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The spreads can be viewed here on a good day when my website does not suck. Augh.
Things to do:
Finalize gallery guide, postcard, poster by next Tuesday (must be approved)
Get estimates
Finish Screenprinting posters
Send to printer
Duluth Rotary Club
Greater Downtown Duluth Council
Kitchi Gammi Ya Ya Ya
Arrowhead Regional Arts Council
Armory Center
Group members: Annie Haubenhofer, Laurie Lawrence, Topher McCulloch
Front:
Back:
It's designed to fold down into a map-like shape: 8 columns and 3 rows. I decided a simple accordian format would be too boring, and booklets folded down from 11x17 seemed too small. Folding down an 11x17 into this map format, however, makes the page seem much much bigger. I need to integrate the imagery better (I'd like to break the grid more instead of having a ton of equal sized rectangles), and the line through the white space on the bottom is space for a timeline of my life. The idea is that the gallery guide is literally a "guide" to my life, leading through all the development up to now. It's also a prototype for a "designer's memoir" which is told primarily through images and all that ephemeral crap kept around. Someone pointed out that that's the function of a scrapbook, but my approach is a little more abstract.
I have a prototype printed that I'm going to write all over and try to think of ways to enhance the design and content.
The poster is more about subtlety, so I don't think I like the huge lettering here. It shows you better my tracing of some typography. I am attached to how "SELF-TITLED" looks (not that I'm even sure that's my final show title), but I am open to criticism.
Playing around with collage some more here. Bud suggested incorporating the show information into the book pages, which I thought was clever. I need to print this one to see if it works in the real world.
A secondary idea inspired by too much abstraction. For the hair posters, I definitely need to use a silouhette of this year. The hair idea was inspired by how hair is in reality a poor determinate of gender, as lots of men have long hair and lots of women short, but it marked me as a 9th grader. This school picture inspired the entire painting series, and was cause for plenty of angst. The covered eyes hint at discomfort with the image. In a final version, I'd physically collage the title over the image and have visible tape.
Back of the postcard. I like the computer-based hand lettering, but it does not work mixed with digital versions of the same font I think. The concept is that I'm primarily a design major, but the show is going to be 95% studio based. It's also a critique of the awful typography show cards have.
The BBC posted fifteen web principles [link from Design Observer], which I think are quite pertinent to our class discussions. Also of note is #12: "Accessibility is not an optional extra."
That is almost all that remains of my early days of 3d modeling and virtual reality chat worlds. A google search on "Myrth" (my old username) and "ActiveWorlds" will reveal several pages of where my hands dipped into the cyberpot. I won a world design contest or two, was features on some hip ActiveWorlds pages, created a world for a Bot Expo (that never happened), and generally was a huge nerd. I was pretty active for a 13-16 year old.
Imagine my surprise when this "SecondLife" thing started showing up in the news. I was taken aback. A new 3d chat world with build options? Whatever happened to ActiveWorlds? Research revealed ActiveWorlds was still kicking, and for $69.95/year. Citizenship in my day was $20. Then I started to realize Second Life's draw. Avatars are customizable. You have to pay to build, which being an involved creative act, is not really for the masses. However, vainly adding doodads and gewgaws onto a virtual representation of you. Now that’s commerce. How else would you convince someone to shell out for a virtual American Apparel t-shirt? This is the MySpace generation. Time magazine voted "you" as the person of the year. "You" as in YouTube as in you fucking narcissist. I can't judge, as my senior show is going to be entirely self-portraits, but that's another matter. Building was why I loved ActiveWorlds. I'm obsessed with the miniature and recreating worlds. I love Legos, and I even love Christmas villages. I miss my train sets. These days I'm channeling my model making needs into painting and drawing, but the idea stays the same.
I still haven't tried Second Life for myself, but I don't think I want to. I want to build. Not look pretty. And buying land just doesn't sound appealing in a virtual setting, but even ActiveWorlds, which once allowed tourists to build free, has been turning the option off to promote citizenship. I guess vanity was hinted at in ActiveWorld's avatar structure too. Tourists can only be a faceless man or woman dressed in gray, labeled simply "tourist." Paid citizens can choose from a much larger list, including exciting things like an alien and a bald German guy named Helmut. No customization. I left ActiveWorlds after 3.0. It's now on 4.0. Maybe SecondLife's success will cause the implementation of a customizable avatar.
Either way, both places are great for a cyber-lay.
Assignment
a) ask three users about the purpose of the interface, the way the information is organized, and the way the interface works
(b) ask three users to do something while watching how well they do.
Questions concerning the user's understanding of the interface:
What is this site?
What is the information that is portrays?
What can you do with this site?
What are your thoughts on color usage?
Where is the navigation?
Where is the search box?
How do you e-mail a page?
What type of an organization is CARE?
Questions concerning the performance of simple tasks:
Elaborate 3 tasks of varying difficulty
1. Job or internship
2. Find annual 1998 report
3. Find key partners
4. Find Care International Offices
1. Purchase a carewear infant creeper
2. Find and watch Keynote Address by Sen. Barack Obama
3. Find Humanitarian Consequences of War: Sudan