantly taken back to my family’s basement in Jersey. My dad loves Tull. In fact, in the early days of the Interweb, he went by the username jtull. He had all of their old records, and I used to love looking at them whenever he pulled them out. Every so often he’d take out his flute and use some Jethro Tull to practice (Jethro Tull bears the odd distinction of being one of the few rock ensembles to feature a lead flautist).

I’ve been in Boston for over five years now, but as long as I have the music that my dad introduced me to, I feel like I’m not that far from home. Thanks, Cover Flow, for reminding me of that.