Archive for January, 2006

Google became the most-used search engine with their simple interface. Simple design. Focus on the task at hand.

They tried to extend this design solution to the Video arena, and stumbled. Why?

Just think about it a little. When you do a search, you have a term in mind. It may not be the correct term, but the responses you receive will normally help you refine your term if needed.

What do you do when you want to see a video? Do you know the name of what you want to see? Only if it’s a classic and you’re already familiar with it. Otherwise, you browse, either at the video store, on your cable system, using a Netflix catalog, etc.

I went to Google Video when it first opened, to take a look at it. It used the same interface as Google Search, with disastrous results. I couldn’t find anything I was interested in, except a few I Love Lucy shows. I left, unimpressed.

Next I took a look at iTunes Music Store. It’s interface is quite complex. It took me a while to find TV shows. But once I browsed to TV shows, I was shown an interesting sampling, and could also browse all the TV shows they carry.

So what? Well, as a web designer or client, there’s an important lesson to learn. Not simply that Google can make mistakes. Rather that you need to understand how your users will interact with your page/site. Simplicity for simplicity’s sake doesn’t always work. The iTunes Music Store is complex (and may become too complex as they add more items), but its current complexity allowed me to browse and find shows I never would have thought to use as search terms.

Search and browse are different activities. Know what activities your audience will be most comfortable doing, and design for that activity.

google video
search
browse
user interface

Comic Sans is a hot topic in the world of typography and graphic design. It’s one of those fonts that graphic designers and typographers love to hate.

The designer of Comic Sans, Vincent Connare, strikes back with an essay on his reasons for designing the type face. He says that he designed the font for a specific project, where a comics-style font was needed. Times Roman just didn’t work in a cartoon speech bubble.

Well, on that point he is correct. Comic Sans looks fine inside a speech bubble, better than Times Roman, which was the type chosen by the progamming team before he created Comic Sans.

He goes on to say that his intention was that the font be used only in children’s projects, where its hand-drawn forms would work well. But it eventually found its way into Microsoft’s core fonts, ensuring broad – and incorrect – usage by millions of office workers and other non-designers who want to show their personal creativity, and are tired of Times Roman and Helvetica.

I’ve been surprised and shocked to see classic faces such as Helvetica and Times Roman being named as hated fonts on design forums and designers’ blogs. Obviously, overuse breeds contempt. It’s a good idea for graphic designers to become aware of type fatigue as opposed to bad type design. Helvetica, Times, Trajan, Copperplate Gothic, Optima, Palatino, etc. (all faces I have seen mentioned on type-I-hate lists) are well-designed type faces that have been overused at different times in their histories.

Comic Sans is a different story. I won’t be so bold to say it is badly designed, though it is not a type face that I have ever used (before the cartoon that accompanies this post). Again, it is the overuse and inappropriate uses of it that are the problem.

It is often used by people who want to “humanize” the look of their documents and don’t have better options available in system fonts. So a font that does look fine for few words used in a speech bubble is used as a text face, where it fails miserably to the eye of a trained designer.

Is this a tempest in a teapot? What do you think?

comic sans
typography
graphic design

Last year I compiled a list of design competition links without their respective deadlines. So, when I thought to compile a similar list this year, I didn’t realize that many of the competitons have deadlines in December and January. Next year I’ll try to compile my list in November or December. Listings without dates indicate that the deadlines have already past or have not yet been announced.

Design association competitions:

• Society for News Design Best of Newspaper Design Awards deadline January 18 2006,
• Webby Awards deadline January 27, 2006,
• Society of Publication Designers (SPD) student competition deadline February 1, 2006,
• Art Directors Club (ADC) 85th Annual Student Awards deadline February 8, 2006,
• Society of Environmental Graphic Design (SEGD) deadline January 31 with a late deadline February 14, 2006,
• Association Typographique Internationale (atypi),
• American Design Awards Semi Annual Design Competitions deadlines February 15, 2006 and August 15, 2006
• AIGA 365: Annual Design Competition and 50 Books/50 Covers deadlines March 3, 2006,
• Art Directors Club of Metropolitan Washington Annual Show deadline April 1, 2006,
• Australian Graphic Design Association deadline June 2006,
• Design Council UK,
• Society of Typographic Aficionados organizes Type Gallery deadline July 2006,
• International Society of Typographic Designers,
• Society of Graphic Designers of Canada Graphex 06: GDC National Design Awards deadline November 10, 2006.

Design magazine competitions:

• Graphis entries closed for 2006,
• Metropolis Magazine Next Generation deadline January 20, 2006,
• Communication Arts Interactive Design deadline January 27, 2006,
• Graphic Design USA American InHouse Design Awards deadline January 30, 2006,
• ID Student Design Review February 1, 2006,
• Print Regional Design Annual deadline March 1, 2006,
• CMYK Magazine Interactive Media and Call for Aspiring Creatives deadlines March 10, 2006,
• HOW Self-Promotion Awards deadline March 20, 2006, Perfect 10 Awards deadline April 14, 2006,
• eye with a deadline of August 10, 2006, International Design deadline September 15, 2006,
• Folio sponsors the Folio Show.

Corporate competitions:

• Adobe Design Achievement Awards deadline April 28, 2006,
• Mohawk Show 7 deadline May 31, 2006.

Industry association competitions:

• Magazine Design Awards,
• Bookbuilders West,
• Bookbuilders of Boston,
• Western Publications Association,
• International Association of Business Communicators,
• Magazine Publishers Association,
• American Society of Magazine Editors,
• American Society of Business Publication Editors,
• Writing that Works Apex Awards deadline March 15, 2006.

Extensive calendars:

• The Workbook resource calendar including advertising, photography, illustration as well as design.
• Taxi Design Network Awards and Competitions Calendar includes a broad range of design disciplines.

Whew!

design competitions
graphic design competitions
web design competitions
graphic design

paulascher.jpg
Originally uploaded by mlangfeld.

This evening Paula Scher presented her approach to graphic design to members of the Art Directors Club of Metropolitan Washington (ADCMW).

She described the body of her work as being directly influenced by New York, where she has worked during most of her career. Even her choices of type, often tall and narrow, vertical and architectural, are influenced by the verticality of the city, the overlapping conversations, the conflicting emotions that make up the multi-layered environment of New York. Interesting, especially to the DC audence, since she grew up in the Washington metropolitan area.

An extraordinary typographic designer, Paula also paints typographically, exploring cartography as well as Information overload in her paintings. She reminded us that designers used to paint comps for book and album covers, so that painting type comes naturally to her. I still have a set of gouaches from those days myself, so I understood just what she meant.

You can check out some of these web pages to learn more about her work: Paula Scher: Chrysler Design Institute Award 2000, Paula Scher, AIGA Medalist 2001, Paula Scher’s Atlas of the World, Paintings.

paula scher
pentagram
graphic design
environmental design
typography

As I mentioned in another post late last year, I’ve been experimenting with Textorized images since the end of last year, when I discovered the possibility on Flickr. I thought I’d share some of my favorite images so far, so you can see a little more of what’s possible.

Textorizing works by defining edges and replacing those edges with strings of type, so that normally dark areas become hollow outlined edges. This poses an issue for many images, so many of the photos I’ve tried textorizing don’t work well. It also seems to be important to use images that will make visual sense, so simple, recognizable shapes seem to work best, if you want recognition.

The length of the words used in strings also affects the final image. Surprisingly, I like longer strings sometimes, shorter strings other times. I thought I’d like all shorter strings when I began to experiment.

Overall light images seem to work well. I was surprised by the polar bear image. I thought there would be some detail inside the bear. Instead the ice field surrounding the bear shows most texture.

I’m hoping to find uses for the technique in my work. The only drawback is that textorizing only works well on a small percentage of images that I’ve tried. So, it might be hard to work it into a project. I’ll let you know as time goes on.

I hope you enjoy these images. I’ve been toying with the idea of producing some posters or T-shirts if I hear that there is interest. Please let me know what you think.

Stuart Pierce Glendinning
Originally uploaded by apg.

Farewell Little Stuart. You touched so many hearts in such a short time. Your brave struggle to live has been shared by your parents with an ever-growing community of people from around the world. We will all miss you terribly.

I cried along with many others on December 29, when your Dad posted the photo we see here on Flickr. I had been watching for your dad’s photos to appear from the day I learned you were born. Such a wonderful soul in such a tiny body.

I’ve wanted to say these things before now, but hesitated, until the newest post by your Dad. He says, “I struggled with whether or not I should share my pictures of Stuart publicly. I am so glad, now, that I did. I strongly believe that this was a large part of Stuart’s job here with us….” Amen.