Feltron Annual Report 2008

Insanity may be a bit of an exaggeration. A little OCD maybe, or somewhat neurotic. Whatever it is that drove Nicholas Feltron to keep detailed records of seemingly mundane facts about his life for the past four years, I am in love with this!

Feltron has published his fourth annual Feltron Annual Report about his life – miles traveled (through 15 different modes), reading and drinking habits, hours of music listened to, and more. This is a beautiful example of information design. Feltron has designed a beautiful report, regardless of the content. Of course, what sells this report for me is the attention to detail in creating excellent content.

I wonder if keeping this detailed of a record would change my habits.

Soon may be relative. I just wanted to point out that I am aware that this blog site could use a redesign. This is a template, a fact that makes me somewhat nauseous. As soon as I get a spare minute, I will be changing this. Until then, you’ll have to wait in dire anticipaiton.

I’ve used Photoshop a fair amount, and I’ve edited plenty of photos, but I don’t think I’ve ever actually sat down and fully re-touched a destroyed photo. This was time.

This man is a refugee from Iraq. He fled his country after intense persecution and torture to both him and his family. Part of that torture was destroying this traditional photograph as psychological torture. The original, tattered and really quite meaningless, was sent to me in a small file from a scan of the 5×7. I reproduced it as an 8×10 and was surprised and the quality when I upsized it.

I could have kept going for a long time to keep trying to get it right, but this served its purpose. When I presented this to Alaa, he pointed to his chest where his heart might be, and said in broken english, “this feels good”.

It felt good for me too. Just for a little bit of fun and a few giggles, I kept going and made the following stylized version. Probably not what he was looking for, so I presented him the simple re-touched version. I kinda like this though. (and yes, that IS his real name).

Stylized version