#OWL CPS

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Week #11 - Welp, It's Official. Class is DONE!

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Week #10 In-Class Interactive Jam Session

Today in class we will continue to jam on either Anthropologie art direction for web, iPhone & iPad and/or take a stab at tomorrow's apple.com homepage, result of tomorrow's Apple Keynote, which is supposed to bring on the iPad 3.

Option 1:

Continue to jam on art direction for Antrhopologie and take your campaign to either the iPhone, or iPad through iOS.

Think about your campaign message and translating it to mobile.

Option 2:

Design a new index page for apple.com, guessing what it will look like tomorrow with the hopeful drop of the iPad 3 and other fun products.

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Week #9 In-Class Design Assignment Pivot X Info Capture Page

After presenting our Anthropologie emails, I offered up one of two options to continue build.

1. Pivot - You have been hired away from Anthropologie by a competitor and will be designing/writing the same type of creative for them.

2. Campaign Page - Use your existing Anthropologie email to design a campaign/landing/information capture page. This would be a page that the email would take you to on-click.

Think... where am I going, what is the page supposed to do, what information needs to be collected? This can also be a contest style site where users are asked to upload photos to a feed, or post on social networks.

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Week #9 In-Class Site Ideation Logan Square Design Building

In class we discussed breaking down a sites functionality from ground up. We talked ways to get people interested in a website from Tumblr, to Instagram, to Twitter feeds.

The board was a mess, but we ended up with a simple site focused on updated feeds via Twitter/Tumblr/Instagram and Contact Info! Really the important stuff.

Check the board. http://instagr.am/p/Hk-HPZHmp9/

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Week #8 In Class + HW Assignment Copycat Something New

In class we are jamming on creation of an email campaign using existing art direction. It was a toss up and we are moving forward designing for Antrhopologie.

Homework is to finish up the email campaigns. We will be presenting at the beginning of next class.

Word up.

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Week #8 In Class Lecture Photoshop, What is it Good For?

In class we took it back to the old school and talked Photoshop in a really granular light. What are color profiles? How do they work on the web?

We also talked basic setup in Photoshop around the 960.gs system and how to get the page created correctly for web.

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Week #7 In Class Jam Session + Homework

Keep jamming on those team project index pages.

Homework: Get as far as you can on your index page infusing elements from your Art Direction. Next week in class I will help teams convert what they got on the page to make elements for their full site.

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Week #7 In Class - Dieter Ram's 10 Principles For Good Design & Why They Are Important

In class we walked 1-10 through Dieter Ram's Principles For Good Design with brief explanation of why they are still not only relevant, but more useful than ever as we expand into new interactive markets, like mobile.

Remember, these were created by Rams for Braun's Industrial Design Department around product development. Apps on your phone are products that need to be developed.

Dieter Rams 10 Principles For Good Design

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Week #6 In Class – Copycat

Let's polish up those design skills. 

I personally think the best way to learn is to benchmark off some pre-existing excellent interactive sites on the web. That way we strip Art Direction from the students to focus exclusively on production of existing styles that are doing something really nice.

We picked in random and students jammed on duplicating the sites all the way down to the % of drop shadow.

I demoed recreation of DesktimeApp.com as the example.

We jammed on: Jeep.com, VictoriasSecret.com, Facebook.com, LinkedIn.com, OldSpice.com, 37signals.com, Etsy.com, MarthaStewart.com, Twitter.com, Target.com, & Pinterest.com.

Next week we will post the progress.

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Week #6 Lecture – Jon Buda Talks Desktime

Tonight, Jon Buda is going to come through to talk about the process around making his product Desktime.

http://desktimeapp.com/

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Week #6 Plans – Badly Designed Site Audit & Style Copycat

This week in class we will be auditing a very expensive newly launched website that doesn't quite cut it. We will assess everything from usability to aesthetics.

We will also be doing a 120 minute in-class design copycat assignment. More on that on Tuesday.

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Week #5 Big Thanks To Nick Disabato For Coming Out

CPS and the class would like to thank Nick Disabato for coming out to speak at our class tonight! Nick was also kind enough to give a digital copy of his book Cadence & Slang to all of the students in attendance, which was a very very nice gesture.

Thanks again Nick.

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Week #5 Homework – Finalized Functionality of 2 Pages + Art Direction Main Page

There are 2 pieces of homework from Class #5:

1. Finalize the functionality of ALL THE PIECES that need to be on the page for 2 main pages from your concept. You pick the pages. This may be your login page, a product page, a question page, or just a content page. Create a sketched wireframe (as a group).

2. Everyone on your team must try to create a PSD layout of 1 of your main pages. Essentially, this is Art Direction, but the goal of getting this all on to the page is to creatively solve problems as to how your product functions.

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Week #5 Presentations – Team Project Decks!

Names have been changed and overall concepts are starting to come together. Take a peek at the project pitches and inspirations.

The Daily Prognosticator

Upcycle

Inquisition

Art School Book

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Week #5 In Class Deceptive UX Lecture + Deck Presentations + Feedback

Class #5 will open with a lecture by Nick Disabato (@nickd) (who you may know from either Cadence & Slang, or his new project Distance.)

Nick will be giving a lecture about deceptive UX techniques, that I heard him give last year before he presented it at the Web 2.0 conference.

After Nick, we will be breaking up into our project groups and presenting our decks to the class, myself and hopefully/possibly Nick.

After presentations, I will choose 1 teams deck to critique (the idea, not the deck itself) with the class.

Once every team has presented, we will start jamming on taking a wireframe and putting a design shell around it.

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Week #4 Copy - Design Exchange

Project: Design Exchange

Team: Lacey, Kelsey & Julia

Tagline: Reworking

Quick Pitch: A classified site for quality furnishings. 

Long Pitch: This website is a curated site for home furnishings. The client can buy/sell furniture of a superior quality. This site will exist to week out lower end and used furniture. All photographs will be of exceptional quality and all items will have to be approved before posted.

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Week #4 Copy - Ad School Book

Project: Book Piece

Team: Allie, Courtney & Simon

Allie

Name: Book Piece

Tagline: Manage your creativity.

Quick Pitch: Portfolio school moves fast. Make sure you're on top of it.

Long Pitch: Building a strong advertising portfolio takes a lot more than clever headlines and fancy photoshop. Timely project management, creative collaboration and extensive research are necessary to create award-winning and dream-job-worthy work. "Book Piece" is a digital resource for creative students to manage innovative, unique and inspired pieces. 

Courtney

Tagline: Simple project management for ad students

Quick Pitch: TheBook is an online project management tool for ad school students.

Long Pitch: TheBook is an easy-to-use tool designed to guide you through ad school and get you the best portfolio possible. Campaigns, research, deadlines, inspiration and directories live in one spot and can be accessed from anywhere there’s an internet connection. Your school controls the homepage, so they’re able to reach all students at one time with announcements and schedule changes when they happen.

Simon

Possible New Names: Adbase.  Book-buddy. Thought Bubble. Idearia… (kidding)

Tagline: Organizing, Inspiring, collaboration tool for ad students.

Quick Pitch: Organizing and simplifying ad student collaboration. 

Long Pitch: A good portfolio isn't built in a day, nor is it built alone. Creatives, not being known for their organization skills, now have the technology to: manage their time, share inspiration with other ad students, and easily follow project development.