WOW

I saw this while watching Bones and I had to find it to let others see!!! What an impacting commercial!

Thoughtful Question

After reading "Recipe for good Design" I began wondering how long can something be used as a resource before it becomes outdated?

I know this is an open-ended question, but when I was reading this article there were a lot of useful tips but there were also many that seemed outdated, such as the programs needed to be designed for. With technology moving so rapidly how often do we as designers need to rethink everything we are doing?

Ex: CS4 just came out, and I am just getting comfortable with CS3, I know that most others are not going to own CS4 yet, but at the same time I do not want to not want to change because of fear of not knowing how to use it, does that make since.

I went to a metals conference last weekend and there were some artists that used CAD and then some that did not. I overheard many of the people that did not use the program bad mouthing the people that did saying it is the computer doing the designing these days not the person. I do not want to be one of these negative, judging people because I uninformed.

Site Map for enature.com

Good Websites

1. www.pizzahut.com
I enjoy looking and showing people this website because you can look at menus from other companies. Its main purpose is not met by me because I have never ordered anything off of it or even thought to look at the online menu before I order. So far I think Japan is by far the most different from what I know as Pizza! TAKE A LOOK.

Yummy!
















2. www.bernstein-rein.com
This is a deign website that is on the links page, but it is wonderful!! I love the bold solid colors and the transitions are great. It is like you are seeing the page being put together in front of your eyes, AWSOME!!
It is great how you can get to anywhere from anywhere, I can go from their works to their Culture without having to go to the homepage.

3. www.barkleyus.com
This site is wonderful because of its simplicity, although it is another design website. It is very easy to see what is suppose to be the main focus. There are a couple of things that I do not like such as when you view the works and click on something twice they play at the same time and is sometimes hard to turn one or the other off so you have two streams going at the same time.

4.www.usa.visitmaine.com
This is a beautiful website. It was actually and accidental find off of the website we are redesigning. It actually makes me want to go visit Maine! The mainpage has a large revolving photograph with reasons why to visit Maine. It is simply beautiful and the typography caught my eye. I am also interested to see if they change it based on the seasons because it does feel like fall.

Enjoy the type in this one:




5. www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/
Here is in my opinion an effective nature website. Like the one my group is working on this one contains a large amount of information. What makes it even more complex is the fact that it is a branch off another large information website, PBS, but they have set it up to were you can access the main PBS webpage along with the internal nature webpage without confusion. This is huge, currently I am working on a project that is almost the same thing, and I am having difficulty with it, I will be referring back to this page as a resource.

6. melissahie.com
This website is neat because of the way it slides you to the next page, very unique! This would work for a more simple website, but when it comes to one with tons of information like the ones we are working it might be too confusing and overwhelming!

7. www.sitotis
This one just reminded me of one that someone in class is working on with a play book. I thought this could be used as a resource.

8. www.richardguerreiro.com
This is a cool website because of the use of Flash, I like how when you roll over the buckets their is a thumbnail of his works.

9. www.proyectiva.com
AWSOME, it almost seems like a game, I just wish I could understand it.

10. www.cokoon.de/cokoon07.swf
Very elegant, I love the little butterfly that flies away when clicked.

11. www.coolhomepages.com/#
Not necissarily designed but lots of other good websites that have neat designs.

Recipe for a Successful Website

Great, fun to read article, but seems a little outdated.

(Combine)Content:
Must have only the BEST content, if it is good you do not need to have that much as long as it entices viewers emotions and makes them want to come back for more.

"Most people will not finish a meal if it is not tasty in the beginning!"

Freshness Counts...
It is important to have up-to-date information, no one wants to read something that is old. Nathan Shedroff (author) makes the point that you would not use week old lettuce or month old tomatoes in a salad so why would viewers want to consume old content. Of course something things can last and still be appealing, but for the most part change and updating is regularly needed,

So Does Quality...
Many sites feel that they need tons of content, so they create or add things that have no connection with that actual purpose of the site.

"If you aren't a content king, don't try to be."

What is interesting though is even if you do have to correct context interactivity is still needed to be successful. Ex, Newspapers have got it down on printed information but do not have good results with websites because they do not understand what interactive media entails.

You Can't Please all of the People all of the Time...
Some sites try being objective and end up creating sites NO ONE is interested in, your voice is why people will or will not come to your site!

(Mix)Information Design
The next step is to take this context and add organization and clarity. This begins with mapping everything you want included in the site then arranging and rearranging until the correct layout is found.

Navigation...
The setting of context which allows people to know what to expect, what to do, what they can do, and even, to some extent, how to do it. This is referred to as a cognitive model. If too much thinking is involved before entering or while visiting viewers will not visit or stay.

"Don't require them to return to the homepage every time they want to backtrack or access a different portion of your site."

One good element in good navigation is allowing your audience to navigate in many different ways. Along with knowing what the next pages purpose is before clicking. It is important to not confuse information design with visual design. Even if a cake looks nice on the outside if there was not enough time spent actually making it then it will taste bad. Remember do not organize too much. DO not have a separate folder for everything, it is suppose to be a linear experience.

Example of over organized website: The SIGCHA Baseline

(Whip)Performance
If your site takes a long time to load people will not want to wait for it and will probably not return even if it is a great designed site. This is where compromising has to take place, even though it looks great if it takes to long... This is when it is important to know who your audience is, what is the average software used?

"if you are trying to sell to "consumers," don;t even think about the building a site that requires anything more than a 14.4 modem connection!"

Assume the total size of the page = how many seconds it will take to load, 30K= at least 30 seconds.

Tricks to make Graphics files:
– GIF for graphics, JPEG for photographs
- Graphic styles of illustration and design (large expanses of colors)
– Vertical gradients vs. horizontal gradients
– Adaptive color palettes and small color depths
– Reuse of graphic elements
– Height and Width tags
– Interlacing JPEGs

(Bake)Compatibility
What ever is on the page should look good across all the different computers and operating systems, not just the latest versions. Determine your audience, and again figure out what they mostly use in the form of computers. Not as much of a problem currently

(Decorate)Visual Design
Many may look good but not taste so good. As in food the same goes in websites, they have to look aesthetically pleasing but not at the expense of the accessibility/organization/content. There are many wonderfully informed and organized sites that look extremely amateur, which detours people because they send a message that quality is not important.

"Whatever you do don't try to dictate your favorite color to them!"

(Serve)Interactive Design
Interaction is very important, most people who go out to eat go to a certain place because of more than just the food, service/location/convenience/price/ect. this is the same for a website, it is visited most often for more than just the information.

Feedback...
Allowing the customer the option of doing something on your site. If there was something to do on your site other than read more people might visit.

Communications...
Allow your viewer to talk, everyone likes to share his/her thoughts. Anything that will allow this will make the success of your website greater.

Adaptivity...
One of the most important experiences are those that are adaptive, or change with each member to meet their specific needs/interests/skills/believes/ect.

Location,Location,Location
Where your customers come from is very important to your design, you would tell different things to different locations.

Ladislave Sutnar

The original website is no longer accessible but I am still blogging about Ladislave Sutnar. I think he is a very important designer for design students to know about, especially given the assignment we are currently working on. He is the father of information graphics, inspiration for designers such as Edward Tufte and Richard Saul Wurman (previously blogged).

He is the greater of area-code design. Even before they were needed Sutnar foresaw the overload of information that would be needed in the near future and found a method to help organize it. He also made manual like devices that helped users effectively sort through enormous amounts of data. Even with these being written over 40 years ago they are still considered efficient and up to date designs.

Good sites about Sutnar:
www.magtypo.cz
www.aiga.org
www.designboom.com

The Order of Order

This article was very intriguing, especially after doing the exercise in class. For some reason it made it even more clear. Basically designers use all different methods of organizing information in order to make it more clear for the average user, "bring order to the world." This can be expected or unexpected groupings of information as long as it is the best execution for that material. Crisp gives one example of a musician who's CD's are organized by the color of their spine and its location in the spectrum, which is very original. Crisp's goal behind this article was to show how there is an unlimited number of organizational possibilities.

The Order of Order article

Reading 4

Process: Discovery

Politics, Diplomacy, and Consensus:
More information designers are having to know more about their clients: politics, goals, agendas, in order to create the most effective solution. It is important to get as much information about the company as possible even their client history. Knowing what happened before you got there can be useful.

It is very important for your couple initial meetings you are speaking directly with the person who has the ultimate decision making power. You do no want to work for days or weeks on something with a high chance of it not being approved.

1. Diagram the process before starting and explain how everyone is involved, this way everyone has something to refer to later.
2. Get a list of everyone who is on the team with all of their contact information. You cannot always assume the manager has everyone up to date info. This way if there is any kind of emergency you can work on getting it resolved sooner than later.
3. Assign people to the what they will be doing day to day.
4. Make a timeline. It is important to have urgency, but when it is false often times a project not be what was wanted.
5. Even though this seems like a lot of work and many things could be unforeseen to change the outcome, a little bit of planning helps their be less surprises once the designing has started.

Wrangling Audience and Content:
1. Know the audience: their wants, needs and goals, and how they align with the client's business strategy. Make sure you know all f the intended audiences, many of there needs conflict.
2. Understand the requirements: What does the audience need to know and why. How should your audience respond emotionally. And how will the information be viewed and by who, walking, sitting, once, many times, ect.

Organizing Content:
One effective way that was discussed was the Alphanumeric Solution. This is were you organize difficult, involved information using letters and numbers. Such as 'H' then its chapters 'H1' - 'H2' - 'H3' and each chapters subset: 'H1.1' - 'H1.2' - 'H1.3' This allows everyone to ask about a specific Alphanumeric rather than titles or chapters.

Markets are having to redefined a lot quicker than in the with less internal resources and workforce. Many times the client will have hard to understand information/content and you will discover challenges with what the tone or message is. The thing to remember: if you have a difficult time understanding the information more than likely so will any audience.These days many designers are most effective when they can do an initial design for someone and then allow them to update it when needed.

9.23.08 Class Critique

PHEW, my video critique did not go that bad, I was so nervous coming to class!!! Someone actually mentioned that they like they was I had shown how 13,000,000 is such a large number that it actually is more than several states populations put together. YES!! My message was explained back to me, which I am hoping means it was understood!! I still feel it is boring compared to many others in class, what do you think!

There are little things that needed to be changed such as the -OR- separating the adding of states. It was mentioned to change it to lower case letters because I am using the abbreviations of the states and that is the same as Oregon.
- the website is a .org rather than. com.
- use some kind of clicking noise for the numbered parts...data like sounds
- "Not voting at all comes on" should take the place of the states because that is where you are already looking.
- a couple of transitions need to be a little faster (red guy growing)

Please if there is anything else that is noticed while watching let me know!!!!

9.18.08 Group Critique

Well...

Message:
My message was not very clear. This is good to know now, since I have been staring and making it for so long I fully understand what I am trying to say. They thought it really started getting unclear when the U.S. map comes up.

The intended message would be memorable if it were better understandable. So... hopefully if I can achieve this!!

My group said when I show that two states only have a population of more than 13,000,000 they got confused as to what that had to do with my original message, so I am going to totally take those frames out. They also did not understand how the multiple states added up to = 13,000,000, so I am going to try showing this message visually and with words. This is a key element to my video and it HAS to be understood.

Technical:
It was mentioned the message might be better understand if the states were some how being calculated up to show their total population. As of right now it is not very compelling, dynamic, or appropriate to the assignment because no one understands its message.

My transitions need some works, especially through the changing of the states. This is mostly because I had not finished fixing things from the last critique I had so when the states start showing up they are ALL out of whack. Also from the transition with "13,000,000 will not vote because..." to "only two states have a voting population..." makes the whole message confusing. My group wondered what 2 states had to do with anything and it made them confused. Also they thought the little people should not stay on the screen the whole time because they were expecting them to do something. One transition that was enjoyed was the enlargement of the little red man and the statistic at the end. It was suggested that I do something more like that in order to make it more interesting.

Type and color were discussed slightly but not solid suggestions were given to improve. I think this is only because I had a much larger problem at hand, my whole message was not understood. They did say they did not like the serif font changing to sans serif in the beginning of the video. Also the use of Helvetica at times was a little hard to read, probably because I used 'light'.

The little sound I had was enjoyed by some and not by others. I will need to input more I believe in order to get better feedback.

There is a lot I need to do, many things that I would not have been able to see myself. So... I have a lot to get started on!!