Reading Connections

This MAPC website design uses elements brought out in Krug's "Don't Make Me Think." Notably is it's use of conventions as brought out in the chapter "Billboard Design." The title of the website is at the top of the page as well as the main navigation bar being placed horizontally across the top section of the page. We have also included a search box at the top of the page because that is the most conventional location for an information box on a general information website.

In terms of space layout, this website uses the concepts found in the book "Thinking with Type." In the chapter "Grid," Luton outlines how useful the grid system is for organizing information. We maintained this theory by putting the heading, navigation, and text in the same arrangement for all pages. This consideration makes the website design pleasantly predictable.

This website also considers Unity as outlined in the book "The Elements of Graphic Design." It achieves unity through repetition and theme variations. The elipsis of the logo is repeated in the frame of the page and the outline of the picture fields. Also the elipsis theme and orange and purple color scheme are recognizably similar on both the home page and the next page, even though the frame and title placement are not exactly the same.

To-Do List

Jen, Joni, Lauren, & Stephanie - Group To-Do List

Our group status on the following deliverables, including responsible person(s) and projected completion are listed below.

• 1 page forms - Completed? - any tweaking will be based on Dr. Taylor's feedback (Stephanie)
  
• Logo - Completed
  
• Website Navigation Structure - will need to be revised based on Dr. Taylor's feedback (Stephanie)
  
• Website Mock-up - will adjust navigation structure based on Dr. Taylor's feedback and last-minute tweaking after next week (Jen)
• Brochure - solid draft is complete, revisions will be made before next week and final tweaking will be done based on Dr. Taylor's comments (Lauren)
• Display board - draft is complete, revisions will be made before next week and final tweaking will be done based on Dr. Taylor's comments (Joni)
  

To-Do List

Michael, Carla, and That's Group To-Do List

Things we need to have done by next time, by deliverable () indicates responsible party:

brochure: changing line-up of text to differentiate between the pages (That), updating logo (Michael-did tonight)

website: insertion of pictures on secondary page (Carla)

forms: el done-o

website hierarchy: any changes Dr. Taylor requests (Michael)

print out copies of deliverables for next week (Michael)

That's all she wrote!

Andrea & Ryan reading response

I think the orals readings were helpful in creating our documents for our project. But since our project is comprised mainly of documents such as the MAPC course description and the brochure, half of our efforts were focused on the text aspects of our documents. Because of this I think that the “Thinking with type” book was the most helpful in creating our documents. It helped us in understanding the points we had to consider when choosing our text for our documents. Instead of choosing something that we found visually pleasing, we also had to choose what we thought our audience would respond to. It had to be visually pleasing, readable, and work well on several different mediums (print and web). We chose our typeface because we thought it looked more modern and clean, and the type book said that a younger audience found sans-serif typefaces to be easier to read we decided on the sans-serif to increase readability and usability for our readers. As for the use of space, this book was also the most helpful in how to utilize space to draw attention to where we wanted the readers eye to go, whether it be through bold high dot ink areas, or negative space to draw the eye to focus on what little is there.

To be done:
Insert images within the circular place holders in the brochure
Print off documents to see how they look in black in white with the different variation of colors

11/20 class prompt on directions from readings

thinking with type: Lupton’s explanation and examples of line spacing on page 83 came in quite handy when designing the brochure. Past experience told me that, often, we people design blocks of texts (be it newspaper, brochure, etc) the spacing between lines or leading tends to be manipulated when the text won’t fit. Lupton gives greater purpose to line spacing. Lines that are placed too close to one another feel cramped and are uncomfortable to the reader. Conversely, lines that are too far apart lose continuity- they don’t appear as a cohesive unit. We ran into this problem when designing the inside text of the MAPC brochure intended for conferences. Eventually, we settled upon spacing slightly larger than the standard (the standard is slightly larger than the cap height of a letter). We did this because we had a lot of text. Spacing made it feel a bit more clean and enhanced readability.

Flower and Hayes (Scenario Principle): This wasn’t one of the primary texts, but it’s important enough of a concept that it deserves a great deal of attention. Time constraints make formal usability testing of the deliverables difficult. The scenario principle does not replace usability testing, but it does help to create user-centered designs. In a nutshell, the scenario principle asks the designer to place him/herself in that of a typical user. For example, the users of the MAPC website include current/past/potential students, faculty, third party clients, etc. When designing the website, we needed to ask ourselves “what would the current students want from the website?” And the question repeats for each user group.

I forgot

to discuss how I applied the principles. Basically, I used mosty of the principles from "The Non-Designer's Design Book" in designing the display board for Dr. Taylor's project. We are not supposed to focus on that text, but it's mainly the one I used. I used principles from that book as well for my visual revisioning. I used the typography information from "Thinking With Type" for the design board also, in choosing fonts.

Prompt for Today's Class

Since tonight's class is somewhat under-attended, I thought the best thing would be to have the question play out here so that everyone could contribute. Here it is:

Point to specific "directions" in the readings that you found to be the most helpful as you completed your projects and papers, and discuss exactly what the authors said, and how you then applied those directions to your own work.

useful directions from the readings

My work thus far in this class has not really been Web-based, however, I did learn from "Don't Make Me Think" about the usefulness of breadcrumbs with regard to Web navigation, and in being simply a user of the Internet versus being a designer, that is something that people may rarely consider and may take for granted. I'm not sure I agree with the policy of always using the words "You are here" to precede them, though, which can be a bit insulting. I also found the "bad/good" examples at the chapter ends very helpful. This is information that I'll probably have to use quite a bit in the future when I have to work on Web pages.

From "The Elements of Graphic Design," I was re-introduced to the concept of gestalt, which I hadn't really thought about since my undergrad years ago. It's important to step back from a project and see how the elements are working together. The book also does a decent job of outlining design components and suggesting ways to use them. The book also performs a useful function in a backhanded way, I think, by providing an example of how not to lay out a design book! 8-)

The most interesting part of our readings, I found, were probably the least useful, but I enjoyed learning about the origins of the different font types and how involved typography can be. "Thinking With Type" contains both trivial and useful information on how to use different fonts, and indentifies the image each conveys.

Comments on the Readings

Specific readings that have been useful and how I utilized them

1. Kostelnick examines two different approaches to visual design – culture specific and global. He argues that in every design situation we should locate our context somewhere on the continuum and design accordingly. With this MAPC group project, there has been a lot of discussion in my group about the culture of MAPC and how it doesn’t necessarily shine through to the general public. In addition, there are all of these little subcultures within MAPC (the rhetoric people, the web people, etc) and it’s really difficult to try to represent such a diverse group with one logo design. Our end design ended up as a logo that could be used for either a global (though global in this case probably wouldn’t include the entire globe) or culture specific audience. The image and text could be used together for the global audience and the image on its own (with just the MAPC lettering) is more culture-specific for our MAPC culture.
2. Kostelnick also discusses the importance of Gestalt principles, such as grouping and good continuation. Our logo incorporates both principles – good continuation because the rectangular shape is naturally continued by the eye, even though there isn’t an orange outline around all of it. Grouping is important because the two elements of the logo needed to be grouped in a way that they become one element.
3. Lupton explains that “design is as much an act of spacing as an act of marking,” meaning that designers should pay attention to more than just the word, they should pay attention to the negative space around words and individual letters. In our MAPC logo, we worked with the spacing of individual letters and words as we imposed the phrase “master of arts” within the two words “Professional” and “Communication”. Also, we worked with the kearning on the letters to make sure that all 3 lines of text were the same width.
4. Lupton also discusses the linearity of printed texts and suggests different accommodations that must be made in online environments where users are approaching texts from different directions in nonlinear formats (lets all think about orals and how this connects to Burbles and Nielsen…and Burke…and…I should stop now…). She suggests the importance of keeping certain expected visual conventions, such as banners and hyperlinks (which, of course, are set off differently than the rest of the type). As we worked on our web design we considered ways to include hyperlinks as visually different aspects of the page than the regular text. We also considered our font selection carefully to make sure that it was both readable on screen and commonly accessible to our users. And, speaking of typography, we might consider the use of the bar | as a fun little web convention that typically indicates separation between linked elements.
5. One of the most important books to me in this class and for my MAPC project is Krug’s book. There are elements from this book throughout our website design for this class: breadcrumbs, logo links home, subnavigation is in a prominent location, grouping of common elements, etc. In addition, like Lupton also notes, we stuck to the general visual conventions users would expect to find on a website.

Jonathat's Paper and visual project

I think that I am going to do the visitor map thing and possibly revise clemson's map accordingly...

Jen's Project & Paper Topics

Seminar Paper Topic
I'm planning on writing a literature review that can be applied towards my MAPC project and my project paper. I'm planning on exploring visual aspects of web and logo design, though I'm not sure if that is too broad to put into one paper (Dr. Fishman, would it be a better idea if I focused on one or the other, what do you think?)

Visual Project Topic
I'm planning on creating a website for my professional portfolio. As I discussed (through a bit of a circle, I think), this website has the potential to be my first opportunity to create something "my way", but I will also need to keep potential employers at the front of my mind - in a way, they are like my clients. Therefore, my idea at this juncture is to create a clean and professional website that will show off my design work, professional, and academic projects without taking away from the individual documents. I'm envisioning something with a lot of white space at the moment, centered around color-washed images, though I'm not sure where exactly I will go with that...but I'm open to suggestions.

*Jen

Carla' Paper Idea and project

I would like to do my paper on the visual identity involved in uniforms.

For my project I would like to design a uniform for public school teachers with a board with drawings and/or cutouts of the pieces and actual fabric samples.

Paper Topic

I'm going to discuss the visual choices (or lack thereof) in performance appraisal forms and, possibly, other "blah" business documents.

Topic

For my paper and visual project, I think I will be exploring signage at its best (and worst). Most probably within the context of zoos. (also maybe aquaria and nature centers)

paper idea

i was thinking about possibly exploring the visual choices in the design of a teen magazines for its intended audiences

Project

I think that my paper and visual project will have something to do with exhibits/marketing. Still thinking about it.