Foliosus » Ephemeral http://www.foliosus.com Plants, food and web design Mon, 05 May 2008 23:27:50 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.5.1 en Botany Photo of the Day, again! http://www.foliosus.com/2007/08/29/botany-photo-of-the-day-again/ http://www.foliosus.com/2007/08/29/botany-photo-of-the-day-again/#comments Thu, 30 Aug 2007 06:22:08 +0000 Brent Miller http://www.foliosus.com/2007/08/29/botany-photo-of-the-day-again/ Avalanche lilyAvalanche lily

Really, twice. First was at the end of June: I completely forgot to note it here. I took a photo of Erythronium montanum at the top of Larch Mountain outside of Portland. It was a rainy day, which usually doesn’t make for good hiking, but we were under a thick understory for most of the hike so it worked. There were vast numbers of these very delicate avalanche lilies waiting for us near the top of the mountain, all covered with droplets. They are quite charismatic.

Wandering daisyWandering daisy

The second time was today, for a photo of Erigeron peregrinus ssp. callianthemus. I shot this one over this past weekend hiking up on Mt. Hood. It was a glorious day for a hike, with perfect weather and clear skies. More photos from this trip are in my Flickr stream.

As always, many thanks to Daniel Mosquin of the UBC Botanical Garden and his Botany Photo of the Day, which I really can’t recommend enough. Every day you get a beautiful photo in your feed reader, along with some understanding of the natural world that surrounds us. It really is an amazing planet.

]]> http://www.foliosus.com/2007/08/29/botany-photo-of-the-day-again/feed/ Plant-inspired architecture http://www.foliosus.com/2006/11/30/plant-inspired-architecture/ http://www.foliosus.com/2006/11/30/plant-inspired-architecture/#comments Fri, 01 Dec 2006 06:35:41 +0000 Brent Miller http://www.foliosus.com/2006/11/30/plant-inspired-architecture/ Urban cactus

I can’t resist, this is too good to be true: there is such a thing as an urban cactus. It’s a housing project in Rotterdam, based on a cactus. By placing the balconies as the architects did, every resident gets a double-height outdoor space and more sunlight than they would with a typical balcony. I think it’s brilliant.

]]> http://www.foliosus.com/2006/11/30/plant-inspired-architecture/feed/ Long live the Swiss http://www.foliosus.com/2006/08/30/long-live-the-swiss/ http://www.foliosus.com/2006/08/30/long-live-the-swiss/#comments Thu, 31 Aug 2006 06:26:08 +0000 Brent Miller http://www.foliosus.com/2006/08/30/long-live-the-swiss/ When I was a kid my family lived in Geneva for 5 years. It was a formative time in my life, and I still think very fond thoughts of the Swiss. I’ve always thought of them as a rather typical European country, but smaller, more quaint and with a much more closed and provincial mind-set. However, over the years I’ve learned that they have a rather interesting sense of art and design, one that is much more prominent than in many countries. Their influnence on graphic design is unmeasurable: take Helvetica, for instance. The Swiss really helped make modernism.

Their artistic sense really shines in public art projects, however — like architectural contests, creative painting of radar camera boxes, and generally constructing their public spaces well. What surprises me is when they go super modern and cutting edge. Take this toilet, for example.

The Swiss freakin’ rule.

]]> http://www.foliosus.com/2006/08/30/long-live-the-swiss/feed/ Fonts for the masses (of designers) http://www.foliosus.com/2006/08/29/fonts-for-the-masses-of-designers/ http://www.foliosus.com/2006/08/29/fonts-for-the-masses-of-designers/#comments Tue, 29 Aug 2006 18:43:43 +0000 Brent Miller http://www.foliosus.com/2006/08/29/fonts-for-the-masses-of-designers/ Right on, Mr. H!

Andrei Herasimchuk has just written an open letter to John Warnock at Adobe, suggesting that he, and really Adobe, contribute a small group of roughly 10 core fonts to the public domain. That’s not so cool. What’s cool is the rationale behind the request. If these fonts — fonts like Frutiger, Helvetica Neue and Warnock Pro — go public and are released in Windows and MacOS distributions, then web designers might be able to use more than FIVE fonts for designing web pages.

Given the technological limitations that web designers face, what with problems in cross-browser support for standards as well as requirements for testing sites on multiple platforms (mac, win, cell phones, screen readers), it would be nice if we got a break for once, and were able to expand our design options beyond Helvetica, Times, Trebuchet, Georgia and Verdana. As nice as those are, the inability to rely on any kind of typographical range is a real handicap. If you’ve ever wondered why many “Web 2.0″ sites look alike, look no further than the choice of 3 good sans-serif fonts that are truly avaliable cross-platform. Choice of fonts will allow our sites to have unique character and identity. Seriously — if Adobe released just 10 fonts in this manner, it would triple the number of available choices.

Mr. H, you have my support.

]]> http://www.foliosus.com/2006/08/29/fonts-for-the-masses-of-designers/feed/ Great photos of plants without flowers http://www.foliosus.com/2006/02/13/great-photos-of-plants-without-flowers/ http://www.foliosus.com/2006/02/13/great-photos-of-plants-without-flowers/#comments Tue, 14 Feb 2006 00:48:52 +0000 Brent Miller http://www.foliosus.com/2006/02/13/great-photos-of-plants-without-flowers/ Finally, I’ve found a great page with photos of non-flowering plants: Dr. Dennis Walker of Humboldt State University has an online gallery of plant images that focusses mostly on non-flowering plants. It has excellent coverage of ferns and conifers, but very little in the flowering plants. The most interesting part is that many of the photos of weird species such as Welwitschia have full plant photos in the native habitats. If you want to see what weird plants can look like, check the Gnetopsida gallery. Via Scott’s botanical links.

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