We fail far too much at keeping this blog updated. Part of it is that we both find ourselves posting elsewhere on the internet, and part of it is simply that life happens. Sometimes it happens way too much, and too fast! I just wanted to post to give you a tiny idea of what we've been up to in our teeny tiny glimpses of spare time, instead of posting witty things to keep the world entertained.

I've been baking and loving Baked's new book Baked: Explorations. Whisky Pear tart (and galettes with the leftovers) has been a huge hit around the office at Zoo, and unmentionable amounts have been consumed at home. We've both been picking fruit like mad as we keep discovering additional and previously unsuspected fruit trees hidden around the yard. The count so far is 11 plum trees, two apricots, a cherry and a lemon tree. Seems like we must be doing something right, because they've all had an overabundance of fruit this year! We have also been in crazy jam mode, and I think this year's plum jam may even rival last year's amazing jewel-red jam. Suitably, we've been sketching jam labels and stocking up on some very awesome hexagonal jars - pictures to follow when we actually get them sorted...

Apart from that, life has been workworkwork. We're both starting to fray around the edges a little, so it might be time for a holiday soon... whenever we actually have time!

This year Josh and I decided to put some back-breaking labour into our season's greetings, as an excuse to break out the gocco printer again! Each card is an individual print (with as many as 5 runs over the press) with a mix of 7 different illustrative elements, printed in holiday-red and silver. I have to admit, the consistency of the red kinda sucked and bled into the paper, but the silver was fantastic to work with, and left a raised imprint against the recycled brown paper.

Only a few of our family and friends were so lucky as to receive one of these incredibly limited edition prints (because damned if we're doing that again for awhile) but if you missed out and want on next year's Christmas List, just drop us a line and you can go on the spreadsheet (yes, there's a spreadsheet).

Some background on what the hell this is:

This visualisation was crafted in illustrator from data collected via iTunes, Daytum, Twitter and plain notes on paper.

Inspired by and modeled from the Feltron Annual report by Nicholas Felton, and the work of the dutch design duo Toko.

The Feltron Annual report seems to get bigger each year, starting in 2005 and released every subsequent year since. Each edition seems to include more and more obscure details to the point where he is now tracking the amount of times he stops to track the data itself - I know, it boggles the mind.

Nicholas Felton at his desk, the planner on the top left looks very similar to his daytum interface

Nicholas is also the co-creator of Daytum.com, as site that I wasn’t aware of until I started this project. A quick look around his office and it becomes obvious where he got the aesthetic from. It is a online tracking system for anything you care to track, I personally track; Time spent in hours, average hours of sleep per night, what my eating habits are, how much I drink, and what my mood is.

It’s a great idea until you are away from a computer, then you forget to put things in and the entire thing becomes moot. However daytum has a neat iPhone App that lets you add things on the fly which not only makes it easy, but also idiot proof.

Without Daytum I would have never finished this data visualisation or at least had to fudge the numbers until I may as well have made up the whole thing. Now I’ve actually got something that I can look back on and see for example, that I miss breakfast more than half the time - something that I previously wasn’t even aware of and that i’m doing something about.

Toko are two dutch designers who operate out of Sydney (when they aren’t in Amsterdam) and they have the opportunity to do some truly interesting design with clients such as Mini and the City of Sydney. They also have a knack with annual reports, and rather than just showing the raw data they instead use it to form a piece of art that’s both functional and beautiful.

My visualisation tracks things that are more personal to me with regards to type choices for example, and i’ve gone for a different aesthetic to the Feltron reports mine are more about creating a contrast within the pages and trying to mix up the design, it's also built to be printed as a book which also works as a pdf but that may be something that I eventually change for the next edition. Obviously this being my first attempt, will be something I intend to iterate upon until I’ve designed something that is simple yet different enough to not all appear the same.

You might notice that currently this report has a (.5) after the title, this is due to the fact that i've only in the last few months been collecting data and as such wont be able to produce a definitive report until the beginning of next year. This is something that I fully intend on continuing to produce, to both keep my creativity flowing and maintain my sanity when just working all the time.

Sounds boring - It isn't.

Allow me to explain; An Annual Report is a way of expressing a companies various performance throughout a year, it’s designed to transmit the information as simply and easily as possible through text, graphs, or whatever.

The majority are boring because they are functional, mainly due to the fact that the people compiling them don’t know, understand or care about the data within - and as such they’re seen as job to be avoided in most design firms.

This doesn’t have to be the case, look at the work Toko, a dutch/ australian firm, do with the graphs in their clients reports - the information becomes a work of art, becoming both functional and beautiful at the same time.

The same can be said for the annual reports by Nicholas Felton, which also happen to be the annual reports for Nicholas Felton - they’re a full year of his life broken down into how many drinks he had and when, how much he traveled and where, how many photos he took and where the last one of the year was taken. It’s a truly exhaustive account which let to his creation of the website DayTum.com, which is an online tool for you to track all sorts of minor details, like how many ice teas you've had this week (7)

You can find Nicholas’ work here.

In an earlier post (and more extensively on PixelArtStyle) I discussed how many 3D and digital production studios, such as Pixar, Digital Domain and Industrial Light & Magic, were starting to blur the line between traditional 3D animation in films and Video games - which has become known as Machinima.

The idea being that you've already got the tools and assets (you used them to make the game) so why not use them to produce the advertising for the product? Digital Domain started playing with this idea for the launch of Gears of War 2 and it's becoming increasingly popular among even the biggest studios.

Valve Software has been releasing Machinima as a marketing tool for it's Team Fortress 2 game since before it's release in 2007 and they have been learning to broaden their techniques ever since. The latest "Meet the.." video is a testament to the depth and effectiveness of this media, and what's more the whole thing was produced in house by the game designers, with the engine that they built to run the game.

I highly recommend checking it out, I guarantee you wont regret it.