This is my submission for GOOD’s Gas Station of the Future competition. You can read about my submission on the GOOD website. GOOD is currently waiting for votes on submissions, so I’d really appreciate your vote. If you have a moment, please vote for me, Matt McInerney, on the twtpoll. If you’d like to see a hi-res version of my entry, click here. Here’s my description:
What if the gas station of the future is no gas station at all? In my vision, as electric cars become more popular because fossil fuels have become more expensive, we’ll need less places to pump and more places to plug in. While many people will just plug in their cars at home, there will certainly be those of us who need to plug in while we’re at work or running errands. Instead of stopping to charge the car on our way to these activities, what if we could just plug in where we park? And instead of designing a new “gas pump,” perhaps we could make use of a payment system we’re already accustomed to: parking meters. By adding a touchscreen interface that allows the user to pay for both parking and charge time simultaneously, rarely would anyone ever have to rely on stopping at a station solely dedicated to providing fuel for vehicles.
Chance is an interactive series I’ve been working on for a Multimedia Design class at SCAD for the past few weeks. It consists of three flash applications that all deal with random chance in some way. You can click through above to interact with the pieces. Below I’ve pasted the description of each piece.
The Evolution Machine is a very simple simulation of the process of evolution. DNA is represented by a simple integer generated at random. That DNA can be bred by selecting a mate and hitting “Reproduce.” The offspring will be generated as an average of the two DNA strands, but with the random possibility of genetic mutation. Once a child is born, the child becomes the parent in the next generation by hitting the “Next Generation” button. This process can be repeated infinitely. All the circular creatures are generated dynamically based entirely on the DNA integer. If you’d like the see the evolution of your species, you click the “Show Evolution” button the top right.
Chances of Death in America takes the popular minesweeper game and turns it into a simulation of actual probability of death in America. Every time a player clicks a square, they risk clicking on a cause of death, based on actual 2002 statistics. The player can choose to click on the squares very quickly and die of one of the hidden causes, commit suicide with a button in the bottom right, or just wait for their life to run out as the years (seconds) tick away.
The Infinite Monkey Generator is a simulation of the infinite monkey theorem. The infinite monkey theorem states that a monkey hitting keys at random on a typewriter keyboard for an infinite amount of time will almost surely type a given text, such as the complete works of William Shakespeare. The generator allows the user to plug in a line of Shakespeare, or any word(s) they’d like, and watch as random strings of letters are generated. The application continues to generate a series of completely random letters until the user’s selected word has been stumbled upon, at which point the application will stop and let the user know the word has been found. Note: if you select a high speed it may slow down your machine. words longer than 4 letters long can take a very long time to generate randomly.
My typefaces Raleway and Orbitron are now on Typekit. If you’ve ever wanted to use them on your websites, it’s now easier than ever.
I just posted Raleway on The League of Moveable Type. It’s free to download. If you find any problems with, please let me know. The font features old style and lining numerals, small caps, a pretty complete set of diacritics, and an alternate stylistic set.
FontAid IV: Coming Together is now available at MyFonts for $20. It’s features 485 ampersands and all the proceeds to go Doctors Without Borders. Go buy a copy.
(I designed ampersands #25 and #26 above.)
Allerta is an open source typeface I’ve designed for use in signage. Allerta was designed to be easily and quickly read from a distance. Each letter exploits the most unique aspects of that individual letter so that each character can be easily distinguished from any other.
I’ve released Allerta as an open source project so that those countries, communities, and/or organizations without a proper signage system may have a way of quickly designing and implementing one.
The name Allerta is derived from the origins of the word alert (adj. swift, v. to advise or warn). The Italian origin all’erta literally means on the lookout.
While Allerta is complete with a large character set, because it is open source, modification and expansion is encouraged. I also intend to continue working on it to improve the spacing, add more kerning pairs, add more useful icons, and maybe even add more weights in the future.
For a full overview, check out the PDF and visit the minisite I’ve set up to download it.
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This was one of the ampersands I submitted to FontAid IV. If you’d like to see other submissions, check out the typophile thread. FontAid will be releasing a font full of all of these ampersands in the very near future for $20. All the proceeds will go to Doctors Without Borders. I’ll post a link to the font when it’s complete.
It’s been a little while since the last post. Since then I’ve been working on some more academic projects. Here’s a little peak at a piece of a new project.
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