current —
Given shortness of time, our package
exercise is adjusted/repurposed:
package all projects done to date.
This affords an opportunity to rework, revise, and even complete earlier projects, and to reconceive how best to present them — packet of cards? a catalogue showing thumbnails and/or details, plus explanations, of every project? portfolio of small independent booklets/brochures? The outrage
poster exercise might be revisited, and given new life by reformatting as book.
For whom? what purpose might a package
of GD2 work done, so far, serve? How might it be organized? Need it be consecutive, one project after another? One might focus on process (including sketches, dead ends) rather than finished designs. And certainly, the tool/visualization exercise had numerous facets.
Our reading was chapters 2 (Problem Solving and Design) and 3 (Design Problem Definition) in Karl T. Ulrich, his Design: Creation of Artifacts in Society (2011). The entire book can be accessed via the author’s website.
Why Ulrich?
He is good about methodology — structured processes of defining gaps and problems, exploring alternatives, evaluating these, and iteratively refining solutions. In Chapter 3, he focuses on what a designed object/process is supposed to do, rather than the particular form it should take (that will come in chapter 4 (Exploration)). This notion helps us when we need to step back and reassess, where we might otherwise be churning out variations without a good basis upon which to choose one over the other. Ulrich stresses the importance of defining problems and articulating needs, particularly where others (stakeholders
) are involved.
His conclusion to chapter 3 is worth thinking hard about —
A common defect in design is a failure to understand the gap the user is experiencing. By deliberately defining the design problem, this defect can be avoided. An additional defect is a failure to pose the define challenge broadly enough to allow the exploration and discovery of a wide range of potential solutions.
Those two poles — defining the design problem, and posing it broadly enough to allow exploration and discovery — are useful for us.
wraparound / punctuation boxes | |||
three cubes: visual elements and type on surface of three-inch cubes | |||
specs |
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time | assigned Wednesday 16 April conclusion (final, three cubes) Monday 28 April |
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objectives | three dimensions. pre-package design. minimal elements, presented in arresting/intriguing way. meaning to be generated from combination and relationships of those elements, taking into account rotation of the cube (thus, time, relationship to body). |
document setup / suggestion —
- New document. Tabloid. Facing pages off.
- Margins:
left and right, 6p0 (equals one inch).
top and bottom: 15p0 (equals two and 1/2 inches).
(remember to click the link off, so that all margins are not the same size. - ok, now layout (top menu):
create guides:
3 columns, 0 margin
4 rows, 0 margin
fit guides to margin, NOT page. - ok, there’s your grid.
- you might want to create guide rules along top and bottom (indicating columns) and left and right (indicating rows) to facilitate trimming after printing.
- when you are trimming, good idea to leave some tabs, to faciliate taping/glueing as you fold into cube.
Here it is, sort of —
The crop/fold guide lines are exaggerated here.
references —
- Malcolm Grear. Inside / Ouside : From the Basics to the Practice of Design (Second Edition, 2006)
for example, the exerciseContainers/Contents
(p141 — the difference is, we’re sticking to cube.) - Timothy Dexter. A Pickle for the Knowing Ones: Or, Plain Truths in a Homespun Dress. Reprint of edition of 1838, with an introductory essay. Boston, 1881
opens here to page 36 —
fouder mister printer the Nowing ones complane of my book the fust edition had no stops I put in A Nuf here and they may peper and solt it as they plese [sic]
tool — multiple visualizations / poster / book |
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visualizations of a single tool; ultimately for presentation in a book, but one extracted/developed for poster
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specs |
|
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time | assigned Wednesday 5 March Spring break conclusion (tentatively) Monday 24 |
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objectives | consider the virtues of multiple visualizations of one device, to emphasize different facets, rather than pretend to capture every aspect in one uber-powerful design consider that how to select and amplify, is to leave other things out build a book whose design can equally accommodate all representations |
reference —
Edward Tufte his various books, beginning with The Visual Display of Quantitative Information (2nd edition, 2001), Envisioning Information (1990), and Visual Explanations : Images and Quantities, Evidence and Narrative (1997).
See also James Elkins, who provides a taxonomy of visualization methods in his The Domain of Images (1999);
the visualizations discussed in James R. A. Davenport, his If We Assume blog, and
Nicholas Felton his Feltron
annual reports.
another reference —
visualizations of pasta
"...artist Serkan Ozkaya partnered with architect George L. Legendre to create One and Three Pasta, an installation of 92 pasta shapes, their mathematical formulae, and their 3D printed representations currently on display at Postmasters gallery in Tribeca."
at edible geography!
B-E-V-E-R-L-Y signage study | |||
specs | catalogue, in lieu of tool poster/book
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time | assigned Wednesday 12 February conclusion Monday or Wednesday, 24/26 February (tentative) |
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objectives | bring book typography back into the picture, including paragraph styles contribute to and work with a library of images file management. |
reference —
vernacular signage/typography survey, done by Typography 1 class, Spring 2012.
One can imagine someone selecting single letters or words from the entire corpus, doing something different with those (organization in tables, alphabetical order, etc.). Could even imagine tracing from photos, to focus on particular features.
outrage poster (derived from anything in a single day’s issue of the Boston Globe) |
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specs | quick project, change of pace and scale.
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time | assigned Monday 10 February conclusion Wednesday 12 February (provisional) |
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objectives | think fast. work with (somewhat) controlled vocabulary of image and text. think audience, purpose, place. |
considerations —
We need something larger than the mark/symbol/icon exercises that have occupied us in the first, snow-day plagued weeks of class.
Think about the who’s —
who are us? who are you? where are we?
art school. where can things be displayed, without approval?
how to reach people, here, with a message you care about?
What do posters do?
get first-glance attention sufficient for beholder to linger, read, consider.
Consider enlarging (in photocopier and/or scanner) small, even dot and letter-sized, details. Aim for graphic impact/immediacy.
icon / symbols (expressive facets, one theme) | |||
specs | six total, one tool (or organ, directional symbol, etc.) expressed six different ways, for six different meanings and/or nuances/emotions.
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time | Wednesday 29 January conclusion Wednesday 5 February (tentative) |
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objectives | using limited number of Illustrator functions, develop a disciplined array of formal variations, expressing different facets/nuances of essentially the same thingor visual cue. |
discussion —
Not five different tools (things), but rather five different facets of the same thing. Formal tweaks will provide the important clue. If for example bells
, one basic bell shape with six formal variants to express, for example, low and high notes, heaviness, brightness, a thunk (maybe cracked), etc.
Keep in mind the many kinds of arrows
shown in the Der Pfeil (1972), compiled by Anton Stankowski, Joachim Stankowski and Eugen Gombringer.
Abstract Marks | |||
specs | in advance of icon design/application exercise
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time | Wednesday 15 January conclusion Monday 27 or Wednesday 29 January |
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objectives | using limited number of Illustrator functions, develop a disciplined array of formal variations organize these formally consider potential relationships with words this is a warm-up exercise to an icon design exercise |
the InDesign grid math —
Create new document (tabloid, facing pages OFF).
Margins: 4p0 top, 7p6 bottom, 3p0 left, 3p0 right. (be sure to de-link the boxes, to accommodate the different sizes.)
OK.
Layout > Create guides > 4 columns 1p0 margin, 6 rows 1p0 margins. Fit guides to MARGIN, not page.
OK.
You should have 24 cells, each 14p3 square.
references —
Anton Stankowski (1906-1998 *) who did formal 2D design exercises throughout his life as painter, photographer and designer. See his sketchbooks.
also book on arrows.
underpinnings —
elaborations, objectives, expectations, criteria for credit
exercises
Project briefs, resources, examples of current and past student work.
tentative list
- Abstract Marks (24 related shapes)
- Icon / Symbols (six)
- Outrage (poster)
- B-E-V-E-R-L-Y signage study
- Tool
(multiple visualizations, yielding book and poster) - wraparound (in-between project)
- package design
(revised: overhaul/package all exercises done to date)
Some of these exercises may have more than one phase; the mapping/diagram exercise may possibly be incorporated into the analytical product prototype exercise.
texts
required (a copy of each will be held on reserve in the library) —
Adrian Shaughnessy. Graphic Design : A User’s Manual. Laurence King, 2009.
ISBN : 978 1 85669 591 6
Andrew Blauvelt and Ellen Lupton, editors. Graphic Design : Now in Production. Walker Art Center, 2012
ISBN : 978 0 935640 98 4
resources
Adobe Typography Primer pdf
a 20-page concise and useful overview; includes glossary.
Will also distribute selected pages from the Adobe Font Folio II Type Reference Guide, in which fonts in that collection are grouped for easier selection. All fonts used in our exercises are to be selected via Fontbook, not from the default fonts that come with the apps.
bookmarks on design related anythings at pinboard.in/u:disegno.
montserrat design tumblr
imposition press tumblr
Comments/questions to jmcvey.