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Design Systems Thinking - Post 5

Jennifer Kilian’s article “Building a design-driven culture” includes a lot of helpful information about how design can successfully integrate with the other parts of a business. Frequently in class we’ve talked about how to use design in a vacuum, without taking into account other aspects of a company. I thought Kilian did a good job of talking about some of those considerations and what to do in order to integrate design as part of a larger company system.

(Design systems thinking must work in tandem with the other elements of an organization in order to be effective.)

While design thinking can lead to ideas and products that focus on customers’ wants and priorities, designers usually work within a larger organization full of non-designers. In order to reinforce design thinking and prioritize it, it’s important to also think about design decisions through the mindset of the other members of the organization. Kilian talks about the “braided” design model which integrates the steps of the design process with the steps used by the strategy and technology focused members of the organization. This model increases the amount of communication between all members of the project team and increases everyone’s understanding of all priorities, enabling a more informed approach.

There are some downsides to this process. Most significantly, the large amount of back and forth communication can slow down the process and make it ineffective, so Kilian discusses other models such as the “four walls” approach. In this approach, members of different parts of the organization meet together all at once, discussing the project goal and using each member’s individual expertise to create a strong roadmap for the project. I thought this was a really helpful way to think about working with teams, because it ensures that everyone goes into the project with a similar level of understanding.

I found this article most helpful because it got me thinking about how design fits into a business setting, and what to think about in order to ensure smooth and effective interaction between different parts of the same company.

Bibliography

Kilian, Jennifer, et al. “Building a Design-Driven Culture.” McKinsey & Company, www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/marketing-and-sales/our-insights/building-a-design-driven-culture.

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Design Systems Thinking Post 3

The processes explained on IDEO’s Design Kit take a three step approach to human centered design. Using this method, the process is divided into inspiration, ideation, and implementation phases. These phases involve establishing a connection and understanding of your audience needs, creating numerous possible solutions and narrowing it down through testing, and then bringing the chosen solution into reality. The site’s resources provided a number of methods and ideas that are helpful in thinking about this process.

Something I found helpful was Patrice Martin’s explanation on embracing ambiguity. Her quote, “We may not know what that answer is, but we know that we have to give ourselves permission to explore,” highlights the significance of working without necessarily knowing the answer. She explains that it’s an important part of the process of arriving at an answer. While not knowing the solution might be an uncomfortable situation, it can also drive intense creativity and unexpected approaches to problem solving.

Recently, I’ve been working on defining project goals in a way that pushes me toward solutions. Some of the methodology that is discussed is helpful for this aspect of the design process, such as the page called “Frame Your Design Challenge.” This practice is used in the beginning of the process in order to get you moving in the right direction and provide clarity and guidance later on in the process. The key when framing your design challenge is to give it room to work toward a good solution, or “ultimate impact,” while also leaving room for a variety of solutions in context. I found it interesting that writing your goal or challenge is also a process, and it might be helpful to write a goal multiple times in order to see what feels closest.

I found the SmartLife case study about water distribution in Kenya to be a helpful illustration of the human centered design process in action. It starts with a clear mission, “to create a social enterprise that would improve access to clean water, personal care products, and health education.” Then, the three phases of inspiration, ideation, and implementation are discussed. This particular case study made use of multiple lines of prototypes in order to test in the environment they were designing for, which appears to be effective in gathering a variety of types of feedback that can all work toward an eventual solution. A significant part of this design challenge was making sure the solution would be scalable and easily distributed, so it was interesting that the ideation phase also overlapped with prototyping for the implementation phase with logistical considerations.

Bibliography

“What Is Human-Centered Design?” Design Kit, www.designkit.org/human-centered-design.

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Design Systems Thinking Post 2

I looked at Nail Communications’s “Nothing” campaign, as well as AMP Agency’s “Change One Thing” campaign. Both campaigns were for food banks as clients, and attempted to reach out to audiences that don’t typically engage with food banks.

The goal of the Nothing campaign was to get a younger audience to donate to the Rhode Island Community Food Bank, to replace the older generation that only donated once a year and had been identified to have less money. The goal of increasing the food bank’s donor base in order to fight hunger is a worthwhile cause. It highlights a need to update messages to reach a different audience in order maintain relevance.

This project used design systems thinking in its consideration of how to make a solution that would address and overcome common barriers to donating to food banks. By listing out important problems that food banks face, such as the intangibility of solving hunger, the scale of the problem and conveying the idea that everything helps, the studio was able to identify a roadmap for the eventual solution.

The human centered design process was used in researching existing solutions employed in solving hunger, and their impact on the intended audience. By looking at existing solutions, the studio realized that guilt trip strategies were ineffective, because people have gotten very good at ignoring them.

The solution created involved selling a physical product called Nothing, which served as a donation to Rhode Island Community Food Bank. This brand provided a clever and unusual approach to food donation, which caught many peoples’ attention for its novelty. This brand campaign presented hunger as something that is fought a little bit at a time, rather than solved all at once, making it easier for people to see the impact of their small contribution.

For the Change One Thing campaign, AMP Agency was also focused on encouraging small changes. The goal was to overcome a common way of thinking which says that being healthy is an all or nothing matter. This was identified as a frequent barrier to kids making healthier choices. By fighting this perception, the campaign had the potential to impact New York youth in small but significant ways.

Design systems thinking was employed in using research to understand what an effective solution looks like, from the input of the target audience. This allowed the studio to realize what specific aspects of the problem they could address effectively.

Human centered design came into play in the careful observation of impact and audience reaction, which informed the first phase of the project and also informed the decision to move into the second phase, which involved interactive and hands on components to promote further engagement.

This campaign addressed healthy eating among youth by turning it from a goal (eating healthy) to a system (make one healthy choice a day). This reframed the idea of healthy eating into something attainable that could be worked toward. This worked well with the understanding that people know when they are eating unhealthy.

Bibliography

Case study by AMP Agency   March 22. “Case Study: Change One Thing-Championing Healthier Eating Habits in Teens.” AIGA | the Professional Association for Design, www.aiga.org/case-study-change-one-thing.

Case study by Nail Communications   November 13. “Case Study: Nothing.” AIGA | the Professional Association for Design, www.aiga.org/case-study-nothing.

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Design Systems Thinking Post 1

Design thinking is a framework that enables us to approach anything from a design standpoint in order to discover or create solutions. Mugadza’s article makes an effort to explain design thinking from a high level, conceptual point of view. According to her explanation, design thinking is an approach to problem solving that is characterized by “applying a designer’s methods and sensibility to problem-solving no matter what the problem is.” Approaching problems with design thinking liberates designers from specific fields and types of work and encourages them to tackle varied, unique situations and problems.

Design thinking emphasizes empathy and an understanding of what people prioritize and why. A key foundation of any design thinking approach is information gathering. While this can be high level research, the most effective information usually comes from spending time with the people directly affected by the problem in question. By understanding the social systems that characterize lives, design thinkers can move toward effective solutions that understand the people they are designed for. Successful design thinkers frequently find solutions in people’s everyday improvisation. By discovering what people are already doing to solve the problem, they can find solutions that work for a specific group because they were developed by that group.

(The design thinking process is described as nonlinear. As you move through the steps, insights gained may inform what you’ve done before and lead to revisiting and changing anything you’ve already done.)

A key element of design thinking that I took away from the reading was the amount of time spent gathering information and building understanding without necessarily thinking about a solution. By just focusing on the problem, you can get a strong understanding and appreciation for its nuances without being bound by applying them to a specific solution.

In order for this to work, I need to stay open minded and flexible about what the final result is. To succeed here requires humility I need to accept that if it’s really a significant problem, people are already taking steps to solve it, and I can learn from them. I can’t create the end all solution that works for everyone, and I should think about my role as a part of a community and a part of the solution.

Design thinking puts solving complex problems in a framework that I’m already prepared to think about. It also synthesizes all steps of the process, including the information gathering, ideation, prototyping, and especially the delivery. Rather than “designing” one step and leaving it to someone else to make it happen, this approach pushes me into understanding finished products and using the information I’ve gathered to follow through and execute the solution. I think this is helpful because it increases the value of design by pushing it into the entire process.

Bibliography:

Brown, Tim, and Jocelyn Wyatt. “Design Thinking for Social Innovation.” Development Outreach, vol. 12, no. 1, 2010, pp. 29–43., doi:10.1596/1020-797x_12_1_29.

Mugadza, Grace. “Systems Thinking and Design Thinking: Complimentary Approaches?”Systems Thinking World Journal, stwj.systemswiki.org/?p=1723.

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Vis Com 5 - Post 1

The Abstract episode and the AIGA Design Conference session both looked into aspects of exhibit and experience design that were new to me. While Es Devlin’s work seemed to focus more on actual stage and exhibit design, Delgado and Goods talked about experience design in a broader sense with a focus on bringing out audiences’s sense of imagination and wonder.

Coming into these videos, I knew very little about stage and exhibit design, or the specific elements that must be considered in order to make these spaces successful. Much of it, as explained by Es Devlin, involves similar principles as 2D design, but translated into a 3D and immersive world. In addition to thinking about how visual elements are presented, a stage or exhibit designer needs to think about physical spaces, where the audience will be in relation to the exhibit or presentation, and how things like sound, scale, and movement interact in a very concrete way.

While exhibit design is a pretty clear descriptor for what it involves, experience design is far more broad. Experience design goes beyond just the creation of physical spaces that people occupy for a specific purpose, and moves into designing any interactive experience. Examples such as Delgado and Goods’s story of uniting the hobbyist radio community in order to communicate with a satellite, or their very broad and open-ended discussion of what a museum of awe would look like, illustrate this. Common threads across experience design are interactivity, immersiveness, and an ability to create or generate certain types of feelings. Success in experience design involves empathy, thinking about how people will react to phenomena, and creativity to explore wild ideas and concepts that will have a truly unique impact.

While a lot of the applications and methods for execution are new to me, I did see several underlying and more general design principles that I’ve learned about, as well as some interesting process variants. Similarities and things I’m familiar with included the sketching and visualization process, as well as iteration and thinking about and researching how different audiences will react.

Differences, especially in more concrete stage and exhibit design, focus around the importance of 3D visualization at a small scale. When exhibits are massive and intricate, it’s required to build working scale models to test ideas. This emphasizes construction and craft skills that aren’t always present in 2D design.

The creative solutions repeatedly demonstrated by Es Devlin, as well as the awestruck and curious way that Delgado and Goods talked about their process, inspired me by encouraging me to think big and have more fun conceptualizing ideas. It’s easier to create something interesting when you’re inspired by what you’re working on, and these designers showed strong evidence for that.

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Information Design - Post 5

I looked at an interactive chart on a New York Times article called “Is it Better to Rent or Buy?”

This series of graphs features sliders which the user can adjust to match their individual situation, and it will provide a projection of the cutoff rental price where renting makes more sense.

Housing situations are diverse. To address this, this calculator provides robust options such as mortgage details, taxes, closing costs, market growth rates, and more. These serve as helpful reminders about factors that one might not have considered when thinking about renting or buying, and it also encourages the user to seek out this information if they do not know it.

The green number on the right, which is the cutoff rental price, also provides details on the situation such as initial and recurring costs based on the number of years the user plans to stay in one house. This piece does a good job of pulling together a lot of contextually relevant information in order to provide a comprehensive picture, and provides a simple, easy to understand number as a takeaway if everything else is too much to take in.

Next, I looked at the nutrition label on a cereal box. This label is something I remember reading a lot as a kid, but I never understood what it meant. Nutrition labels are ubiquitous, but they are also dense. While the percentages are explained to be a percentage of a daily value, the actual explanation of what a daily value is must be found much farther down on the label. It takes specific dietary knowledge to understand the context of the numbers like 2g or 180mg, because otherwise there is little to determine if that’s a lot or a little.

Since this is a cereal box, it was interesting that this specific label provided serving information specific to young children, which shows a bit of variation in labels that I thought were mostly exactly the same.

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I’m Curious - Post 5 - The Federal Design Improvement Program

Historical:

In the early 1970s, the U.S. federal government initiated the Federal Design Improvement Program, which made use of an increased federal budget for the arts in order to update the visual identities of many government agencies. This initiative saw top designers such as Massimo Vignelli and Tom Geismar work to create unified and strong visual identities for agencies such as NASA, the EPA, the National Park Service, and others.

(Massimo Vignelli’s Unigrid system for the National Park Service)

What was significant about this time period was that the federal government made a conscious movement toward updating its agencies with intentional and smartly designed graphics and systems of communication. The effort was widespread, and produced several works that we still remember today, such as the NASA worm logo and the Unigrid system implemented in the National Park Service’s brochures.

Beyond just providing an opportunity for great design work, the Federal Design Improvement Program also served as an introduction to design for many people working in government agencies. Agency leaders who might not have cared about design were forced by this federal program to interact with designers and work with them on creating new identities. This presented some difficulties, since many agency leaders either did not care, or actively opposed the redesigns. This is reflected in the longevity of some of the designs, such as NASA’s worm logo. The logo was only in use for a short time before NASA reverted back to its old circular logo which is still in use today. Despite a sometimes adversarial response, this program provided an opportunity to invite people across the federal government into conversations about design and the importance of clear visual communication.

Today:

Although the Federal Design Improvement Program was initiated almost 50 years ago, the effects it had on the government and the overall design conversation are still felt today. Some of the effective and well received design solutions that emerged out of the program, such as Massimo Vignelli’s Unigrid and redesign of the National Park Service’s layout designs, are still widely used today.

(The short-lived NASA worm logo redesign)

Others, such as the NASA logo or Chermayeff and Geismar’s designs for the Department of the Interior, which didn’t last long, are still remembered as standout pieces from talented designers. These works, and their successes and failures, illustrate a part of history where non-designers interacted with and formed an understanding of the importance of design. The Federal Design Improvement Program served to increase the number of people who participate in design conversations and think about the value of design.

The program also illustrates the far reaching impact of even a small increase in arts funding. The budget increase that led to the program amounted to 0.04% of the 1971 federal budget, and it employed numerous designers to create work that is still talked about today.

Biblography:

Budds, Diana. “Nixon, NASA, And How The Federal Government Got Design.” Co.Design, Co.Design, 26 May 2017, www.fastcodesign.com/3068659/nixon-nasa-and-how-the-federal-government-got-design.

Meggs, Philip B. A History of Graphic Design. J. Wiley & Sons, 1998.

Stinson, Elizabeth. “Inside the Rise and Fall of NASA's Beloved Worm Logo.” Wired, Conde Nast, 20 Nov. 2017, www.wired.com/2015/09/nasa-graphics-standards-manual/.

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Information design: Blog 4

(Screencap from infographic entitled “13 Reasons Why Your Brain Craves Infographics)

https://neomam.com/interactive/13reasons/

I looked at an online infographic called “13 Reasons Why Your Brain Craves Infographics.” This scrolling infographic immediately makes clear the question it seeks to address, which is “why have infographics become so successful?” Having a strong and clear narrative hook is effective in contextualizing all of the other information in the piece, which talks about how much information is present in our day to day lives, and also how our brains process information. The graphic presents reasons why infographics are more successful than other ways of presenting information, including reasons such as that they are more accessible and more persuasive. While all the reasons are backed up with statistical claims, the statistics are generally just percentages that don’t do a lot on their own. More vivid or contextualized depictions of the statistics could have made this graphic more engaging.

(Label on the back of a laptop charger)

I also looked at the label on my laptop charger. This label has the task of explaining the type of electronic device it is in accordance with regulations. This label has three main parts: the identifying numbers, the identifying icons, and the warnings. The numbers are labeled by the type of number, although I am not sure what the labels represent. The icons, similarly, are intended for a very specific audience, and in accordance with what I assume are regulations that I am not familiar with. I recognize some of the icons, and the one with the trash can is very self-explanatory, so I at least understand what it is saying. The warnings, which are in words, are more straightforward, although they are referring to an “interference” which I am not totally sure of. This label, while clear and easy to read, relies on a specific base of knowledge to understand what it is communicating about this device.

Bibliography

“13 Reasons Why Your Brain Craves Infographics.” NeoMam, neomam.com/interactive/13reasons/.

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I’m Curious Post 4 - International Style architecture

International Style architecture, which emerged in the 1920s on the heels of movements like De Stijl and the Bauhaus, is characterized by similar principles of industrialization and strong geometry, as well as a focus on new technology and materials. While the work of De Stijl and the Bauhaus made steps to establish art and design’s place in the modern age, International Style provided that for buildings.

Architects working in and establishing the International Style grew dissatisfied with the disparate and eclectic styles and types of design that were traditionally applied to architecture. They sought to develop a more unified and universal style that would embrace the industrialized nature of the world at the time. Architects and designers such as Walter Gropius and Le Corbusier designed buildings that made heavy use of iron, steel, and concrete as well as the characteristic glass curtains.

Le Corbusier famously described the house as “a machine for living.” This illustrated the modernist thinking that drove the International Style’s development, which centered around the utilitarian value of a building. This is reflected in the general style of International Style buildings, which make heavy use of strong geometry, straight lines, and open space in a way similar to modern art such as Mondrian’s De Stijl paintings. The utility-focused approach to architecture, coupled with the central use of industrial, easy to manufacture materials such as iron and concrete, made the International Style the face of a lot of post-World War II rebuilding efforts as well as the rapid expansion that followed.

(The Schroeder House, recognized as part of the De Stijl movement, shares design characteristics and principles with the International Style.)

(Gropius, as one of the central figures of the Bauhaus, designed the Bauhaus at Dessau according to the developing principles of the International Style.)

(Skyscrapers emerged under the guiding principles of the International Style, made possible in increased numbers by industrialized materials and advances in technology.)

Today, home builders are consistently working with a style that shares visual and structural similarities with the International Style of the first half of the century. In places like Seattle, residents are familiar with the pattern. Old buildings and houses are being torn down only to be replaced in short order by a geometric box house. A common sentiment is that the character and uniqueness of the old buildings is being destroyed in the construction of a bunch of buildings that all look the same.

The driving force behind this phenomenon is the creation of larger numbers of homes. In a place like Seattle, developers have recognized a demand for housing that is willing to pay higher prices for less space. This contributes to the tendency to tear down one old house and build two or three on the same lot. Taking these factors into consideration, it makes sense why buildings constructed with this mindset share visual similarities with buildings from the International Style. Both the International Style and the building boom in places like Seattle are driven by a need for rapid expansion. In the case of the International Style, geometric structures, efficient use of space, and industrial materials were selected out of a desire to push forward and show progress. In the case of today’s building booms, cheap materials, geometric structures, and extreme space efficiency are employed to rapidly clear old houses and cram their old lots with multiple new houses.

(One example of a box-shaped home built after demolishing a West Seattle house.)

While there are valid criticisms to make about the destruction of older, more unique buildings with the intent of placing lots of same-looking buildings on the lot, this design and architectural philosophy is contributing to alleviating the demand for numerous luxury houses in expanding cities like Seattle.

Bibliography

The Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica. “International Style.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 18 Oct. 2016, www.britannica.com/art/International-Style-architecture.

“The International Style Movement, Artists and Major Works.” The Art Story, www.theartstory.org/movement-international-style.htm.

Rosenberg, Mike. “A Teardown a Day: Bulldozing the Way for Bigger Homes in Seattle, Suburbs.” The Seattle Times, The Seattle Times Company, 26 Aug. 2016, www.seattletimes.com/business/real-estate/a-teardown-a-day-bulldozing-the-way-for-bigger-homes-in-seattle-suburbs/.

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History of Graphic Design - Reading 5

Chapters 13 through 17 cover the time period from the late 1800s until around 1950. This relatively small amount of time covered indicates that there are a number of significant movements taking place during this time, which all worked together to establish most of what is recognized today as graphic design.

For much of recorded history, art has been characterized by a focus on representation and depicting subject matter taken from real life. High profile movements in modern art around beginning of the 20th century worked to establish the legitimacy of non-representational art. A central part of the evolution of graphic design is the cubist movement, started by Picasso’s work in the early 1900s. In cubist works such as Man with Violin, Picasso approaches art with an emphasis on spatial relationships and geometry, rather than focusing on realistic representation of objects. Cubism, and the movements that spawned from it, paved the way for non-representational forms of image making that allow designers more control over the types and varieties of messages they seek to convey.

A significant design movement that emerged in the new world of image making was Plakatstil, which emerged from Germany around the start of the 20th century. Plakatstil’s defining characteristics, flat colors and reductive image making, have become some of the most widely recognized and used techniques in graphic design ever since. Posters such as Julius Klinger’s work for Die Lustige Woche and Hermann’s & Froitzheim’s Clothing, with their reductive depictions of birds using a small number of flat colors, use a style so repeatedly iterated on and imitated that they would not feel out of place in a contemporary environment. The reductive nature of Plakatstil designs emphasized sign, signifier, and meaning over traditional representation. These concepts are now thought of as central to effective graphic communication.

As the central figure of the Russian Constructivist movement, El Lissitzky approached art and design with structural and mathematical considerations gained from his study of architecture. Lissitzky worked with structured grid arrangements in order to create his posters and print layouts, such as The Isms of Art. By focusing on the structure of the content of his layouts, Lissitzky avoided ornamentation and focused on the object-ness of his type and content. This was a significant step in the establishment of type as form, which opened doors into new uses for typography.

One of the many contributions of the German Bauhaus movement of the early to mid 1900s was the attempt to develop a universal language of design which could be applied to visual design, industrial design, architecture, and more. By thinking about design in a broader sense, Bauhaus designers sought an integration of design into all aspects of life, and tried to envision what that would look like. The integrated, universal, and sometimes mystical approach used by members of the Bauhaus movement represented an early effort to think about the applications of design in all aspects of life. Applied design thinking has been used to great effect ever since, and it tends to be instrumental when put to use designing the future of new technologies. New technology such as AI and virtual reality are examples of fields that benefit from intentional applied design thinking.

Alexey Brodovich’s editorial design work, such as what he did for Harper’s Bazaar from 1934 to 1958, took elements from the Russian and French design movements and moved them into an American space. Brodovich’s focus on open layouts and white space, as well as sharp modern type and a unique eye for photography, defined a new approach to editorial and publication design with principles that are echoed in today’s web and publication design.

Bibliography

Meggs, Philip B. A History of Graphic Design. J. Wiley & Sons, 1998.

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I’m Curious - Post 3: Video Recording

Eadweard Muybridge’s Horse in Motion, photographed in 1878, is the best remembered example of early attempts at capturing motion, but other early inventors were instrumental in the development of specialized devices for capturing movies. The efforts of these inventors paved the way for the recording and dissemination of movies, revolutionizing how we are able to communicate.

Thomas Edison, who met Muybridge, took inspiration from Horse in Motion and wanted to develop a specialized camera for capturing motion. Edison assigned one of his employees, William Dickson, to develop a movie camera. Dickson’s creation, known as the Kinetoscope, used mechanisms that would come to define movie cameras, such as a shutter taking a series of exposures at regular intervals, as well as a mechanism for advancing the film frame by frame in order to create film strips.

(Dickson and Edison’s Kinetoscope)

Edison and Dickson unveiled the device in 1893. They used the kinetoscope to produce and distribute videos, which would be viewed through a specialized cabinet with a peephole. “Kinetograph parlors,” specialized venues that offered films and concessions, emerged, and the public gained a desire for motion pictures.

The Kinetoscope, and other early movie cameras, were limited in the amount of footage they could record. They were heavy and non-portable, so they were limited to filming in pre-constructed sets for short durations. In 1909,  Polish inventor Kazimierz Prószyński developed the Aeroscope camera, powered by compressed air. The Aeroscope stood out because it was portable and capable of being operated by hand. A portable, hand operated movie camera opened up a new world for communication. Similar to Mathew Brady’s Civil War photography, the British War Office employed cameramen equipped with Aeroscope cameras to record footage of World War I, allowing the public to see and gain a new outlook on the reality of war.

(Combat cameraman Geoffrey Malins operating an Aeroscope camera.)

Today, there is a staggering level of demand for video recording. The prevalence and ease of use of video cameras in the form of devices like smartphones, GoPros, and surveillance cameras reflects how video technology has shaped how we consume media. These devices have moved video recording from a specialized field to a commonplace activity that people do without even thinking about it. Video enables specific forms of entertainment, documentation, and communication that shape our everyday lives.

Early video was restricted by a limited number of opportunities to view video recording. Whether it was specific kinetograph cabinets, movie theaters, or televisions, these restrictions on the ability to view video meant that its significance and impact was diminished. Now it is common for a person to have several devices capable of viewing video content, meaning the potential impact of any video has skyrocketed. Video is easy to access, easy to preserve, and easy to distribute.

We have gotten used to watching videos on everything, from education to entertainment to news. The prevalence of the technology has shaped how we get our information.

The non-exclusive, open to everyone nature of modern video recording and sharing also empowers countless individuals to spread content and ideas. Where before we would get our news from specific news sources, accessible video has enabled the rise of citizen journalism, which means multiple sides of any event can and will be presented. This gives us even more information and possible narratives, and opens up our understanding of news and current events.

Video recording, now that it is so easy to get, has resulted in a huge saturation of video content which has reshaped how we get information and communicate with others.

Artifact:

I made a cinemagraph. The cinemagraph is an interesting combination of photography and animation, finding a space in between the two. While it’s mostly a still photo, animated elements give it a layer of motion. This juxtaposition is similar to the principles that Muybridge explored with Horse in Motion where he used a series of photos in a way that conveyed motion, but was not a full video.

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Information Design Post 2

(Tableau interactive infographic illustrating the amount of money different major companies make in one second. Source: https://public.tableau.com/shared/YKS5CGJHT?:display_count=yes:showVizHome=no)

This infographic demonstrates how quickly big companies make money. The chart is arranged in a circular fashion with each piece representing a different company. When one of the slices is selected, the graph changes to display the company’s profit per second in dollars. Hovering over one of the companies will display a popup with additional information such as the company’s industry, Fortune 500 ranking, and a graph displaying all the industries the company is involved in. When dealing with big numbers like this, they can tend to feel abstract. Relating all these numbers back to how much the company makes in a second provides strong contextualization, since the audience is able to compare this to how much money they make in a second, or how long it would take them to make the amount displayed. That contextualization paints a vivid picture of how powerful these companies are.

Proportionally, the chart’s title and the dollar amount are the most attention grabbing items. They were the first two things I saw and it made it clear what this infographic was about. The color of the dollar amount number changes to mach the color assigned to the company selected, which quickly identifies where the company ranks on the chart. A small hand icon reads “Hover to reveal more information,” which informs the viewer of the additional interactions possible without feeling in the way. The use of the Apple logo feels inconsistent. While it is an easily identifiable logo, no other company’s logo is displayed, and it doesn’t match with the rest of the visuals.

(Screen 4 of Amanda’s dashboard)

This dashboard screen deals with sex trafficking and youth. As communicated by the header, its goal is to provide a picture of the situations that victims of sex trafficking deal with. A number of statistics presented in a circular layout do a good job of communicating the situation faced by youth with sex trafficking, and each of the items builds another layer of empathy. The overall layout has a lot of empty space, which I think could be effectively used to increase the size of a couple elements to build stronger hierarchy. Some of the smaller text has a hard time standing out, probably due to the blue on black colors. The use of red feels like a highlight element but it’s not clear what the red signifies.

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History - I’m Curious - Post 2: Newspapers

Historical

Newspapers started around the early 17th century as corantos aka currents of news, mostly regular publications, extracted information from other journals and stuff

Started out as news books, eventually like 1640 the title page was dropped and news books became newspapers.

In America in the 1700s, newspapers were resisted and censored until courts ruled in favor of freedom of the press. John Peter Zenger acquitted of libel in 1735 cuz his criticism was factual.

Newspapers, regularly printed publications detailing events of interest to a particular audience, were largely unfeasible until the invention of typographic printing. With the development and refinement of the printing press, the concept of a news-oriented publication became more realistic.

Even before the printing press, the public expressed a demand for news. In the 15th and 16th centuries, news was communicated through official newssheets, which were written by scribes and read by town criers.

Starting in the early 17th century, demand for newsletters and newssheets resulted in increased numbers of publications, made possible by typographic printing. This was the beginning of the regular newspaper in Europe. Newspapers differentiated themselves from earlier forms of newssheets and letters by their regular publication and broad range of topics. Dutch printers took advantage of their nation’s location within Europe to collect and report on information from other countries, becoming the first source of international news. Their papers, called corantos, were printed weekly or bi-weekly.

The early newspaper usually had small readership and a small staff. Similar to early printers, early newspaper creators often did all the tasks, ranging from reporting to writing and editing to printing and distribution.

(Publick Occurrences was the first newspaper published in North America.)

Newspapers found power in their ability to report on and criticize the government. This led to struggles with censorship. The first American newspaper, Boston's Publick Occurrences Both Forreign and Domestick, published by Benjamin Harris in 1690, was shut down by the British government four days after the printing of its first issue. Struggles with censorship continued until ideas about the freedom of press emerged. In 1735, a newspaper owner named John Peter Zengel was acquitted of charges of libel after his paper, the New York Weekly Journal, criticized the government.

Current

The newspaper exists today in a rapidly changing world. Newspapers emerged with typographic printing by using the new technology to distribute information in new and efficient ways. Our evolving relationship with the internet is forcing the newspaper to reexamine its role.

In the past, the newspaper was the most effective way to distribute information regularly. Television came around and offered a second way to get news, but for the most part newspaper readership remained strong. The internet provides countless new sources for news, and the types of information and the way we get our information is fragmenting. The traditional newspaper often struggles to keep up, and the era of a fully staffed newsroom printing morning and evening editions has ended.

The decline of newspapers is not simply a matter of medium. Newspapers moving online has not appeared to be the solution for the industry. Just as the printing press changed everyone’s behavior when it came to consuming media, the internet has enabled behavioral shifts when it comes to getting updated on current events. The immediacy of the internet means we expect new information at a faster rate than what is possible from a regularly printed newspaper. This affects the type of information that can be printed, and has negatively impacted the feasibility of investigative journalism.

Newspapers came into being because they utilized new technology to provide the public with information faster than before. When the newest technology was printing, they were the best answer. As the world changes and moves beyond mass consumption of print media, the means of news publication has moved with it.

Artifact

I’m a layout editor on The Falcon, SPU’s student newspaper. My role within the newspaper focuses on the print edition of the paper, organizing typographic and visual elements to create hierarchy and flow in order to best connect readers with the stories within. While newspapers of the past were laid out through typesetting and movable type presses, current print newspapers are laid out digitally, still making the same types of design decisions.

Bibliography

Unwin, George, and David H. Tucker. “History of Publishing.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 15 Nov. 2017, www.britannica.com/topic/publishing/Newspaper-publishing.

“American Newspapers, 1800-1860: An Introduction.” History Philosophy and Newspaper Library, www.library.illinois.edu/hpnl/tutorials/antebellum-newspapers-introduction/.

“Early American Newspapering.” Early American Newspapering : The Colonial Williamsburg Official History & Citizenship Site, www.history.org/foundation/journal/spring03/journalism.cfm.

“As the Internet Grows Up, the News Industry Is Forever Changed.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 19 June 2006, www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/13/AR2006061300929_3.html.

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VC4: Information Design Post 1

For my first information design item, I looked at the main screen of the Uber app. The ride sharing app is continually reworking and changing this screen in an effort to make it more intuitive and convenient. It starts with a map, something we are generally familiar with. It’s logical that a transportation service would start from a screen like this. It lets users visualize their location and where they would like to go.

Next, the app includes a blue dot in the center of the screen to convey the user’s location, now a common convention, and relates it to a number of car icons on the map. Quickly and visually, this lets the user picture how long it will take to call a ride.

The search bar is labeled unmistakably, with the words “Where to?”. This prompts the user’s involvement, asking them to tell the app where they would like to go.

The car and clock icons, while not a completely conventional in terms of recognition, can be put together and understood as holding recent destinations.

Additionally, the clock icons near the bottom of the screen, when paired with destinations that the user entered before, is easily understood as recent places you’ve taken rides to. This allows you to conveniently get home or to another recent destination.

(Screenshot of main screen of the Uber app, showing the map, nearby drivers, search bar and recent destinations.)

The second example I found was the chore board at my house, used to distribute chores between the residents. It’s difficult and unpleasant to keep track of everybody’s chores and remind them all the time, and nobody wants to do that. This board attempts to tackle this problem by providing a visual and ever present reminder of who is scheduled to do what.

It starts, again, with a map. The diagram of the house was initially meant to create a clear distinction between the two bathrooms for cleaning purposes, but it is also effective for specifically placing chores within rooms, and also if the specific tasks ever need to be modified.

Check boxes next to each chore item provide a commonly used visual means of showing whether the chore has been completed for the week, while and a small sidebar of “Things we need” makes it easy to create a shopping list for shared items. The size of the sidebar does, however, make it difficult to read and write in.

A board like this needs to be interactive, with everyone using it able to put their input. This means a temporary medium like a whiteboard is effective, although to keep it from being accidentally erased, it has been mounted high on the wall, which does at times hinder its usability.

(Photo of a whiteboard used to distribute chores between roommates, including a diagram of the house with an indicator for each chore and whether or not it’s been completed.)

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History: I’m Curious: Post 1 - Logographs

In history:

Early writing systems began by using pictographs, where a written symbol represents an entire word instead of a phonetic sound. This style of writing is often referred to as logographic writing, with each symbol that represents a word being known as a logograph. Early Sumerian writing and Egyptian hieroglyphs both used logographic representation. In many cases, such as with cuneiform and hieroglyphs, the early logographic systems evolved into phonetic systems. But logographic writing systems also continued to develop alongside phonetic systems. Logographic writing systems appear in several other notable places, persisting in parts of Asia and Central America and evolving into intricate variations.

Chinese characters initially used logographic elements, and continue to do so. While not every Chinese character is a logograph, many of the basic characters are. Additionally, these characters appear in more complex characters and lend meaning to them.

(The evolution of several significant logographic Chinese characters)

(The two characters on the right are each composed of two basic logographic characters)

In Chinese writing, logographs appear both on their own, and as the pieces used to construct more complex characters.

Some Central American writing also used logographic representation. There are many different forms of writing that developed in Central America, and they share common characteristics with hieroglyphics. A notable characteristic of these Central American symbols and characters is that they are frequently very elaborate, sometimes looking like detailed paintings in addition to being used as writing.

(Common words represented across a number of Central American languages)

As these Central American writing systems developed, they used logographs in distinct ways. The image above is of a highly stylized carving that could be read as a picture. However, the depictions of items are early examples of very specific symbols which convey certain meaning, and their arrangement in relation to each other affects their meaning. The symbols are logographic, and their specific arrangement changes the specifics of what they say.

In current media:

One of the drawbacks of logographic writing systems is the sheer number of characters that need to be memorized in order to effectively read or write. This makes learning these languages a complicated and time consuming process. Advances in technology have enabled the rise of emoji, a logographic language that many people now understand and use without even realizing they were learning it.

(The same sentence, translated into four logographic forms)

Communication technology has frequently developed with Western language systems in mind, leaving people speaking Asian languages to adapt and find a workaround to communication technology that was built for alphabet-based languages. This happened notably with the telegraph and keyboard, and again with phones and their input methods. Writing in character based languages like Chinese using a phone keyboard is time consuming and inconvenient. People in countries with character-based language began to use emoticons and images to communicate quickly.

iOS 5 released with the first emoji keyboard, which was at first only advertised in Japan. But when western audiences found out about it, they quickly began adopting it as well, and a new, logographic means of communication emerged.

Through shared understanding of specific emoji and their general use, we have developed a way to communicate complex ideas and phrases through a few images. Emoji can be used alongside other written languages, or in some cases be used as a standalone.

One of the strengths of logographic writing is the potential to be understood globally. We recognize characters such as $ and # because of how they are used. We know what they mean, and it matters less what we call them. Emoji are not completely universal. Much of their meaning is tied to cultural understanding. For example, the emoji of two hands pressed together is seen as a sign of greeting in some cultures, while it is understood as an indication of prayer in others. In other cases, such as hearts, laughing faces, or animals, the meaning is more well understood and similar regardless of the language you are relating the emoji to. Beyond this, some emoji have developed their own meanings, both with regard to people using emoji and also in relation to other emoji.

Artifact

Practiced Chinese calligraphy using an ink stone and calligraphy brushes

Bibliography

“Emojis + Hieroglyphics = Universal Language?” This Anthro Life, 17 Jan. 2017, www.thisanthrolife.com/emojis/.

Flavelle, Mack. “The Sticky Truth about Modern Written Language – Digital Culturist.” Digital Culturist, Digital Culturist, 5 Mar. 2017, digitalculturist.com/the-sticky-truth-about-modern-written-language-dde65c2854af.

“Mesoamerican Writing Systems.” Ancient Scripts: Mesoamerican Writing Systems, www.ancientscripts.com/ma_ws.html.

“Logogram.” Logogram - New World Encyclopedia, www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Logogram.

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Flag design

In discussing flag design, Roman Mars explains key elements that carry over to logo design, and to any other area of design. This is because he keeps his talk centered on principles of simplicity and readability. He talks about how good flags use a small, standard set of colors, have no text, and stay simple and memorable enough that a child could draw them from memory.

These points overlap into the area of logo design. Logos and flags have similar purposes, serving as an identifier of a larger group. The logos we remember the most tend to follow the principles that Mars explains. They are simple, easy to recognize at small and large sizes, and they are easy to draw which helps us communicate them to others.

Logos are a lot more varied than flags. There are fewer restrictions as far as format, and since logos communicate a larger variety of ideas than just representing a country or city, they often need to use text. However, they remain similar in their need for quick recognition and simplicity so they can stay strong in peoples’ minds.

This video made me think about my own process for designing logos, since Roman Mars’s points of focus is different from my own. I usually think about simplicity and recognition, but his emphasis on representation in flags was something that I need to remember. Flags and logos are stronger when they represent something, rather than just being something someone decided looked cool. It would be a good idea to start with a strong sense of what a logo is supposed to represent.

Starting with a point of representation is a direction I could take my conference materials, since that offers a potential to come up with a strong symbol rather than finding a pretty way to present a bunch of words.

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Presentation pitfalls

Mike Monteiro’s article was a great reminder about design presentations. The biggest point that stood out to me in the article was number four, “not setting the stage properly.” Even with all the attention paid to audience, I frequently forget the role my audience plays in presentation. When I’m watching someone else give a presentation, I don’t want to be yawning and asking myself why I’m even there. It makes a lot of sense to consider that about my audience, and clearly identify the role I want them to play in the presentation I’m giving. That piece of information is something I haven’t thought about before, and I want to keep it in mind for future presentations.

Thinking about myself as an expert in my field is a mindset I need to get in the habit of having when I present my work, although it seems to be different in a school setting. While the idea there is to be an expert, what I can learn is at the forefront. I would consider myself the client when I’m doing work as a student, since the goal for me revolves around what I can get out of it, whether that refers to experience, portfolio pieces, or skills gained. Outside of student work, though, remembering the “expert” position is something I need to keep working on.

Points about not getting up and moving around, apologizing, reading a script, and getting defensive are all things I’ve been working on. Hearing about why these are important in the context of design is helpful to remember.

I agree with Monteiro’s point about presenting being a core skill of a designer. Designers can create, but being able to explain their choices with words makes them effective in many more situations. Being well rounded in both visual and verbal communication opens up many more possibilities.

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