Hooray!

My flash project is done! you can click here to see it on my process webpage. Happy break everyone!

p3 storyboards

...long overdue project 3 post...

look & feelconcept statement:

What is it about secrets that makes them so exciting and desirable? It may be that few have the privilege of being in on them, or that their contents are especially useful or profound. But the real fun of secrets is not in what they are, but how we keep them: the codes and rituals we use to protect the knowledge that everyone wants to know, even if they don't know why. The code is the elixir to the imagination, transforming any written word into tantalizing mystery worthy of plot and adventure.

more on Obama and design

I just read this article in the New York times where Steven Heller interviews Sol Sender, designer of the Barack Obama "O" logo.
pretty interesting.

new and improved animation render!

project 3 : pigpen code

The Pigpen Code

A code is a way to send a message while keeping it a secret from someone who isn't supposed to know about it. Codes can be easy or complicated - the trick to to make sure the person on the receiving end of your secret message has the key to decode it without making it too easy for anyone else to crack. One simple code you can use is the pigpen code. In the pigpen code, each letter is represented by part of the 'pigpen' that surrounds it. If it's the second letter in the box, then it has a dot in the middle like so:

new animation render

FINAL CLICK-THROUGH!

http://people.ku.edu/%7Eleamaria/divestsc_leah/clickthrough/home.html

vote helvetica

Today I cannot focus on homework! I'm checking the media outlets and blogs constantly...and stumbled on this sweet little interactive graphic on the New York Times site. You type in the emotion you feel, and you can see how many others feel the same way (scale) who they support (color; you can also see a general black and white version) and time.

dive STSC website click-through

http://people.ku.edu/~leamaria/divestsc_leah/clickthrough/home.html

Design and Barack Obama

I've noticed several of you guys have posted entries about the Obama campaign's use of design. This blog on time.com gets into the design in the prime time program that his campaign aired tonight. I don't know if the author has any kind of background in design, but it's interesting to read feedback on this sort of thing:

http://tunedin.blogs.time.com/2008/10/29/getting-to-know-you-and-him-the-o-mercial/

and very handy for anyone who thinks of a future in politics, design-wise or otherwise.

new animation render

goin' slow

scuba on acid

every i try to upload the gosh-darn webpages it inverts my colors. phooey.

hysterical

Palin as President

updated daily until the election!

oh animation

I'm going to start posting a weekly render of my animation project, maybe that will help me get motivated. My basic concept is clouds - clouds up in the sky, you see them from a distance and then zoom in so far that you can see they're made of ice crystals and the creation of rain. Still working on details of the storyboard (!). As you will see, this is just a rough little snippet. I know, it's dorky. Right now I'm feeling the pull between the organic-ish movement and the shapey- campy- cutesy- collage medium. Input plz.

project II: good design vs. scuba

The challenge: make this thing here look good and make sense. In looking up what other scuba websites, I found that design really isn't a priority for many of them. Look no further than www.stcroixscuba.com:That's pretty par for the course. Bubbles, blue, red/white flag, photos of people diving, photos of sharks/fish/turtles/coral reefs/palm trees, and BAD TYPE are all top scuba web design fetishes as far as I can tell.
Here's more scuba-related links:
scuba
padi
scuba diving
scuba toys
scuba duba
scuba diving index
good dive
the scuba guide
scuba board
Here's one related site that's not so so bad. It's got good general-specific type organization.
SeaWorld

and now for some pretty websites:

Virgin Mobile Music Festival

We really like the dynamic graphics on the homepage, plus it's nice that you don't have to click on anything to see the line up, which is probably the number one thing people want to know.This American Life
so simple - doesn't hide anything from you or distract you. i love it.
Delicious Design League
global nav really pops here, design is simple and bold.
Fire Belly Design
Their homepage is basically a very clean, simple newsletter.
Slow Food USA
Homepage has blog highlights, news, events, and lots of beautiful pictures that don't distract. You don't have to search for the important news items.
The Moth
Nice type and color palette, global nav already shows some of the breakdown, which is nice if you want to get straight to a particular show.
3st

pictures rather than global nav: works good for showing images. homepage becomes a grayed-out background when you click on something.pagliuco

MTV
alphabetic links and a simplified global nav
Lawrence Memorial Hospital
quick start guide and global navMayo Clinic
Two navigation bars, one more specialized than the other. Good for a very complex site.

questions

The "Designing Interfaces" reading kept reminding me of pet peeves I have with websites and software, and explained why some of them are so bothersome. Do you have any pet peeves related to the functionality of websites?

Also, I completely agree with the reading that certain features have come to be "expected" and should be placed in the "expected" locations. (global navigation, previous/next buttons, etc.) No doubt this makes navigating a website a hell of a lot easier for people, but i wonder how designers that do a lot of websites find ways to keep composition interesting when everything goes in the "expected" loction.

Reading IV, The Order of Order

Reading four gave me hope that somewhere out there, people are good at workplace communication. This reading was all about how to go about gathering data about your client, their target audience, their goals, desires, self-image, money, etc. as well as how to "grease the wheels" by forming relationships with decision makers and other key people in the company. This is exciting to me because every workplace I've ever experienced has been plagued with embarrassingly bad communication. At my previous job at the Lawrence Public Library, I saw a lot of little project eat up too much time and cause too much stress due to lack of a clear plan or shared priorities.

The Order of Order - This was just a little musing on how we can categorize the world in an infinite variety of ways, and how these ways can impact the user experience of the content

The link to the Ladislav Sutnar reading wasn't working for me - any other ideas on how to get to it?

round 5! feedback plz!

1.do you have enough time to understand all the words?
2do you feel like you understand the relationship between the images and the statistics?
3.is the sound appropriate?

hmm progress

so i made a bit of progress this weekend on the ol' motion graphic. i need to render a smaller copy to post here, so i can get feedback. on thursday my round four render was pretty heavily under construction (some photoshop layers had been edited and as a result disappeared) so i don't think it was that helpful to my crit group. what we did determine was that my text needs to stay on longer, and the correlation between the numbers and the colored vs. gray stars and stripes needs to be more clear. also i got the suggestion to add a slide after the 72% slide with some sort of "you should vote" message.

so basically this weekend, i : added transitions to several of the beginning slides, added repetition and transitions to the stats slides, worked a whole lot on timing, added an additional message before the end "designfordemocracy.org" slide, and added sounds effects and music.

video coming soon.