DesComm - Good Design

Assignment: What is your definition of good design? Give some examples.

My definition of good design is a design that is functional, aesthetically pleasing, and solves a problem. There are enough 'designs' out there that are pretty, but some of them can be pretty useless. I don't think the world needs more junk. That's where art comes in. Pretty stuff without a purpose (aside from getting people to talk about it) is art, not design. Design needs to solve a problem. It has to make something better. The best example I can think of right now is the three teapots that Donald A. Norman uses in his introduction in his book 'Emotional Design'. He owns the three teapots in the picture below.

The first was created by the French artist Jacques Carelman. This is not design, this is art. The second was designed by Michael Graves, called Nanna. The third is the tilting pot made by the German firm Ronnefeldt. The Carelman pot is, by intent, impossible to use. The Nanna teapot looks clumsy, but actually works rather well. The tilting pot is made with deep consideration of the stages of tea brewing: place the tea leaves on the interior shelf and lay the pot on its back while the leaves steep. Then, as the brew approaches the desired strength, tip the pot up to a tilt, partially covering the tea leaves. When the tea is ready, stand the pot upright, so that the leaves are out of the liquid, preventing the tea from becoming bitter. And finally, when the teapot is empty, remove the cover, signaling the waiter that more hot water would be welcome. -Donald A. Norman, 'Emotional Design'

The first teapot is not design, it's art. It was created by an artist and proclaimed as such. The second was made by a designer and while it works, it's not, in my opinion, good design. Its not hard to make something functional, you also have to make something pretty or clever somehow to make it on to my list. The third is good design. The teapot functions in a neat way and is pretty. It takes into consideration all the steps in the process of making tea and simplifies it for the user. It is a good solution and good design.

DesComm - Mixed Media

Assignment: Find and share examples of illustrations or sketches that use mixed media (or sketches that you can't tell what techniques were used.)

I found this tutorial over at psdTuts+ the other day and thought it was amusing that as soon as we were assigned to do a mixed media project a tutorial pops up on one. They have some other tutorials using stock photography to create new images. One shows a woman's face being turned into a greek bust statue. As an extra trick they added bleeding tears dripping down the side.

DesComm - Post Project

Assignment: Develop concepts for a small object in 3 sizes. The products should be created as a family of form with a specific brand in mind. Concepts must fit within the overall dimensions and design details based on an product dimensions. To gain insight and inspiration on how to design your product, conduct an online survey with a combination of qualitative and quantitative techniques. Visualize the data through charts and infographics as a part of your presentation. Excellent concepts will have a family look while following the recommendations set forth by the research. Create a series of sketches to quickly and effectively capture your ideas. Work in Illustrator to render and present two final concepts in orthographic views.Share images of your information design, sketches, and illustrator renderings. Discuss the specific challenges of our project direction and how you solved them.

This was my first real attempt at using Illustrator in a long time. I'd had a basic CS training course five years ago, but the only thing I remember being taught was Live Paint and I couldn't tell you what that is for anymore. After spending some time relearning the basics, I really focused on trying to make each object its own distinct texture. I wanted to try out a variation of different techniques for accomplishing that as well. I took this project as sort of a mastery of skills test project. I finally learned what a clipping mask is. Yay me.

DesComm - Open Post

Assignment: Write about whatever you want relating to home, school, work experiences, or something else that could be applied to design.

A couple of quarters ago, our professor asked us to name a few of our favorite things. One of mine is my chair. It's this sweet old chair that used to be in my favorite high school teacher's classroom. By the end of ninth grade I was completely in love with the chair and told the teacher I'd be taking it with me when I graduated. He thought that would a great idea as he was retiring the same year and had no idea where the chair came from and didn't use it himself. I loved it because it was a great shape for sitting crosslegged in and it tilted farther back than anyone expects it to. Surprise factor. Because of this, my entire family and everyone I've ever met hates sitting in it. It's my chair. When I started at DAAP I was introduced to design history and instantly fell for Charles and Rae Eames' designs. OMG, that's my chair!! I was stoked that I had what looked like their chairs, not even daring to dream that it was a real one and not a knock-off. About a week ago I took a picture of it to show to my professor, who is a self-professed fanatic about these chairs, and was able to tell me with a good deal of certainty that my chair was in fact a real one. So, freaking, cool.

Typography - Resumes

Assignment: Give your resume a make-over.

One of the more practical projects that is being assigned is to do a resume. I've got the before and after shots of my resumes here. Before my alignment was all over the place. I had rules for them, but there were so many different lines they snap to that none of them had much gravity to it. I also removed and combined my high school extra-curricular activities. It's really hard to part with them, I was really active and involved in HS, but my teachers are right, your resume is a rolling 4 year list, I'll ditch them soon. :(  I feel like my new version is much more readable and clean. The images also help because my employers barely even glance at our resumes, they move straight to the portfolios. If the portfolios suck, the resume never gets read. The logos can get across more information in the .5 seconds I have.

Before:

After:

DesComm - Inspiration

Assignment: Find an inspiring designer with strong visualization skills and write about their work.

As sad as it sounds, I don't really know too many designers off the top of my head and I honestly couldn't say I really follow any of them. I've never been good with current events, so it makes sense that that lack translates across the board. I'm much more interested with older design. I really like the interesting shapes, colors, and designs of decades past. Considering just about everything repeats itself I'll likely fall into being current if I lag behind long enough. Bauhaus and mid-century modern design is my absolute favorite.

The few designery websites I do follow are Abduzeedo and ID Sketching / Sketch-A-Day. Mostly I frequent them to learn how to do stuff rather than follow a current trend. psdTuts+ is another of my favorite sites.

DesComm - Info Design

Assignment: Scour the web for the best example of information design and share them with your audience. Talk about the common techniques used in these great infographics.

The website Infographics Showcase takes submissions and gives them grades on design and content. The good ones are super interesting to look at and they are explained why the good ones are good and why the bad ones are bad. One thing I noticed that was common to most of them was that everything was outlined, most used either black or white, only a few outlined in colors. This helps gives a more illustrated feeling to the image. An interesting thing that might just have been a coincidence was that all the good ones used Sans Serif fonts and the two that used Serif fonts were really terrible. Sans Serif fonts seem to be better for posters and graphical things, while Serif fonts are better for text things like books and magazines. The good ones also managed to keep their images in the same style, bad ones mixed MS Office charts with web photos and badly drawn vector art.

DesComm - Portfolio

Assignment: Post your portfolio to your blog, both as a PDF and as screen shots that viewers can easily see. Talk about some of the key challenges and how you resolved them in this newest version of your portfolio.

My portfolio is available on UC's Professional Practice site. I also try to keep my UC website up to date as well. As this quarter is just starting up, I haven't had the chance yet to make a new style sheet for it reflecting my current portfolio's layout and design. Or add in my projects from last quarter....

The challenge I had this time was I really wanted to make my portfolio look like the senior's portfolios. I needed to make it look sleek and in depth and show off all the work and thought process that goes into my projects. The portfolio I had to start from looked like a barely stepped up picture book. Each project needed to be longer and go into more detail. This was difficult because there have really only been three projects that we have spent any significant time on, and one of them for me kinda sucked. You don't put work you aren't proud of into a portfolio. That left me with only two projects and I knew I needed at least four. I had done some extra work for a few of my sophomore projects so I kept them in and included more of the back work for them.

The other problem I faced was all graphical problems. My layout was meh, my grid was non-existent, and my fonts made my Graphics friends cringe. This was solved by listening to my teacher explain grids, we all were over thinking it, and by enlisting my Graphics friend to poke at my text layout. I didn't let her touch my fonts, but I did try to pick better ones. I was relatively pleased that she didn't have to do much to it, apparently I'm learning stuff in my Graphic Design Basics class.

DesComm - Film

Assignment: Movie trailers are the appetizers of the film world. Find a great movie trailer and write about why it makes such a great piece of communication.



Memento is one of my favorite thinker movies. The trailer does a good job of describing the hows and the whys but doesn't go into what happens, so watching the movie is still worth your while. It really bugs me when movie trailers practically show you the whole movie, or they've been edited to make it look like an entirely different movie. Or even worse, they keep the mechanism secret until you get to the movie theater so you are disappointed that it was all just a dream or they are really just ghosts instead of being a really neat movie.

This movie uses a neat way of keeping the viewers in the dark about what will happen next because the main character has memory issues and he doesn't know what just happened. The movie plays backwards. The question then turns into 'how did this all start' instead of 'how does it end'. Really cool.

Typography - 9 Square Magazine Cut Out

Assignment: Using 9-Square grids, explore the use of image and letter forms to convey mood, spatial ambiguity, dynamic composition, and pattern. The grid template is used to organize cuts made from magazine prints into orderly arrangements that display an intentional use of the frame to subtract unnecessary detail and focus the viewer on elements in a considered way.

Arrange magazine cuts to create an visual representation
of the keywords provided: sombre

For this project we had to bring in magazines and cut up little 3" squares to create a block that represented a word. My word was 'somber'. I looked for dark, desaturated images to use. I also looked for objects or arrangements that seemed lonely, sad, formal, or low energy. I decided to space the images that contained people in them to make it feel more lonely and apart, none of my people face each other. I feel like I captured the word.