Design as a Conversation

            Design is a conversation. Just like a conversation, design tries to convey a certain message or idea. Just like a conversation design has a specific audience they’re trying to speak to. And just like a conversation it tries to spark new conversations.
            Recently I came across this infographic “American Kills” by Sebastian Errazuriz on designboom.com.

This is an excellent example as design as a conversation. It shows how Sebastian Errauriz was trying to get a point across to his audience like a conversation, but unlike a conversation his point is made through images and not through words. This design is so simple and so powerful. It beautifully and effectively conveys the message Sebastian Errazuriz wants it to. It’s hard to not be shocked by the reality of all the deaths of American soldiers. The simplicity of the design aids the viewers’ eyes to compare how many suicides there were compared to deaths in Iraq.

When Errazuriz first learned the shocking statistic, he wanted to tell people. But then he realized that it would be best if he showed people by painting it on the side of his studio in Brooklyn so everyone who passed by could see it.

Design Boom conducted an excellent interview with the artist. Here’s what Errazuriz had to say about it:

“the counting of dead soldiers outside my studio was long and surprisingly eerie; it was hard to forget that every brush stroke was a soldier who had died the previous year. a lot of people stopped to read the mural and were immediately impressed by the reality portrayed. most of them seemed quite shocked and approached me to ask if what I was painting was real. I tried to explain that I simply wished to create a physical image that could capture people's imagination, creating awareness of the current numbers in death, war and the infinite discrepancy between the resources and energies destined to fight and protect soldiers at war versus the energies invested in protecting their mental health and stability”

Read more about it here:

http://www.designboom.com/weblog/cat/10/view/11233/sebastian-errazuriz-american-kills.html

Unity

       The book we are reading in class Design Basics by Davis Lauer and Stephen Pentak discussed in one of its beginning chapters that designers attempt to create unity within their designs. They do this by arranging the objects within their composition through use of proximity, repetition, and continuation.
Evelina Bratell has mastered this technique which is clear when she paired up with photographer Carl Kleiner to create a baking book for IKEA called Homemade is Best.

       What's so interesting in her use of these concepts. She masterfully repeats the use of the 45 degree angle which leads our eye across the work. She lined up the stick of butter with sugar, a fork, and a small pile of cinnamon which visually helps the viewer imagine a continuing line connecting those items together. Then, the flour, edge of the butter, and cinnamon all help create a visual frame around the whole composition by creating another continuous rectangle around all of the ingredients.

In this image she uses repetition to create visual unity. She repeats the shape of a simple triangle between the raspberries and sugar, as well as the eggs on either side of it.

Her meticulousness to get everything to line up perfectly pays off and she ends up with a great, visually-appealing, and hunger-inducing design.

Comparing and Contrasting

About a month ago, the Democratic National Party redesigned their old logo to a new logo that’s supposed to be more inclusive and more modern. While I do agree with the modern part, it is definitely not inclusive, nor does it speak to what the Democratic Party is about.

Taken from the Democratic National Party's Facebook page

The old logo was patriotic and familiar, albeit antiquated. This new logo does not say any of that. It's a circle, with a "D" in it. I suppose the party was trying to design a logo like Facebook's so they could try to get younger voters to the polls. But by catering to that specific age group, they’ve excluded anyone over the age of 25, which is the vast majority of their party. People in their 70’s who have been voting for half a century certainly do not relate to the new logo.

The Old logo

Taken from the Democratic National Party's facebook fan page

Besides that, it’s just a bad logo. Logos are supposed to be recognizable and memorable. If I saw the letter D with a circle around it, I certainly wouldn’t think “Democratic National Party”. It looks like a logo for Target or a kid’s TV show, not an old, established, political party. The D in the circle does not speak to their values or their specific party like the old one did. This new logo says that it's a modern, passing trend that will eventually be obsolete once the fad passes, while the old one said that they were an established patriotic organization that's committed to doing what they think is best for the country.

The most recognized symbol of the Democratic National Party

I suppose the logo is supposed to give a nod towards President Obama’s extremely successful one, especially with their new slogan “Change that matters”, but Obama’s was a bit more complex than a letter in a circle. Besides, it also points to how short-lived this logo will be. If there’s such an Obama-heavy tone, in 6 (or 2) years it will no longer be relevant and will no longer speak for an entire party but for a past president. This is obviously a logo that is supposed to be temporary.

I do like that the Democrats are trying to brand their party. The past few logos haven't been recognizable and the donkey was by far the most recognizable out of all of them. But the antiquated donkey needed to go, but maybe a stylized, sleek, modern-looking donkey would’ve been better. This new design does not scream patriotic like the old one did.

Designing from without, pancakes edition!

While browsing the web this week I came across this cool little site:

http://www.jimspancakes.com/

This guy makes pancakes for his daughter. What makes them so original? They’re 3-dimensional!

This is a guy who definitely gets his inspiration from his materials. Who knew you could take flat pancakes and make them 3-D? He started by making flat pancakes in different shapes. From there he began to add color and experiment with different thicknesses of pancakes. It led to him making a turtle out of pancakes. He was experimenting with shapes and if he could make the turtle shell round.

Jim has a channel on youtube, and in the video he shows users his different methods of dispersing the pancake batter onto the griddle. He had an old ketchup bottle, a syringe, and a few other devices. After that he started making bridges and dinosaurs out of pancakes. Stacking pancakes and coloring them only gets you so far.

The creation that stood out to me the most was the ferris wheel he created. The ferris wheel has individual seats on it too! After experimenting with the turtle, Jim discovered that he could make building blocks of pancakes, and then assemble them on the griddle using pancake batter. The secret is over cooking the pancake apparently; he says it makes the pancakes like balsa wood. His pancake “civil engineering” is featured in one of his videos on his youtube channel.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BPzu3Whe4xo

To develop something so innovative from flat, limp pancakes is amazing and takes lots of experimenting and creativity with materials. His pancakes pushed the limits of what we used to think was possible with pancake batter. 

Design from Without

Everyone knows who Walt Disney is. Just his last name brings up memories of cartoons and theme parks. Walt Disney created an international empire, but where did his inspiration come from?

            Walt Disney gets his inspirations from his environment and places he visited. His most famous character, Mickey Mouse, is internationally recognized and is what made his cartoons famous. Mickey was inspired by a pet mouse he had when he was younger. Originally Mickey was named Mortimer Mouse and looked like a mouse. Disney wanted to make a character that appealed to everyone and he realized that the public loved cute and little animals. He changed Mortimer’s name to Mickey and made Mickey more human-like.

            His inspiration for Disneyland came when he visited Tivoli park in Denmark. Disney’s kids went on the merry go round and Walt Disney had to sit and watch. Disney got the inspiration to create a park that was family oriented that both parents and their kids could enjoy. The park was also disgusting and dirty and Disney wanted to create a park that was also clean.

            Another icon of Disney is Sleeping Beauty’s Castle in Disneyland. The castle is based off of Neuschwanstein castle in Fussen, Germany. Disney loved all the spires of the castle and wanted to make a castle just like it in Disneyland. He loved it so much, he made it the main focal point of the park.

            Another source of inspiration for Walt Disney is The Brothers Grimm’s old folk tales. The Brothers Grimm wrote the Rumpelstiltskin, Snow White, Rapunzel, Cinderella, The Frog Prince and many other stories, which is where Disney got the story lines for some of his most famous animations.

            Walt Disney took ideas from things he had seen and imagined them in his park or as movies. He then tweaked the designs and made it his own design that fit in with the family-friendly theme of his company and made his movies and theme parks appeal to all ages.

Layout

Currently I am the assistant design director for The California Aggie. It is my job to do the layout of the newspaper twice a week and working here has made me think about newspaper design. Newspapers are the main way people receive their information, so the way it is designed has a lot of impact on our society.

Recently I’ve been reading this book The Exception to the Rulers by Amy Goodman and in the first chapter she talks about how the media manipulates the public by only focusing on the same few stories when there are thousands of others out there. She talks about how the media now sets the political agenda because they bring attention to topics that may not be as important as other problems, but the politicians now have to focus on because the public wants them to. For example, Park 51. The “ground zero” mosque was given a lot more attention than it deserved this summer and because the media commented on it so often, it became an important issue in society. It’s disgusting that xenophobic racists were featured in the media and their discriminatory agenda was put at the forefront of society.

Everyone glances at a newspaper every day. It might just be a quick look at the front page, but they receive a lot of information in that second, which is why layout design is so fascinating. It all depends on where a designer decides to place a story. If a story is in big, bold letters all the way across a newspaper’s front page with a huge picture, that is going to get way more attention than a article that takes up a fourth of a page in the middle of the newspaper. If there is a story of a protest and a layout designer puts a huge picture of police beating up protestors, the reader is going to be biased towards the protestors. If a layout designer were to make a picture of an out of control protest the main picture, the readers' opinions of the protestors is going to be a lot different.

http://www.amazon.com/Exception-Rulers-Exposing-Politicians-Profiteers/dp/1401301312

Stone Soup

This week in class we were told to bring in materials for “stone soup”. Stone soup is based off an old folk tale. When I was younger, I learned that it was called nail soup. The moral of the story is that when people work together, they can make something better than they could have individually.

My group brought colorful paper, watercolors, bottle caps, cardboard boxes, glitter glue, markers, stickers, and tons of other stuff. With these materials we brought, we were supposed to make something that used the items. After lots of discussion, my group ended up making a very colorful bus. We covered a box with a lot of patterned paper and some sticks we found lying around. For the headlights we used bottle caps and we glued everything on with glitter glue. We cut out little people and windows and doors from the paper and glued it on. We even had a tailpipe on the bus. Meanwhile, someone was keeping track of time so we knew how much time to budget for. Individually my group members couldn’t have done anything like this. You can’t make a bus from bottle caps, paper, or from a box, but when you combine them, its absolutely possible.

Collaboration is a useful tool that improves whatever you are doing. For example, students need each other to study. Individually one student cannot keep up with a professor’s notes and remember all the details, but when there are multiple people who were in class it is possible. The students could study individually, but if they were studying with a group it would probably go a lot smoother.

My First Encounter with Design

When I was younger, my mom used to sew me and my sister costumes for Halloween. I loved the costumes because they were so original, and always turned out better than their store-bought counterparts. This was one of the first moments that I got to see designing first hand.

One of my favorite costumes was when my sister and I wanted to be Mulan for Halloween. My sister wanted to dress up as Mulan when Mulan had to meet the matchmaker, and I went as the soldier Mulan who impersonated her father and went to fight in the war. After my cousin heard about the costumes, he wanted to join us as General Shang.

My cousin as General Shang, my sister as Mulan when she went to see the matchmaker, and I'm dressed as Mulan when she went to war.

My mom couldn’t find a pattern for my sister’s dress, so she used a basic dress pattern. In the movie, Mulan’s matchmaker dress has extremely long sleeves, so my mom altered the pattern for the sleeves so they would be long, just like what Mulan had. I thought it was so cool how she could deviate from a pattern to make it better. Plus, the shades of pink, blue and green on my sister’s costume matched Mulan’s dress perfectly.

For my soldier costume, she used a basic robe pattern and made it shorter so it looked like the soldiers’ uniform from the movies. This was for what the soldiers wore under their armor. The armor on my costume was made of black, green, and grey fun foam that was hot glued together.

For the final touches, my sister and I had our hair put in a bun, I had a plastic sword that I stuck under my belt and wore around, and my sister carried around a plastic crickee we got in a McDonalds happy meal.

What I loved most about the costumes (besides the fact that my mom put lots of effort into them) is that they looked EXACTLY like what Mulan had in the movies­—much more so than what the Disney store had. What do you think?

Disney's Mulan costume 

Zeitgeist

            In class we had to read an article about Zeitgeist and the Zeitgeists of the past generations. Zeitgeist is the “spirit of the times”. Well I think one of the main Zeitgeists of this generation is communication.

            What made me think of communication was youtube. Youtube brings people together. It is so easy to find something in common with someone who laughs at the same videos as you. This bonding comes from videos that have gone viral, that almost every one has seen. There is no better way to connect with old friends than over a video of autotuned news or some other funny video. It has also created new vocabulary (for example, “viral”) which bonds together people of different internet subcultures, like Nerdfighters. It also showcases how our generation has had so much access to other people our age around the world. Many companies have even tried to take advantage of youtube and design their ad campaigns to cater to those who use the internet. For example, Old Spice posted response videos to people that wrote in with questions or comments on their youtube or twitter.

Text messages are a relatively new form of communication. Now almost everyone uses them to stay in touch because they find it so much easier than calling. I have friends who use tens of thousands of text messages, and hardly any talking minutes. Its so easy to just pick up a phone, write the one question you need to ask a classmate, send it off, and get a response a few minutes later. How easy! It has also led companies to use teenagers’ obsession with text messages to their advantage. Cell phone companies have been designing fancier and fancier phones to try to make a profit off of those who can’t live without the internet and music on their phone.

The internet, youtube and text messages all have something in common: communication. Its absolutely fascinating watching all these people connect and make friends from all over the world. I have a few friends I have made from the internet whom I consider to be my best friends. I wouldn’t have met them and keep in contact with them if it weren’t for these new forms of communication.

The Importance of First Impressions

Recently a study was conducted at Ohio State University about first impressions and how they affected college students. 164 Students at OSU were paired up and instructed to talk with each other. After 3, 6 or 10 minutes of talking, students were given a survey that asked them to predict what kind of relationship they would have with that person. When the semester was done, the students were then given another survey and the ones who rated each other favorably at the beginning ended up forming a study group together. What was surprising about the study was the huge effect that negative first impressions had. Classmates who rated the person they were paired up unfavorably avoided talking to the other partner all semester.

First impressions are especially important for college students. You don’t want to give a bad first impression to your roommate when you move into the dorm, you don’t want to show up late to your first day of work or a job interview, you don’t want to look like a messy slob when meeting people in class for the first day when everyone is trying to form study groups, and you certainly do not want to show up late to a professor’s office hours (sorry Professor Housefield). What someone decides about you in the first few minutes determines the type of relationship you’ll have with them.

The Society of Human Resources Management did a study and discovered that 63% of hiring decisions are made within the first 4.3 minutes of a job interview. The rest of the time is spent deciding whether the first impression was correct.

What’s my point in telling you all of this?

First impressions matter.

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=69942&page=1

http://www.cvonline.com/content/?id=208&gr=1

http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/1stimpre.htm