hyper say, we're good.

the nice folks at hyper have posted the visual dictionary on their homepage this week, saying our site is 'good'.

aww, thanks :)

Unclephil and the Thousand Words

Well done to unclephil for passing the 1000 images mark. He's been a long time supporter of the visual dictionary, so a few months back we interviewed him:

1. 
   How did you first find the visual dictionary?
   
   My friend Paul Burgess, the illustrator, sent me the address, knowing I had an abiding interest in recording lettering.
   



2. 
   I assume you're into photography?
   
   I have always enjoyed photography, but this is more about the word itself. My earlier interest (still ongoing) is in finding and recording interesting and unusual examples of lettering from wherever, especially examples of vernacularity, such as hand-made signs.
   




3. 
   What keeps you coming back to the visual dictionary?
   
   The challenge of finding new words. Now that I am a contributor, sometimes the most ordinary word will jump out at me from the midst of a sign. Yesterday, while my wife was buying a ticket at the railway station, I spotted ‘approach’, ‘stay’ and ‘disabled’ all in the space of two typographically unremarkable signs.
   
   
   
4. 
   You and minorbug are going head to head at the moment. Have you any strategies for domination?
   That would be telling. I am flattered that minorbug’s contribution remained dormant for about a year until I began assailing that third place in the pantheon. It all helps in the finding of words, though. I am sometimes less likely to go for words than I should be, simply because they don’t make interesting images: I will have to get over that.
   



5. 
   What is your favourite word and why?
   
   Palimpsest. I like the way it bobbles around the mouth and engages many parts of the speaking process. I also like what it means: a re-used parchment, erased and containing a new message. This notion of a second layer of meaning within a sign or a word is a crucial one to me as a typographic designer.
   




6. 
   What is your favourite image on TVD, and why?
   I have many. A favourite among my own is ‘bookseller’, painted on a silver globe in a bookshop window in Brighton. In the TVD as a whole it is a difficult question to answer, but I enjoy the contributions of scannedinski, particularly his commentary. I made a comment on his ‘grand’, but I think my favourite of his images is ‘pain’, about which he says: ‘I love France: you can buy ANYTHING.’
   



7. 
   And finally, anything you'd like to see the visual dictionary do as future functionality?
   It does bug me that somebody is daft enough to enter 38 images of the word ‘Madrid’ and they all get put onto the site. Perhaps there could be a block on multiple images of ‘exclusions’ only (multiple images of every other word is a good thing). Although on reflection, it does make the look of the A-Z ‘cloud’ more interesting!
   

Thanks to Unclephil for his time chatting to us, and of course, his effort in building up the dictionary.

Happy Christmas

Server Migration

Take a deep breath - we're moving the server to a new home this week (mainly because the current server ran out of space!) Apologies if you cannot access the site or notice problems over the next 48 hours, but hopefully it will help improve performance. Drop me a line if you have any problems.

The Visual Dictionary Poetry

We had a couple of friends around for dinner last night, and I broke out the box of moo cards. I then had to run to the shops to pick up some cheese, and by the time i got back, even with the limited amount of words in the pack, Emma had written a little poem with them. I'd never thought of that idea. I'm going to do a bunch of other moo packs with a better/wider selection of words, and some themed sets also.

moo

Woo! Moo!
My moo cards for the visual dictionary arrived today. They're wicked, just wicked. Ask me for one when you see me next!

madinspain

Fred was at MADINSPAIN this weekend, and showed the visual dictionary to the audience as part of his talk. Hello to anyone who is visiting the site from Spain, especially to those who heard about us from Fred. Its really hard to track word of mouth referrals, but just today, we had quite a few visits from Madrid, so you never know. I should have given him some moocards to hand out ;)

onomatopeia

Such a great page - bonus points to anyone who can find these in the real non-batman world!

http://www.batmania.com.ar/paginas/serie_onomatopeyas.htm

Digital SLR User Magazine

We were was featured in the August edition of Digital SLR User magazine, on the back page. A great feature, but they managed to mis-spell my name. Still, close enough - at least they got the URL right.

There were also a good few images from the dictionary posted in the article - thanks to everyone who offered their images for that. I'll scan the article this week some point

Dominos

The domino effect of getting a high profile link never ceases to amaze me (despite me explaining it to my clients on a regular basis). Since Die Welt linked to us last week, a bunch of other great sites have also picked up on the site and started linking to us also. Interestingly enough, the earthlink newsletter which went out linking to TVD last month, whilst brought with it around 1000 visits in a day, did not have the same network effect. Perhaps Earthlink's consumers are less likely to be site owners.

We've also been featured on 52projects.com - which is a truly great site which i've admired and been inspired by for a good long time. Thanks to Jeffrey for that link. If you've not seen 52 projects before, take a look right now. They managed to find us via Ali Edwards, who has also been great in sending us a steady stream of traffic over the past year or so.

Also thanks to minorbug for explaining a little more about what the Die Welt article said. Thumbs up indeed!