Journal #6

I watched the video Thirty Conversations in Design where they asked 30 different designers two questions, What single example of design inspires you most? & What problem should design solve next? Here are 5 peoples answers...

Kit Hinrichs- Typography is the thing that most inspires him. The way in which

the letterforms are expressed, not the actual alphabet. They can be portrayed in many different aspects, bold, delicate, descriptive, etc. It is an art form and not just a hassle. Design should solve the problem of airplane secruity next. Having to take of half your clothes and put them on a conveyor belt that was built in the 40s is not exactly up to the 21st century. Some sort of design should be made to not have that process seem so painful.

Michael Lebowitz- The iPad is the example of design that most inspires him. Ho

w it is so interactive and easy to use. Its more human and more natural than things in the past. Software is the most flexible face of design. The problem we should solve next is how to create order and context out of things we have stores. We need to create meaning out of the data we have. Basically like an updated version of Google.

Tony Hawk- Apple products are the most inspiring to him. How they made a business only

product and transformed it into a product that is useful and fun and something you are proud to own. They made the idea less intimidating. That is what he sees as a problem that needs to be solved. Making the newer technology that has been coming increasingly more advanced into something that an be made fun, exciting and beautiful.

Tina Rothe Eisenberg- The swiss have an eternal need to arrange thing meticulously. That i

s what most inspires her, how they have influenced design. The problem she thinks need to be fixed is somehow providing safe drinking water to the world. Some engineers and designers to need to come together and fix this problem.

Ze Frank- (He was the most inspiring to me) The thing that was most inspiring to him was social design. It takes advantage of the immense complexity of our social interactions and simplifies it just for a moment so we can look at it through a different lens. Simply rules can get layered on top of interactions you think you understand but make you totally revaluate what you believe, how your manipulated and the way you think you can design the communications that your listening to. The problem he thinks needs to be fixed; all of the problems. "Even design should be redesigned." We need to see how choices affect how people can see our work. Everything should be exposed to the process of being interested. He thinks it would be interesting to see many people come together to try and fix one problem. He said that it would help him pay more attention to the world we live in.

My Thoughts- The thing that impresses me most is that fact that technology is increasingly getting more and more useful. Things you think you dont even need or realize you need are being created. Yes you can live without most things, but the fact that they are being created fascinates me. I think the problem we most need to redesign would be that fact that most people are just taking their own inputs and using them to create objects. I think everyone should put their ideas together because the more minds you have together, the more problems and ideas you can fix. Using this strategy you could eventually solve some of the worlds biggest problems.

Journal #5

Jonathan Harris is a internet artist and designer who has created many different works that aim to explore and explain the human world. One of his most famous projects was building the worlds largest time capsule. Some of his most recent work includes projects based on online dating, and news and language. I found this video very interesting because I think he talked about topics that we can all understand instead of making it impossible for non-artists to get.He made a good point in saying anybody can have ideas, do not be afraid to dig deeper to finding meaning. All of his talk about technology made me realize how much technology has an impact on our lives. It is really fascinating to think where we would be in this world today without things like the internet or god forbid blogger.

Questions

_ How many characters is optimal for a line length? words per line? 40 to 50
_ Why is the baseline grid used in design? It gives a nice horizon line across the page and makes it clearer for the eye to look across your page.
_ What is a typographic river? The lines that the leading makes across your page
_ From the readings what does clothesline or flow line mean? Line across the top/bottom/ middle of the page that all the paragraphs hang on.
_ How can you incorporate white space into your designs? connect the text and title together or vice versa.
_ What is type color/texture mean? Using different bold, italic and size of text. Also the tracking, leading and weight of the text.
_ What is x-height, how does it effect type color? The height that the lowercase x meets. It makes it easier or harder to differenciate between capital letters and lower case which is what has to do with how you read the page.
_ What are some ways to indicate a new paragraph. Are there any rules? Dont indent a the first paragraph, the size f the indent matters it should be less than 1/2 inch. There should be no space between the paragraphs if indented.
_ What are some things to look out for when hyphenating text. There should be no two letters left behind, no words shorter than 5 letters should be hyphenated. dont hyphenate names or proper nouns.
_ What does CMYK and RGB mean? cmyk- cyan, magenta, yellow, and black rgb- red, green, blue
_ What does hanging punctuation mean? The quotes or other punctuation that stand outside the text box.
_ What is the difference between a foot mark and an apostrophe? foot mark- straight two lines apostrophe- curved two lines
_ What is the difference between an inch mark and a quote mark (smart quote)? Inch mark is straight while quote mark is curved
_ What is a hyphen, en dash and em dashes, what are the differences and when are they used. en dash- opt. shift, hypen-, em dash- opt. shift -
_ What are ligatures, why are they used, when are they not used, what are common ligatures. legability, using ffi, fi ffl, to be one letter. but they dont use when they are tracked out.

Journal #4

Who is Bruce Mau? He is a visionary and world leading innovator who has several huge clients that he designs for. Not only does he have several large clients, but he also does work for children's books and even founded a company called Institution without Boundaries. This company does work to promote change in the world today.

Why is he interesting to us? His motto is, "Now that we can do anything, what can we do?" I think this a good motto for us to follow because it not only gets us to think about what we are doing with our project but also makes us think about the bigger picture and where our spreads will be seen and what sort of place they will be seen in.

What is the mantra you have chosen and why? Go Deep. I chose this because he says, "The deeper you go the more likely you are to find something of value." I think this is a really good idea to do when you are stuck on a project. You need to explore all possibilities of that project and in exploring you will come up with some idea that will be brilliant and original. The more time you put into something, the more you can get out of it.