The Eyes Have It

Right now I’m a member of the ICIA and I’m also part of its Presentations Council (which is like an association within an association). It’s a great organization. I’ve learned a lot and met a bunch of great people.

However, I’m beginning to feel the need to also be part of a group that’s a little more focused on my field. Any suggestions? I considered the Graphic Artists Guild, but even that seemed a little too broad.

How about the Health Sciences Communications Association? If you are a past or current member, I’d appreciate it if you could drop me a line and share your experiences. If you like, you can also click above to leave a comment that will be shared with other visitors to this site. Thanks!

This week’s tutorial, from photoshopcafe.com, demonstrates how to use Photoshop to make collages. The example they develop is pretty busy and will work well as desktop wallpaper. However, these techniques can be also adapted to make a striking custom background graphic for your next PowerPoint presentation if the elements used in the collage don’t clash with the slide content.

“We are about to embark on a 6-part voyage that will teach you how to create the high-tech multilayer backgrounds that make you go “wow”. This is probably the most requested tutorial that I have been asked to write.“

Update: Here’s a PowerPoint background I banged out using some of the techniques in this tutorial as well as a few others I picked up elsewhere. I usually try to avoid using text effects in these backgrounds as they can interfere with the slide content.

The Center for Creative Instruction at the Medical College of Ohio is creating dynamic, visually rich healthcare education tools. And it looks like they manage to have a good time while doing it.

“Supporting MCO’s vision ‘to become an acknowledged leader in health care education,’ the Center for Creative Instruction (CCI) is dedicated to developing innovative applications to support teaching and learning. Formed in early 1993, the CCI has assisted faculty, staff and students to develop and use state of the art technology to foster learning.“

An exhaustive reading list that had me clicking to Amazon with the Visa in hand…

“The following books cover many disciplines, from Interaction and Visual Design to Filmmaking to Architecture, but all relate loosely to the various processes, ideologies, visions and practicalities of Experience Design.“

[from elasticspace via Info Design]

A weblog about biotech art.

“Here you will find a small but growing collection of visual artwork that describes many different views of how medical nanorobots and other nanomedical devices and systems might appear. Some of these works have been borrowed with permission from already-published print-media or electronic-media works. Other contributions are original graphics created by the named individual artists especially for this Gallery exhibition, for your additional enjoyment. The images in the Nanomedicine Art Gallery are organized into three nonexclusive conceptual groupings — Nanorobot Species, Medical Challenges, and Individual Artists — for easy browsing.“

“Artwork in this Gallery should be appreciated as expressions of each artist’s unique creative impulses and insights. Some works may be highly interpretive or impressionistic, while others may attempt to achieve photographic realism or the precise rendering of a technical engineering illustration. Some images are in the nature of rough drafts or quick sketches; others are more elaborate finished pieces. All styles are welcome here. And all images are presented with the understanding that they are “artist’s conceptions” which may or may not entirely reflect the technical nanodevice designer’s original intent — or the ultimate engineering reality.“

Thumbnails of all the images in the gallery can be found here.

“The National Science Foundation and the journal Science are now accepting entries for the inaugural 2003 Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge. Winning selections will be featured in a special section of Science’s Sept. 12 edition and winners will receive an expense-paid trip to the foundation for its “Art of Science Project” exhibit and accompanying lecture. This new international contest will recognize outstanding achievement by scientists, engineers, and visual information practitioners in the use of visual media to promote understanding of research results.“

Press Release
Contest Rules

[Thanks Mr. Cieciel]

Things have been kind of slow here at TEHI recently, I was helping to prepare Merck’s FDA Advisory Committee Meeting presentation for the EMEND NDA. I’m hoping to begin posting at the usual frequency next week.

“There is a space of highly complex systems for which we lack deep understanding because few techniques exist for visualization of data whose structure and content are continually changing. My research focuses on developing approaches to such data, in particular, the human genome.“

Main Page and Chromosome Studies: Experiments in Genomic Cartography

From an interview on since1968.com:
“In my own work, the ideas and emotions have to do with enormous amounts of data. As I cannot draw such diagrams by hand, or process such data in my head, then I have to employ computation. In undergrad I studied graphic design and computer science, so I’m interested in trying to weave the two together as a way to visualize and understand more enormous amounts of data than can be dealt with using standard graphic design techniques… that is, I can’t sit down with Adobe Illustrator and layout a poster with all 30-40,000 genes in the human genome by hand… especially when the data keeps changing.“

Thanks for the heads up James.

Blood, Dirt, and Nomograms: A Particular History of Graphs by Thomas L. Hankins.

“L. J. Henderson, a Harvard physiologist and the first president of the History of Science Society, attempted to analyze mammalian blood solely as a physical-chemical substance. He found that the only way he could describe a chemical system as complicated as blood was by a diagram called a “nomogram.” This lecture tells the history of Henderson’s nomogram and of nomograms in general. It describes the origins of graphs in the eighteenth century, their development in nineteenth-century engineering practice, and their importance in the twentieth century for describing physical and chemical systems.“

“A hundred and fifty years earlier he would not have been able to draw any kind of graph at all, unless he had had the imagination to create graphs for the first time. Graphs have become such an important tool for arranging and analyzing data that we can hardly conceive of a science getting along without them, and yet the entire Scientific Revolution of the seventeenth century took place without graphs. Recent writings on representation go so far as to claim that what is new or different about modern science is the nature of its representations. If this is true, then the appearance of graphs and their subsequent elaboration throughout the nineteenth century must constitute, or at least accompany, a profound change in the way that scientists go about their business.“

[via grafyte]

I’ve been an avid reader of Spitting Image (a group blog about “any visual representation of something, that can be copied, and the technologies that make that happen”) for quite a while. Yesterday, I was fortunate enough to become a contributor. This is a great opportunity for me to post all the stuff I’ve been wanting to write about that doesn’t fit the rather narrow focus of The Eyes Have It. Please stop by and visit a blog well worth reading and bookmarking (and I’m not just saying that).