Misc stuff

Wonder how a PhD defense in the Netherlands looks like? Here is mine.

I once entered a short story contest. Here’s my contribution (in Italian). Spoiler alert: I did not win.

Graphic Design

Disclaimer: I am not a trained graphic designer, by any means. Every work of design that is meant for publication should always be realized by professionals.

That said, this is a gallery of works made by me, mostly logos. I like working on logos because it involves a good deal of conceptualization, while keeping the actual illustration work to a manageable intensity. The bare minimum material to ship a logo should include at least an icon version, a monochromatic version, and a version for dark background.

Some of these were made in collaboration with Sara Barcena.

Logos

DeKO

DeKO (Default Knowledge about Objects) is a large database of common knowledge about objects. The knowledge has been collected as part of the work of the ALOOF project and it comes from several sources and techniques.

The shapes encased in the letters are highly abstract representations of a knife and a glass of water.

DeKO page


CREOL

Contextual Representation of Objects and Events in Language (CREOL 2017) is the first edition of an international venue focussed on investigating the relationship between representations of objects and events in ontological and linguistic resources, and their interpretation in their context of occurrence.

The logo takes inspiration by a typical example used in the field, that of an orange observed as food as opposed to as a child’s toy.

CREOL 2017 workshop


WASABI

WASABI is a research project that aims at enriching the experience of music listeners by providing additional information such as biography or albums by the same artist, and offer suggestions to listen to other artists or songs “similar”. The technology involved in the project includes the automatic analysis of music and lyrics, as well as linking and reasoning on the Semantic Web.

The W of the logo resembles a waveform, while the color green is a reference to the popular japanese sauce by the same name.

WASABI project page


KNEWS

KNEWS (Knowledge Extraction With Semantics) is a software that bridges semantic parsing, word sense disambiguation, and entity linking to produce a unified, LOD-compliant abstract representation of meaning.

Here I used a classic Bodoni font with some kerning adjustment that playes with the serifs.

KNEWS source code

KNEWS demo


JURIX

The 29th International Conference on Legal Knowledge and Information Systems.

The symbol under the word Jurix is reminiscent of a lambda calculus expression, with the lambda (λ) replaced by a scale, a typical symbol for law and justice. The touch of color on the year tries to replicate the beautiful blue of the Riviera seaside (venue of the conference).

website


Centre for Digital Humanities

The Groningen Centre for Digital Humanities provides a vibrant research climate for researchers working at the intersections of computer science and the humanities. (from the website)

The logo uses a classical design and warm colors (including the RUG’s trademark red), while switching to a terminal-type font for the initials C, D and H, for a subtle integration of digital and humanities feel.

website


Open Game Benchmarks

A platform to share benchmarks of videogames run on different hardware configurations and operating systems.

The logo mixes a gamepad (a staple of gaming) with a stethoscope, a typical medical examination tool.

website


PDRT Sandbox

Haskell library that implements Discourse Representation Theory (DRT), and its extension Projective Discourse Representation Theory (PDRT).

The logo is simply a pictorial representation of a physical sandbox.

website


Groningen Meaning Bank

A free semantically annotated corpus that anyone can edit.

The logo hints at the logical formulas used in the project with the logical symbols ∀ (universal quantifier) and ∃ (existential quantifier). The font is of the typewriter type, which fit the idea of a corpus of written text. The circle is a symbol of completeness (even though it’s open in the logo). Orange is the color of the Netherlands.

website


Parallel Meaning Bank

A free semantically annotated parallel corpus (English, Dutch, German, and Italian).

Derived from the GMB logo, the cirle is modified to symbolize the parallelism (parallel bands, that was easy). The color is the inverse of the GMB logo.

website


TWITA

Collection of tweets identified as being written in the Italian langauge.

The logo is inspired by the Twitter fonts and the colors hints at the Italian flag.

website


Produce

Produce is a Python-powered automation tool geared towards management of processes that deal with many files.

This logo plays on the homography of produce as verb (create or manufacture) and produce as a noun (fresh fruits and vegetable grown for the market). While the intended meaning of the software is the former, the logo contains a stylized tomato.

github page


Elephant logo

Word and sentence boundary detection software (a tokenizer, that is), based on supervised statistical methods.

The name of the software refers to the elephant in the room metaphor. Accordingly, the logo includes an elephant head.

website


NLDB logo

International conference on Applications of Natural Language Processing to Information Systems.

The color scheme matches the one of the University of Groningen, where the event was hosted. This logo ended up on the conference bags as well.

website


Socialpros logo

Socialpros (Social Project Studio) is a startup focused on social research software development. It somehow lose momentum.

The logo contains a representation of a network, a formalism to represent many important phenomena in social sciences. It is also shaped like a rising sun, as socialpros is a new company on the horizon.

website


Posters

Posters for the CLCG Colloquium series:

CLCG Colloquium Poster Minematsu CLCG Colloquium Poster Kaiser CLCG Colloquium Poster Shear CLCG Colloquium Poster Clark

CLCG Linguistic Lunch (just one example):

CLCG Linguistic Lunch Poster

The posters for conferences and workshops are in the presentations page.