The Image-Interface

Preface

This book studies interfaces as images and images as interfaces. By interfaces, I mean specifically graphical user interfaces; the systems which we use to interact with information displayed on an electronic support.

My interest on this topic has grown over the years and it reflects both personal motivations and professional work as a teacher and researcher. As someone who has always been fascinated with technological objects (I remember as a child programming a VCR, discovering how to change the time in an LCD watch and climbing to the rooftop to redirect the TV antenna), I think one of the best ways to approach a domain is to “touch it”, to do things with it, either under special supervision or under our own risks. I hope this book will provide inspiration to the reader in producing his/her own examples and prototypes, either by hand or with software applications or with computer code.

I have had the opportunity to discuss many of the topics included in this book with colleagues and students. I learned a lot about computer graphics and 3D software while serving as a program director of the BA in Animation and Digital Art at Tecnológico de Monterrey in Toluca, Mexico. Later, I could appreciate the intricacies of web design and human–computer interaction for the web when I was appointed as a program director of the MA Interface Design at Université Paris 13. More recently, data culture, data visualization, digital humanities, semiotics, cultural analytics and software ...