Digital Alter Natives Book Design

Hivos (Netherlands) and Centre for Internet & Society (India) had commissioned Lucid to design a 4 part book for them entitled “Digital Alter Natives: With a Cause?”. The book was also accompanied by a kit that contained a booklet entitled “D:Coding Digital Natives”, a poster, a cd and some stickers.

The project involved submissions from over 50 contributors, from academics to scholars, to practitioners, educators, policy makers and corporate representatives, to share learnings on the Digital Native (defined as a person born during or after the general introduction of digital technology such as the internet). These technologies have allowed Digital Natives to reshape the structure of interpersonal relationships, social communication, economic expansion, political protocols and government mediation, and the books highlight these redefinitions.

The project was launched on September the 16th, 2011 at the Museum of Communication in the Hague. We enjoyed designing these books tremendously. We wanted them to be edgy and engaging (unlike other research books) and imbibe and portray the interactive nature of the internet into a static medium. The project was very well recieved!

To learn more please follow this link: http://www.cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/dnbook

Or to read the books online, please click here: http://www.hivos.net/Hivos-Knowledge-Programme/Themes/Digital-Natives-with-a-Cause/News/Digital-AlterNatives-with-a-Cause

So Much Information Built Into the Streets

I know that in most parts of the world, a street is covered in tarmac and then a whole bunch of paint is applied in various configurations to delineate the different functions of different parts of the street. And a lot of the time, the lines are worn away making the street quite unsafe.

If you think about it, a street has to communicate a lot of information to the various types of users on it. You have pedestrians, bicycles, rickshaws, carts, cars and trucks amongst other things, depending on where you live (I’m talking cows in India!)

In Penang, the Malaysians have taken this to a whole new level, and in a way that is not likely to be worn off soon. The street is cast in concrete and brick in various colors. The main driving lanes are gray in an interesting pattern. The bicycle lane is cast in a red toned concrete with a horizontal gray concrete brick separator. The parking areas are outlined with a yellow toned concrete brick. The intersections are a criss cross pattern of gray and red toned concrete. And there is even a pattern in gray and red for motorcycles and cycles to park in.

The result looks very sophisticated, is very informative, and naturally very durable and permanent as it is all cast in concrete. Pretty smart!