One of the inspirations for our name came from the concepts underlying Fractal geometry and the work of Mandlebrot.
Self-similarity, a focus on process, the organization of small elements into beautiful natural design, the endless fascination with natural forms, the ability for individual entities to self-organize and the previously undiscovered connection between mathematics and the natural world all inform our project on many levels.

We see an immense potential for continual transformation and growth when individuals are given simple tools to understand, communicate and help each other.

From the underlying mathematics of our recommendation system that connects news to needs, to our attempt to provide a simple tool to facilitate charitable communities to our self-sustaining business model that in turn reflects the simple innovation of the website to the exponential potential for growth through a deeper understanding of need and the desire to act  - Fractor draws inspiration from the recursive structures found in fractal forms.

PBS has a wonderful program on Fractals.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/fractals/program.html

A thousand thanks to everyone that offered their feedback on the interface and logo designs for Fractor! It was very helpful, and we’ve been working with our design/development team at Helen Marie to finalize the designs.

So you can see the progression, here’s the evolution of the interface design:

from the first wireframe sketch that Ben did (below):

to the first interface idea from Helen Marie:

 …progressing through further development ideas of the home page…

 …and here’s where the home page starts to really take shape:

AND FINALLY:

Here’s the evolution of the logo designs:

an early version of the Fractor logo, by Floor van Herreweghe

followed by further logo development and logo ideas from Helen Marie

 this is where things start getting interesting:

…and here’s where we start to hone in on what resonates with all of us. We all liked the patterning on the inside of the letters, similar to the first one that Floor had designed, but also liked the treatment that Helen Marie had applied, with the color contrast and transition in the sample below (in the middle just below this paragraph).

So, the logo on the left below is the direction that we chose to go with.  We actually ended up combining some elements of the logo on the right, i.e., we liked the uneven levels of the logo of the right, and the colors and patterning of the logo on the left. The final logo has both of these elements. 

Took the final logo idea and played around with it. Ended pulling back from it a bit and going back to what we saw in the designs above, but it was good to see how far the idea could be taken. 

Final logo designs: we chose the top one (with the darker contrast).  We have our final logo!

And for those that are interested, you can see the collection of all the images from our design reviews in our flickr interface & logo designs collection.

Again, thanks for all your helpful input! We should be launching an alpha (test) version of the site in a month or so, and we’ll be sure to let you know when it goes live!

At 6 weeks, we have passed the half way mark to our alpha release. We have been working hard with Matt Holford from Helen Marie on the underlying software and database implementation while designers Chakaras and Chacon Johnson  are designing the look and feel of the site.

We’ve found this to be an exciting, complicated and interrelated project requiring an iterative process and an easy back and forth between design and development as you might expect from a site dedicated to creating relevant connections between vast inflows of information and charitable communities dedicated to positive social change.

With that run on, I’ve run out. Till the next time,

B

Fractor has a new volunteer, Stanislav Nikolov, a sophomore student in applied mathematics at MIT who is helping to design the recommendation system underlying the Fractor website. As we worked together yesterday to determine some best practices and solutions to some basic aggregation concerns, Stanislav posted a quick message to his dorm “floor”, very few of whom were anywhere near the dorm.

In less than 10 minutes we had five completely unique and innovative solutions pulling from the latest software technology, some old school programming from over ten years ago (when these kids were about 10 themselves) and a couple basic hacker tricks. Talk about an effective student network.

I was sold. Nothing innovative in the method of approach (email) but the vitality and commitment of the individuals was astounding.

At any rate, Stanislav, and his amazing resources will be an important member of our team as we develop the first prototype of the rec system and the site by early November. We will then move to optimize and enrich the system over the coming year as we work to develop a subtle and powerful filtering and recommending algorithm that will connect news to nonprofit needs based on user interests and actions.

So it is a network working on a intelligent device for parsing a network of information.

Thought you would enjoy.

What’s really amazing is that just 6 months ago, we went from having an idea on paper for the DML Competition to being able to hire a design & development firm and acquire an office space. So things are moving along and concepts are becoming reality.

Firstly, it’s official! We signed our Articles of Incorporation, prepared for us by our trusty attorneys at Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft - so we are officially a 501(c)3 corporation now.

In about 3 days,  we start building the Fractor website with the talented folks at the design & development firm, Helen Marie. This is an exciting move forward and the biggest single contribution that the MacArthur/HASTAC DML Competition funding has allowed us to make happen.

We’ve been prepping for the start of the site development by building user scenarios, planning testing phases, researching recommendation engines and working on the business plan and outreach in general. Here’s a (very rough) wireframe sketch of the home page:

We’re looking forward to seeing what spirals forth and send a nod of appreciation to the supportive folks at the MacArthur, HASTAC and DML Competition hub, with whom networking and finding overlapping synergies is always a pleasure and will facilitate our current and future outreach efforts to loads of nonprofit organizations which will become the beating heart of Fractor.

Fractor can haz new office space!

We’ve signed the lease on a new space and though it’s still rough, we are loving it and the neighborhood! It’s in the Lower East Side, at 155 Suffolk Street, on Suffolk & Stanton. Check it out:

After seeing a slew of portfolios and talking to people, we’ve engaged the very able services of Helen Marie to do our design and development of the Fractor website. They are a Brooklyn-based design and interactive technology firm that has quite a bit of diversity, artistry and experience in their portfolio. At our first meeting with Matt, Chakaras and Sara, we all felt a very synergistic groove and knew that they could take our vision and grow it. Check out their portfolio.

We’ve been bouncing around ideas for our logo design for awhile now and there are a couple of designs that have resonated with us. Ben, Hugo and I had originally brainstormed with designer Floor van Herreweghe and came up with these ideas: fractals, beautiful expressions of logic, takes chaos and makes sense of it, delicious patterns, Mobius strip unfurled, dynamic, informed, sleek, adaptive, and with a dash of fun. Here are some samples:

The above version provoked a comment on Flickr: “I think I might like some version of this one . . . I like the way the r’s look like arrows, which seems right for pointing readers from news media to the right activist and charitable causes.”

Hi, all! We’re looking for a Web Designer to join our team.

Position Description: The Web Designer position is responsible for the graphic customization, branding and user experience of the Fractor website - a sophisticated aggregation site with social networking tools. This is a 6 month contract with the possibility for long-term extension. You are passionate about beautiful design as well as writing clean, robust, compliant code. The position calls for close collaboration with the Fractor board and staff to meet the short-term and long-term goals for a growing, nationally implemented media website. We are looking for a collaborator with excellent interpersonal skills; someone who knows how to communicate the appropriate level of information to keep all key players in the loop on critical issues.
Requirements:
• 4+ years of professional experience
• Expert knowledge of HTML, XHTML, CSS, and some Javascript
• Strong experience writing clean, W3C *valid and compliant* code that is completely cross-browser compatible
• Great design skills and a mastery of Photoshop and Illustrator
• Ability to translate designs into living sites efficiently, and without relying too heavily on images
• Flash, Actionscript, and general illustration skills are preferred

To Apply:
• Send your resume, online portfolio or links to work samples to webdesign@fractor.org along with a description of your role in the projects.

Hi, all! We’re looking for a Web Developer to join our team. Details below.

Position Description: This Web Developer is responsible for the architecture, creation and customization of the Fractor website in line with our mission and philosophy. This is a 6 month contract with the possibility for long-term extension. The ideal candidate will have a portfolio of Drupal web application design, news aggregation and ‘adsense-like’ tagging applications, as well as knowledge of social networking platforms and the skills to develop widgets. The developer is able to design and build web presentations with a keen understanding of utility, functionality, UI fundamentals and supporting server systems. The position calls for close collaboration with the Fractor board and staff to meet the short-term and long-term goals for a growing, nationally implemented media website. We are looking for a collaborator with excellent interpersonal skills; someone who knows how to communicate the appropriate level of information to keep all key players in the loop on critical issues.The design environment will feature a number of user-centered design & development cycles so it is important that the candidate can develop low fidelity functional design prototypes to demonstrate proof of concepts and to enable rapid iterative evaluative design.

Preferred experience with:

Content management systems

Large-scale news aggregation
Creating online communities

Extensive experience creating a distributed scalable customized Drupal environment
Extensive PHP experience.
Database schema creation, database maintenance and optimization
Excellent knowledge of CSS/XHTML and cross browser development
Experience with AJAX techniques and libraries and fluent in modern JavaScript DOM and the event model
Good knowledge of object oriented design,familiar with using REST and MVC concepts in site design
Experience working with a LAMP and the Unix environment, BASH shell scripting Perl etc.

Preferred Qualifications:

BS/MS in Computer Science/Engineering or equivalent experience

4+ years of experience with software development of web-based applications

Has worked extensively in an open source CMS for the creation of a highly customized XHTML/CSS-driven/tableless online community site that is mindful of cross-browser compatibility & browser graceful degradation.

Has performed site optimization (file size /actual rendering time), accessibility testing.

Comfortable working with Unix, Apache MySQL, store procedures, database normalization and optimization.

To apply, please send your resume and portfolio link to webdev@fractor.org