Following up from my posting on the Size China presentation at last year's Connecting '07 IDSA national conference, Metropolis magazine has a feature article on Roger Ball's research effort to create a digital database of head anthropometrics for the Asian market. Sizing China
Ball had initially assumed there would be a correlation between head sizes and eye, nose, mouth, and ear sizes, which would allow him to create a series of facially featured average Chinese heads. After scanning several thousand subjects he discovered that there is no correlation between the zones of the face at all: “You could have a very large head, very tiny eyes, and a medium mouth, or a tiny head, very big eyes, and an average mouth,” he says.
With great photos, anecdotes, and a clear articulation of the benefits of this project, Metropolis achieved the near-impossible - making an anthropometric study an interesting subject.
[Note - I am beta testing some new formatting options on TypePad, so things may be a little quirky, over the next few posts]