Adam Brace - Research Methodologies

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Making Great Design Decisions

Design is empirical. It is a deliberate set of choices that function to capsulise a message or set of attributes into a unified form. Relationships should be made between what we are saying and how are we saying it and to do something merely for its aesthetic value is really not enough, as aesthetics are subjective. Design is referred to often as a practice of problem solving. Is solving the problem through design just doing something that looks great? For the longest time I could have easily said yes, but now my answer is no.

To do something aesthetic is easy. With all the tools at our disposal is it really that hard to design something pleasing? Not really. To design something strategic with voice, spirit and concept is difficult.

Definition is what I feel a lot of young aspiring designers like myself have issues with. Its about defining the problem and then shaping elements to fit these defined parameters. Take branding for example, what is your brand trying to say? You want to be fun and quirky yet your typographic choice is Helvetica. This is really the heart of my argument. Does it look good? Well yes, cause its fucking Helvetica. Is it fun and quirky? Definitely not because Helvetica is designed in such a way that makes it so refined and objectively functional. A decision like this is really not thought out or just hasn’t been fully applied to the problem. So what is the decision to be made? Well its about finding characteristics that have a relationship with the problem. Would some chunky rounded forms go a miss? How about some subtle elements that give the letterforms some character? This is certainly in the bandwidth of making something feel fun and quirky. Its then about taking decisions like this and applying them across the board to shape experience.

Making appropriate decisions and doing something with confidence is what makes design so interesting. Then if empirical decisions have been made and care has been used to shape a memorable experience, the work is almost certainly going to look fantastic as well. 

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Thesis Proposal #2 - The Future Roles Of Designers

In the digital age designers' adapted from traditional technique's and workflow's to incorporate the emerging computer technologies. What I am interested in trying to understand is how new emerging technologies will effect how we work and how it will shape our future's in design. With the range of evolving devices such as tablets and smartphone's as well as new emerging technologies such as 3D and motion graphics how do we design to ensure that our message is communicated effectively.  What possibilities are being opened up to us. For example how can we present more intriguing content through emerging web technologies like HTML/CSS3.

I want to try and understand what the shape of media is going to be in the future and what role we play as graphic designers.    

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Transitional Ideation

As graphic design has matured into its modern culture, tight deadlines, the rapid nature of current work, budget and technology have changed the process of design drastically from the traditional practices (pre computer-age). What I see as a contemporary designer is the sense of urgency taking prevalence over the practice of conceptual development. Ideas are drafted quickly straight to the computer, the bezier curves perfected in illustrator, type fixed up and its off to the client for approval. What then happens in turn is a distinct lack of concept or half-baked ideas that dont reach their full potential. What I have recently began to value is, a step back to traditional practice of sketching and, depending on the project, constant ideation and development of concepts.

I find myself really dealing with this process of transitioning from sketchbook to computer and back to sketchbook a lot with my project im working on for my branding class at OCAD. I've gotten away from saying "heres 50 sketches, here are my 5 best concepts of those sketches lets move forward". I find myself really casting my net out wide in my research, experimenting with ideas through sketching and converging into strong concepts, then as I get too intimate with these concepts, heading back to the sketchbook to work up some more. I find this process really refreshing. I understand that this isn't always possible in our modern practice as I discussed above, but i'm having so much fun. As for the ideas, well I feel as though the more time I have to interact with this project the stronger they are becoming. Also treating research and conceptual/visual development as a whole and not two separate stages has really helped me to make better connections shaping the brand to the organizations essence. 

The greatest thing that i've felt recently regarding my design work is confidence in my process and feeling the value in the practice of conceptual development.  

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Thanks dudes!

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The Afterlife Of Newspapers

When reading over Eric Alterman's article, The Death Of Newspapers I can side with the majority of his points.  Although I side with him on his ideas about mainstream media such as The New York Times & The Washington Post, media behemoths like these companies will not die out they just need to reposition themselves into the evolving deliveries of new media. We have already seen the rise of tablets such as Apple's Ipad or ereaders such as the Amazon Kindle offering alternatives to the printed page. As these new forms of content delivery grow and flourish it isn't too difficult for media outlets of this size to repurpose their content.

Did they take too long to adopt the internet? Yes, but what have they learnt? I think some of the things that can be taken away from the rise of the internet is that online media is here to stay and that media is collaboratively driven, but the advantage that large traditional media companies have over the small blog based content delivery is the power of integrity. Referring the part of Alterman's article that states the journalistic credentials of The New York Times over The Huffington Post, is that TNYT has far more content drivers of legitimate education and journalistic experience and (mostly) trusted sources then that of THP. The biggest mistake the big media corps made is they feared the internet for too long. 

How has that changed anything? I write with some hindsight over Alterman in a sense that I have seen the rise of the tablet space. Although news was spread through the mobile space the tablets offer a new experience similar to that of the traditional printed page that the large corporations can take advantage of. Although offering a further nail into the coffin of the printed newspaper the large media companies are embracing this new technology with less fear then the internet boom. For the most part it could also be very successful for the one that creates the right experience which in my opinion hasn't been done with any success to date. 

The problem with the applications that have been created for these devices are too tied up with needless bullshit. I can see the excitement with the depth of media that could be offered videos, animations, charts etc but what has happened is the apps have become far more about aesthetics then just the standalone content. The Amazon Kindle simple black and white screen focused on legibility is very popular, however when the iPad came along I read a fair number of articles stating that these e-readers would become obsolete. This is entirely not the case and the Kindle among other e-readers are still popular because of their no-nonsense appearance that interacts with people that just want to read. This is where the future for these media outlets lie, providing reliable trusted information on these tablets that is readily available, cheap and is focused on delivery and not a majorly over aesthetic feel.

I think there is a market out there still for a full tablet newspaper that is simple and legible like there printed counterparts. Rupert Murdoch said he was going to tackle this with his tablet based newspaper The Daily but the critiques i've read state that it reads more like a magazine then a newspaper. The key for The New York Times etc is to really try to key into how people want to experience the news on their tablets and target that as I believe this space is where the newspaper has the potential to live on. 

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You could be in with a chance of winning an iTunes giftcard

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Armchair Creativity

I read a great post the other day on The 99 Percent blog. Are You An Armchair Creative? is a post by Mark McGuiness that explores the idea of designers taking use of that comfy armchair next to our office chair as a location for freedom of thought and increased productivity. 

"[...]it's easy for me to feel diligent and productive in the first chair, hammering away at the keyboard. Every time I recline in the armchair during working hours, there's a little part of me that asks, are you sure you have time for this?"

This quote taken from Mark's article isn't far from the truth for most designers (including myself). There does however become a point at which energy levels at our "lean forward" work at our laptop on the trusty office swivel chair starts to dip. It's at this point that Mark suggests that we take use of the office armchair to enhance our creativity and thinking, in turn aiding productivity.

This is pretty self explanatory obviously taking a break would help anyone refocus and rejuvenate their thinking. However what I feel Mark is trying to say is that productivity, ideation and creativity can reach its full potential when you take your body out of its comfort zone. Switching your keyboard for a notepad and pen or changing your pen to a new pen could be subtle differences that effect how our body and mind acts and may help us to overcome the challenges faced with our projects. 

The armchair takes me into a different space, where my mind can drift and I can see the big picture of the projects I'm working on [...] When I get up from the armchair, everything is clearer and sharper. My body feels lighter, and more energized. And I get a hell of a lot done when I return to the other chair.

A really quick and easy read that I think helps us all to understand that work doesn't need to be solved in front of our laptop screen, and that some of our most creative times can happen in the chair we feel most guilty about relaxing in. 

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Process - Setting Up My Website

The final post in this three part series will cover how I merged the two CMS platforms I have been using together to consolidate my website. I will also talk about Typekit integration and installing awesome web fonts onto any website. 

Cargo

 I spoke about the benefits of getting cargo and how it works in the last post. That post can be viewed here. My site is a modified version of the sites Kennedy Alt theme. Some additions by me was javascript that controlled my custom fonts from typekit and that created the rollover effects on the project thumbnails. I admittedly don't know too much about javascript. However Cargo through their online support forums offer the script to create the rollovers and the Typekit script is provided on your user account. This makes it very easy to add some custom elements and effects without fast knowledge of javascript.  

The rest of the layout is tweaked via HTML/CSS. If your a more print centric designer and do not work with web, but want to set up a site without paying a developer, then knowing some HTML/CSS is going to help you immensely. This is no different with Cargo. Although the theme is mainly built for you already it helps to have some knowledge of HTML/CSS to help you add some custom elements to make your site unique.

Tumblr

The main challenge when creating my Tumblr was making it look like and merge seamlessly with my the other pages created on Cargo. Again this was done by modifying one of tumblr's ready made themes to fit my purpose. It also needed to feature a global navigation that matched the navigation of the rest of the site, feature the same elements used elsewhere in the site with correct positioning and finally have a typographic hierarchy that matched the Cargo side. 

Firstly I tackled the basic styling of the blog. The theme I worked off was tumblr's Strict theme. Extending the width, adding my custom elements and changing the colours of the site to match what I had in place on the Cargo side. 

Secondly I had to add my global navigation. This was really simple and is just a small HTML/CSS markup. 

HTML

The HTML is a very simple div with a list of links to the correct pages that is then styled through CSS. 

CSS

The first part of this code is dealing with the position and style of the text of the navigation. The second small part controls how the list is styled. {display:inline} is code that forces the list to display horizontally and removes the bullet points from the standard markup. The third and forth parts are controlling the link texts and how the user interacts with them. a:hover refers to the colour change that happens when the cursor rollovers the links. 

THE RESULT

Typekit

Typekit is what I used for the web typefaces used on my website and on my blog. Typekit hosts a vast library of typefaces on its servers and then through javascript adds the typefaces that are fully editable and selectable text, thus reducing the need for images. 

Getting Typekit is a matter of signing up for an account on their website www.typekit.com. Everything is then done through the kit editor (pictured below).

My kit features the two fonts used on my site as well as the weights and support. To then add the fonts it is as simple as clicking "embed code" then copying the javascript provided into your websites <head> section. Then to use the font on your body copy for example its as simple as just adding the name into the selectors such as; 

font-family: "proxima-nova-1","proxima-nova-2", helvetica, sans-serif; 

Using these tools really simply allow designers or artists with little web experience set up a unique site without the hassle of understanding really heavy advanced code and/or saving money by not having to hire a web developer. 

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Thesis Proposal #1 - Designers Roles In The Changing Media Of The Music

Album artwork has been with us for decades, some of the most famous, most recognised images are album covers. Album covers have long been visual partners to the experience of listening to a bands music. 

With the days of vinyl long gone (popular only among a cult following) and the popularity of CD's slowing deminishing in the face of the internet and online music downloads, are there new roles for designers in the present age of designing for music and album covers? 

As a thesis proposal I would want to research what are the inherent differences between music design in the past and the current trends effecting the roles of the graphic designer. Such things to explore would be how has the different media affected the artwork, the transition from a large vinyl canvas of 12in to a CD just under 6in to a image that lives in a 1in square on our itunes dashboard. In what ways has the communication changed? In the past the image worked solely as a piece of art, are contemporary designers making new decisions based on how the image would be portrayed on the internet or merchandise? Is album artwork as iconic now as it was in the past? How can new technologies be used to help shape a newer experience more engaging then static album artwork of old?

To list more and more questions of which I can think of many would take all night. I feel the purpose of this thesis in a nutshell would be to understand the future of design in the music industry and the evolution from its past into the digital age. 

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Hello (research methodologies) World.

Welcome to my blog that I have created for documentation of Research Methodologies 2 with Richard Hunt. 

I'll save all the introductions because most of the people reading this already know me in person. For those that don't I'm the guy with the strange british accent and the baseball cap. 

So in terms of progression in class so far I established a group with my friends Sandi and Kirk and we welcomed a new friend Heather. We discussed a direction for our group work that involves Billboard Posting in the city of Toronto and in particular the act of illegal billboard posting. We wanted to research and explore the various politics and legalities of posting billboards and wanted to try to work through the process in potentially getting one that broke the rules taken down. 

With all that being said I'm looking forward to diving onto research and looking to really try to start defining my process and talking about some of the different aspects effecting my process and my research. 

A number of you have followed me already which is great! As alittle bit of shameless self promotion I also run a separate blog parallel to this one through my online portfolio/website. I would appreciate it if you guys to came and checked it out. It is alittle more lighthearted and related to some of the work I do both in and outside of OCAD. You can view this blog at blog.embracecreations.com it's built on tumblr so if you wanted to follow my personal blog also you can do so by clicking here!