Journal 14 Inspiration

I had many inspirational moments, I would say the first was the books that Andrea brought in or told us to buy, I'm a sucker for reference and eye candy and when the two meet I loose the ability to not justify the cost of the books. But I think we also had some good moments with hallmark I like hearing the stories of different professionals how they made it.

But I would say I supplied myself with my most inspirational moment, I do a lot fo reading and researching on the sides and I was already familiar with the TED talks and then found out I can get them like pod casts and digest 1 or 2 a day and I love the diverse groups they bring in. I would also say my tolling around the internet and design blogs has paid off great as well I've found some companies that really interest me and I am starting to see a direction to all this madness.

Signs Journal Entry 7

Signs, a set on Flickr.

Here are a few pictures I took of examples of signs, typography and logos. Tried to get a good variety. I wish it hadn't taken me this long to get them online but at least they are here now!

Type Animation: To The Moon

So here it is, don't worry I'll be putting up the rest of my blog posts later.

Untitled from M. Rezaiekhaligh on Vimeo.

Lulu.com - How much will my printed book cost? - Connect

Just in case any of you wanted to know the pricing for this lulu business here it is. You might need to create and account to see this page --> Lulu.com - How much will my printed book cost? - Connect

Thats a Biggie

Whew I feel like I need to take a deep breath before I begin this one.

What are the advantages of a multiple column grid.? It gives you the freedom to use a variety of type and typographic color in an organized and easy to follow rhythm. I would compare it to the use of a modular grid in that it helps establish a system of organization that is implicit with out having to be explicit.
How many characters is optimal for a line length? words per line? 40-50 characters
Why is the baseline grid used in design? The baseline grid establishes an ordered system that is uniform though out the layout unifying multiple sizes of type.
What is a typographic river? The gaps that are formed when you set your paragraphs to justify. The program is trying to uniformly space the words and in doing so will create larger gaps at time and on consecutive like of text. So a river would be the negative space created when justifying text.
From the readings what does clothesline or flow line mean? The line across that defines where the text(paragraphs) will hang.
How can you incorporate white space into your designs? Connecting the text together, varying alignment and adjusting column and type size also utilizing the grid.
What is type color/texture mean? Bold, weight, size, tracking leading or just about any other modification to the spacing or density of the type.
What is x-height, how does it effect type color? X height is the maximum medium height of lowercase characters in a font. The shorter the x height the stockier the look of the type and the taller is more condensed.
In justification or H&J terms what do the numbers: minimum, optimum, maximum mean?
What are some ways to indicate a new paragraph. Are there any rules? Size of the indent, don't indent after spacing
What are some things to look out for when hyphenating text. Have more than 2 letter before or after the hyphen, or words that are too short or peoples names or places.
What is a ligature? An abbreviation of letter forms that improves the readability of the text such as fi.
What does CMYK and RGB mean? First is process or subtractive colors and the second and the second are screen or additive colors.
What does hanging punctuation mean? The punctuation is outside the area of the type suche as quotation marks, using this ensures all the type lines up without interruption.
What is the difference between a foot mark and an apostrophe? A foot mark indicates measurement and apostrophe indicates contractions of plurals.
What is the difference between an inch mark and a quote mark (smart quote)? Similar to the difference between the foot mark and the apostrophe visually only double.
What is a hyphen, en dash and em dashes, what are the differences and when are they used. hyphens are used for hyphenation, en dashes are longer and used for between dates and breaks of train of thought in place of parenthesis ,em dashes are the same width as the capital M and denote a long pause or quote.

Bruce Mau Design

the Incomplete Manifesto

So reading this for me was pretty awesome maybe more because I do a lot of these things already and it's gratifying to know some one else does the same thing. Mau seems to be a pretty colorful guy, leaving school early to design and then working for Pentagram in London and then starting his own design firm and during all of this he helped develop and define a modern form of design. I'd have a drink with hm.

I think I want to make mistakes faster and I'm not going to enter any Design competitions, yeah I know thats 2 things but I figure I owe a second one on account I should have had this up last week(I think). These last 2 projects I've worked on this semester felt kinda stagnant and I feel like I need to be producing more shit. I need to just turn things out even if they aren't good just to see what I can milk out of my head. All of that kinda related to other things Mau said as well.

Typotheque: How Good is Good? by Stefan Sagmeister

Typotheque: How Good is Good? by Stefan Sagmeister

Stefan Sagemeister has done a great job defining and then redefining some of these terms and ideas. I enjoyed the section on Bad design + good cause = good sometimes we want to avoid cliche even if it is the best decision if it helps the viewer.

He also quotes from one of Chip Kidd's books calling Uncle Sam commercial art and the flag as graphic design, clarifying that comercial art sells you something and graphic design gives you ideas.

The more I read the mor eI recognized names.

Don Norman on 3 ways good design makes you happy | Video on TED.com

Don Norman on 3 ways good design makes you happy | Video on TED.com

Don Norman is a well known design critic and author on the subject of design. I've enjoyed reading his work before. His thoughts on design and emotion makes sense and I can agree with what he says wholeheartedly. The environment and objects in the environment effect us emotionally and it does a feedback loop and in turn effects the usability for us the users.

In one of his books(I can't remember what one) he brings up a study that a Japanese University did about usability and design with atms. One set of ATMs had a UI that was designed and the other set was undesigned. And weirdly enough the designed ones worked better even though they were both running the same system. So when the university released it's results and Israeli school though this can be and conducted the same experiment in Israel thinking that the more practical Israelis would find no difference and the researchers were shocked to have repeated the Japanese results.

Happiness and our relation to the way things are designed are stronger than most would think or want to admit but they are there and the link should be respected. These are more examples of the visceral, but behavioral relates to our physical interactions. Integration of behavioral elements into design improves our emotional connections with the objects. Our reflective elements is usually the key motivation in most forms of design though. We often design to evoke a desire of the possible market. But I would wonder if it would be better if we ignore the last and focus on the visceral and behavioral elements our designs evoke?

Illustrated Guide to Book Anatomy

So I was reading through the assignments we have and it occurred to me some of the terminology kinda made sense but maybe I could use clarification. So with a little bit of Google Magic I found this site Illustrated Guide to Book Anatomy. So this should solve all your worries about book anatomy.

Dieter Rams' 10 principles of good design.

I really feel kinda dirty trying to summarize this. This si like someone saying to summarize the 10 commandments something so distilled and pure and you want me to make it even more concise? Well I guess I should just try.

Good Design is Innovative: The design should bring something new and progressive to the table. Use what technology you can and don't shy away from new materials and processes.

Good Design Makes a Product Useful: The design should improve the functionality of the device. What use is the design if it doesn't offer anything additional to the user experience.

Good Design is Aesthetic: I guess this should be pretty obvious, there aren't many cases when you design something to be repulsive.

Good Design Makes a Product Understandable: The design should lend to the purpose of the device. The ultimate use and operation of a device should be reflected in it's design.

Good Design is Unobtrusive: This one has been lost on most I think. Te design of a device should not overshadows it's use or cause it to be a source of attention. A well designed lamp will be noticed but will not become a focal point.

Good Design is Honest: Design shouldn't exaggerate or lie about the ability of the device. This is something I commonly see with heavy duty labels and rubber bits and yellow coloring.

Good Design is Long Lasting: The idea that what you design remains relevant. This also means you have to forgo popular fads when designing to avoid dating your work.

Writing For Visual Thinkers

The concepts covered in this booklet are those of idea generation and development through the use of words in the context of creating the visual. One of the most common methods are the mind mapping and free writing. I like the use of both in conjunction with my sketch book.

Mind Mapping - This is like a dynamic word list you begin with a central idea and begin to branch off writing associated words and then you branch off of these words and ideas. In the end it looks like a flowchart from hell and some of the ideas are no where nere the original and that is really the reason for this exercise. As designers we by nature have to be divergent thinkers we can't settle on the one solution but must accept there might be multiple solutions and explore those options.

Free Writing - I think every one in the U.S. has had to do this at one poitn or another in grade school. the concept is simple but I find it frustration at times. Here's how you do it. First you begin to wrie about the core idea or problem and then you just continue with what ever comes to mind even if it happens to be "I can't think of anything". And at that point it kinda fallas apart from me because I begin to think about all the things I can't think about and get nowhere. But if I do the mind map before and think about some of the core contexts then I can come up with more valuable insights.

Audience Profiles

Audience #1

Age – 18-22

Sex -M

Education – High school, in college

Interests - Just leaving for college or currently enrolled. Some what sheltered before just starting to explore past the boundaries of his parents house and his neighborhood. Is interested but not successful in relationships and has up until this point read fantasy and science fiction. He thinks that Empire Strikes back is the best of the Star Wars movies. Enjoys gaming preferring strategy over first person shooters. He wants something intriguing and profane and something that looks more adult like.

Audience #2

Age - 20-30

Sex –M/F

Education – Some college

Interests - College student or post grad that has been forced to read endless amount of books on boring topics but still enjoys reading. Has been playing world of war craft and living through relationships that fill the voids of time. They want something contemporary and edgy but grounded in reality. They enjoy meal out by themselves and prefer wheat over white bread.

Audience #3

Age – 30-35

Sex -F

Education -College

Interests – Some one looking for excitement but lives in a quiet setting. Likes crime dramas and forensic shows. They are now in the twilight of their youth and work a 9 to 5. Evenings are often shared and they have a great love of barroom trivia. Previously they had read Whitman and Miller and those writers had stuck with them. They like watching other people do stupid things and living vicariously through the contestants on reality shows.

Stuck

I'm trying to to find something out of the cliched realm of condoms and and people having sex for my patterns and even beyond that into inspirational photography and imagery. It's hard to su of some of the characters past some of their key features or how do you express the idea of searching for your mother? Yeah I'm trying and maybe I'm trying to hard.

Good God

My mind might melt if I go through all the version of Helvetica Neue. Funny because I'm really just looking through it just to give it a fair shot. I'm not even that fond of Helvetica and I hate the lower case r's. Yeah I'm a happening guy saturday night spent staring at fonts. I think I still have 15 more concept sketches to do for Monday and I'm hoping I can get some of them digitally mocked up as well. Maybe I need to take a few minutes break from type.

Design and Condoms

I'm a huge advocate for sexual education and removing the taboos we have in our society to openly talk about sex like adults. So I found this brand of condom I hadn't heard of and they are using design to remove inhibition some people have when purchasing condoms. I have actually bought condoms for strangers at Watkins because they were too embarrassed to ask themselves. So check out One Condoms and hopefully they can prove design can solve some of the bis problems in out society.

I cannot read.

So can't read what is assigned and forgot to post 3 book covers, but I have them here and ready to go, so lets start with the ugly one just to get it out of the way.

Yeah at first I couldn't read the title or any of the other copy. I'm fond of the pattern but that may be because I have trouble making them. I really question the use of a pattern so large and bold on a cover of a book by Freud and the treatment of the copy is just horrible and next to unreadable.

It's constructivist and that is about all I need. The illustration is sharp and conveys the dark overtones of Orwells work. This si clearly a cartoon for adults and also brings a vintage vibe to this book.

We have complimentary colors and a clearly related image. The First and second read are just the image and the title and I think that's how I think books should be. The proportions are great and the balance with the negative space plays very well with the entire visual.

Wow it's logo-rific

Creative Review is doing a vote for best logo on their blog right now. So if you find that tracking logos down is a pain in the ass then you might find some ideas here. Oh yeah this site is pretty fuckin awesome like core77 but more for graphics and if some one want to get me a subscription to the magazine I will do much for you. And if you find this months issue it's their Type annual so that's cool