Name Andy Rutledge
Location Plano, Texas
Web http://andyrutled...
Bio Designer, cyclist, composer, curmudgeon. Owner of Unit Interactive.
My early experience in the design profession was unlike that of most of my peers and colleagues. I did not attend design school and did not enter the profession with the academic design training most receive. Instead of starting a design career in my early to mid twenties, I started when I was almost forty years old, after more than two decades in retail and corporate management while at the same time being an intermittent artist and craftsman. As a result, I was never offered design advice from mentors or professors. My training as a designer has been mostly derived from 30 years as a musician-composer and bonsai artist. Additionally, my design understanding has been greatly augmented by an ongoing study of human behavior, psychology, and sociology.
I did, however, receive lots of formal training in music and artistry. Much of that training was and is as a private student of highly skilled professional artists and I continue that training to this day, for I believe that someone with no teacher is lost. As a result, I am a student and I will always be a student. I expect I’ll be a student when I’m 90.
sIFR_callback_4_DoFSCommand(info, args);
Love the Business as much as the Practice
So while I have certainly received instruction, have pondered lessons offered in books and in articles, and have learned lessons through practice, I have not really ever received advice the way that Tony had in mind when he wrote to commission articles for this series in his weblog. Even so, he asked that I contribute to describe my story and offer something that I’ve learned through experience.
Perhaps the most profound and impactful lesson I’ve learned was not something that came only through my own experience. It is something that was informed by my experience, but made clear to me again and again by observing other designers over time. Loving design and being an excellent designer is not enough to succeed as an independent; nowhere near enough. If a great affinity for business is not part of what motivates you, go to work for an agency or in-house for a company, but don’t go the freelance route or you will fail (and be very unhappy until that time). I have never seen an exception to this fact. The lesson is that if you want to be a successful independent design professional you have to love the business of design.
sIFR_callback_5_DoFSCommand(info, args);
Guest Author Bio
Andy Rutledge is Principal and chief design strategist at Unit Interactive. When not designing or hanging with the family, he is usually found banging on the piano or putting in a few miles on his bike.
Monday, November 30, 2009
Project 4 article
March 4th 2008, By Andy Rutledge: If you’re a web designer, do you consider yourself to be “a creative”? When you describe your profession to others, or when you promote yourself or your agency, are references to creativity prominent in your words? If so, how do you characterize creativity’s role or significance in your work? How closely do your references to creativity conform to the popular understanding of creativity…and how much to its actual nature?
This last distinction is important because the popular conception of creativity and its relationship to design is often distorted. As designers, we are, rightly or not, widely perceived as custodians and professional exponents of creativity. Therefore, the ways in which we define, employ, and represent creativity matter.
In light of this professional responsibility, it’s best that designers recognize the difference between idealistic definitions of creativity and the practical, effective nature of the applied creativity professionals must exercise—and then behave accordingly. Individual designers may have differing ideas about these issues. I believe that our ideas about creativity and how we employ it factor significantly in the quality of our design efforts and in our professional prospects, so I want to challenge your concept of creativity’s place in our work and professional communication.
So what is creativity?
Creativity is…
…never having to say you’re sorry. Yes, just like love. In fact, like love, we must never judge or ridicule creativity. Creativity is precious; it is our birthright and a glowing light that resides within each one of us, making us special and unique…
Well, not really. These sorts of sentiments are fine for young children needing reassurance and encouragement, but as designers, our creative efforts are judged—and rightly so. While many commonly popular definitions of creativity amount to little more than references to self-expression or flamboyancy, we designers should not be so lax or obtuse in our concept of it. Much hinges on our use of creativity, including our clients’ fortunes.
Creativity has nothing at all to do with self-expression or flamboyancy. Aside from the simple ability to create things, the most important feature of creativity is a highly developed perception filter that is somewhat less common than we’re led to believe. Despite what we were taught in school, we don’t all possess significant creativity, and fewer of us still have any skill at employing it. True, anyone can make something, and anyone can make something up. In this mundane sense, everyone is creative. But this basic truth belies the design-relevant definition of creativity, and ignores the fact that each one of us has different creative abilities.
Creativity is technical and analytical, not expressive (as in self-expression). It is a filter through which perception and output pass, not a receptor or an infusion (as in the case of inspiration). Creativity may require or be enhanced by inspiration, but the two are distinct forces. (These facts are vital in discriminating between appropriate and inappropriate descriptions and applications of creativity.)
Creativity is an inborn capacity for thinking differently than most, seeing differently, and making connections and perceiving relationships others miss. But most importantly, it is the ability to then extrapolate contextually useful ways of employing that data: to create something that meets a specific challenge. By this definition, creativity is merely a tool; it does not convey skill. For a dedicated few, though, this inborn capacity is then further augmented by certain disciplines, including:
ongoing curiosity,
the desire and habit of looking more deeply into things than others care to,
the habit of comparing stimulus with result, and
a habit for qualitative discrimination.
It is primarily these disciplines that set top creative professionals apart from those who are merely gifted. It is also these disciplines that help shape a designer’s intuitive senses, which are vital to design craft, processes, and overall success. Being merely creatively gifted is no qualification for design expertise, and the idea that creativity is a magic bullet that anyone or any designer may employ to positive effect is a vacuous notion.
There is another factor that’s vital to the effective use of creativity in the design process: timing, or when in the design process creativity should be employed. The most effective use of creativity begins with a litany of very un-creative things called “facts”—the facts we get to know during the discovery process.
Careful where you point that thing
The siren song of creativity is likely responsible for more bad design than any other factor. Some might think this overly dramatic, but I believe we should regard creativity as a rather dangerous tool. Like a firearm, it should be treated with caution and respect, and used professionally only by trained individuals.
If you are a designer worth your salt, you know that no design project begins with creativity. Instead, it begins with client- and/or context-specific discovery, and lots of research to help you understand the fundamental nature of the challenges at hand. All designers must guard against the urge to invest in specific creative ideas before becoming intimately familiar with the contextual landscape of a design project.
Sadly, creativity is often used as a crutch, or as a surrogate for design competence. Some individuals reveal themselves as clinging to this practice when they complain that some client work prevents them from “being creative.” What they mean here is that they dislike not being allowed to express themselves. But design competence has little to do with self-expression, and creativity is no substitute for knowledge or comprehensive understanding. Instead, design is most significantly founded on the comprehensive understanding and greatly developed empathetic/sympathetic sense that highly skilled and disciplined individuals bring to bear.
Design creativity often involves coming at a communication or interaction challenge sideways, or from another uncommon angle. In this way, you may find clever or otherwise compelling concepts upon which to base your solution. The thing is, you can never know what constitutes a sideways approach until you have fully explored and are intimately familiar with the entire landscape.
For instance, if your client is NASA and you’re asked to design a spacesuit that allows for a greater degree of physical movement and manual dexterity, you can’t leap straight into creative brainstorming and suggest a form-fitting spandex suit. That would be a creative response to the issue presented to you, but it would also reveal your ignorance of the overall context, e.g. the fact that space is a vacuum.
Creative mythconception
Before we continue, I want to touch on a common misrepresentation of creativity. In discussions with other designers, occasionally one might hear arguments for how web design creativity is or can be stifled by various external forces, like web standards or client-mandated constraints. But these sentiments indicate a flawed concept of creativity, its place in design, and its purpose in our process.
Any reference to constraints that limit creativity is just another way of equating creativity with self-expression, an erroneous and irresponsible idea. Except for personal projects, self-expression has no place in design, but constraint is vital to design. No component fuels creativity more than constraint. Indeed, without constraint, creativity (and design) is irrelevant. The discovery process is mostly about finding constraints, which is why we must do such a thorough job of it.
Constraints are a designer’s best friend. They’re signposts, not shackles. In a sense, constraints amount to the solution half-built. It is merely up to us to then realize the other half according to what these signposts indicate is appropriate. Nowhere in this concept does self-expression find any valid foothold.
Our intuitive, subjective design senses are relevant to our work. Part of a designer’s job is to show people what they want before they know they want it, and our success in doing so is based largely on our intuitive abilities. But there is a difference between what we prefer and what we know will work best. Competence demands that we understand this difference and filter purely subjective data from sympathetic, fundamentals-based creative work.
Steering the conversation
While my goal here has been to offer designers something to consider about their work and perhaps some challenging ideas to chew on, I have another purpose in all of this. At the start of this article, I asked how you conceive of and associate yourself with ideas of creativity, from a professional perspective. I noted that designers are generally considered to be the custodians of creativity in the professional world, but this distinction may soon come with a cost. So I want to describe a scenario I deem important to our profession, and perhaps to present you with another challenging idea.
If you read any of the prominent business magazines, like Forbes, Fast Company, Business Week, or Inc., you can find in every issue references to how creativity is vital to success. With the tangible benefits of great design being touted and trumpeted from every corner of the business world, companies aim to seize on what they believe to be the key factor in great design and innovation: creativity. What’s so appealing and what is apparently widely believed is that creativity is absolutely free and available to, and from, everyone on staff. Score!
Businesses are also beginning to look beyond their own sandboxes for the benefits of creativity. Many businesses are looking to customers to craft their marketing, believing that the vast pool of ordinary citizens is a valuable untapped creative resource. But when you recognize, as we do, that creativity is not a magic bullet, and that few individuals understand how to employ it effectively, you can sense trouble looming on the horizon.
The ideas circulating in business communities are misguided; the results of this sort of activity are usually wholly unproductive and inevitably lead to disillusionment. But that’s not all they’ll lead to. Another result of this failed effort is likely to be a vengeful backlash against “creativity.” This all-too-predictable pendulum swing will reflect poorly on design professions, which will be both unfortunate and unfair, given that creativity has so little to do with effective design.
Because of this impending trend in much of the business world’s perceptions and opinions of creativity, the design profession will increasingly be judged by how it represents creativity. Web design is one of the so-called creative professions, but that classification has potential to be an albatross around our collective neck, and I think it is a good idea for all of us to soberly consider how we represent value to our clients.
Think about it:
Are you most comfortable asking your clients to invest in your creativity or in your design competence? Or do you believe these two things to be synonymous?
If you are the client and you’re spending $450,000 or $45,000 or even $4,500 on design/marketing services, do you trust to design skill or creativity first?
When a client admonishes you with, “…now I don’t want you to get too creative on this one…” does it indicate that they’ve got a clear grasp of creativity’s place in design work?
Which quality is easiest to demonstrate to clients and potential clients: your creativity or your skill-based design competence?
Which quality do you think your clients can more easily grasp and perceive benefit from: your foundational design skills or your creativity?
All of these questions relate strongly to perception rather than substance, but we are in the business of crafting perception, and our substance depends on our clients’ and potential clients’ perceptions. It is our business to craft those perceptions about how creativity fits into our work—if we don’t, others will do it for us, and the result may not be to our liking. Key Points: never having to say you’re sorry, we don’t all possess significant creativity,Creativity is technical and analytical, not expressive (as in self-expression),thinking differently than most,By this definition, creativity is merely a tool; it does not convey skill. For a dedicated few,creativity is often used as a crutch,
This last distinction is important because the popular conception of creativity and its relationship to design is often distorted. As designers, we are, rightly or not, widely perceived as custodians and professional exponents of creativity. Therefore, the ways in which we define, employ, and represent creativity matter.
In light of this professional responsibility, it’s best that designers recognize the difference between idealistic definitions of creativity and the practical, effective nature of the applied creativity professionals must exercise—and then behave accordingly. Individual designers may have differing ideas about these issues. I believe that our ideas about creativity and how we employ it factor significantly in the quality of our design efforts and in our professional prospects, so I want to challenge your concept of creativity’s place in our work and professional communication.
So what is creativity?
Creativity is…
…never having to say you’re sorry. Yes, just like love. In fact, like love, we must never judge or ridicule creativity. Creativity is precious; it is our birthright and a glowing light that resides within each one of us, making us special and unique…
Well, not really. These sorts of sentiments are fine for young children needing reassurance and encouragement, but as designers, our creative efforts are judged—and rightly so. While many commonly popular definitions of creativity amount to little more than references to self-expression or flamboyancy, we designers should not be so lax or obtuse in our concept of it. Much hinges on our use of creativity, including our clients’ fortunes.
Creativity has nothing at all to do with self-expression or flamboyancy. Aside from the simple ability to create things, the most important feature of creativity is a highly developed perception filter that is somewhat less common than we’re led to believe. Despite what we were taught in school, we don’t all possess significant creativity, and fewer of us still have any skill at employing it. True, anyone can make something, and anyone can make something up. In this mundane sense, everyone is creative. But this basic truth belies the design-relevant definition of creativity, and ignores the fact that each one of us has different creative abilities.
Creativity is technical and analytical, not expressive (as in self-expression). It is a filter through which perception and output pass, not a receptor or an infusion (as in the case of inspiration). Creativity may require or be enhanced by inspiration, but the two are distinct forces. (These facts are vital in discriminating between appropriate and inappropriate descriptions and applications of creativity.)
Creativity is an inborn capacity for thinking differently than most, seeing differently, and making connections and perceiving relationships others miss. But most importantly, it is the ability to then extrapolate contextually useful ways of employing that data: to create something that meets a specific challenge. By this definition, creativity is merely a tool; it does not convey skill. For a dedicated few, though, this inborn capacity is then further augmented by certain disciplines, including:
ongoing curiosity,
the desire and habit of looking more deeply into things than others care to,
the habit of comparing stimulus with result, and
a habit for qualitative discrimination.
It is primarily these disciplines that set top creative professionals apart from those who are merely gifted. It is also these disciplines that help shape a designer’s intuitive senses, which are vital to design craft, processes, and overall success. Being merely creatively gifted is no qualification for design expertise, and the idea that creativity is a magic bullet that anyone or any designer may employ to positive effect is a vacuous notion.
There is another factor that’s vital to the effective use of creativity in the design process: timing, or when in the design process creativity should be employed. The most effective use of creativity begins with a litany of very un-creative things called “facts”—the facts we get to know during the discovery process.
Careful where you point that thing
The siren song of creativity is likely responsible for more bad design than any other factor. Some might think this overly dramatic, but I believe we should regard creativity as a rather dangerous tool. Like a firearm, it should be treated with caution and respect, and used professionally only by trained individuals.
If you are a designer worth your salt, you know that no design project begins with creativity. Instead, it begins with client- and/or context-specific discovery, and lots of research to help you understand the fundamental nature of the challenges at hand. All designers must guard against the urge to invest in specific creative ideas before becoming intimately familiar with the contextual landscape of a design project.
Sadly, creativity is often used as a crutch, or as a surrogate for design competence. Some individuals reveal themselves as clinging to this practice when they complain that some client work prevents them from “being creative.” What they mean here is that they dislike not being allowed to express themselves. But design competence has little to do with self-expression, and creativity is no substitute for knowledge or comprehensive understanding. Instead, design is most significantly founded on the comprehensive understanding and greatly developed empathetic/sympathetic sense that highly skilled and disciplined individuals bring to bear.
Design creativity often involves coming at a communication or interaction challenge sideways, or from another uncommon angle. In this way, you may find clever or otherwise compelling concepts upon which to base your solution. The thing is, you can never know what constitutes a sideways approach until you have fully explored and are intimately familiar with the entire landscape.
For instance, if your client is NASA and you’re asked to design a spacesuit that allows for a greater degree of physical movement and manual dexterity, you can’t leap straight into creative brainstorming and suggest a form-fitting spandex suit. That would be a creative response to the issue presented to you, but it would also reveal your ignorance of the overall context, e.g. the fact that space is a vacuum.
Creative mythconception
Before we continue, I want to touch on a common misrepresentation of creativity. In discussions with other designers, occasionally one might hear arguments for how web design creativity is or can be stifled by various external forces, like web standards or client-mandated constraints. But these sentiments indicate a flawed concept of creativity, its place in design, and its purpose in our process.
Any reference to constraints that limit creativity is just another way of equating creativity with self-expression, an erroneous and irresponsible idea. Except for personal projects, self-expression has no place in design, but constraint is vital to design. No component fuels creativity more than constraint. Indeed, without constraint, creativity (and design) is irrelevant. The discovery process is mostly about finding constraints, which is why we must do such a thorough job of it.
Constraints are a designer’s best friend. They’re signposts, not shackles. In a sense, constraints amount to the solution half-built. It is merely up to us to then realize the other half according to what these signposts indicate is appropriate. Nowhere in this concept does self-expression find any valid foothold.
Our intuitive, subjective design senses are relevant to our work. Part of a designer’s job is to show people what they want before they know they want it, and our success in doing so is based largely on our intuitive abilities. But there is a difference between what we prefer and what we know will work best. Competence demands that we understand this difference and filter purely subjective data from sympathetic, fundamentals-based creative work.
Steering the conversation
While my goal here has been to offer designers something to consider about their work and perhaps some challenging ideas to chew on, I have another purpose in all of this. At the start of this article, I asked how you conceive of and associate yourself with ideas of creativity, from a professional perspective. I noted that designers are generally considered to be the custodians of creativity in the professional world, but this distinction may soon come with a cost. So I want to describe a scenario I deem important to our profession, and perhaps to present you with another challenging idea.
If you read any of the prominent business magazines, like Forbes, Fast Company, Business Week, or Inc., you can find in every issue references to how creativity is vital to success. With the tangible benefits of great design being touted and trumpeted from every corner of the business world, companies aim to seize on what they believe to be the key factor in great design and innovation: creativity. What’s so appealing and what is apparently widely believed is that creativity is absolutely free and available to, and from, everyone on staff. Score!
Businesses are also beginning to look beyond their own sandboxes for the benefits of creativity. Many businesses are looking to customers to craft their marketing, believing that the vast pool of ordinary citizens is a valuable untapped creative resource. But when you recognize, as we do, that creativity is not a magic bullet, and that few individuals understand how to employ it effectively, you can sense trouble looming on the horizon.
The ideas circulating in business communities are misguided; the results of this sort of activity are usually wholly unproductive and inevitably lead to disillusionment. But that’s not all they’ll lead to. Another result of this failed effort is likely to be a vengeful backlash against “creativity.” This all-too-predictable pendulum swing will reflect poorly on design professions, which will be both unfortunate and unfair, given that creativity has so little to do with effective design.
Because of this impending trend in much of the business world’s perceptions and opinions of creativity, the design profession will increasingly be judged by how it represents creativity. Web design is one of the so-called creative professions, but that classification has potential to be an albatross around our collective neck, and I think it is a good idea for all of us to soberly consider how we represent value to our clients.
Think about it:
Are you most comfortable asking your clients to invest in your creativity or in your design competence? Or do you believe these two things to be synonymous?
If you are the client and you’re spending $450,000 or $45,000 or even $4,500 on design/marketing services, do you trust to design skill or creativity first?
When a client admonishes you with, “…now I don’t want you to get too creative on this one…” does it indicate that they’ve got a clear grasp of creativity’s place in design work?
Which quality is easiest to demonstrate to clients and potential clients: your creativity or your skill-based design competence?
Which quality do you think your clients can more easily grasp and perceive benefit from: your foundational design skills or your creativity?
All of these questions relate strongly to perception rather than substance, but we are in the business of crafting perception, and our substance depends on our clients’ and potential clients’ perceptions. It is our business to craft those perceptions about how creativity fits into our work—if we don’t, others will do it for us, and the result may not be to our liking. Key Points: never having to say you’re sorry, we don’t all possess significant creativity,Creativity is technical and analytical, not expressive (as in self-expression),thinking differently than most,By this definition, creativity is merely a tool; it does not convey skill. For a dedicated few,creativity is often used as a crutch,
First Blog for Project 4
Multiple column grids: divide the page and are distributed evenly across the page. The more columns give additional flexibility for the arrangement of visual elements. Creates an organized structure, asymmetry, line things up, also have opportunities to use different column widths.
Line length: type size, leading, and column width all contribute to how many characters are optimal for a line length but as a general standard for continuous text, forty-five to seventy-five characters per line is the ideal length.letter, space , and numbers are all characters. This is all done by hand because there is no computer program that does this for you.
Baseline grid: is an imaginary grid upon which type sits. The baseline of a piece of type can be forced to 'snap' to this grid to maintain continuity across the pages of a design.
Typographic river :is a river is a series of inconsistent word spaces that creates distracting open lines running vertically through the justified paragraph.
flow line: a flow line is a horizontal measure that divides the page into spatial divisions and creates additional alignment points for the placement of the visual elements.
White space: into your designs is important because space provides visual contrast and contributes to an effective ordering system. The empty compositional space brings the visual elements alive. This can be done by using less text, grouping things,leaving more space on the edges.
Type color/Texture: the choice of typeface, type size, leading, word spacing, and line measure affects the texture and color (tonal value) of text setting. (ex. Clarendon has strong horizontal emphasis while Helvetica has a monotone texture) the density of typographic elements and their perceived gray value - the overall feeling of lightness and darkness on the page. the density of text, being that things are leaded out and not bold.
X-Height & how it effects type color the x-height is the height of the lowercase letters without ascenders or descenders. Different typefaces have different x-heights which give them different textures, depending on the x height, the typeface can look darker or lighter
Justification: uses three values for type setting; minimum, optimum, and maximum. justification settings allow the designer to specify the minimum, optimum and maximum spaces between words. Justification settings also allow for additional spacing to be introduced between letters where necessary.
Ways to indicate a new paragraph: indent, ex dent, make the first letter larger, tracking, leading, extra spacing. etc
hyphenating text: make sure there are not more than two hyphenations in a row, too many hyphenations in any paragraph, and never hyphenate a heading.
Hanging punctuation: must be adjusted so the text will appear aligned and not distract the eye. This applies to asterisks, apostrophes, commas, en dashes, hyphens, periods, and quotation marks.
Hyphen: is strictly for hyphenating words or breaking words in paragraph settings
En dash: is a punctuation mark used in compound words and to separate items such as dates , locations, times, and phone numbers. (can also be used to separate thoughts within a text) when an en dash is used like this, spaces are added before and after the dash.
Em dash: is a punctuation mark used to separate thoughts within a text. There are no spaces needed before and after, but kerning may be required.
Ligature: is a specially designed character produced by combining tow or three letters into one unified form. It is one form used when two or more letters would normally touch or overlap. Common ligatures are fi or fl. Sometimes ligatures are not required because the typeface letter forms have be designed to minimize the problems that make ligatures necessary.
CMYK: cyan magenta yellow key
RGB: red, green blue
Line length: type size, leading, and column width all contribute to how many characters are optimal for a line length but as a general standard for continuous text, forty-five to seventy-five characters per line is the ideal length.letter, space , and numbers are all characters. This is all done by hand because there is no computer program that does this for you.
Baseline grid: is an imaginary grid upon which type sits. The baseline of a piece of type can be forced to 'snap' to this grid to maintain continuity across the pages of a design.
Typographic river :is a river is a series of inconsistent word spaces that creates distracting open lines running vertically through the justified paragraph.
flow line: a flow line is a horizontal measure that divides the page into spatial divisions and creates additional alignment points for the placement of the visual elements.
White space: into your designs is important because space provides visual contrast and contributes to an effective ordering system. The empty compositional space brings the visual elements alive. This can be done by using less text, grouping things,leaving more space on the edges.
Type color/Texture: the choice of typeface, type size, leading, word spacing, and line measure affects the texture and color (tonal value) of text setting. (ex. Clarendon has strong horizontal emphasis while Helvetica has a monotone texture) the density of typographic elements and their perceived gray value - the overall feeling of lightness and darkness on the page. the density of text, being that things are leaded out and not bold.
X-Height & how it effects type color the x-height is the height of the lowercase letters without ascenders or descenders. Different typefaces have different x-heights which give them different textures, depending on the x height, the typeface can look darker or lighter
Justification: uses three values for type setting; minimum, optimum, and maximum. justification settings allow the designer to specify the minimum, optimum and maximum spaces between words. Justification settings also allow for additional spacing to be introduced between letters where necessary.
Ways to indicate a new paragraph: indent, ex dent, make the first letter larger, tracking, leading, extra spacing. etc
hyphenating text: make sure there are not more than two hyphenations in a row, too many hyphenations in any paragraph, and never hyphenate a heading.
Hanging punctuation: must be adjusted so the text will appear aligned and not distract the eye. This applies to asterisks, apostrophes, commas, en dashes, hyphens, periods, and quotation marks.
Hyphen: is strictly for hyphenating words or breaking words in paragraph settings
En dash: is a punctuation mark used in compound words and to separate items such as dates , locations, times, and phone numbers. (can also be used to separate thoughts within a text) when an en dash is used like this, spaces are added before and after the dash.
Em dash: is a punctuation mark used to separate thoughts within a text. There are no spaces needed before and after, but kerning may be required.
Ligature: is a specially designed character produced by combining tow or three letters into one unified form. It is one form used when two or more letters would normally touch or overlap. Common ligatures are fi or fl. Sometimes ligatures are not required because the typeface letter forms have be designed to minimize the problems that make ligatures necessary.
CMYK: cyan magenta yellow key
RGB: red, green blue
Saturday, November 28, 2009
Monday, November 9, 2009
FLASH
Flash is a program that designers use to give their website a bit of personality. Designers use them to help the user have a better experience/ a more personal experience with their page, rather than something that they just get board with.
http://www.typorganism.com/ was the first site that i went to that used flash. This site had some pretty awesome features. The main page was a series of buttons that led you to another page. There was one page that was all text, but when you first went to it there was nothing there and i was like uh hellooooooo, then i moved the mouse and the text came on the page and every time you moved it there was a ripple like water. another aspect of this site that was cool was a page that used all type to create an image of a mans face, or a pic of a cat, or Barack Obama's face. There was a lot more but your going to have to check out the site for yourself!http://www.reformschoolrules.com/ This site was pretty cool as well. They added a little bit of doodles to give the page a more personal feel. Some things were continuously going on the page and then there were things that you ran your mouse over and little icons would pop up.
http://www.theadventureschool.com/ The last site i went to had a little animation for each different thing you could check out about the page. and something that was interesting was that you could have all the little animations playing at one time.
http://www.typorganism.com/ was the first site that i went to that used flash. This site had some pretty awesome features. The main page was a series of buttons that led you to another page. There was one page that was all text, but when you first went to it there was nothing there and i was like uh hellooooooo, then i moved the mouse and the text came on the page and every time you moved it there was a ripple like water. another aspect of this site that was cool was a page that used all type to create an image of a mans face, or a pic of a cat, or Barack Obama's face. There was a lot more but your going to have to check out the site for yourself!http://www.reformschoolrules.com/ This site was pretty cool as well. They added a little bit of doodles to give the page a more personal feel. Some things were continuously going on the page and then there were things that you ran your mouse over and little icons would pop up.
http://www.theadventureschool.com/ The last site i went to had a little animation for each different thing you could check out about the page. and something that was interesting was that you could have all the little animations playing at one time.
Sunday, November 1, 2009
Data Flow
This example of showing the different colors of the flags in pie charts is by far one of the most interesting layouts that i have seen in all the examples. It jumped out at me when we were in class and again when taking a closer look. I love how the design is so simple but very exciting. Your eyes moves all over the picture plane. For me i always try to make things simple and easy and i think this idea demonstrates that concept very well.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)