DHA 2351: Spring 2008

Remember that your process blogs are meant to be an electronic sketchbook of sorts, allowing you to pool your ideas, inspirations, links to resources, and digital images of your work in one place. Your blog should also showcase your progress throughout the course; include multiple entries for each assignment to relate this sense of progression. Most of you are already doing this, but two blogs that stand out are:

http://elliesketchblog.blogspot.com/
http://amy-berg.blogspot.com/

Also, remember to include the link to your personal website in a visible location on your blog and vice versa.

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Research is always a critical step in the design process and can be inspirational as well as informative. For class on Thursday, Feb 21, find at least two sources of factual information related to your series concept and three sources of inspiration that will inform and guide your designs (these can be campaigns, series pieces, and/or innovative examples of grid structures). Blog these examples, being sure to provide source information (i.e., the article name and location and/or the designer and campaign name) and how it will shape and inform your design(s). We will be sharing these in class on Thursday.

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When creating a series of related pieces, it is helpful and effective to develop a grid system on which to base the designs. Grids help to inform your individual layouts, and – while they may seem limiting at first – can actually aid in revealing new and innovative designs that effectively balance consistency and variety within your series.

Grids should be developed before your designs in order to provide a framework in which to work. In your planning and brainstorming phase, consider how a grid could be implemented to create hierarchy, structure, and unity within your series.

As you design, ask yourself:

-Do you want your grid to be highly visible or subtle?
-What are the proportions of your grid?
-How do your elements (i.e., headline, image, supporting copy) occupy the spaces? Will this vary?
-How will you break out of the grid, in order to introduce variety and interest in your designs?

Inspirational resources

Josef Müller-Brockmann is esteemed for his use of grids in his designs.
Check out this collection of "forty-eight posters" by the Swiss teacher and designer




The Guerilla Girls are an underground but public group of anonymous women who bring to light issues of sexism and racism, especially in regards to art and politics.
Check out their series of posters addressing art museum discriminations

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Chip Kidd, a contemporary graphic designer most notably known for his award-winning book cover designs, will be at the Minneapolis Central Library on Feb. 27, 7pm, speaking about his own publication, The Learners, a follow-up to The Cheese Monkeys.

With The Learners, the fascinating follow-up to his national bestselling debut The Cheese Monkeys, Kidd again shows that his writing is every bit as original and memorable as his celebrated book jackets. The Leaners is a remarkable story about advertising, electro-shock torture, suicide, a giant dog, potato chips, and the Holocaust.

Get full details about this FREE event!

I encourage you all to attend this free and local event to increase your awareness of well-known professionals in your field. Chip's dramatic and appropriate use of found images and careful integration of type is iconic and is recognized worldwide; the opportunity to see and hear him speak is one not to be missed!

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If you are experiencing difficulties connecting to your U of M webspace from home or other off-campus locations, you may try running a VPN (Virtual Private Network) Client before you try to establish a connection.

To do this, simply:

1. Download the appropriate VPN software
2. Follow the installation instructions

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If you are using Dreamweaver to upload files to your U of M webspace, you will need to install an extension in order to set the file permissions to allow for public viewing of your files.

1. Download extension
2. Follow these directions

Remember, you can also set the file permissions in a separate FTP client. Either way, test yourself by viewing your website and seeing whether or not the files are visible. You may need to refresh your browser once you have updated the settings.

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1. By Tuesday, everyone should have established access to their personal web space on the University servers. Please post *something* on your index page (i.e., a link to your blog, an image of your work, your name and email address) to test that you have correctly established a connection and are able to upload files. We will discuss any issues in class.

2. For your in-process critique, please have your poster:
-printed to scale (no smaller than the required 12x19")
-mounted (either flush on foam core or on black matte board with at least 2" margins on all sides)

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The local (and totally awesome!) screenprinting duo, Aesthetic Apparatus, will be hosting their 2nd Annual "Kindling & Litter-box-liner Sale" this Saturday, Feb. 9, from 6-11pm at Grumpy's in downtown Minneapolis. This is a great opportunity to buy some slighty damaged but incredibly cheap posters, and also a good place to find inspiration . . . these guys really know how to print!

Check out some of the prints that will be on sale >

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Your persuasive poster is meant to printed on a large format printer, in order to increase your familiarity with atypical printing sizes and non-standard methods. There are a variety of printing options in the cities, but the most accessible ones are available to you as CDes students.

Plotter information
The College of Design has (at least) two plotters available for students, one in McNeal 305 and one in Rapson 127. You can find more information about lab hours, etc on the CDes "The Lab" website. Note: This site also contains a wealth of other information, including program tutorials, which may be helpful to bookmark.

Cost: $5 per linear foot (MAJOR deal!)
Size: Up to 42" wide (allow for margins) and X" long
Color: Color / BW
Paper: Matte / Satin
File type: Adobe .pdf (from jump drive or NetFiles)

Remember to *plan ahead* when printing as many things can go wrong, i.e. the plotter is out of paper/ink, your file type is incompatible, everyone is trying to print at once, etc. If you have more specific questions, the lab attendants are very helpful.

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Your second assignment requires you to engage the art of persuasion through the use of striking imagery and limited text in a black and white poster. It is appropriate to reflect on the classic persuasive methods of rhetoric (logos, ethos, and pathos), as rhetoric can be defined as the art of influencing the thought and conduct of an audience[Source: Dictionary.com]. Today, Aristotle's methods hold as much relevance to advertisements and poster design as they do to effective verbal communications.

Consider which of these methods is most suitable to your content by conducting some research on their individual use, purpose, and resulting effect. The sources below should get you started with your search:

Basic definitions: Learning How to Use the Three Main Rhetorical Styles
Comparison chart: Highlights the characteristics and resulting effects of each method

Examples:
          

Note: The above examples may exhibit characteristics of more than one persuasive method. I have simply chosen the one that seems most evident in order to help categorize.

In helping you to analyze these (and other) images and build your own persuasive poster, reflect on the following questions:

What is it about the visual that grabs your attention first? Why?

How does this image connect to the rest of the visual?

What purpose does this image serve? What do you think the person who created it wanted you to know?

What is this image about? Describe what ideas, emotions, etc.. are portrayed in the image.

What kinds of ideas is this image trying to persuade its audience about?

Source: WikiBooks.com

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As you work on the design of your home page and eventual website, it may be inspiring to check out some Webby awards nominees and winners, categorized by year and type (i.e., Art, Best Home/Welcome page, Professional Services).
The Webby Award is one of the most prestigious and widely recognized honors a website can receive, and the winners (chosen by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences) can count themselves among the most elite and industry-leading sites of the year.

While it's always useful to have some well-designed sites to look to as inspiration, looking at the worst designs can be inspirational as well. To see for yourself how much the field of web design has progressed, check out the Wayback Machine, which has archived web pages since 1996. Looking at the University's site in 1997 is quite revealing as to how much has happened in a short time.

Similarly, this collaborative interactive piece, "Defining a Decade of Web design" addresses some interesting questions regarding web design, its cultural impact, and how it has changed over the course of the last decade. The interface allows you to explore this interactive timeline and see the progression that has occurred in our field and social and public realm as well.

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As U of M students, each of you have access to 20MB of web space on the University of Minnesota servers. Your web address (which cannot be changed) is:

http://www.tc.umn.edu/~<your Internet ID >

ADCS has a great overview and guide that will help you through the process of accessing your space and uploading files for public viewing. Read the ADCS Personal Website Guide to get a better understanding of this process.

You will need an FTP program in order to upload your files to your server space. I recommend using Cyberduck, but you can also use Fugu or Fetch (will require you to login with your x500).

I suggest using Dreamweaver to build your websites, although you can also build your html files in any text editor (i.e. TextEdit, WordPad), etc. I do not recommend using programs such as Microsoft Word, which adds its own code to your files and will undoubtedly result in undesirable effects.

If you have little to no experience designing or implementing websites, now is the time to learn! The best way is to learn by doing, but the following tutorials are helpful as well:

Basic HTML: http://www.w3schools.com/html/html_intro.asp
Overview of CSS: http://www.w3schools.com/css/css_intro.asp

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