Type on the Streets

Alexander took me on a lovely date.

One that consisted of him driving me around Lawrence and Kansas City and me jumping out of the car to take pictures of sweet typography. We enjoyed the 80 degree weather, I almost accidentally got into a stranger's car when I thought it was Alexander driving, and we dined on tuna steaks and fish tacos on the Plaza. I think this has been my favorite journal assignment yet.

Leading Grid Magazine Posters!

30 Conversations on Design

So, a brief summary of the videos that asked two questions (“What single example of design inspires you most?” and “What problem should design solve next?” )

Kit Hinrichs

typography, how letterforms are expressed.

what could be improved: going through security in airplane (more arcane), out of touch with design in 21st century

agustin garza

act of giving, holding offerings, ancient sculpture example of inspiring design

the integrity

where design is going to head next: environmental and social constraints will influence design. designers have the ability to seek solutions, will play a already present role in focusing on what is valuable and important (solving world problems)

ami kealoha

rubberband, different uses, ubiquitous, about the material, simply designed for tones of applications

design to solve noise and light pollution, rapid urbanization

design to solve health problems not only to add to consumerism

deborah adler

pieta by michealanglo, for the emotion it evoked, feeling empathy for mary, feeling connection towards the piece, raw emotion in the piece that we should all look for in design

a designer's strength should not be defined by their style or aesthetic. rather, it is about having a "love affair" with your audience, figuring out their problems and the desire to transform their problem into a solution.

emily pilloton

design as a process, not a product. mcgiver. fictional character, the original design thinker, most minimal resources, severe constraints. solutions are simple, often improbable but elegant.

design should tackle next: design as a untapped resource in public school systems (k-12), how we can offer the best parts of design (the process) for public education, design for education and design as eduction, redesigning education itself.

gong szeto

maps as visualization to tell stores, to explain

maps of military bases around iran

power of thoughtful design in telling story and transmit critical knowledge, design as a tool to make people smarter

k kirk and n. strandberg

iphone, interface (intuitive and revolutionary), consolidates, inspires others

problem should design solve next: already happening already Facebook and twitter--open up different avenues of communication

better wi-fi, better movement towards city wide wi-fi, universal ability compatibility in smart phones, better accessibility of smart phones (cheaper, more available)

ken carbon

ingénuité, utilité, beauty (in that order), if it's a great idea, and is useful, is going to be beautiful

q drum for water, water retrieval device, a large donut with a cap, pulled by a rope

simple, brilliant, makes life easier

#2: anything dealing with education. education + knowledge, leads to empowerment, which leads to positive change

tony hawk

apple products

lessening the intimidation of technology, doing what apple is doing right now by making new advancements still exciting and accessible

william drenttel

artifacts of graphic designs are not things we should worry about, rather, design that has more engagement with our world is more important, what inspires

design for scale change, not typography, not posters. focus on those challenges rather than print, and typical graphic design

start having expertise and knowledge, collaborating, find a way use design as a methodology, problem solving to lead us to solution to help the world.

So, I most connected to gong szeto's answer, of using design as the means to spread knowledge. I think that right now, as a graphic design student, the power of communicating ideas through graphic media is something that initially attracted me to this major, and has managed to keep my attention. It's tangible, it's concrete, and when it is done correctly, it is the personification of how beautiful the concept of an idea is.

If I was to answer these two questions myself, today, and I'm sure my answer would probably change due to my mood, of time of day, because right now I'm okay with being a fickle thing, I would answer as such:

1. The single example of design that inspires me the most is the work of my peers and fellow design students. The amount of potential I see motivates me to work harder and better, the passion that's there, the drive to improve, makes me proud to be one of them. I'm living in a time of real change, where my generation is passionate about using design to solve world problems, and taking classes with other students, and learning from my professors makes me unbelievably excited to design. This week I participated in a portfolio review day, as a baby sophomore in the program, it was intimidating at first to be in a room of juniors and seniors with their beautifully printed work all lined up, but I can't begin to describe how exciting it was to see everyone's work. It just pushes me to work harder so that I can create work like theirs. It was just the motivation I needed.

2. Design needs to solve education, whether that is the education system or the curriculum in our public school systems, it need to happen. Now. That's a problem we, as humans, need to solve.

Jonathan Harris

Jonathan Harris does it all. Computer programmer, charming nerd, thoughtful designer, motivated humanitarian, he makes every other twenty to thirty year-old feel like we've done nothing significant or remotely exciting in comparison to his work. Initial thoughts of the AIGA talk? Shit he's young. Next thought? Wow, his work is impressive, and his attitude toward his work (the internet, the way humans interact with the web, computer programming) is even more impressive, kinda overwhelming, and unexpected.

Harris is a programmer and a designer, and most importantly, a human. He dives into the purely rational, orderly, everything has a place and a right and wrong, every bug can be eventually traced to a source, programer. On the other hand, he wants things to be beautiful, wants to feel emotions with his body rather than the very cerebral and mind-talk interactions he has with his computer. He says this duality is difficult, he must make an extraordinary trade off as to be either a great programmer and a bad human being (distinct and unable to fully compartmentalize his work in the real world among other people), or a bad programmer and a great human being.

One of his most impressive piece of work was this program he developed for a show for MoMA that compiled all of the online dating statistics from all the online websites on the internet into this interactive design program that communicated all the different feelings and thoughts from these websites on an hourly basis. This is program, however, the design is exquisitely beautiful, he portrays each human within these balloons (pink for women, blue for men), these little isolated beings who are in the search for a complete match. Not only does the program mathematically determines matches, it is even more impressive in its endearing, and shockingly human gestures. His portrayal of information makes us think deeply about us as humans because online dating websites, which allot a few hundred characters for its participants to describe themselves, get to the root of who these humans are, what they want, and what they are about, and therefore are a pretty interesting snap shot of our society today.

Harris compares the internet today as an adolescent, someone who's at the stage of growth where things can go very right or very wrong. He says that the elimination of the individual has occurred. The internet is also very much like this condo that everyone has a room in, everyone can have one, free of charge now a days and even websites offer everyone some sort of personalization, but every room is different, no matter what pictures we tape onto our walls. He says that a few dozen geeks, all male, mind you, have the ability to really design and decide for the rest of us, these computer programmers who, like Harris, have difficulty removing themselves out of their fake, beautiful rational world, and relate to other human beings (let along interact with them!), have the ability to create what our internet looks like today and tomorrow. Harris understands how scary this is, for a few to decide for all. And for a few dissociative humans to decide what our internet, our still growing adolescent internet, will be tomorrow.

Harris asks designers whether or not our work is benefiting our audience, not on a design level, but more importantly, a human level. Is our work doing something to help our fellow humans become better humans? Have we contributed to this overall goal?

About Type

_ What are the advantages of a multiple column grid? Whereas columns increase flexibility and provide unlimited compositions options, multiple columns are better for more complex projects that require the interaction of diverse visual elements. Discourages symmetrical compositions too.

_ How many characters is optimal for a line length? words per line? 66 character line is regarded as ideal, this is approximately 10 to eleven words with an average of five letters

_ Why is the baseline grid used in design? Imaginary grid that type sits upon that allows for continuity within a design.

_ What is a typographic river? When there are uneven spaces between words that are justified, causing large gaps in the paragraph.

_ From the readings what does clothesline or flow line mean?The flow line or clothesline is an imaginary line that aligns horizontally to text and allows for easy readability and flow.

_ How can you incorporate white space into your designs?Leave margins of paper open, break text into smaller paragraphs and group them.

_ What is type color/texture mean?How type is used to create a visual tone within the text. Includes typeface, size, spacing, line measurement, etc.

_ What is x-height, how does it effect type color? The height of lower case letters of a typeface without ascenders or descenders, the higher the type color, the lighter it seems, it's also more readable.

_ In justification or H&J terms what do the numbers: minimum, optimum, maximum mean? If text is justified, there is reasonable minimum word space (usually M/5 or a fifth of an em), as well as their is a maximum word space and optimum word space in order to avoid bad rivers.

_ What are some ways to indicate a new paragraph. Are there any rules? Ornaments, drop lines, pilcrows and boxes and bullets can be used to mark breaks in streams of continuous text, outdented paragraphs, white space. One rule about paragraphs is to set the opening paragraphs flush left. In continuous text, mark all paragraphs after the first with an indent of at least one en or equal to the leading.

_ What are some things to look out for when hyphenating text.

At hyphenated line-ends, leave at least 2 characters behind and at least three forward. "Fi-nally" is okay, "finally" is not.

Avoid leaving the stub-end of a hyphenated word or any word shorter than four letters, as the last line of a paragraph.

Avoid more than three consecutive hyphenated lines.

Hyphenate proper names only as a last resort.

_ What does CMYK and RGB mean?CMYK is cyan, magenta, yellow black, the color model for printing. RGB is additive color model, uses red, green, blue light to produce color.

_ What does hanging punctuation mean?Quotation mark hangs outside line of text.

_ What is the difference between a foot mark and an apostrophe? A foot mark is often referred to as a dumb apostrophe, just like a inch mark is referred to as a dumb quote, they were common in typewriters and are straight apostrophes.

_ What is the difference between an inch mark and a quote mark (smart quote)? Inch marks were common in type writers, they are straight quotation marks. Quote marks is the one that should be used.

_ What is a hyphen, en dash and em dashes, what are the differences and when are they used. Hyphens are used to separate the worse in a compound adjective, verb, or adverb. En-dashes are used to express a range of values or distance. Em dashes is used to separate abrupt parenthetical elements.

_ What are ligatures, why are they used, when are they not used, what are common ligatures? Two or more letter combined into one character make a ligature. Ligatures used to improve the appearance of type are usually character pairs or triplets that have features that tend to overlap when used together. The ligature creates a smoother transition or connection between characters by connecting crossbars, removing dots over the i, or otherwise altering the shape of the characters, common ligature would be ff.

Bruce Mau and Stefan Sagmeister

So, about Bruce

"Design and culture converge around literacy, equity, society."

Bruce Mau Studio works in print (Zone Books and I.D. magazine) as well as in architectural practice (environmental graphics and wayfinding). "Massive Change: The Future of Global Design" a exhibit, a book, a website, an initiative) with the goal of "exploring the legacy and potential, the promise and power of design in improving the welfare of humanity" based off of interdisciplinary thinking. Worked with 100 designers (people who were changing the world whether they knew it or not, whether they called themselves "designers" or not).

He's interesting to me because he looks like just about the happiest designer in the world, all pictures of him are of him laughing, that kind of deep throated, tilt your head back kind of laugh. He must be doing something right.

Okay, so my mantra of the week is:

7. Study.

A studio is a place of study. Use the necessity of production as an excuse to study. Everyone will benefit.

I need to think of doing work as most of a positive, I think that's the only way I'll get through this week. it's not this have-to, must-do thing of doing work for the sake of making deadlines, but it's the opportunity to study, to grow, to learn. Hard work and having a positive attitude towards working hard will only benefit me, so that's what I plan on doing. :)

On Sagmeister's "How good is good"

I've often asked myself whether or not design was as "impotent" and "frivolous" as Sagmeister talks about at the beginning of the article. Frankly, he's right. We as a field encourage people to buy more junk, we portray others to the best of their ability whether or not they are a good cause or not, and we help others take credit for doing something good, even if they only did a good deed for the publicity. Even after listening to the Hallmark Symposium lecture about the M Project, and trying to talk to my friends about what I learned, I had some difficulty articulating what skills the designers brought to the project to make change. Uh, so they made these cool posters and got donations for these water pump. Oh, that's cool, my friends said. Okay, so maybe I didn't do the best job describing that good deed, but it laid down a real question in my mind. So you have science trying to cure cancer, what are we doing besides making posters?

Well I think that Sagmeister answers that question for me, design helps us remember important events (like the 9/11), it simplifies our life (the metro card), it unifies (any flag), it makes the world a safer place (clear directions for medication), it helps people rally behind a cause (posters!), and make us more tolerant (these are just to name a few). So like Sagmeister says, if design is this good, that's a pretty great reason to get out of bed in the morning and design. :) Some useful inspiration and motivation for a design student.

What is Design Thinking Anyways?

Notes from reading (important points):

design thinking applies designer's abductive reasoning to business (formal logic)

deductive and inductive: grounded in science, end declaration of true or false, build on previous knowledge (standoff shoulders of the giants who have come before us)

deductive: (logic of what must be) reasons from general to specific (crow)

inductive: (logic of what is operative) reasons from specific to general (small town)

William James and John Dewey explore formal declarative logic --not true and false at the end, but the process by which we come to know and understand. Knowledge acquisition not conceptual, not this abstract progression towards absolute truth, but instead dealing with inquiry and evolving interaction with context or environment.

The Pragmatist philosophers: knowledge comes only through experience

Charles Sanders Peirce: no new idea could be proved deductively or inductively using past data, new ideas did not come from conventional forms of declarative logic (inductive or deductive), therefore a third must exist.

First step of reasoning is not observing (deductive/inductive), but wondering, "logical leaps of the mind." Abductive reasoning. Not declarative because it does not ask to seek a true or false, but modal reasoning, because it seeks to post what could possible be true.

Abductive thinking scares businesspeople, can fail designers if they are not aware of what is technologically feasible, and must make business sense to succeed.

Balance in three types of reasoning.

About Author:

Roger Martin:

Dean of Rotman School of Management since 1998

Writes extensively on design, regular columnist for BusinessWeek's Innovation and Design Channel, author of "The Design of Business: Why Design Thinking is the Next Competitve Advantage"

In order to be innovative in business, we must not rely exclusively on analytical thinking (that refines current knowledge) and turn to design thinking (from mystery to heuristic, a rule of thumb that guides us to a solution, to algorithm, a predictable formula for producing an answer).