Website I Like: steampowered.com

If my computer is on, then I’m logged into Steam.  It’s that simple.  The Steam website is by far the one that has spent the most time opened on my desktop, always tucked in the bottom right corner of my screen.  The site is well organized, clean, and sleek, with a simple color scheme that doesn’t distract from the information presented.  Tabs direct you to different sections of the site, including the store, news, forums, support, and community sections.  The store page lets you see what games are being featured because of new releases or sales, and lets you see lists of games organized by what’s been recently released, what’s selling best, what’s coming soon, and what’s currently on sale.  You can also search for specific games, or browse by genre.  The community section lets you view what games your friends own, what they’ve been playing, and what they still want to get.  The news page features announcements on upcoming or newly released games, as well as updates and patches to existing ones.  Every page is presented in a clearly organized manner, information is placed in order of importance and boxed together accordingly, and the chosen font is highly legible.  As for ways to improve the site, a greater degree of flexibility in how you view your own game and friends lists would be appreciated.  Perhaps if these could be grouped into their own designated subfolders, the information would be easier to navigate.  For those of us who own hundreds of games, anything that can make organizing them easier is a huge advantage.

MoMA Print/Out

I was unable to make the trip to the Museum of the Moving image, and so went to the Museum of Modern Art instead.  I visited the special exhibition Print/Out, which gathered together hundreds of digital and screen prints, text based posters, and other graphic art pieces from dozens of artists.  The first piece that caught my eye as I entered the exhibit was a series of prints by Martin Kippenberger.  They were large scale copies of photographs that depicted sculptures made out of destroyed paintings.  The artist described this as appropriation of appropriation and a sort of “double kitsch.”  In another area, an interactive installation had been set up.  Museum visitors photocopied images of lamps onto semi-transparent paper and affixed them to cube shaped wooden frames with light sourced inside them to create real lamps.  One room featured several large posters printed with phosphorescent ink.  The lights would alternate switching on and off every 60 seconds, the darkness making the barely visible ink glow brightly and reveal the images and text.   The exhibit included many examples of works utilizing layout design elements such as grids, proximity, and alignment, many of which were text based and made use of a great variety of fonts to differing effect.  Some pieces juxtaposed many font styles and sizes to evoke emotion or feeling, or simply to highlight the interaction of the text.  The best piece by far, however, was one by Rirkrit Tiravanija.  It was a timeline of his life and work over several years, depicted with a huge variety of different print and text techniques in a giant scrolling piece covering an entire wall.

In Camera Edit: Public

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWI5744eM0k