alanjonc-blog

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I’m a big proponent of podcasts and wanted to share a list of the best ones concerning graphic design. Full disclosure, I’m only aware of one of these, but it is soooooo good that I’m sure the rest are too! 99% Invisible is excellent and as the article states, “From brutalist architecture, to the history of the octothorpe (that's hashtag for you millennials, or pound sign for you old-timers) Roman unpacks the impact that design has on our culture, even if you've never stopped to notice it before,” it delightfully expands on the impact that design has on our everyday lives and has in our history. Check out the last episode, “The Infantorium,” if you’re wanting a great example of what 99% Invisible has to offer.

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I was surprised nobody critiqued this during the class. It is really deflating to use their interface as it is dreadfully slow. Why do they use Windows? I would like to know more behind the UGA’ s reasoning for this but I guess I’ll have to research it myself. 

If we had another critique or making assignment, I would redo the UGA VLab. Maybe it’s just because it’s opening up another desktop within mine, or maybe it’s because it uses Windows, but the interface is slow and painful to use. It makes me appreciate Apple’s animations when scrolling and clicking even more than I did before! 

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This is really cool and I wish more companies were helping and targeting this demographic. I am really impressed with Logitech for also getting the price down so low!

This is really cool to see. I’m a pretty big fan of video games (as those who have talked with me probably know) so I love seeing methods and attempts to positively spread and welcome more people into one of my favorite hobbies. The Xbox Adaptive Controller the article mentions is so cool to see because its a first party device with real care and thought put into what affordances we naturally assume a controller can and should have and then strives to widen access for those whom those standard affordances may not be enough, or even functional at all. Seeing this device take things to the next level in that regard is both heartwarming and exciting to see!

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A fun post that had me thinking about the near future and what one of the biggest influencers (social media) will do to affect it. 

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Too true!

Let’s play a game!

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I’ve always been a fan of the doodles and its beginnings are hilarious! Google’s Sergey Brin and Larry Page had just been given $100,000 to bankroll Google and wanted to go to Burning Man before embarking on the strenuous workload in front of them. So what did they do? Well, they made a "rough sketch of the wooden effigy that’s burned at the festival,” and added it to their website, “as an “Out of Office” sign and set off for the Nevada desert.”

The initial spirit of these earlier doodles has stayed with Google and helped their design appeal to customers who have a problem with static, over-formulaic logos that reek of corporate alignment. Google has relied on this strength and continues to provide “a new wave of constantly changing “dynamic identities” that feel right for our frenzied, febrile era.” 

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This is a tough argument to get behind, although I do understand why Twitter is implementing this for their users. In their words, “Twitter’s thinking is that if people know that hateful remarks and inappropriate behavior could be hidden from view, it will encourage more online civility.”

This needs to happen of course, but I’m not sure if this is the right procedure from the right source to help with online civility. The opposite effect is just as likely to happen from the feature in regards to other posters, “to silence their critics or stifle dissent, even when warranted.” 

Online civility is not something I believe Twitter can control but I do appreciate their creativity to try and resolve an ever-growing problem with social media. At the end of the day, it will be all posters–not just the original poster–who will need to work in unison to build an effective online community that consistently believes in civility and posts with this in mind.

What do you think about this!

[alanjonc-blog]

After reading Creativity, Inc., I wanted to dig a little deeper into the Toy Story 2 debacle to see what else was out there that might have been left out of the book. I was fascinated with how Pixar almost fell apart completely and then rebounded to become the ultra success they are today. 

One of the big reveals in this article is when the movie was thought to be completely lost. “At first, the team didn’t panic. They had backups, after all, and they’d only lose a half day’s work. But it was not to be: the backup system didn’t work correctly, and there was nothing there to restore. The film was literally gone.” 

 This happened to me at Grady on a student film one time and I was devasted. I cannot begin to imagine what it was like for the Pixar team. Luckily, my backup files were eventually restored as were Pixar’s!

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These are cool logo designs that I think illustrate the business model very well. The first one is very elegant but I think the second is more modern and clean, therefore more appropriate and a better choice! 

Making 5- Logo design

After designing an application and a website, I decided to make a logo this time. And this logo is also designed for my business plan-Visible News. At first, I want to explain briefly what Visible news does. To be straightforward, journalism students or beginning journalists can upload their news videos on this online platform, and news agencies or media companies can select good news videos and even directly hire talented news videographers on this platform. That’s why I plan to add the icons of a videographer on my logo. Because I think a logo should symbolize a brand or an organization in the market. When customers watch the logo, and the logo can help customers to understand what this brand or organization is doing. After I read some articles about how to design a logo, I conclude several main points of creating a good logo. Here is the list of tips: 1. Match the purpose of your business A logo designer should understand the purpose of the business or the company and always remember that the logo should match the purpose. That’s why I choose dark bronde as the main color of my logo. Because Visible News is an online job market, and customers should know that such a platform is professional from the logo. That’s also why I use the icon of a videographer in my logo, to tell the customers that Visible News focuses on video making.

Font design of my logo

There are two pictures, the first one is the old version and the second one is the final version of my logo. The reason why I decided to use a more modern and concise, even more, the solid font is that my target audiences are young generations. Based on data support, we can know that my target audience is 18-29 years old. They are the relatively younger generation in society. 

Elegant and Memorable

Because the Visible News is an innovative business, the logo design should also avoid the similarity with those existing logos, especially the logo of the same type of enterprises. That’s why I combine the modern style and elegant style into this logo.

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Since we’re reading about it, I thought I would share this informative article from The New York Times about how an iPhone is produced and exported to other countries, including the United States. 

Several tidbits stand out:

1) “Foxconn’s facilities in Zhengzhou cover 2.2 square miles and can employ up to 350,000 workers, many of whom earn about $1.90 an hour.”

2) “In Zhengzhou, often in the customs facility, Foxconn sells the completed iPhones to Apple, which in turn resells them to Apple affiliates around the world. The process, most of which takes place electronically, allows Apple to assign a portion of its profits to an affiliate in Ireland, a tax-advantageous locale.”

3) “After the iPhone leaves the Foxconn factory in Zhengzhou, it takes two days, on average, to get to a store in Shanghai, a 590-mile trip. It takes three days, on average, to get a store in San Francisco, some 6,300 miles away.”

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Making #5 - Vintage Infographic

For the final Making assignment, I decided to make an infographic for the mobile app prototype (Vintage) I produced for my Entrepreneurial Journalism class. This infographic could act as a nice addition for my business pitch or for a handout during the presentation. The design process is explained through headings for each draft.

1st Draft: My 1st draft was ultimately concerned with creating a layout that matches the message the mobile app business plan conveys by purposely lining text and pictures into an aesthetically-pleasing style.

2nd Draft: This draft made use of small designs to outline the text and pictures within the infographic.

3rd Draft: This draft used lush, plain tones of color to match the vintage look and vision. 

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

Final Draft: Final edits and creative choices were made to produce the desired result.

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Critique #3––––UGA Athena

Since registration begins this month I thought I would look at Athena, UGA’ s student information program. I won’t be looking at the sign-in process, that’s a whole other bag of chips, so to speak, so today I’ll just concentrate on reviewing the process once you’re in the UGA Athena portal and have landed on the homepage after login (see above). I will then concentrate on registering for classes and specifically how one goes about finding classes they would like to take for specific semesters.

Objective: The main objective of Athena’s design is to get you to all your pertinent student information as fast and efficiently as you can. The most important time a student needs access to their information in Athena is when they are registering for classes and the beginning layout Athena provides is very intuitive for the user. 

Experience: Once the student clicks on the Student navigation box, seven more boxes appear with a Registration box appearing at the top left corner, denoting it as the most important as its placement suggests. Athena does a good job with locating everything within the two left quadrants and even when they use the whole page the most important and most frequented information stays on the left side of the page, creating a pleasing, operational/navigational experience.

Skipping ahead a little bit, I’ll just mention that once you are in the registration page several options open up for you but the most important one for students preparing to register is the Look Up Classes box which is easily accessible and takes you to this page which has the Select by Term feature that has an easy-to-use scrolling feature to pick which semester you are looking up classes in.

So far, so good. Now to the real test=Finding Classes. After hitting the submit button you are taken to a Subject box featuring abbreviated disciplines with their full description. This is a great feature for all students, as younger students need the full description when learning what the acronyms stand for and more experienced students can just skip the description and go straight to the acronym they already know by heart, once again staying to the left. 

Once you are in the subject, courses of the discipline you have selected appear on the left and you can easily scroll through them to find the one you are looking for based on their class number and name with the ever-important view sections box to the right to look at the most pertinent information, so far, so good. The page opens with the class’s schedule with all the other important information, e.g., crn number, instructor’s name.

Critique: I really like the user-friendly navigation Athena presents throughout this process and the other options on their page. The only hitch I’ve yet to find is the next part of this process. When I want to go back and find another class I’m not allowed to from this point. When I am back at the same page of classes as before and try to view the section of another class this pops up. 

The only options I have left are two, yet they take me back to the same place to start over again. I can go back to the Select Term page seen above and start over which seems pretty far back in the process to have to start over again. The other option seems better, but instead leads me back to the same Select Term page. It is hitting this New Search button at the bottom of the view section page that has the class schedule and other information. 

I thought I was correcting the error I had made before in hitting the back button and that now I would be properly taken to the correct Subject page, but alas, I was not. I was taken to the Select Term page again. This should be an easy fix and one of the 2 options should just carry you back one page, not several. I think Athena has a nice user-friendly application and has great navigational tools except at the very end of the registration process, but overall it is a great resource for students and is very helpful when registering for classes.

[alanjonc-blog]

This is a great idea and I definitely think the Garmin interface could not only look a little better, but also have stronger navigational tools to allow you to see the things you deem more important. I would also like to personalize the page which is not really an option. The visualization graphics from Dribble look great and have a much cleaner feel. I look forward to your presentation!

Final project idea

I have a Garmin watch, which is a GPS watch that I use for running, biking, swimming, etc. It tracks my miles through the GPS. There is an app called Garmin connect that connects with the watch, however I barely ever use this app. 

I go on dribble all the time and see really cool dashboards for health/fitness apps. They are intuitive, well-designed and honestly, just way cooler looking than Garmin’s interface. 

Examples from Dribble 

Above is Garmin connect’s interface. 

I want to redesign Garmin’s homepage as more of a “My Day” dashboard that is informative and easy to check every day. The interface now isn’t bad, however you really have to go digging around the app to find different information that could be included in the “my day” home page. For example, sleep, water, calorie intake, stairs/elevation, health & performance, training, etc., are all things that are found in various areas across the app. Also, if you workout that day, you have to go to a separate page to find the details of that workout. 

I can create an experience map, that follows the user’s journey throughout finding the most pertinent information on the app. Using that, I can decide which information is the most valuable to put on the “my day” homepage. 

I can prototype a new my day page and possibly a new page for completed trainings as touchpoints.

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Researching Customer Journey Maps

I recently visited this website about customer journey maps and found the material instructive and beneficial. One insightful tip explains the need to start the process with a touchpoint inventory. This enables you to learn more about your customer–before making a map–so you can view the persona by “creating a ‘lens’ through which to view their journey.” This Adaptive Path illustration made for their client, Railroad Earth, is highly recommended.

Building off the initial inventory for Railroad Earth, Adaptive Path created a customer journey map that was able to look at all the touchpoints their customers go through and not just the primary one of booking tickets. This was a great visual representation that helped me view the holistic experience of the customer and hopefully can help anyone else that needs further understanding of the journey map implementation. 

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Making 4: Illustrator Flyer

Last Sunday I ran in the annual AthHalf marathon with some friends of mine. After the race we overheard some people talking about how they had used social media to raise money for a charity of their choice on top of raising money for AthHalf’s non-profit organization. We thought that was a great idea for next year’s race and someone suggested having a fun flyer to hand out to friends as an incentive for them to donate too. So...

For this week’s Making assignment I decided to make a flyer for my friend so he can have it for next year’s AthHalf.

1st Sketch:

2nd Sketch:

3rd Sketch:

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Final Project Proposal

I am also hoping to revamp my personal website for the final project assignment. At the end of Fall semester last year, I created a website through Wordpress to have my portfolio on it as it was required for class. This was done hastily, as there wasn’t much to put on there (my first semester) and it was a very small portion of the final grade. Since then, I’ve done a lot of work but haven’t added it because I haven’t found the time to clean it up (and because I’m embarrassed by the site itself). Since I’m in the process of applying for internships and will be applying for jobs in a few months I need to enhance the functions on the site and make it more aesthetically pleasing. 

Some of the apparent changes I need to make to this existing offering are: 1) to add options and different types of platforms to the page 2) to enhance the look of the homepage, navigation tools, and overall quality of the website 3) and to have more explainer subheadings to help the user (potential employer) find the type of work they are more interested in as it applies to their company’s specific interests.

Some of the touchpoints I’ll be working with are the aforementioned navigational headings along with a contact page and contact form to digitally communicate with me. I might try to create new touchpoints, such as a comments section but have not decided on this yet.

I will create an experience-centered journey map based on a potential employer’s experience with my website. Starting from the process of searching for the website to finding it and utilizing its functions until contact is made with me from the website. The focus of this project will be to find what gaps exist pertaining to the website’s purpose of future employment and then find the solutions there are to fix them based on the completion of a potential employer’s journey.

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This article reminded me of the Will Fortanbary presentation and provides great examples of software tools with brief descriptions of what they do. Also gives tips on the creative process and then showcases the 50 works in 100 days. Not quite Fortanbary territory, but impressive nonetheless!