Curious Anonymous Stories – Part 7
INFO-GRAPHICS AND BEING INFORMED… OR NOT
This brief story is about trust in information. Trust in what we know and what we think we know. Trust that we are prepared. And, trust that what we learn is correct, sound and adequate.
I have always been fascinated and somewhat entertained by instructional drawings – the more dire the situation depicted, the more interested I tend to be. Despite the potentially lifesaving information they provide, safety guides, like airplane seat cards and “conspicuously posted” Heimlich maneuver posters, primarily catch my attention for a single reason – they’re morbidly humorous.
In an effort to boil intricate details or complex choreography down to a series of easily comprehensible steps, instructional illustrators often unintentionally over-simplify their drawings. The results are either dreamy or cartoonish, and fail to convey the severity of the situation or task at hand.
From my perspective, this seems especially true of vintage or foreign instructional illustrations for which new wisdom or methodology has replaced outdated techniques – or, where printed instructions in other languages add to, rather than alleviate, any lingering confusion.
A number of years ago, I happened to be at an outdoor antiques market picking through a pile of mostly terrible drawings and watercolors, when I came across a small stack of black and white gouache paintings with markings that suggest they were intended for print. I was immediately captivated by what seemed to be a very contemporary series of stylized and minimalist depictions of hand-to-hand battle. Each drawing was titled in pencil with a name like “Stop a Body Kick” or “Disarm Opponent With Gun.”
More: continue reading here…
Like this:
Wild Temperature Swings – Loving the Hots, Warms and Cools
MASTERING THE USE OF COLOR BY EXPERIENCING AND DOCUMENTING COLORS IN CONTEXT.
Learning to see the full spectrum of color – and understanding how individual shades combine to create new tones and hues – are two of the most basic skills a designer or artist will ever learn.
Beginning with the universally experienced elementary school tempera paint mistake – commonly known as icky brown – we all gradually improve and expand on our mixing skills. Some of us even master that purple we were going for in the first place.
Being more than a few years beyond those early lessons, I’ve learned a thing or two about color – and continue to do so however and whenever I can. I’ve written about traveling with an eye for color, even traveling specifically to seek out new colors. I pay attention to color use from past decades and am much more aware of how they can change from season to season and at different times of day. I am very interested in how colors affect mood, habit, appetite and even memory – and I’m fascinated by how culture plays into our understanding of, and relationship to them.
A new study, conducted by Columbia University, recently caught my attention. Researchers concluded that, since the advent of search engines, we have reorganized how we handle memory storage. Our brains increasingly rely on the internet, much the same way we depend on the memories of friends and family, to hold onto facts and details that are important to us. We simply choose to forget things we are confident we can dig up again online.
More: continue reading and PHOTOS here…
Like this:
Bringing Soulful Back – A Tactile Approach To Design
INCORPORATING FOUND TEXTURES AND PATTERNS INTO MOTION GRAPHIC PROJECTS – ADDING DEPTH AND PERSONALITY IN THE PROCESS.
For years now, and probably since I started working as a graphics and motion designer, I have been drawn to unusual textures and patterns. Specifically, I have become a connoisseur of the types of vintage and antique surfaces that can’t be realistically duplicated by even the most sophisticated software.
It seems to me that the more advanced computer programs become at generating slick, reflective and transparent surfaces, and the easier and more affordable these programs become, the less variety we see in design across television and the web.
Textured and patterned surfaces take time and skill to collect, coordinate and present in pleasing arrangements – and it’s simply far easier to create “hi-tech” and polished looking graphics than it is to work in a more tactile direction.
I’m not suggesting that all designs should incorporate complex found textures and patterns, but it would be refreshing to see them implemented more frequently in network branding, commercials and show titles.
Truly memorable graphics are always those that enhance and reinforce the mood and content of what they promote, and do so in a fresh and novel way. If impeccably lit, transparent and shiny surfaces, choreographed splashes of liquids, highly polished and flaming parts of mystery machinery, or fly-throughs of glowing letters in deep space accomplish this, then I’m in favor of their use (sort of). If not, I’d prefer to see something more original – something that shows at least a modicum of creative stretch on the part of the design team.
Mind All Your Ps and Qs While You Still Can
THE ART OF CURSIVE, LIKE SHORTHAND, MAY SOON BE A QUAINT RELIC OF YESTERYEAR.
Cursive handwriting is still widely taught in American public and private elementary schools, but, its use by current students and young adults is in rapid decline (read more here and here). When handwritten essays were introduced to the SAT in 2006, only 15% of the 1.5 million students who took the test wrote their answers in cursive. The rest chose to print.
Just as keyboards and recording devices helped make shorthand an unnecessary skill for office staffs and journalists, a range of new devices and modes of communication has gradually eaten away at the relevance of fast and artful penmanship.
And, with more and more testing-oriented, budget-challenged school systems removing cursive from their elementary curriculum, it’s only a matter of time before entire groups of Americans will find some – if not all – of the following logos to be illegible:
What will this mean for companies that have developed logos and other aspects of their branding and advertising with the use of script or cursive fonts? Will they find it necessary to re-design using block letters, doing away with – in many cases – decades or even centuries-old identities in order to remain accessible to all readers?
At the very least, this latest development represents a potential sea change for graphics professionals who will lose the ability to base their designs on flowing cursive letter forms.
Does it make financial or strategic sense, going forward, for any company to introduce a logo based on a script font?
As a term, “John Hancock” refers generically to a signature – and putting your John Hancock on a document means adding a mark that is as unique as your fingerprint. Looking at the stylized handwriting of the original John Hancock in the logo above, I’m reminded of the significance of his grandly overstated and flamboyant signature on the Declaration of Independence.
Would we know his name today at all if he had printed it in block letters?
© Markus Horak, 2011
LOOKING FOR DESIGN’S PLACE IN AN EMERGING ENTERTAINMENT FORMAT – AND FINDING IT EVERYWHERE
scene from "L’Arrivé d’un Train" - 1895
One persistent scrap of film “fakelore” is that moviegoers in the 1890s bolted from theaters, terrified by footage of an oncoming locomotive in the Lumière brothers film L’Arrivé d’un Train. Others are that The Jazz Singer was the first feature “talkie” with sync audio – and that D.W. Griffith invented “film language.”
More examples here.
Historians question the likelihood of spectators running hysterically from a sequence of flickering black and white images of a moving train. Being pioneers in film simply allowed the Lumières to over-hype the thrill of seeing their movie – and who at the time knew better?
Likewise, Al Jolson wasn’t the first actor to be recorded on a soundtrack, but his movie was a financial triumph and is therefore most often referred to. And, the D.W. Griffith credit likely grew out of the director’s self-promotion efforts years prior to The Birth of a Nation.
I couldn’t help thinking about these quasi-markers in film history, while attending the Power To The Pixel and Wired Magazine Cross-Media Forum held in New York last week. As each new speaker introduced his or her contributions to the nascent format of transmedia, the “new” frontier of interactive entertainment, I thought about the story of the Lumières’ audiences. I wondered which member, if any, of the panel would be able to claim his or her own shockingly real speeding locomotive and, with it, a place in history.
Transmedia is a form of storytelling that involves a traditional element like a film, video or book – and combines it with audience interaction via social media, story-specific merchandise, game elements and events, etc. This allows the creators to delve much further into details that weren’t, or couldn’t be explored in the original film.
Like this:
WHAT THOUSANDS OF HITS, “LIKES” AND COMMENTS CAN TEACH YOU:
My aim is to compose a new post for this blog at least once each week – but since it’s entirely a labor of love, this “schedule” gets pushed when I’m busy. Occasionally too, I sit and wonder what to write about – or question why I’m spending the time writing at all. This tends to delay things as well.
A week ago, WordPress featured one of my recent posts on Freshly Pressed – essentially pointing it out as one of their favorites to the gazillion subscribers and daily readers of the WordPress homepage. And, from Friday through Wednesday of the following week, readers went from respectable (my assessment) – to comparatively INSANE.
After the digital dust settled, I was able to quasi-analyze which of my posts and images got clicks – and which didn’t. Those that did had:
- topics that were relatable or of general interest
- an emotional aspect or connection to readers
- a means of interaction, questions or sharable tips
- strong images or video incorporated
- something original to say or show
In a very simple way, the experience helped me re-answer the question – why blog? Unlike waiting for feedback from pitches or discussing work with colleagues, the impact of “like” and “don’t like” in this case was instant, blunt and very informative. This equals good click – whereas this, not so much… no click.
For me, the main reason to blog is feedback. Through reader comments, clicks and searches, I glean a terrific amount of insight into what people like and respond to – and that makes me a more informed writer, presenter and designer.
The posts that were least successful at attracting readers (and therefore clicks) are what I’ll call curatorial – re-posts of images or material that I came across and wanted to pass on. For this type of post, it seems that even my most brilliantly witty titles and thoughtful copy (if I may say so myself), failed to garner much curiosity.
The post that racked up the most hits – out of over 12,000 – was about a former roommate’s collection of souvenirs, and how memories and meanings that are tied to such objects, can evolve over time. In short, it told a story – and readers liked it. The fact that it provoked emotion is evident in their comments, which contained stories of lost loved ones, distant childhoods, holiday traditions and personal mementos.
In between the most and least read posts, were dozens of examples of images that inspired a click, when those around them didn’t – and articles that were read and shared, when others were ignored.
This is all basic to A/B or usability testing on websites and games – and it’s a natural part of the discourse to people who regularly make presentations or give speeches. However, without access to focus groups and audiences, you’re not likely to have many opportunities that allow you to see a large-scale and unbiased opinion of your ability to convey a concept – or the effectiveness of your choice of words, images and designs.
© Markus Horak, 2011
Remember The Future?
A few weeks ago, I came across a stash of slides of my student work that I had always intended to transfer to digital storage before their emulsion deteriorated and I lost them forever. Since starting an archiving project didn’t seem like a particularly fun way to spend my weekend when I last had them out, I stuffed them back in their box and let them sit on a closet shelf for a couple (or five) more years instead.
Unfortunately, during that last stretch of neglect, some unofficial expiry date passed and they literally, and almost comically, devolved to the final stages of a complete film meltdown. This time around, I would either have to transfer them immediately to my computer or take a final look and toss them in the trash. I decided to give preservation a try.
Luckily for me, there were enough duplicates of each slide that I was able to scrape together a good representation of the work and send them through the scanner before exposure to light and air did them in completely. I felt a bit like Howard Carter must have while handling Tutankhamun’s knickknacks, but these artifacts were neither particularly earth shattering or especially old. In the end, I was able to scan about seventy-five slides, or what amounted to a quarter of the portfolio.
