I consider geometry to be a fairly important aspect of design, so when I came across the classic 8×8 13×5 “optical illusion” (it’s actually more of geometry problem) over the weekend, I decided to put together a little video illustrating the hole in the 8×8 rearranged into 13×5 problem.

The idea is that an 8×8 square can be divided into four shapes (2 quadrilaterals, 2 right-triangles) which can then be re-positioned to form a 13×5 rectangle (never mind for a moment that this would defy the laws of physics). Each quadrilateral is combined with one of the right triangles, and then end result is what appears to be two right triangles with a base of 13 and a height of 5. The thought is that these two triangles can then be combined into a 13 x 5 rectangle.

The problem with this line of thinking is that the two “triangles” (created by combining one of the quadrilaterals with one of the triangles) are not actually triangles at all, rather they a quadrilaterals with interior angles of 20.55°, 90°, 68.20°, and 181.25°. The 181.25° is close enough to 180° that at casual glance the composite shape appears to only have three sides, when, in fact, it has four.

When the two composite supposed “triangles” are joined together in an attempt to form a rectangle, a hole in the shape of another quadrilateral (a parallelogram) is formed. This hole has an area of 1, which accounts for the missing difference between 8×8 (or 64) and 13×5 (or 65).

Sadly, you can’t create an extra square-unit of area, by simply rearranging an 8×8 square into a 13×5. If you could, I’d buy myself an 8×8 sheet of gold and retire soon after.

You can also check out a fully-scalable Flash version of the 8×8 13×5 video (or download the .swf file by right-clicking or ctrl-clicking the link and doing a Save Target).

The Unexplained Phenomenon that is the Google Doodle

Google seems to be having some fun with their “Google Doodle” today. Generally, the Google Doodle marks an anniversary of an event related to the image (a recent example would be Michael Jackson’s feet appearing in the Google logo on MJ’s birthday). However, the current doodle, which features a UFO beaming up the second letter “o” from the Google log, does not link to information about any particular individual or event. Instead, it simply gives you the search results for “unexplained phenomenon.”

Translated: All your o are belong to us

In addition to the Google Doodle, the code (A=1….Z=26) above appears on Google’s Twitter page. Using your Little Orphan Annie Decoder Ring (don’t worry it doesn’t say "Drink more Ovaltine."), you can translate it to read, "All your o are belong to us". This is apparently a reference to poor translation that dates back to the 1991 video game Zero Wing, which later caused an internet phenomenon/meme, according to Wikipedia.

So, is Google just going out of their way to create their own internet phenomenon with their cryptic Google Doodle and Twitter meme? I’d be willing to bet that by the end of the day, if not already, “Unexplained Phenomenon” will be the most highly searched term on the web, which just goes to show how much influence Google has on the online world.

I recently removed Adobe CS2 from my laptop to clear up some hard drive space (Note: you can legally continue to run older versions of Adobe CS even after you’ve upgraded, and it’s probably a good idea to keep your older versions unless you need the disk space). Well, today, I went to open a document that I had created prior to removing CS2, when lo and behold, Illustrator CS4 informed me that Century Old Style Std was missing. Now, I had created this document in Illustrator CS4, so it didn’t dawn on me right away that the removal of CS2 could be the source of the problem, so I wasted quite a bit of time trying to figure out how this font could have been deleted from my Windows>Fonts folder. As it turns out, it wasn’t deleted from there at all, because it was never there in the first place.

When installing Adobe CS2 on a Windows machine,  Open Type Fonts are stored in Program Files>Common Files>Adobe>Fonts (on a Mac they are stored in [Macintosh HD] /Library/Application Support/Adobe/Fonts/). As long as you leave the fonts there, you can upgrade to newer versions of Adobe CS products and the fonts will still be accessible. For example, upgrading to CS4 will not wipe out your CS2 fonts from this folder. HOWEVER, if at some point you decide to remove your older CS or CS2 versions, the uninstaller will remove the fonts associated with the Creative Suite version you are removing (I think this only applicable to CS and CS2 removal, but I’m not positive).

The easiest way to prevent this from happening is, of course, not to remove your older versions of Adobe CS. If you’re like me and you’ve already made that mistake, hopefully, you still have your CS or CS2 installation disks laying around (or better yet, you still have the older versions on another machine). To fix the situation, either completely reinstall your old CS version(s) or copy the missing fonts you need off another machine that you are LEGALLY running the older versions on (the Adobe Creative Suite license typically allows activation on 2 machines) and paste them into the folder mentioned in the paragraph above. Restart your Adobe application, and you should be all set.

Logic (which I was foolish to try to apply to anything involving the use of image data in Microsoft Word) told me that my best option would be to export the letterhead from InDesign as a .wmf file, since it’s A) vector-based and B) a Microsoft file format. Then, I should (“should” being the keyword) just be able to Insert>Picture>From File in MS Word with no problems. Unfortunately, the quality of the original vector artwork seems to be affected by this method, and by “affected” I mean “rasterized.” I have since learned that .wmf does not support Bezier curves, which is another reason to avoid exporting from InDesign to a .wmf.

Original vector artwork exported from InDesign to PDF (at 300%)

.wmf artwork inserted into Word and exported to PDF (at 300%)

So, it would seem that using a .wmf file is out, if we want to maintain our vector image. Next, I tried exporting an .emf followed by Insert Picture>From File into word and converted it to PDF. This version did, at least, yield a vector-based result. However, the paths seemed to be degraded somewhere in the conversion and smooth curves seemed to be converted into jagged segments. (Update: This is due to the fact that .emf also does not support Bezier curves and hence “converts” curves to a series of line segments.)

EMF converted from Word to PDF (300%)

Original vector artwork comparison with EMF exported from Word (800%)

At this point, you’re probably wondering, “Why didn’t you export your InDesign file to an .EPS?” Well, actually, that was the first option that I tried, but when I imported it into Word, the results looked like this…

EPS letterhead as it appears in MS Word

The moral of this story is that you can’t trust appearances in Word. When the same file that the image above was taken from is exported to a PDF, you end up with the following result.

EPS converted from Word to PDF (100%)

Same EPS converted from Word to PDF (300%)

When importing the EPS into Word and exporting to a PDF, we end up with our vector image information intact and unharmed, just as it was before we imported it into Word.

To make a long story short, if you want to import letterhead from InDesign into MS Word. Follow these steps to set up your Word Document

1. Export your InDesign file to EPS format.
2. Open a new Word document.
3. View>Header and Footer.
4. Insert>Picture>From File and select your EPS file.
5. Format>Picture
   1. Layout>Behind Text
   2. Size>Make sure Height and Width are at 100%
6. View>Header and Footer (to exit the edit Header/Footer)

Depending on the size of your letterhead, you will probably need to adjust your margins, so that your main text does not overlap your header image. After you’ve entered your text in Word, just export to a PDF, and you should have a clean vector-based letterhead.