Philips and E Ink
Two companies that have developed the world's first high-resolution
color electronic display prototype for handheld devices, which matches the
quality and portability of paper.
Offsite:
For more information about Supercade: A Visual History of the Videogame
Age 1971-1984 (MIT Press, $49.95), go to
www.supercade.com/supercade.html
(which has a link to order the book from
amazon.com for just $34.96). FF
Call is available from FontShop at
www.fontshop.com or (415) 512-2093 (or
e-mail info@fontshop.com). You can see examples of Emigre's Lo-Res fonts
at
www.emigre.com; to order fonts call (800) 944-9021. Viewrinal information can
be found at the Captive View Web site,
www.captiveview.com. Log on to
www.ericsson.com
to find out about the T68 and other products. Information about
the I300 can be found at
www.samsungusa.com. E Ink's Web site is
www.eink.com.
Philips's Web site is
www.news.philips.com.
Designers and manufacturers are capitalizing on the technology that's producing
thinner and less expensive digital screens, which can now be found in supermarkets,
corner stores, airports, and even bathrooms. Captive View, an electronic-display
company, has placed urinals with on-screen advertisements in roughly 100
nightclubs and bars in England. Individually we can benefit from the
new technology by downsizing: cell-phone companies like Ericsson and Samsung
offer phones with color displays that eliminate the need to carry a separate
PDA and laptop. The economy of this same technology also allows designers
to create large-scale products. For example, Rotterdam-based graphic designer
Gerard Hadders has developed Light-Emitting Walls (LEWs) made of LEDs (light
emitting diodes) that produce stunning information graphics at previously
impractical dimensions.
The near future looks even more exciting. The winners of last year's Nobel
Prize in Chemistry--Alan Heeger, Alan MacDiarmid, and Hideki Shirakawa--have
made a conductive plastic. In a few years this technology could be used
in flat television screens made of a thin plastic film, as well
as luminous traffic lights and information signs. In large sheets this
same thin film could function as light-emitting electronic wallpaper,
which would make redecorating as easy as changing channels.
1. FF Call
FontFont typefaces by German designers Maik Ignaszak, Stefan Kister, and
Astrid Scheuerhörst that resemble cell-phone displays.
2. Emigre Lo Res
A family of fonts based on Zuzana Licko's coarse bit-mapped typefaces from
the early 1980s.
