_________: February 2010

Sunday, February 28, 2010

Formatting Instruction

Here are some ideas for the viral media piece. The problem is that the slides feel too much like instruction. They've got good rules of thumb. But the original idea was to come up with a fun piece of media which would convince people to install my defaults, rather than an educational piece of media which would convince people to adopt its lessons.

Color issues in Powerpoint

One of the things you actually can set in a theme is the color palette.

1. The colors need to be high contrast for easy reading.

2. For projector-based presentations, the content should be light on a dark ground (the eye looks for light, not lack of light--and this makes sure that the content is the lone bright spot in a dark room).

3. I used white text on black background for the highest contrast possible. It is also compatible with any company color scheme (logo won't clash, etc).

4. Unfortunately, the color palette is set up to use the same colors for both content (line graph) and background (table background). For this reason, I had to find some half-tones that could be distinct, but not distracting as background colors.

Friday, February 19, 2010

THOUGHTS ON THE “DESIGNER AS AUTHOR” ESSAYS
I agree that good design leads to better communications, better products and better experiences. And I support the effort to get designers to both act and identify as content providers as opposed to service providers. This is a good approach if the goal is to elevate more designers into positions of power and influence. But if the goal is simply to inject more fundamentally good design into the world at large, I think there’s a better way.

The problem is that teaching innovative and entrepreneurial thinking is hard. In comparison, teaching design principles is pretty easy. So why concentrate on adding authorship skills to the designer’s resume? I think you’re more likely to end up with a Steve Jobs by teaching design to an innovator than by teaching innovation to a designer.

Of course, it’s easier to identify designers than innovators. The solution to this problem? Teach everyone. Basic principles of good design are easy enough to communicate on a widespread basis, and you’ll hit the big-idea people through sheer numbers.

HOW IT LED TO MY PROJECT
Unfortunately, I don’t have the ability to change the educational system. So how can I apply these principles in a design project that should take 3 weeks to complete? My solution was to identify an area in which a non-designers could use some basic design guidance, and to help as many of them as possible. And what I came up with is a long-standing pet peeve for many designers: Microsoft Powerpoint.

A combination of poor program design, poor default choices, user ignorance and user apathy has led to millions of uncommunicative communications. I’ve seen plenty of Powerpoint presentations in my lifetime, and I can’t remember a good one.

There are plenty of tutorials and tips in books and on the internet. But I’ve seen no evidence that their ideas are being adopted. My project is to improve as many people’s presentations as possible.

The project has three parts.

ONE: create a set of presets, defaults, instructions, etc. within Microsoft Powerpoint that would make it as easy as possible to create a well-designed and effective presentation. This would include both aesthetics (fonts, sizes, colors, layouts, etc.) and matters of process (creating master pages based on what people want to communicate rather than what they want it to look like).
The challenge: creating a beautifully effective look that is both universally applicable and hard to screw up.

TWO: Distribute this to the greatest number of people in such a way that convinces them to actually use it.
The challenge: what I produce will have to be appealing, shareable and probably enjoyable.

THREE: Use the communication in #2 to teach as many basic design principles as possible that may help people organize their thoughts into more successful presentations.

To begin, I did plenty of research, both on information design and the abilities/drawbacks of Powerpoint. Tufte was an obvious starting point, with his rants on the program as well as his books “Envisioning Information” and “Beautiful Evidence.” Other resources here, here and here.

I hope to update again soon…

Monday, February 8, 2010

With this one (like with the Airline Ticket) I wanted to make sure I was designing type, not just mimicking a format. So while it was important to keep the Helvetica look of the text messages, I made sure the surrounding areas said "Love Story" too. I made an L out of the service bars, changed up AT&T and made the time work as well.

Fonts: Helvetica

Process: Airline Ticket

I found a ticket online, and deleted all the markings on it in Photoshop. I stuck with Helvetica Neue for nearly all the fonts.

For some texture, I added in trademark symbols, I used an extremely condensed font and kerned it way too tight to make a barcode, and I added some printer streaks through some letters.

Fonts: Helvetica Neue, Hamilton Gothic Triple Condensed

Process: Journal

The journal was pretty straightforward, but I wanted to use only fonts that seemed like they were handwritten all by the same person.

I tried a few different things: layering fonts on top of each other to get a scribbled look, and finding decorative letters (like the big "O" here) to wrap other text around.
Fonts: Miss Brooks, Pazlina, Pablo. From DaFont.com: In My Closet, LSLeaves, Graphic Attitude, Black Roses, CalliPso Grafia, Floral One.

Process: Contraception

For this, I needed a font based on squares with bold, angular and non-intricate features.

I liked this one: angleblock. So I measured it out and cut the pieces (and removed the contents). I wanted to kern the letterforms, so I decided to attach them to a pillowcase.

Font: Angleblock

Process: Menu

Since I only had 2 words to work with, I decided to use some punctuation marks as design elements here: ~ . [ { etc. I liked these two fonts together, so I wanted to try to do the whole menu with just those 2. The lowercase wasn't working with the Officina serif font, so I only used all caps.

The light blue didn't add enough, so I went with green. Every section has both fonts, a little green and a touch of the punctuation element.

Font: ITC Officina, Peach Exquisite

Process: Classifieds

This was straightforward. The main choice was Archer, because I wanted one versatile font that could be legible and classified-like, but that still seemed modern.

Font: Archer Pro (many weights)

Process: Lips

I found some type that seemed lip-like (I looked for playful letters that I could cut out with an Xacto knife...preferably with good lip corners) and manipulated the size and orientation of the letters to approximate the shape of the lip mark I wanted. I thought I could cut out with an Xacto knife. After cutting out the letters, I used a lip liner pencil to get the marks on the shirt.