Screen Space Reading

Designing for the screen comes with it's own set of limiting rules, mostly limited by the capabilities of the code or the physical attributes of the screen itself. This has let much of the design for the screen to end up being "streamlined shapes, a rejection of ornaments, an appeal to minimalism, to functionalism." It is an easy task to design on the screen, within the screen, imagining everything as flat. But the internet is anything but flat. A screen is nothing but a frame. It's a border, but one that we can, and must, cross.
In an interactive environment, time is something that is lost. This, also, is something of a disconnect, as the idea of temporal experiences dictate the rest of our lives.

Visual Advocacy: Readings

Graphic Agitation

The thing that I thought was most interesting, and almost disturbing, about this essay was how successful design was as a propaganda tool. At first it seems like, yes, this is a great tool! We can use to the inform and share our opinions with the people around us. But its benefit of being a succinct way of delivering a message also seems like a scary downfall. I know that I sometimes fall prey to making a huge assumption on a broad topic base on very little information. I love the idea that something so powerful can be so simply conveyed. I just hope that I'm never on the opposing end of that message.


Visualizing a Revolution

Just because there are people in need doesn't mean that you make them look needy. Douglas did an amazing job of empowering the civil rights movement through his visual imagery in the Black Panther. He showed the strength of the victims of racism, so that they would feel supported and strong, instead of pitied and weak. Wonderful!

Design of Dissent

Powerful political design evokes action from its viewers. It's a gift to be able to "rally the troops" through the method of design, and apparently dissent saves democracy, and helps everything be equal. Same as the Graphic Agitation reading, I got the a similar message of "this can deliver both good and bad" from this article/interview.

Good Citizenship

Katherine McCoy, you make me aware and uncomfortable.

From this reading, I gathered that apathetic designers are the professional equivalent of a prostitute. Steady, reliable service with an objective, removed point of view. This was an interesting read as it was an eye-opening article about the importance of creating design with a bias. Instead of being universal, it creates a more meaningful message because of its passion.
If this class it based on this article, I am both excited and apprehensive about what we will be doing. I, of course, have things that I have very opinionated about. But expressing those opinions publicly, and even worse, loudly, is something that I have been taught from an early age to not do. That's not to say that I'm stubbornly against being active and concerned, but rather that it might not come naturally to someone inclined to feigning apathy.

Technology and Education Readings

The Machine is Us/ing Us

In a quickly changing digital society, this video gave great insight into the leaps and bounds that the web has made in such a short amount of time. Separating form and content, even the most techno-phobic individuals can have their own custom space and identity on the internet, no coding required (on their part, at least). What interested me most about this video was not the technological wonder of all of this mass exchange of data (even though that's crazy cool), but how from a cultural perspective, this relatively new "language" of the internet (coding, I guess) is like a Rosetta stone for connecting people of all ages, opinions, and areas into one huge online community.


Henry Jenkins on Transmedia

Changes in technology have led to a huge change in how we send, receive, and perceive information. Everyone who is connected to the web can collect and contribute their own stories, and this is changing everything we have to deal with. We now have limitless sources to draw from, spanning over multiple channels, which are not redundant but rather complementary. Exploiting multiple channels helps to insure that the largest audience can receive (and potentially share) the information that you delivered.


Interest-Driven Learning

Technology is allowing us the opportunity to branch out into new social possibilities. The open communication that is available is really leading way to more opportunities for creative expression and exchange between individuals. Mimi Ito hopes that this new media will continue to seep deeper into our lives, particularly finding its way into the learning process in schools. Some teachers are already beginning to adopt this social media as tools in their teaching toolbox. Now the challenge is to adapt their curriculum past the basics of subjects.


Changing Education Paradigms

This was one of the most stimulating videos, in such a way that I'm not even sure what to say about it. While it was all very informative and relevant, it seems like one of the most pressing issues is the cyclical dilemma of the anaesthetic state that many of today's youth are in. Some of my feelings about all this are pulled more from my personal experience at my past schools than the video, but it all rolls together.
At the schools I went to, saying that the arts were neglected would be an understatement. I feel that this might be true in most schools. In elementary, we are taught to color and draw and explore and grow, but by about 4th or 5th grade, that interactive, creative form of learning was replaced and discouraged in favor of reading from a hefty stack of textbooks. While I might have been getting a heavy dose of dense information, what I wasn't getting was stimulation. Cutting children off from the media around them is meant to be in their best interest, I understand, but it is obviously taking a toll on the quality of their learning. Instead of removing them from the technology-rich environment of today, the real solution seems to be to adapt the technology to help them learn, and emerse them in it. The stimulation and inspiration of new ideas can only lead to more new ideas. Sir Ken Robinson touches on the concept of divergent thinking, or the creative ability to be able to come up with many non-linear answers to one question. Learning in the classroom needs to be more collaborative, more open, and more diversified to suit individuals learning styles.


Kids Learn How to Navigate the Multimedia World

Film as a second language. Media as a new language/viable source of education.
Being media literate is something that should be crucial to today's kids, since they are completely surrounded by this new form of education that, unfortunately, is not widely recognized in most schools. This video show several schools where technology is an integral part of the classroom, and where children not only learn about their subjects, but analyze it to better understand why it is important. Rather than just regurgitating information, they help to create it. Sounds like a cool system.


Web Squared: Web 2.0 Five Years On

The web is smart. Really really smart. From what this article is saying, it seems like the need for keyboards and mice are beginning to fade away in favor it mobile devices and textless (like speech and location recognition) interfaces.
Some of this article seemed to be a bit over my head, but the general idea that I got from it is that the web is growing in wealth of knowledge through algorithms and applications that continue to allow it to cross-connect information and sort it in the most useful way for us. It can remember your interests, your searches, your location, many things about you to help set you in the right direction for whatever you're on the internet looking for. Even though it is intuitive though, it's not "learning," but "being taught." In other words, we are still the ones that have to feed it the information that it uses to grow with, it can't form this information on its own.


The Seven Types of Intelligence

Every child falls into one of seven different intelligence types. Instead of teaching the child to learn in the format that works for you, it is most to the child's benefit if you learn the method of learning that best suits them. While this seems really cool, it also seems like it would be very difficult for this system to for in the traditional sort of school that kids are a part of currently.

iPhone App Problem and Readings

For the final project of information architecture, I decided to go with the Jones Generation Hikers. They are baby boomers, which means they are concerned with their health. This of course, could contribute to the reason that they are hiking. But at this age, they are beginning to be concerned with many health issues.

For my app, I would like to create a program that will help the hikers remember other health issues that they need to be aware of before, during, and after their hike. This includes problems such as allergies, air quality, blood pressure, arthritis, and remembering to take meds at certain hours. While hiking is a wonderful exercise, it is good at distracting people too. So this will hopefully help.


The Readings:

• Buttons should look like buttons, and not be hard to find or hard to understand as buttons. Too many visual elements can make it hard to read, but you do want it to have a degree of abstractness to it.
• There are a set of standard tab icons. Use them. Certain icons have certain meanings, and if you stray from them then it is confusing for the user.
• There are a lot of standards that are required for an iPhone app to pass inspection. If you're not within these guidelines, doesn't expect it to pass.
  
• Along the same lines, it is probably a good idea to just stick with the gestures that the user will already know, instead of creating a whole new one just for your app.
• It needs to be taken into account, to some degree, that a lot of the screen is covered up by the user's finger as they do a gesture.
  

It is Beautiful, Then Gone

While the processes for both of the projects were interesting, I felt that the Sundance project was a more useful read. Venezky talks about the project being split into several pieces that work individually, and were created independently and then brought together. While the Reebok work was very different from what is normally done for Sports design, the unpredictability of the Sundance work really appeals to me and relates more to the experimental type that I'm doing.

While what we are doing are technically experiments, it really frustrates me and makes me nervous when I think about the prospect of them not going anywhere or failing completely. I've been working on several different works at once, trying to answer the questions that I posed at the beginning of the project.

• How can human interaction change the form or legibility of type placed in nature?
• How can time effect the state of type placed in nature?
• How can type be presented in nature to make people more aware of their environment?
• What kind of type can be placed in an environment without it effecting the well-being of the nature in it?
• How can nature be manipulated to form legible type?
• How can a font be made that expresses the environment it was created in?
• How can typography reflect the patterns found in nature?
• How can the unpredictability of nature be translated into typographic form?
• How can type emulate the symbiosis of natural and manmade elements?
• How can the passage of time evolve or devolve typography in nature?

While I think that some of my projects are beginning to answer the questions, some of them are not. And some of them are just not working. It's like the part of the Sundance work where they start to match the pairs of images and texts together, except some of them aren't matching at all. And also, even on the things that are beginning to work, it seems like they are unrefined pieces, not necessarily something that can be easily shown.

As I continue to work on more experiments, I will also work on refining their quality, keeping them in a managable time frame, and trouble shooting to resolve and prevent problems found in the past experiments.

Experimental Typography Readings

Experimental typography. Whatever that means.

This article really spoke to the unclear lines between what is considered "experimental" and what is not. In many instances, people toss the word experiment around when there's no clear reason to their work. If we were to speak scientifically, then we would be making questions/hypothesis's that we would be using type to prove. But this doesn't really mean the result will be groundbreaking or "novel."

With the limitation of communication on us, our experiments must already conform to some sort of convention. But out of all of this what I got was that the definition of experimentation is extremely subjective, and no matter what opinion or view you tend to lean towards, it seems that most importantly, like design overall, the experiments are all about process.

"It is experimental only in the process of its creation."

This reading really gave me some insight into the variety of standards regarding what people consider to be experimental typography. It's so subjective, I'm not sure why people want to analyze it. But it was interesting when the author pointed out that even if it is something that does not have a practical use when it was made, often times the discoveries made in the process of the experimenting lent itself to some better purpose.

RADICAL TYPE DESIGN

function and aesthetic

I thought this was a much more interesting reading the perspective that it has as much to do with the experimenter as the experiment. This reading made me really excited to approach the risks involved in the process of creating these experiments. Again, it's all about process process process of it all! This project seems like it's going to be a sort of embodiment of the design process, explored through the element of typography.

Tropicana Reading Response

This article was an interesting insight at an instance where a packaging redesign was not taken well. From the looks for it, it seems like what many of the complaining customers were frustrated with losing the personality that was attached to the earlier packaging. The orange and the straw was something that symbolized freshness, which would speak to both logos (seeing what you get) and ethos, because they are promoting the freshness of their product. But as time went on, customers became so attached to the Tropicana imagery that it became a pathos package too (perhaps they feel nostalgic about it because they grew up with it?).

The customers did not respond well to the solely logos-rebrand (simple sans text with a glass of orange juice on it), and made a big deal about it–in a good way. And the company took note of their customers opinions, and the drop in their sales prices, and brought the old design back.

Visual/Verbal Rhetoric - Bonsiepe

Rhetoric - the art of persuasion.

• Originally, rhetoric was used by the greeks for mostly political, legal, or religious reasons
• It was used to obtain a definite decision, implant an opinion, evoke a mood
• it was a "war of words," and was broken into either being persuasive or description/analysis.

In this reading, the author Bonsiepe goes in depth into the breakdown of different rhetorical devices, covering things that were not mentioned in class including transportive figures, privative figures (omission of words)

"Pure information exists for the designer only in the arid abstraction. As soon as he begins to give it concrete shape, the process of rhetorical infiltration begins."

Visual/verbal comparison - a comparison that starts with verbal sign and is continued with visual signs

visual/verbal analogy - a relatum expressed verbally is paralleled by a similar relatum expressed visually.

Visual/verbal metonymy - a relatum indicated by verbal signs is visualized by signs in a real relationship to the verbal relatum; e.g. cause instead of effect, tool instead of activity, producer instead of product.

Visual/verbal chain - a topic begun in words and continued and completed visually.

Visual/verbal negation - verbal signs negate what is shown visually.

Visual synocdoche - a relatum expressed verbally is visualized by a part representing the whole, or vice-versa.

Verbal specification - verbal specification - a visual sign accompanied by only as much text as is necessary for its comprehension.

Visual substitution - one visual sign replaced by another because of its formal characteristics

Syntactic climax and anticlimax - a purely visual figure

Type and Image - Meggs Reading

Graphic design is a form of communication that uses pictures, words, signs, and colors as it's language. So, while it might be difficult to imagine all literary terms applying to design as well as what we traditionally perceive as English, it's not impossible when we remember to view it as just another communication form.

Rhetoric is in many of the images we see, even if we aren't aware of it. And sometimes, it's even just a matter of illustrating things that we might already recognize. As an example, in the Type and Image reading, they mention use of similes, among other rhetoric devices.

"His heart is as hard as a rock."

This is a sentence written in paper, but at the same time it's also something we can visualize. If anything, graphic rhetoric might have even more impact than written rhetoric, since seeing an image convey that message can be more immediate and emotional than just reading it on paper. I don't want to start an argument with some English buff, but it's just a thought.

Lupton: Pattern

This was a really informative article to look to while I was working on my first round of icons, since it was clear clear on how dots and line form grids. Dots can also form lines, that then go into a grid system. The pages with the many ways to implement the same shape in many different ways way cool too, although some of those relied on overlaying, which when I tried to do with my icons, looked TERRIBLE. :( BUT STILL, it was good to see how a simple shape can make so many patterns, both simple and more complex. Seeing the patterns with random repeats were interesting too, and it would be a cool challenge to try and create my own pattern with difficult-to-find- edges.

How To Think

In response to the article How to Think by Ed Boyden:

Always be making notes and always be connecting thoughts and projects together. This is great, not just as a habit to have in design, but a habit to carry through everything. It's amazing how often independent subjects can relate to each other if you connect the dots between them. He talks about collaboration and documentation too, which are things that are already stressed over and over again in studio.
What interested me most in this article was the logarithmic time planning in which as goals become closer, you must map out you plans for them more specifically. Always evolving and becoming more exact, these schedules allow for maximum productivity. The only thing I'd question about planning out your day so obsessively is that it might not allow time for mistakes, which will always happen. Also, this is REALLY machine-like. While it's a great way to manage time, it seems like you're also trapping yourself into these schedules and routines; is it really necessary to make your whole life a micro-managed day planner to get everything done?
Mistakes are another How to Think problem. The key to mistakes is to document them, remember what you learned from them, but move on quickly. While there's a lot to learn from mistakes, there's probably more to learn about what is past them.
Overall this article has a lot of really great points to it, but it also seems awfully mechanical. I understand the point of record-keeping, skill development, and long-term planning are all important to both design and life in general. But in the context the author presents it in, his rules seem a little over the top. I'll keep the general idea of this article in mind as I continue to work, but don't want to become quite so involved as this author seems to be.

Bitmap vs. Vectors

Bitmaps

Bitmap images are pixel based, and can support hundreds and thousands of colors per image. This allows for a great amount of detail and tonal quality to be achieved. The millions of pixels create a very rich image, and cannot be detected unless you zoom in.

Pros:

• more colors available for each image
• details are greater
• each pixel can be manipulated, allowing for a lot of freedom when editing/altering an image.

Cons:

• an image cannot be enlarged past its original size, or the computer attempts to create the missing data where there are no pixels, resulting in a fuzzy/blurry image.
• pixelation of an image also occurs when you try to manipulate or warp it

Vectors

Vectors are shapes that consist of points, lines, and curves. They are mathematical images, allowing for more manipulations. These images are made in computer programs.

Pros:

• retains its quality, no matter how much the image is enlarged
• can be filled with solid colors, gradients, and even patterns
• ideal for things that need to be represented in multiple colors and sizes, such as logos
  

Cons:

• typically very simple in comparison to bitmaps
  
• look rather flat
  

*In their defense though, vectors have become increasingly photo-realistic lately. As it becomes easier and easier to make vectors with such high amounts of detail, artists can take the liberty of being hyper-realistic, and eliminating elements not wanted in the bitmap version while adding their own details. Not sure if this is a good thing, as it would make it hard to distinguish what is real and what is not, but the idea that artists can improve upon reality (ex: a bitmap photography) is not a new one, but now we can just scale it to fit any size we want.*

Time and Motion notes

The most basic differences between having a flat image and having an animation is that animation allows a time-dependent exploration on changes in scale, transparency, color, and layering. Backgrounds and images can each move or remain fixed, allowing for different changes and interactions in the environment in the different layers over a given period of time.

The production of an animation begins with a storyboard, where the most important parts of the animation are laid out. This includes notes on the camera angles, soundtrack, movement, and transitions. Style frames are another essential element to the production or the animation, and contains information on the typography, colors, patterns, illustrations, and photographs to be used, along with the aesthetic tone and other formal elements.

Animation works due to the term "persistence of vision," which describes how the brain retains an image longer than it is actually shown, so when many images are shown in rapid succession, it appears to be moving. When making an animation, "key-frames" are the important frames that define the sequence, often located at the beginning and end. All of the in-between frames are called "tweens." Tweens can be automated by the computer programs, but doing tweens by hand allow for cleaner edges, better quality of motion, more accurate details, and greater control of the subtle elements.

Change in position, rotation, scale, shape, color, depth, and transparency over time are all elements of an animation that can be altered, and it's often some combination of those that make a successful sequence. It's important to note that when animating text, it is especially important that these elements to not remove the legibility or change the reading order of the text.

Urge to Make

The article "The Urge To Make Things" was a refreshing and interesting read, and I found myself agreeing with everything that Leo Lionni was saying in it. The simplicity of being able to use our hands to make something is a wonderful thing, and Lionni says it perfectly when he calls it "that magic moment of pure making, when suddenly all interface vanish, leaving the hands free to perform their assigned task swiftly, lightly..."

While working on the mark makings this week, I've been reminded of the line project a lot because of how we are looking for connections between our marks and our symbols the same way we tried to match our lines with photographs. But personally, the haiku project is more fun. Using unorthodox tools to make our stamps and smears and spots is an almost therapeutic process. Just allowing the tool to do it's own thing, then discovering serendipitous markings that are similar to our symbols is a "magical moment." I think I prefer the more hand-made projects over the ones where we have to spend lots of time in front of the computer.

Anatomy of a Visual Message

The Primer of Visual Literacy by Donis was a really informative read, and helped to clarify the distinctive differences between the three ways that we express and receive visual images.

Representational • Vs • Abstract • Vs • Symbolic

Representational images are mostly images like photographs, which are most successful in recreating a picture with all of its details intact. Realistic drawings and paintings can also be representational, but often tend to lean more towards abstracts. The intended meaning behind a representational image is just supposed to be the image itself, nothing more. But meaning is left for the viewer to decide, so sometimes even photographs don't have only one meaning. Dondis uses the example of a photograph of a bird-one person may see the image as a representation of bird, while someone else might interpret as a representation of flight.

Abstraction begins as the extraneous details are removed from a picture, and all that is left is the emphasized distinguishing features. It's an abstraction only conveys the essential meaning in an image, whatever it is. The visual message in an abstracted image is left up to the viewer to decide, and as opposed to a representational image, the meaning of an abstract one is a little more versatile.

Sybolism is the most simplified of the bunch. "Less image, more meaning" would be the most succinct way of explaining it, even though it's not nearly as easy as that. The visual data that is represented by the a symbol is important to consider as a designer, because of the vastness of the data. One point that Dondis made that I found particularly interesting was the fact that in order for a person to understand a symbol, they have to have previous knowledge about it. Without the education of the meaning, the 'code' of symbolism is completely lost.

Lupton's review of Dondis further emphasies the importance of visual literacy when creating symbols. I'll keep all of this in mind when beginning to sketch my thumbnails for my haiku. It's a lot to remember, but the readings definitely helped with understanding the differences between representations, abstractions and symbols, and I'll try to avoid representational images in my drawings.

Scher Video

In Paula Scher’s video, she talks about how her designs often reflect the city that she lives in. Crowded, bold, and tall shapes define both New York City and her artwork. This seems to be an inevitability for every artist, although it’s in no way a negative thing.

This was a really cool video to watch, since it’s easy to relate to what Scher was talking about. While working on this project, I seemed to have a tendency to prefer my photographs of small objects or macro shots over those that were of large things like buildings. I’m fairly new to Kansas City, living here only one year, and my frame of reference for this city is mostly the area immediately around the campus. Even back home, I’ve always been intimidated by dense areas of city, and find details in small things in my immediate area to be way more interesting. Even after going into the business district of Kansas City and taking lots of pictures there, I seemed to prefer photos of staples poking out of a telephone pole more than glossy skyscrapers.

Even though this is interesting, it's also important to realize what I'm comfortable with in order to move away from it. It's cool to have preferences and tendencies, but getting stuck in one style could be bad since it would prevent me from moving forward.

Project 2 Reading Response

"Graphic Design: The New Basics" Reading on figure/ground - framing


The purpose of our line studies is an evaluation of positive and negative space and the interaction of these spaces with each other. The figure/ground relationship of the line studies aren't just important in themselves though, the photographs that we pair with them are informed by the lines. A photograph can relate to several different line studies, but each line study activates a different figure/ground relationship.

Without the line study next to it, the rounded shaped in the background of this photograph would be much less apparent. But the background becomes a dominant element of the photograph once it is compared to the juxtaposing round lines.

Scale is a really important element in the books we are working on, and cropping was a leading factor in enabling me to create dynamic photo/line pairs. Like in this pair, where the cropping allowed me to make a formal comparison of lines between these two pieces. And framing created by the images themselves create an additional divide, making it seem like 4 panels instead of 2.

Project 2 Reading Response/Progress Report

Juxtaposition of lines to create depth, space, rhythm or shape

While working on the line study pairings, I'm trying to keep in mind the ideas discussed in the reading (which I am late on posting about) in the Graphic Design: the New Basics book. Juxtaposing my line studies with the photographs has proven to be pretty tricky-it's not just about matching up corresponding line weights and directions, as I thought it was initially. The pairs are a lot more interesting-and tell better stories-if I pay more attention to the less obvious similarities.

This random straight line study is not mirrored in any way, in fact, to be honest, I didn't check to see if the lines in each image lined up at all. Even if they don't match up, the rhythm in each is similar. It's almost as if the random line is reflecting the overall texture of the woodgrain.
Individually, these two images give off a completely different feel, and I flipped past them while looking for good pairs without considering their relationship several times. but once I laid them down next to each other, and worked on the cropping of the photograph, the lines from the photograph created a path from the line study that gave the combined image a more interesting composition. Plus, the pipes in the photo translate into line study, giving a sense of shape and depth to what would otherwise be a flat image.

Reading Response Transparency

While the dot compositions should be strong enough to convey the meaning of the word they represent without explanation, layering the text strengthens the piece and adds additional complexity. As the dots and text both progress and begin to come together in my book, it's really interesting to see how they begin to interact with each other when overlaid. Even though the arrangment of both are completely different, they all seem to work really well together, neither overpowering the other, and the information overlay seems to be working without any snags.

It will be very interesting to see what each page will look like once printed on the transparency. I tried to keep my ideas for the compositions of each half separate, to allow for some "magical" surprises to happen when they overlap. But I don't want to be too surprised, so at this point in the project I'm thinking of both parts when I work on the final compositions . I'm going to continue to refine both halves of the project to make sure than when added together, they are harmonious.