the final assignment

my oh my...

it's been quite a semester. I'm glad it's coming to an end but I really enjoyed working on some of these projects.

The final manual pages I expect are going to be somewhat hard. But I think I've said that about all of them.

Oh! should this information be too cumbersome for one page, can we make it two?

I'm hoping I can get inspired and do it quickly so I can focus on revising all my work for the final portfolio.

Until then...

For my final portfolio

I know I don't need to be writing this post but I thought I should do it now or forget about it later.

The portfolio is coming up... and as much as I really don't want to think about all the work that's going to be involved with it, I'm focusing on it now rather than later when I don't have enough time to focus on it.

We're supposed to have at least 4 items in the final portfolio and I'm thinking I may go with 6 or 7 items.

I'm going to put all three of my final tiles on one page, with the rationale on the back of the board. I think the tiles are some of my best work (considering I just redid them after a glitch with pantherfile) so I feel that putting just one in the portfolio will not be able to do it justice. Three tiles, with three different letters all going toward the same feeling will allow me to show diversity in my work and show off the different things I have the ability to do.

I also want to put in the flier design I worked on. After a massive revision, I think it's evoking the feeling that the brief wanted. I changed the layout to landscape, flipped the photo and moved the text around. This way it creates a circle in the form of the dancer's body, to the title, to the dates, to the paragraph and back to the picture. I enjoy this layout immensely more than the others.

I next want to put in the form. I enjoyed working on the form and I feel that it evokes the kind of person I am: very straightforward, simple and to the point which is exactly what I wanted this form to do. I didn't want any kind of frilly stuff added to it because it would give a patient the feeling that the document was not going to stay in a file for only the doctor's and/or insurance company's eyes. I'm leaving this form the way that it was when I handed it in and putting it into the portfolio.

I DO NOT want to put the literary reading layout in there. I've hated this design due to the mass amount of text and being constricted to only one page that I've never been able to find the happy middle needed for the design. Too much frustration has gone into this design for me to want to continue looking at it and I believe my portfolio will be just as strong without it.

Next will be the brochure. Again, after much revision (about three versions) I'm FINALLY happy with the work I've created. I may do some more changes to the layout but I'm very happy with what I've managed to produce. I'll put the two sides flat against the board and then have the folded brochure in a pouch on the board, much like what I'll be doing when handing it in.

I may be adding the manual page into the portfolio but I haven't come to that decision yet. I haven't gotten to work on it and make an attempt to be happy with it so I'll leave it out at this time.

That's all...

Design Brief 4

A brochure...

oy.

So if pictures can't go over the edges, that means we can't cut the picture off a bit-- having it look artsy with a little bit of it missing? AKA- cropping the picture is a no no, right?

What is the repetition we're going to have to do? Are we talking bullet points within a header and sub-head?

In the first paragraph it says the brochure can't be smaller than 8.5X11 then in the procedure it says '8.5X11 (or smaller)' Is this to allow for margins or is this brochure not to be trimmed?

Since this brochure has the ability to possibly be used, should we include out name and 'designed by for English 439' on the brochure somewhere?

OK... I think that's it.

what I changed

I didn't change much...

On one, I simply moved the text around and closed up the leading so it wouldn't be as though there was this huge weight on her shoulders as she's dancing. I also attempted to make the text larger for the title so it would stand out more and the reader would be able to see it from far away

The next one was, at first, my favorite because I (cheated the class) and used Irish Jig shoes instead of ballet or jazz shoes so the context is a little off. At first I had the large block of text as a diamond pattern between the two sets of feet, but realized that it took away from the photo, so I moved the items around so they created clear lines from the pointed toe to the text at the corner. I then created a block of text and moved it to the bottom- sort of a throw away paragraph so they don't have to read it should they not want to.

Finally, I moved the girl in my photo over to the right further and added a black box to fill in the space made on the page. I then was able to make the title text larger so it stood out more and I was able to justify the texts so they created a flow much like what the girls' body was doing.

design brief 3

I used to Irish dance so I have a familiarity with how to design a flier for a dance show or competition but I've never actually put one together.

I've also never used Photoshop so this will be an interesting endeavor for me. Mainly because I've never had Photoshop, the extent of my flier making skills were limited to what I could do in Word.

I guess I'm a little freaked out by the amount of information that needs to be on this page. I was even overwhelmed with the layout design and found myself re-doing the project multiple times... and I don't think my stress level could take it!

Anyway... that's all that I have to complain about... I know that eventually something great will come out of me, but until then, I'll just have to fret over the work I attempt.

form vs reading

I made up the Confidential Patient Intake Form and actually asked for the opinion of my mother, who is a Registered Nurse. I wanted to make it as clear and concise as possible for patients and loved ones of patients alike so they would be able to fill it out quickly and as calmly as possible.

There's no obvious contrast other than the title of the page which, in boldface, states what the document is and who it's for. The capitalized words/phrases, I don't feel, are contrasting but in theory they are.

I tried to keep a balance in the form by making everything evenly spaced and giving the patient enough line-space to write on. The boxes I put in make it harder to find a balance, because the boxes aren't evenly placed in one line to the other, but the boxes help in efficiency.

I attempted to make everything proportional but I'm not positive if I've succeeded. The entire document reaches from the left margin to the right margin in one way or another, usually by way of line or box.

I repeat the use of the box- for the better use of the patient. I also used lines after the prompt for the information on the patient- this allows them to write in the correct information in the correct area. Since the document is very simple and color would be slightly inappropriate, I thought it best that the design be completely straightforward and efficient.

I feel that this design has harmony. I wanted it to be very easy to fill out and easy to work with in that if a distressed patient or loved one of a patient were to be asked to fill out the form, they could easily be able to fill it out, even in a frantic attitude. The form is easy to read, simple to understand and gives enough room for the information to be put in.

The document has movement in that it's all placed against the left margin (except for the Date) and allows the patient to read from left to right, rather than jumping all over the page.

I don't know if this document has unity, and it definitely doesn't exactly scream for attention, but I didn't feel that was the point. If something has unity, I assume everything works together, and your eye is able to move fluently from one piece of information to the other, and I feel that's what this form does, in its most basic way. It's not meant to be a flashy or warm/inviting form, because it's not meant to be something that other people (aside from an insurance company/the employees of the hospital) will be looking at.

Readings for Oct 6

Visual hierarchy is important to any reader. If you're making something that requires concentration and is formal, one must have an easy to read hierarchy of what needs to be filled out.

With a form like the patient intake form, it should be readily available for anyone to fill out. Some people come into a hospital and are stressed out or distraught and this form needs to be incredibly easy to read and figure out. I've been to hospitals where I had to fill out pages and pages of paperwork and it wasn't always easy to read if I was checking the right box (especially when giving blood. I ALWAYS check at least one wrong box).

This form should also be quick to finish so the paperwork turnaround can be quick so the patient's loved one can get back to them.


I'm a huge fan of "fill in the blank" kind of forms because they leave no room for error. If you clearly have No [ ], Yes[ ], I don't know [ ], you clearly know which box you should be checking for "I don't know." The 4Cs are now in my vocabulary as four main foci for making this form. If I'm clear and concise, the patient won't have any problem answering these prompts, but clever may be harder as there is no room for error in a written form. Co-Operative is useable when giving the patient plenty of white space so they a.) have plenty of space to write their symptoms etc and 2) don't write in the wrong spot.


With this form, I feel that it's very important that I left-justify the beginning of a new topic. This allows the patient to understand better what they're meant to write in the blanks.

I don't think it's very necessary to use color, other than a possible gray bar at the top and bottom to put the unnecessary information in which states where the hospital is and/or the name of the form.

Note: I found it ironic that they recommend you don't use serif fonts (number 4, 10 election design guidelines) but the entire Web page is in Serif... probably Times New Roman...


Contrast, Balance, Proportion, Rhythm, Harmony, Movement, Unity. These terms remind me so much of music. One has to have a balance of sounds so the song will be clear to the listener, the song must also have movement and contrast from what was previously done, so the listener won't get bored. These also all make so much sense in terms of making a successful layout since you need to have every aspect of these terms in order to allow a person to use the design to it's greatest ability.

Frustration over last week's assignment

OK So I'm just fuming over this so I need to let it out.

We presented our first part of the typeface brief assignments on Tuesday last week. I had painstakingly worked on that stupid thing and deleted it about 6 times before finally landing on something that I kind of liked. I showed it to a friend and he said it was boring- that it needed more diversity in the fonts. I showed it to another friend and she said she liked it a lot and just to bold one or two more words.

So I did that thinking that the message got across and would be easily recognizable as a literary reading quote. The bolded words would easily get the message across what the quote was talking about... and the larger words would give more subtext to the bolded words and so on and so forth.

I get to class and someone says that it's too busy- they don't know what to focus on and they don't understand what purpose the bolded words had.

*Facedesk*

I don't understand where my happy middle is. If I bold the words, people say they don't understand what they're supposed to be looking at, but if I don't, people say they don't understand what they're supposed to be looking at because it's so bland.

I was so frustrated with this thing last week that I was ready to start crying in anger at the Mac I was sitting in front of in the middle of the library.

We have to have an updated draft of this project by Thursday... I don't know how to change it other than starting over because I hate this thing so much and no one else can decide if they like it. I actually like it the way it is, but if it's not going to be accepted and received by everyone else the way I intend it to be, how can it be a good design?

reading response

Wikipedia- Type that is most easy to understand and is most important is that which is appealing to the eye.
My four guidelines are the readability, legibility, density of the script and the font chosen
I found it interesting that typography is subject to different cultural norms.

11 tips-
Grids! I never would have thought of grids! I fully intend to use this pattern in order to create sleek lines and straight lines.

Fonts- I've never thought of typeface as a science, but that's what it's seeming like to me as I look at 'counter' and 'x-height' etc etc. (by the by- I now know what was meant when we'd start dreaming of typeface)

8 ways to improve- I know that the mind processes more information when reading from right to left, and it tends to gloss over the bottom right more than it does the bottom left. I hope to incorporate this into my designs.

Design Brief 2

How in the world do you make a form festive and enjoyable...? I suppose I'll be figuring that out soon but I'm still confused.

I guess that's my only question/concern. The brief is pretty straightforward and easy to figure out. I just have to find a design that inspires me and hopefully I can use it with typeface.

I'm familiar with InDesign so I'm happy we'll be able to use that to create these items. I've used it previously to create newspaper layouts, so it'll be different using it for a one-page item.

A response to Tiles

I am very proud of what I’ve managed to do for my tiles. I was also very happy to see that all three of my tiles wound up where they were supposed to be.
My Light Rail Station tile is my favorite. At first I wanted to evoke some sort of psychedelic feel that would look cool in a large scale, but then I got some feedback about it having the feeling of motion and it made a lot of sense. The font I chose has larger scale stems on each end of the M, and the middle part of the M is thinner, and, when placed one above the other as I did, I found that it looks like tracks, which is very evocative of a train station. When the vision is blurred slightly, the white and black also blend together, which I found interesting and I felt like it would be interesting to someone waiting for a train or even in passing.
The Unisex Bathroom was probably the hardest for me to complete. I tried to evoke the gender-neutral view but also have some interesting quality. I chose Ls in two different sizes and placed them together to form a geometric pattern. By making an even amount of the pattern in the corner and then a larger set in the middle, I feel it keeps everything neutral while also giving the viewer something to look at while they’re doing their business.
The Poets kitchen was also pretty hard for me to do, as I didn’t want it to be the cliché “letter on the tile.” I wanted to make it have a fluidity and grace which would inspire the poet and anyone else who may come into the kitchen. I thought of using a general sans serif type but then realized that the serif type was better for the feelings I wanted to evoke. I used varying sizes of Ms and overlapped and rotated the Ms around so the curl of the letter would come in contact with one or more other Ms. I felt like it looked slightly jumbled but I like how it turned out.

I feel I need to work harder on making a proper decision on my tiles: I must have deleted and retried the patterns about 10 times before settling on a pattern simply because it looked good and I was sick of attempting to make a decision. I found it hard to evoke the proper emotion from the tile and was thus forced to start over or try to figure out how to change it, something I’m not very good at.
I also don’t think I conveyed the right message in my feedback to the other designers in class. I saw a tile that worked well, and tried to make that message clear, it still came across wrong. The same thing happened with what I didn’t feel worked in the context. I think I may have insulted the designer because of what I said and all I was trying to say was that the design may not have been right for the context in which it was chosen. I don’t like giving critiquing feedback unless I know the other person isn’t going to take it the wrong way and I feel that’s what my fellow classmates did.

Readings for 9.17.09

Every time I try to explain the difference between ambiguous and reversible to a friend, I found myself confusing the person I'm talking to. Either way I'd explain it, I'd be saying the same thing for each ambiguous and reversable. At first I made two tiles that I thought were the two ideas but then, after reading the two readings I figured out that my tiles were the same idea and I realized what the difference was between the two ideas.

So I redid the ambiguous tile. I even made sure that the best of my two created tiles would definitely be reversible.

In my mind, a reversible creation can have the colors inverted and still make a noticeable ground/figure distinction whereas the ambiguous tile represents one where the ground and the figure cannot be completely figured out. As the reading said, an ambiguous pattern challenges the viewer to find a focal point, and I think it's challenging to find a focal point and to find the right letter, font and placement to make something ambiguous.

I suppose it's easier said than done... I'm still working on making it happy and sunshine in my mind.

Readings and two more tile ideas

I've always thought of pictures of two or three colors as containing "white space" instead of the background and the image being the figure, mostly because of my journalism background. Now that I know these different terms and how they're used, I'll be able to communicate better with people in the graphic design field.

In notes on figure and background, I found it interesting in that there's a 'waist' in a graphic. It makes it sound like a figure should always have a middle. I've never thought that what I did for my tiles should or does have a middle. I was also interested in the "half and half" concept. I think the eye naturally sees the black more than the white in a tile, so while I'm interested in attempting this, I don't know how I'll be able to make it exactly half the space.

I never thought about the weight an object had. When I put a lot of black in one of my tiles, I just thought there would the opposite use of white as the figure and black as the ground. Thinking of gravity in a tile is something new I'll have to start considering. I've always thought of it as shading, or a shadow... so this is new to me.

While the work we're doing is in 2-D, I think it's very interesting how many graphics are in 3-D. I love watching movies like "Ratatouille" and "Finding Nemo" and the likes. and I know it must take so much more work than putting a letter on a 6X6 tile so my trying to decide which font and how to place is seems to matter less in the grand scheme of things.

Finally- I'm doing my tiles for the light rail station and the co-ed bathroom. I think something almost trippy for the light rail station would let people look at it while waiting for the rail. I wanted something for them to find different designs out of (sort of like clouds). I used Ms and, I think achieved what I was going for.

For the co-ed bathroom, like what's been said before, I wanted something that wouldn't have a gender. A tile that can be easily repeatable and still have something to look at while doing their business. Using Ks, I was able to find a way to mix a little bit of fun with a tile that could easily be re-created and duplicated.

Three alpha tiles

So I'm working on Design Brief #1 and found some great designs I'd love to attempt. The pictures were found from http://www.pophamdesign.com/gallery.php and I think these patterns will be easily morphed into an alphabetical feature.
I may be doing this wrong, but these are the three tiles I'd like to achieve for this brief.





Tile 1 is beautiful in itself but I'd love to recreate it in W's. Since it'll be in black and white, I think it'll be great if I made larger W's, maybe in a different design or different shaping, to give the tile the same affect as the floor on the wall. I feel like this would be really neat as a tiled bench in a zoo, in a new part where displays of non-fiction about the animals help visitors think about the animals in different ways. It could be placed near Zebras, since that's the affect I feel it'll give.



Tile 2, while in color, I think it could be great in black and white in O's on the kitchen wall of a poet’s house. I would love to create the chain-affect but make it on a smaller scale. Different shades of gray would also give it more character. This would show off the kitchen, as well as give the affect that the person living there is artistic in all aspects of their lives.



Finally Tile 3 would be great in black and white in use of the walls of a new Milwaukee light transit station, meant to make the large blank wall appealing to quickly passing commuters. I think it'll be slightly trippy when made with L's. I get a Tetris feel from this design and I think, even though it'll be rectangular in L's, it'll be super neat while put together with blacks, whites and shades of gray. This would look cool in a transit station. It would let people have something to look at while waiting for their commute, and it would allow those sitting for a short time to try to find designs in the shapes.

Repurposing a sweater and what to do with a leechy nalgene

So I spent two days taking a sweater apart so I can wear it again. It was a lot of hard work and I was covered in red schnibbles of yarn but I'm officially done with getting it all taken apart and whatnot.

So what do you get when you take a long sleeved Mossimo sweater apart?



6 balls of varying sizes of red machine-washable yarn.
Now I have no idea what to make out of it.

Also, here's what I did with my old Nalgenes because I got an amazing Sigg bottle:



Along with all my other fun effects on my landing-pad upon entering my bedroom, I re-purposed my green nalgene into a needle holder. I put all my knitting needles (I just started my own collection... I'd been using my mom's before so I decided to start buying my own) and my crochet hooks (again... I'm starting my collection) as well as my chopsticks (for my hair).

It finally dawned on me last night that I can use them for that purpose because I've always thought I'd been losing a pair of needles and I don't have a bag for them because I like displaying them and/or they're always in use so... yeah... That's one way to repurpose your old Nalgenes!

I digress

So... I'm working on some novel ideas for a publishing class and we had to come up with two novel ideas and I'm looking for some feedback on the ideas I came up with. We only needed to come up with two so... yeah.
They're very rudimentary and choppy... and probably not meant to be read right now but I needed to get them out there...

"27 to Life"
I get almost a sick sense of hilarity when I tell people 'My father killed a woman 6 years ago' but it's how I deals with the every day.

At 12, my parents separated because my father found someone 'new' whom he decided he loved more than my mother.

The day was July 3, 2002. my mom and I had come home from a good day when the phone rang. My mother got to the phone first.

"Colleen's dead!"

...I sunk into the chair behind me and immediately sobbed out "my daddy's a murderer."

The phone rang that night. I was in mom's room. Dad was on the other line and he wanted to talk to me. I cried harder than I ever have in my life. He said nothing more than 'I'm sorry' while I held so tight onto a teddy bear that I thought it would rip in half.

When I found out that my father was a man who killed the woman whom he loved at one point, but then 'wanted to make her feel the pain she had made him feel' I knew that I was no longer 'daddies little girl' but the daughter of a man who I didn't want to be associated with for the rest of my life.

What kept me together was therapy and my horse, Reno. Until Dad sold Reno to pay the government, because it costs the government money to keep an inmate in jail while they wait for sentencing.

it took 9 months for David Throm to reach a sentence. The trial was postponed twice.

Life.
Am I a horrible person to say I was glad?



And....

"Jesus Fakes"

My father was one of those people who was either too stingy to give money to the Church or he truly did believe that God was intended to be free and one shouldn't be forced to go to church to believe in God. In either case, I never went to Church, never had 'the word' instilled in me, and never really cared either way until the day I had to actually think about the things I wasn't caring about and had to start faking my way into the world which some people were completely brainwashed.
I became one of the self-proclaimed "Jesus-Fakes," a brand of people who faked religion while working around a group of people who believed so deeply in Christ that every day was an amazing feat of fallacy. From an owner/boss who spoke in tongues to many fellow Jesus Fakes who couldn't quite fake it as well as I could, the quaint Christian coffee shop where Switchfoot could frequently be found blaring from the speakers because I couldn't stand any other kind of "God is Great" music was full of antics that any kind of God-faker could be made a believer.