Summer Taulbee: Thinking with Design

Design Thinking: Design is in the Details

Here is an article I found on Alistapart.com. As I was reading the article, all I could do was think about the process we are going through when working with the signage for MindShare. The article talks about how design is in the details and it reminds me of the things our professors say to us. We are constantly reminded to not just slap a logo in the corner and to stop merely pushing things around to occupy the space, of our first level idea. We need to push beyond first level and start to design something even better. What more could it do? Well, in summary, this article just reminded me exactly of what we’re currently going through and learning. Design is in the Details.

Design Thinking: Standards to Design By

At the bottom of every poster or announcement, of any event, there is always a line of text telling you to call a number for special accommodations or for special seating for the disabled or handicapped. If you aren’t disabled or handicapped you’ll probably look past that small amount of information and not even stop to think about the person who has to call that number. As designers, as architects, and as employers, it is imperative that we stop to think about the disabled and take into consideration their needs. If we don’t, we are discriminating against disabilities and not only is it against the law, but it could result in a long-term negative reputation for any brand or company that doesn’t comply to the regulations and standards that have been passed through various laws.

ADA-Americans with Disabilities Act was passed in 1990 by George H.W. Bush. This act prohibits any discrimination based on disability. This includes any discrimination through employment, public services and transportation, public accommodations, telecommunications, and miscellaneous provisions.

As a Graphic Designer it is important for me to understand the regulations set under Title III – Public Accommodations and Commercial Facilities. The ADA has created a document called “Standards for Accessible Design” which gives guidelines for designers, architects to use and apply to the design of public places to allow for accessibility, which is included for the design of employee only areas as well.

The design of signage has a whole set of standards all on its own. Letters and numbers on signs shall have a width-to-height ration between 3:5 and 1:1 and a stroke-width-to-height ratio between 1:5 and 1:10. Characters and numbers on signs should be sized according to the viewing distance from which they are to be read. The minimum height is measured using an uppercase X. The finish has to be a non-glare surface. Characters have to contrast with the background.

OSHA- The Occupational Safety and Health Administration is an agency signed by President Richard Nixon in 1970 to help prevent work-related injuries and illnesses by applying rules within the workplace to protect employee’s health and safety. OSHA strives at focusing on 3 strategies: 1) strong, fair and effective enforcement; 2) outreach, education and compliance assistance; and 3) partnerships and cooperative programs.

BIFMA – The Business and Institutional Furniture Manufactuer’s Association produces standards for manufacturers of office furniture to provide adequate safety and durability. There are several different standards which are as followed:

-       Safety and Performance Standards

-       Furniture Emissions Standards

-       Color Measurement Standards

-       Textile Characteristics Standards

-       Quality System Standards

-       Ergonomic Guidelines

-       Sustainablility Guidelines

ANSI – The American National Standards Institute  is a non-profit organization that enforces set standards among the development of products, services, processes, systems and personnel. They also combine U.S. standards with international standards so products can be used overseas. They make sure that performance is consistent and that everything is tested the same way. 

Design Practice: Design Job

If everything is equally important, then nothing is very important – that’s number 3 on an article written by Michael McDonough called The Top 10 Things They Never Taught Me in Design School. This article allowed me to relate some interesting thoughts on design to myself, and what I found was that I’m not far from the real-world.

The first statement that I connected with was “If everything is equally important, then nothing is very important.” I was able to relate to this through my senior year as a design student. McDonough says, “Everything is important, yes. But not everything is equally important.” To me this was how things had to be thought about when building our portfolios. Working on 5 or more projects simultaneously, we had to find a way to figure out what needed to be done first, and what could be done last. It’s all about hierarchy. Hierarchy doesn’t only exist within a design, but it exists within project management, as well as life.

I have a bad habit during the conceptualizing stage of the design process to over-analyze a problem and try too hard to literally communicate a message. I work for hours on end trying to come up with that one concept that just comes out and says what I want it to say, and I can never find it. Until I look back and my past thumbnails and realize I had already found that answer, I just over-looked it. I always wondered if that was a designer’s flaw of mine to over-think the problem, but apparently it’s a common thing, according to McDonough. He says we’re “obsessive by nature”, and I agree with that. I’m naturally obsessive about ways of communicating because it’s what I do.

The other thing that stood out to me was, “Don’t forget your goal.” Sometimes things get so crazy that your end result get lost in the frustration and/or excitement. You tend to stray away from the initial concept and find yourself a long ways from where you started. As a student, it’s easy to lose focus of the initial concept. This is usually from stress or excitement, and sometimes we just need to reality-check ourselves and take a look at the big picture. We need to continually ask ourselves, “What am I doing this for? What is my goal?” This can apply to design students and their college career. With the stress of project management things can start building up, and just being able to understand what our goal is, should help us through the end.

Michael McDonough’s article was most inspiring to me as a student because it gives a lot of knowledgeable thoughts on design and the future and helps me to foresee what needs to be strived for when entering a new dream job.

Design Thinking: Tangoes

With the game Tangoes, you are given some shapes. You work with them, put them together, take them apart, and switch them around, all in an effort to creating a desired shape, specified by the card.

Design is much like this game. You are given a project in which you develop various concepts. You work with these concepts; putting them together element by element. You switch up the elements to create multiple variations, all in an effort to creating a desired solution, specified by the client.

This game is very representational of the design process. After getting the shapes you study them, learn them, and begin to understand what they’re about–much like a client. Research needs to be done to determine demographics, target audience and the big picture of what is going to be done. After studying the shapes, you develop multiple ways of creating a specified shape– some aren’t even close to the actual shape and some are almost there. This relates to brainstorming and conceptualizing a design. You develop multiple ideas and produce various thumbnails– some are working and some aren’t. Towards the end of creating the desired shape, you are an expert at what almost works and what doesn’t work. Finally, you create your desired shape through modifications and group input. After much thumb nailing and prototyping, you become an expert at what is working and what isn’t, which helps in the developmental stage of producing the desired solution.

It takes a creative mind and the ability to imagine to create a specific shape using various other shapes. This works the same way for design. Good design comes from a creative mind and the ability to imagine what is possible using various elements.

Design and Business: Grand Rapids

Last Thursday we got the opportunity to hear from 3 awesome, inspirational and informative people. Two of which were not designers but they work with designers, and it was interesting to hear about things from their perspective.

Ryan VanDyke
The first speaker was a recent graduate of Ferris State, Ryan Van Dyke. His dream job found him at portfolio review and it was inspirational seeing the amount of love he has for his job. For the past 25 weeks he’s been working for Carnevale ID,an interactive design firm that specializes in creating innovative user experiences for web and software products. Mike Carnevale, principle of the firm, found Ryan to have a high level of interest and dedication in code and html, and that inspired Carnevale to hire Ryan as the first employee, ever, of the firm.

He presented some of the projects he has worked on, to give us a feel for the type of work he’s been doing since graduation. Some of the projects shown were: LaBecasse Restaurant–a French restaurant in Traverse City, National City Mortage webiste, and the one and only Grand Theft Auto IV site, which had to remain confidential for it has not been released yet. However, the fact that he’s working on a website for a nationally known and very popular video game almost makes him a Grand Theft Auto “behind the scenes” celebrity, and that’s aweome!
Ryan then went on to share with us the software he uses and prefers. Beyond Dreamweaver there is Textmate, Slideshow Pro, Swift 3D, and Google API.
Ryan was inspired to learn flash from www.2advanced.com.

Hearing from Ryan was beneficial to me in a couple ways. The most beneficial was getting to see someone who was in my shoes not too long ago and how now he’s completely successful.
It was also nice to see that even through all the hard work in school, where the emphasis is mainly on print, he didn’t end up being a print designer. It’s about finding your own niche, and doing it. Finding what you do and do it the best. Perhaps after graduation you won’t be a “graphic designer” but something else that pertains to graphic design, and it was nice to know there is some flexibility out there as far as career choices go.

Dalin Clark
The second person who spoke with us, I was most inspired by. Dalin Clark is a freelance writer/strategist. Dalin is a woman who is very experienced and has A LOT of knowledge. She was a very quick thinker and merely listening to her talk was inspirational. She’s inspired by random things like windshields and backless chairs; and the want to learn about them.
Dalin Clark has worked for various areas in the industry. She started in journalism and has done stuff for various media types: direct mail, radio and advertising. She is now a stay-at-home freelancer, where she finds it comical to be able to work for global corporations in her pajamas and sweatpants, from home. She deals mainly with business-to-business where she helps companies sell things to other companies. Basically her job is to make complicated things easier to understand. She does this by looking for ways to combine words, and looking for ways to make things faster to read. She tries to find the right words that create the right feelings to intrigue the reader to want to read more.
She gave a lot of advice about what we should expect as designers. Designers need to think in their partner’s shoes and give them all the information they know. Designers need to let the writer look at the layout to make sure they have enough space to work. She continued to share with us that she, as a writer/strategist, prefers to work with people who are forth coming, honest, and give opinions straight up. She wants to work with people who need to have a problem solved and hasn’t already solved it.
Dalin Clark was very beneficial to me. First of all she gave a ton of helpful advice, the “do’s and don’ts” regarding working with a writer/strategist. But she was also very inspirational to me when she started to talk of family life. Her family is number 1 in her life. She spends more time with her family then she does working and hearing that come from someone as successful as she is, was very insightful. It was nice to know that you can still keep family number one and be successful.

Spout.com – Bill H. Robinson
The third person that spoke to us was Bill Holsinger-Robinson. He is chief operating officer of Spout.com–an online community that helps people find films and films find people. Spout.com is a networking system that hooks consumers up with people who know a lot about movies that consumers are interested in watching.
It was interesting to listen to Bill, for he is speaking from the client side. He is not a designer but would like to go back to school to be one. The site has 350,000 feature length titles.
Bill’s talk with us was beneficial through his emphasis on design. “Design should always be written with a capital D,” he says. “Design is everything.” When designing the website for spout, creating a good customer experience is key. It was also beneficial to see what goes on with the client side of design.

People Design
While in Grand Rapids, we had the opportunity to have a studio tour of People Design. It was interesting to visit this studio and see the various works produced by this firm. A lot of their work used in-house models, “cheap models” as they called it. They are the design firm that did the identity for spout.com. It’s interesting to visit this firm after going to New York City and visiting major companies there. This firm seems just like the firms in New York, yet it is right next door. There was a long discussion regarding what they look for in a portfolio and an employee, which was very beneficial to me. Hearing that they prefer to look at websites and pdf’s of your portfolio, and smaller condensed book version of portfolios instead of boards was interesting. It’s nice to know those kinds of things in the long run for future interviews and having a variety of was to show your portfolio. It was also very interesting to discover there were about 4 different employees there that had graduated from Ferris. Again, it’s inspirational to see how successful people have become finishing the same program that I am currently in.

Design Thinking: The Big Apple & Me

The most inspiring aspect of my New York Visit was the tour of Carbone Smolan. The Graphic Designer, Nena, who lead our tour, had a fun and frisky attitude that made the environment enjoyable. She was very relaxed and cool about everything. She tried her best at stressing not to be nervous for the future and gave a lot of helpful advice.

Hearing and seeing her present an identity that she created was the most rewarding part. I really enjoyed seeing what she does and relating it to exactly what I am doing in the classroom. It was very interesting to realize that we are doing exactly the same thing as she does within a firm and to comfortably understand that I am fully capable of working the same job, which usually terrifies me at the thought. I sincerely hope I can find as cool a place to work as Carbone Smolan when I decide to search for jobs. Having such a laid back attitude makes things more at ease and comfortable which allows me, personally, to be able to open up and share ideas.

Nena’s spirit and attitude was inspiring to me and allowed me to feel comfortable with the thought of applying for jobs. Her passion for branding has intrigued my excitement and I think I am leaning towards branding as an area I am mostly interested in.

Design Practice: Visiting New York

While in New York City I was able to visit and tour a branding and marketing design agency, the AIGA National Headquarters, and the publication office of Metropolis Magazine.

Metropolis:
The first place I went to was Metropolis. We met with the creative director, Criswell Lappin, who started out by telling us how 10 minutes prior to greeting us, they just had a major crisis for their next issue that was going to press in two days. I’m not sure about the details but apparently there were some legal issues with an article that had been written and it had to be pulled from the magazine, leaving 2-3 pages left to fill within the next two days. Doesn’t sound too brutal but according to Criwsell, it was. The normal amount of time they spend on an article is roughly 3 months and they had to get one done in 2 days. It’s a reality check that not everything is going to run smoothly and there will be a few kinks to be worked out, and as a design student, it’s very interesting to see.

Metropolis magazine started out in 1981 as an architecture magazine from only New York. Now it’s everywhere over everything. Metropolis magazine is the only magazine in the United States that covers all areas of design; architecture, furniture design, landscape design, graphic design, interior design, etc. It circulates about 56,000 each month. There are editors all over the United States that feed in stories about various topics from all over the nation. The most interesting fact about Metropolis magazine was that there are only 3 graphic designers; 2 of which were hired with no editorial experience. To witness a crisis like the one they were having that morning, to discover how short staffed they are with such a huge circulation rate was very shocking.

Paula Scher had redesigned the magazine for various reasons. Two of the most important characteristics of the original magazine was the huge size and the logo, both of which Paula Scher decided to change and modernize. The reasons for doing this are simple. The reason behind the size change is so that now they can fit into a bag as well as the front slot of the newsstand. The original magazine was too large to fit in a bag without rolling up, and would never have been placed in front of any other magazine because it was too large and covered everything. Now, it is still larger than most magazines, but just small enough to fix these issues.

It was also pointed out to us the difference of paper between the advertisements and the editorial pieces. The advertisements were shiny and glossy whereas the editorials were on a softer, textured paper that didn’t have a glare to it. The reason for this was for 3 reasons. It allowed the reader to be able to easily feel which section of the magazine they want to quickly flip to in order to skip all the ads. It also kept the glare off of the pages, making it easier to read. By doing this, it kept advertisers out of the section of editorials because advertisers all want shiny super glossy paper and they weren’t attracted to that section of dull textured paper.

Metropolis was an interesting visit, however, it wasn’t the environment that I foresee myself working in. It seemed really uptight and stressful and not very much fun.

American Institute of Graphic Artists:
The second place I visited was the AIGA National Headquarters. The student-member experience manager, David Hall, who gave us a tour of the headquarters, greeted us. We went through the building and he explained the purpose for the design of each floor. It was a nice experience getting to see the headquarters of the organization I have been a member of for the past 3 years. In the end they gave us AIGA’s 365 book and that was a really nice gift that we’re very grateful for.

Carbone Smolan:
The third place we went to was a design agency that specializes in brand strategy and marketing and sales. Nena and Paul greeted us, and then presented two different identities that they had created. I was extremely excited because the first project they showed us was the identity for Bideawee, a non-profit organization for dogs and cats. This is an organization in which I can relate to because I am a dog/cat lover and it is a shop I had previously discovered online and wanted to visit while in New York. The identity was a flushed-out modern approach to the old identity that gives a frisky and fun feeling. It is characterized with the image of a dog or cat within the logo in which employees of the company can choose which animal they want for their business card.

The second identity was The W Hotel. There were 3 different approaches presented to us that were viable options but the final piece created was actually 2 approaches combined as one.

A large amount of time spent at Carbone Smolan was spent talking about preparing for a job and what to expect. Nena especially contributed a sense that made you feel comfortable and excited about applying for jobs. With her free-spirited attitude, she gave a lot of useful advice.

Design Thinking: New York Museums

I recently had the opportunity to visit three prestigious art and design museums in New York City. I got to experience the Cooper-Hewitt, Guggenheim and MOMA. For all three museums, I was able to see phenomenal work and get a sense for various artists’ styles. As a student designer, it was interesting to see, in real life, work that I have studied as well as new art. I enjoy being able to view art and use my own knowledge about art and design to make sense of the logic behind its purpose or meaning. I start to relate my own way thinking to what I am seeing, and it becomes inspiring for the future.

Cooper-Hewitt:
I first went to the Cooper-Hewitt. This was my favorite museum. It was different than your traditional wall hanging museum of old paintings and things. This museum intrigued my thinking more so on a couple different levels. The first half of the museum was called “Provoking Magic” – Lighting of Ingo Maurer. This featured many different objects and how they can be shown using light. From the chandelier, to the broken plates, to even a wedding dress; everything was illuminated in some way. I had never thought about light the way Maurer had and it was very intriguing.

Downstairs there was an area about Piranesi as a designer. He had a lot to do with interior design, decorative arts, and architecture. His decorative arts included: chimneypieces, furniture and interiors.

There was also a section on Design Thinking, created by IDEO. Various works were selected by IDEO, a leading innovation design firm that had to do with things people don’t normally think about as design. The three frameworks of design thinking that the gallery was based on was empathy, intuition, and inspiration. Empathy is how designers imagine people benefiting from their ideas based on the needs at hand. Inspiration is how designers respond to the materials, technology, people, and social and cultural context of their time. Intuition is how designers’ intent and personal framework drive their vision of the outcome.

Guggenheim:
The most interesting part about the Guggenheim is the architecture and the continuous inclination of levels that made viewing the art easy and enjoyable. There were various works of arts displayed. There was a lot of photography, and then some typographic mural phrases, many being about someone’s wife. I wasn’t completely impressed with the work being displayed. The architecture of the building completely overtook any work being shown. I wish the art being displayed was more intriguing or perhaps all one theme; somehow to compliment the architecture.

MOMA:
My favorite part of MOMA was seeing Pablo Picassos painting–the Girl with the Mandolin. I have always admired that piece and I had no idea it was being displayed at this museum. I never knew I could get goose bumps looking at a painting, but I did. It was so amazing to actually see the real work in front of me. MOMA is overwhelmingly full of different art in various aspects. I really enjoyed the pop art with Lichtenstein, Warhol, Rosenquist and Ruscher. I also enjoyed the photography by JoAnn Verburg. I especially liked the piece named “Underground”. It was different photos pieced together to make one. It was just like a project we did in digital imaging called “joiners”.

Design Thinking: Value

Inspired by her grandma accidentally taking the wrong medication, due to lack of clarity of instructions on the traditional pill bottle, Deborah Adler took on the challenge of redesigning the pill bottle for her thesis assignment, at the School of Visual Arts in New York.

Adler’s assignment was to design a product and go through all the steps of taking it to market; and she did just that. Through much research, she developed a solution for making the traditional pill bottle safer.

First she studied the original bottle only to discover numerous problems it presented. The largest type on the bottle was merely the pharmacy it came from, whereas the actual name of the drug was printed at the bottom and hard to read due to horrible typographic issues with leading, kerning and line length. She also discovered that often times, numbers are printed on the labels without an explanation of what they mean. The circular form of the bottle makes it hard to read information unless it is turned while reading. Warning labels are merely stickers that are slapped on carelessly and sometimes aren’t understandable.

Along with researching the product characteristics, Adler also had to research the production process. Whether or not the product was producible, if machinery had to be purchased, if a making a mold was possible. Come to find out, it was possible, and made the manufacturers excited. Through the help of her new boss Milton Glaser at Milton Glaser’s Studio, the design was shown to Minda Gralnek, creative director for Target, who loved the design and wanted to pursue it. With the help of industrial designer Klaus Rosberg to work out all the manufacturing details, the design quickly became Target’s new ClearRX pill bottle.

The bottle was designed using Target red. It was created to stand upside-down so the label can be wrapped around the bottle to save paper. It has a flat front and back surface so the information is easier to read. It is provided with a visual distinguishing factor using colored rubber bands that wrap around the cap to help distinguish each household members medicine, to help avoid a mix-up in medication.

Together, Deborah Adler and Milton Glaser also designed a set of 25 symbolic warning labels that are easy to understand which go on the back of the bottle.

Design Practice: Photography

Environment:
Michael Schabel
Clients: Novum, Fotomagazin, Photographie, Communication Arts, Marlboro, Sony, Toyota, Lexus, Daimler Chrysler, Geo, Phillip Morris

Portrait:
David Field
Clients: Communication Arts, EYEmazing, PDN Photo Manual

Table Top:
Craig Cutler
Clients: Blueprint, Holiday, Ebay, Smirnoff, Sprint, Xbox, Microsoft, and many more.

When working with photography, the designer needs to decide whether to hire a photographer or use stock photography. When hiring a photographer there are a lot of issues to consider such as contracting and releases, deadlines, fees and rights, and copyrights and ownership. With stock photography all those contractual issues can be avoided. However, there are still issues to be considered when using stock photograph as well.

When using stock photography, the designer needs to be careful not to exceed the license from the stock agency. If additional usage is needed, then the designer needs to pay the stock agency additional fees to clear the rights. Also, it must be considered that the photographer can resell the license as many times as desired, unless, the copyright is bought, in writing, before the photo shoot.

When hiring a photographer, one of the first things that need to happen is a written contract between the designer and the photographer about the creative goals and business issues. If both parties understand basic business issues, then the creative relationship will prosper. When working with a photographer, the designer must be careful to make sure that the contracts for rights with photographers conform to the rights the designers have contractually agreed to give their clients. A client may want an All-Rights contract, which means they can use the work in any conceivable way. They typically do this to prevent competitors from using the photography. However, the best way to work with rights is to use a written limited rights contract so that both parties know exactly what deal is being agreed to. Limited rights photography can be tricky as well. These rights may affect the duration of use, geographic area of use, type of product or publication, title of product or publication, and whether the use is exclusive or nonexclusive.

Another area to be considered when working with a photographer is the budget. Designers need to determine payment options and review expenses that the photographer will need to be reimbursed for. After doing a photo shoot and the designer decides that it needs to be re shot, that could be a big expense. Designers need to consider the clients budget and not get caught between a client with a limited budget and an image cost that exceeds that budget, due to changes.