Passwords, uniquely

“Create your own visual style… let it be unique for yourself and yet identifiable for others.”

Orson Welles (1915-1985)

A key element of a strong password is that it must be unique. No copying!

Lorrie Faith Cranor has flipped this axiom on its head.

Lorrie, a professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, is following up her ‘security blanket’ quilt (Linus would be jealous!) with a new project.

She’s taken the weak passwords that way too many people use and created something different: a dress displaying all the worst passwords in a word cloud layout.

Now that’s unique.

And, as you can see, it’s also very nice.

The fabric (‘bad passwords’) is available for sale on Spoonflower. Two versions are available. You can choose from a ‘clean’ version without 4-letter and other nasty words, and a – let’s call it – unabridged version.

Creative visionary Orson Welles (father of the legendary The War of the Worlds radio broadcast) surely would have approved.

We love it, and we look forward to seeing more unique password ideas from the workshop of @lorrietweet.

Frequent readers of this blog will recall another unique password project: German artist Aram Bartholl’s creation of the 8 volume Forgot Your Password book. Mr Bartholl will be at the Atlantic Center for the Arts at the end of October.