Katie Schultz – UTC Graphic Design

This project was set to further our understanding of creating functional and accessible web design. Although we were not incorporating actual CSS into this project, I feel like I have a better understanding of how I would begin to incorporate it. Careful consideration of information placement and color contrast were the two most important items on my agenda before building this design. I chose to go with simple sketched images so they wouldn’t take anything away from the information given. I worked with many different gray-box models in the beginning to figure out what felt most balanced, and chose to put my information into two main columns. I chose this method after researching more about the heat patterns involved with webpages, and where the users eyes tend to go first.
My font choice was the basic Arial in the regular and bold styles. I felt the san-serif typefaces worked well the the basic design and made the text more readable. The color scheme was picked based on the preexisting colors in the bottom image. The purple was added as a nice contrast to the greens and blues.
Overall, this design feels completed and well thought-out.

For the first part of Thursday, our processes and materials class visited Paper Plus. They offer a wide variety of paper products from vellum bristol to multipurpose xerographic paper. Several samples were passed around while Alex talked a little bit about his job and certain papers. One particular thing we talked about was the difference between long grain and short grain. The grain is dependent on the second number of the sheet size. If the second number is higher that the first, the paper is long grain. If the second number is lower, the grain is short. Also, something I never realized was the direction of the grain. Alex showed us that you can find the direction by tearing off a strip of paper. If the ripped edge was clean, you have torn with the grain and if its jagged, you’ve torn against the grain.

After talking for a few minutes, we were given free range to the sample books. To see it from an outside perspective, it looked like 16 hungry wolves attacking a single squirrel. Poor squirrel. I’m not a big fan of being run over or people grabbing around me so I only left with a couple of swatch books after the masses picked through all the things they wanted. I’ll go back on a later day to get more I suppose. It’d be really helpful to have  some in the future, not only for business but for when I’m trying to decide what type of paper to buy for all of my wedding invitations, programs, etc.

Zooooommmmbiiiieeeeeesssssssss! I originally typed a period at the end of that, then I sat here for a minute to question why I would do that. Why would I front all the effort to say ‘zombies,’ then finish it off with simple period? Terrible. So I went back and added an exclamation point. Clearly.

There was a mix up with out guest speakers for today, so instead of going back home to sleep, we all stayed in the room and watched Zombieland. It was pretty amazing and hilarious. Not to mention good to have a day not to worry about anything but relax around each other. We all received an email from George Bairaktaris later today to explain the mix up and apologize which I respectfully accept. Shit happens.

For Processes/ Materials today, we visited the Chattanooga Times Free Press.

I can honestly say I never expected to be so amazed by a newspaper. We’ve been hearing about the evolution of printing presses since we started with design classes as sophomores, but seeing it today made all the difference. The actual press is so enormous as is the process to get everything done. The light sensitive plates that each page is printed on are amazing and they let us keep one to bring back to school.

The press:

Oh if only pictures could really do it justice.

And I sorta wish I had just one of their tanks of ink. It took all the strength in my body not to crawl on top of one… open it up… and dip my hands inside. I know that may sound strange, but it’s what I was thinking at the time.

The end of the tour took us through a time portal and we somehow ended up back in the lobby. I had a great time touring the facility and really seeing all the things we’ve heard about come to life.

Thanks to Josiah Roe and Bekka Reece who were our guests today from Medium!
The first thing we were hit with was a quote by Stephen Anderson, “To make good website we must be good info architects, need to learn what motivates people and how they consume content visually then bake those ideas into our designs.”

Alright, well. That’s it.

Is there anything else that needs to said? No? Not really?

We looked at several sites (EPB Fiber Optic, Lula Lake Land Trust, Olan Mills) that they designed and the process they used to get them there. They started with the content management phase, or a site map. Basically this lays out key information (usually all the links) you have on your website in a text/bullet form for easy navigation.

After that you move on up to the wire framing. This where we want to get all of our information laid out in the form of boxes to discover how things should live on the page.  There are a few things to really keep in mind when your wire framing; it amy not be possible to fit all of your information in these boxes so be lucrative, and we highly aware of what area gets the most attention on a site. This area is where you are going to want to put the most important information.

Process is so important. I need to take it up a notch or three on my process level.

Oh my wow. I wasn’t too sure that I was actually going to leave this place. Todd Oates, the GM, took us on a tour of the shop. The first thing that was mentioned was the organization of everything. Everything was so well organized and filed away in every department. I would definitely feel safe giving them my order and relying on them not to lose it!
Heather, the only graphic designer in the shop, took the time to tell us a little about what she deals with which is mainly company logos. That can be a real hassle if the client doesn’t have a high quality file of the image and will sometimes find herself reconstructing the entire logo.
Following that we went into the print room with 3 very large printers. (2 of which were named Bonnie and Clyde) We got to see Bonnie jam while she was printing out our example booklets. This made me feel a little better about the MFD on campus. (Take your time, breath, and just fix it.)

I was really impressed everything Allegra had to offer me. (WHICH IS SOOOOOOO MUCH) I’m finding it hard just to recap everything because of the sheer overload of information. Not to mention the awesome free stuff they gave us. (Water bottle, personalized stickers and notepads, pens)

Ohh and there was another thing that peaked my interest. The banners. Er, the material the banners are printed on, rather. Fade, weather resistant for up to three years. Very important for me in the next couple of weeks.

I have so many things that need to be printed in the next month (bout books, stickers, magnets, bumper stickers, banners….. to name a few) and there isn’t any place I would rather go than Allegra. I feel like it’s going to be very beneficial for the roller girls to establish a relationship with them for all our printing needs.

Gosh. We all left so happy.

DIY Summit

http://www.environmentsforhumans.com/diysummit/

September 17, 2009

Other than a photoshop conference two years ago, I really have no experience with conferences. The DIY Summit conference was definitely an interesting way to induct me into a world web and design conferences I foresee myself attending in the future. The pros to having a web conference is that anyone can see it no matter where they are as long as they have an internet connection; the one major con about it is that technology will always fail in some way or another. Major ‘thanks’ to Environments for Humans for taking care of all the technical work and putting on a great conference over all.

Of the speakers I was able to see, I believe Dan Rubin (http://www.sidebarcreative.com or http://superfluousbanter.org/) was my favorite and most informative. Not to say the others (Matt Harris, Kevin Lawver, Ryan Irelan, Kelly Goto, Mark Trammell & Juliette Melton) weren’t informative, but most of the information they were communicating was way beyond my educational status thus far. I thought everyone was very well spoken and communicated effectively without being too technical.

Dan presented “Mastering the Details in Interface Design.” It’s all about balance and proportion and how the design actually feels. He basically reiterates what I’ve learned from Type I about spacing, grids, and text and combines it with web design which created a very nice transition for me. Before, I looked at websites and noticed they were visually appealing but never gave much thought as to why. Now I can really dive into how a site is put together and what little tiny effects the designer has applied to make it feel so nice.

I’m disappointed I wasn’t able to hang around to hear Lea Alcantara’s presentation. From what I’ve heard and researched about her (see previous post), she’s an amazing communicator and she had a very nice topic that fit perfectly with current studies. I downloaded the PDF file containing all of her slides just to browse through them, but it was hard to pick up on what would have been going on at any given moment.

Overall a great web conference experience for me. I think the enjoyment of the conference was heightened by the fact there was a room full of people wanting to learn about the same things.

Lea is a newly 27 year old designer from Edmonton, AB Canada. She graduated college with a degree for Visual Communications Design with a major in Design and Digital Media. Her first love was comic book illustration and animation but soon realized a career in the web was where she belonged.
In 2005, Lea established her own company, Lealea Design. Lealea Design (Lealea meaning happiness and pleasure in Hawaiian) focuses on branding, web, and print design with “sass and class.”
In her own words, Lea’s job is to “kill bad design.” Several of her clients include Waterloo Festival for Animated Cinema, FCG Media, Britopian and Sinfully Sweet Incorporated. In many of Lea’s design you can really pick up her background and love for comic illustration. I find it most prominent in the Waterloo series.

From looking at this particular work I can extract that she really enjoys and loves what she does an this is what interests me most. I want to be sure that I make a living doing something I enjoy, rather than waking up every day dreading working. Looking at other work from Lea, there is a trend. She puts her own personal touch on the design without being too obvious about it which is also interesting to me. I’m looking forward to getting through school and developing my own way of doing things and representing myself through design for other people.

Lea’s is most specifically known for her knowledge in branding. She has had several articles published in various locations such as Design-in-Flight and Digital Web. She has also spoken at several design conferences in regards to her branding techniques. The South by Southwest in Austin, Texas and the Future of Web Design in New York City.

She also keeps a blog (blogblog) that keeps up with everything from organization and workflow, handling rejection, and women in technology.

I’m really excited to hear with Lea has to say coming up in the DIY Summit conference coming up. She will be discussing the Art of Self-Branding.

Who are you? Who cares? With proper self-branding, not only will you find out who you are, you will make the right people care, opening up a slew of the right opportunities specifically tailored for you. We define what brand is, and go through the top 5 most important aspects of a brand and see how that can apply to you. Maximize your potential and get the type of work and respect you deserve.

This is all information that I feel is super important for where we are as a design class and believe this will be a very important lecture to acquire into our design brains as we continue to work on logos for our current projects.