#collectioncuration

[lifergus-blog]

Wk #5 Collection Curation & Creation

Twelve steps in creating an inforgraphic: this is aimed towards internet graphic artists as it has useful tips on including links, embedded codes and sharing capabilities for social media. What appealed to me was the generic information that can be applied to any infographic, for example: don’t provide too much information, make sure information is relative to your audience and note where your research comes from.   The steps also reminds us to make it visually interesting and even fun, although I’m personally against things that are too humorous as not credible.  Step 11 confuses me when it says stick to hot topics, unless this infographic is solely for people looking to get hits on their websites and is creating infographics for a buzz. The following step, #12, I found interesting since I had not heard of this suggestion before, but to keep your brand identity separate from your info graphic.  I’m not surer SU follows this pattern but I’m going to keep my out for that, although I can see what you would want to keep your “product” separate.

My Jason Voorhees infographic is just pure fun!  I said infographics shouldn’t be fun, but I have to retract that statement in light of this graphic.  I think infographics as providing a service of delivering data, but this image opened my eyes to a different world.  I’m not sure why anyone would want to know the sequence of killings in the Friday the 13th movies, but I guess if you want to know that this image is perfect.  The creator had good fun of using Jason’s signature masks as the base to present the info, it definitely caught my attention and I did read it to see how they mapped the victims and characters.  It fascinates me how someone thought up this way to present information, it’s really a skill compared to all us bar chart users.

Moving from the fun of the Friday the 13th graphic to my next image we clearly see that “taste” as in good or bad, plays a factor in creation.  The Unsexy America doesn’t offend me; I just find it terribly tacky and tasteless. I’m not sure where this graphic was published, hopefully for a very narrow and select audience, but my fear is that it is circulating in a store bought magazine or social media sights. This is what I mean when I say the image can discredit the content. Sperm shaped moans to illustrating percentages, really?  I don’t see any sources for this data and this type of graphic is just perpetuating the Jersey Shore/Girls Gone Wild mentality that doesn’t need any more attention in the media.

My coffee vs. beer graphic is another fun graphic although again there aren’t any resources for this information and I had a very hard time believe the claims it makes.  Those are very broad general characteristics that can’t be true for every user and in fact could be detrimental to some.  This poster also has too much info; it’s trying too hard.

My project is going to have a map, so there are a few takeaways from this for me, but mostly this has changed the way I look at infographics.

[lifergus-blog]

Wk #3 Collection, Curation & Creation Blog

For this week’s posts I’m inspired by our reading on accessibility, so I am going to reflect on that.  The readings made me more aware of things that have been altered and things that haven’t and what it means to me.  I love handicap bathrooms and the electronic doors meant for wheelchairs.  Something that I use but don’t really enjoy is Apple’s Siri, I haven’t had success talking to it.   While this is a big feature of the iPhone it is also one of the accessible features the device has but I feel that it’s flawed.  The other day I was trying to dictate a simple list of items needed from the grocery store. Siri or the iPhone’s voice recognition had difficulty recognizing what I was saying and typing it accurately.  After several attempts I gave up and just let it write whatever it wanted.  I managed to get through my whole list except the last item listed, “Karen”, and I didn’t remember what I said that was close to that.  It took a few days for me to realize that it was carrots I wanted! I was frustrated with this feature that is a luxury to me because I don’t need it to write for me I just wanted it to write for me.  I can’t image the frustration from people who rely on such technology to navigate through daily life.   It’s not always the technology’s fault; sometimes it’s the user (like me who’s probably talking too loud) or the creator’s (as in the visual accessibility). A few years ago I took accessibility training at Syracuse University to learn how to make our daily communication accessible for all users.  Simple changes to emails like type size and color along with no unusual lines or unlabeled graphics can make a big difference in terms of accessibility. Despite the urge for training I don’t see much of the suggested changes implemented.  

 My post for accessible game design I thought was important to share because that is such a big part of younger (than me that is) lives and the thought of it not be accessible to many children breaks my heart.   Accessible doesn’t mean being hearing or vision impaired, it can be a simple as nerve damage or color blindness.   The post called “blind problems” I actually found before my shopping list mishap, but I felt like it was something that would happen to me, and while it sounds funny it could be severely embarrassing for someone. The PSA post about invisible disabilities shamed me because I felt guilty of that I may a person who would judge somebody based on what I see, not knowing what is really going on.  Back to my mention about liking handicap stalls…I supposed they’re not just for wheelchairs and I should avoid them for people with invisible disabilities.  The last post is about making an “accessible icon”, again something that is overlooked by unafflicted individuals like myself, but can mean the world to a child or person in a wheelchair.  In the age of emojis in various skin tones, why shouldn’t the 45 year old handicap sign get a makeover, sending a more positive message that being in a wheelchair isn’t inactive as the old symbol shows, but rather very active as the forward leaning moving chair image portrays.  

Whether it is typed words or graphic images, careful thought needs to be put into the design and the question asked, “Is this good for everybody?”

[lifergus-blog]

Wk #2 Collection, Curation & Creation Blog

Typefaces…. everybody needs them, but does everybody know how to use them?

In Chip Kidd’s book we learn that there is a lot more to putting words onto a page (or other) mediums than we may have thought.

Our modern alphabet and written form evolved over thousands of years and is derived from Roman alphabet that came from the Greek alphabet, which was derived from the Phonenician alphabet.  To effectively communicate text, designers used different typestyles to communicate text. Nowadays most everybody is familiar with different typestyles as computers are integral part of our lives and offer an endless variety of choices.  When I was growing up there were only typewrites that didn’t offer a choice and all your communication looked like this.  So when I saw a post on Chinese typestyles it really surprised me.  What I know of Asian writing is very minimal as my exposure is limited to Chinese take-out menus. If you asked me to describe what it looks like I would definitely has to say “brush strokes” as I imagine black ink and a wide brush painting the characters.  It’s narrow minded of me to think that other cultures wouldn’t have multiple options of type…or character styles as we do.  Just looking at my computer that are several different ethnic offerings and within those families of typestyles many have options for bold, bold italics and italics just as we have.

When looking at different fonts I came across the article on The Paris Review.  I’m not familiar with this magazine, but it’s art and design is linked with some very famous artists like Picasso and Chip Kidd. I really appreciated the effort put into these designs and the evolution the covers went through, from many different typestyles and layouts it always seemed to keep it’s contemporary edge. I’m actually intrigued to read a copy and if you click on the photo in the link you will see multiple covers. It’s fun to see the attempts to change the covers by using photographs as with some of Kidd’s “album art” covers. It’s not appealing to me and perhaps many others since the cover reverted back to its original design.   I think it works best to keep the same format but use variations, like the hand drawn type, to keep it interesting.

The periodic table of Typefaces is a fun thing and it claims to have the 100 best fonts of all time listed.  This looks old as nowadays we have thousands of typefaces, but this is a good example of the variations that exist from one style to another.  The flowchart is especially funny because it suggests that there is a formula for designing something and having it be successful.  I’m not sure if this was made by a graphic artist to mock the do-it-yourselfer at home or if this is an old infograph for when pc’s became popular and enabled anyone to create their own layouts.

So there’s a lot of typestyles out there and no set formula as to how to use them.

[lifergus-blog]

Week #1 Collection, Curation & Creation

Wysocki in her article points out the visual text arrangement performs persuasive work. As we know logos are often designed to convey a message about the company it represents, but placement of text can also represent the information it typically provides.  The title page of a research paper is to include just that, the title of the document.  If you typed random text in that space, at quick glance it could be construed as the title, because that is what we’ve been trained to think. Just as letterhead has company information on the top and/or bottom of a sheet of 8.5 x 11 paper. 

In my “Layout matters” image the book cover challenges us to think about how type is laid out on a page.   Placement of the text is very critical to the delivery of the information being conveyed.  Wysocki also asked us to consider in addition to text placement, the style and size of the type and the object it is placed on.  In my photo with the transparent jacket with the text “I have nothing to hide” the transparent jacket is helping to make the argument that the artist is trying to convey.  The text alone would make the statement, but including the visual image (and the text) really emphasizes the author’s point.  It also shows that different materials or “visual elements” can play an integral part in the message being sent.  Materials act in a supporting role for text as do other elements like photographs, drawings, color, size and medium.  In my image “Keep It Simple” I like that while this image does look simple since it is just black and white with an unremarkable font, it’s carefully planned and laid out and is not  exactly that simple.  The author had to determine the type size, if it were a default 12pt it would have been simple for the author but not for the reader as we wouldn’t have seen it in the image. And the white text on black is not common, but that was chosen maybe to stand out or to emphasize that they are using black and white to be simple.   The placement of the type running through the center of the book is trying to illustrate the creators disregard for placement as if the letters were just plopped on the page. But making that conscious decision to do that took a lot of thought and planning.  So again where the artist’s image is sending a message to keep things simple, creating the image was not so simple.  I really liked the quote I re-blogged that said “Clutter is a failure of design not an attribute of information”.  That combined with my other images really made me think about how and why we present the information in the way we do.  Especially for that quote I thought of our discussion about the SU website, there is a lot of information presented perhaps too much.  And while there is organization to the site, it doesn’t have a great design and tries to deliver too much. So as the quote is suggests, you can present information, a lot of it, but it should be well designed, if not, it’s not the information’s fault.