SECAC 2010 Southeastern College Art Conference

SECAC-MACAA Richmond, VA
October 21-24, 2010

This year SECAC was held in Richmond, VA in partnership with Mid-America College Art Association hosted by the School of Visual Arts at Virginia Commonwealth University. I had proposed a panel titled Research and Design: A match made in Heaven or Hell and it got accepted. I had very interesting paper proposals from which I chose 5 plus mine. Ambitious no? I had thought of not presenting my paper in favor of the applicants. However, one of the panelists had to decline participation thus, giving me a chance to present my paper. I had thought about this panel and paper since I started teaching the Capstone class at Harrington College in 2009.

Our panel had very interesting topics ranging from methodologies on how to teach and embed research in the design process, simple methodical analogies and parallels between the client-designer relationship and others. One paper in particular, Experience Design Models— a Compass for Integrating Methodology, Research and Criteria by Troy Abel from Virginia Tech and Andrea Quam from Iowa State University provided historical background for research methodologies in the practice of design education. It was very informative and it ended with a proposal for a rubric or project evaluation. Another paper presented by Adream Blair from University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee titled Participatory Design Research and Ethnographic Research in the Classroom: Incorporating Research into the Design Curriculum presented an example of a comprehensive process book students put together documenting their process and results after a semester of intense research.  This research involved developing and making products that would be sold to the consumers.  Diane Gibbs from University of South Alabama titled Wait: We Were Supposed to Research? talked about students’ perceptions of research methodologies and the analogies she develops throughout the semester to help them understand how relevant research is to the design process. It was without a doubt a very funny and upbeat presentation. Diane has great sense of humor and the most remarkable statement she stated:

Design is like a good bra. It supports everything.

 

Sustainability or lack thereof…

“do you mean to tell me that you are not going to replace the battery?”

On July 24th of this year I took my iPhone to the Apple store nearest to me because its battery was shutting down in less than an hour. I bought a 3G phone on November 4th, 2008. I still had a few months on my contract with ATT. Thus, I was not looking to renew my contract or upgrade the phone— at least not yet. However, upon being helped at the store and telling them of my phone’s demise, the Apple representative told me that my only options were either to buy the same phone for $99.00 and continue with my existing ATT plan or upgrade and thus renew my ATT plan for two more years. It took me a moment to get over the news. So, I asked “do you mean to tell me that you are not going to replace the battery?” She replied very politely telling me they couldn’t open the phone to replace the battery. I replied saying that every other phone company allows you to replace the battery or at least I thought they should. Thus, my fight for a new battery got me nowhere and I had to decide if I wanted to get a 4G and start all over, or buy the same phone for half the money.

My disappointment with this marketing technique of forcing people to buy an entire new electronic device instead of replacing a part has reinforced some ideas I have entertained for a while. This last Monday, while giving a lecture to my students based on the book by Karl Aspelund, The Creative Process, we touched on the topic of sustainability, expanding on the concepts found on Stage 2 of the creative process: Identification. In the book, Aspelund emphasises the need for designers to think about sustainability BEFORE they sit down to create and sketch. He encourages designers to ask questions about materials and think about how these materials will be discarded once the user moves on. He states:

Expecting common sense should never be a basic assumption in any design…

 

Inspiration, ideas, creativity, and the genius

Some time ago, my good friend Nate Burgos from Design Feast sent me a link to a recorded presentation on TED by Elizabeth Gilbert, the author of Eat, Pray, and Love. I watched the video and it affected me profoundly. She talked of course about  her book and how its popularity had indeed, according to people, doomed her. How could she repeat that amount of success? However, to me the most important part of the video was how she described her relationship with her “muse,” her “genius” as something outside of herself. The way she described this relationship implied almost a servant attitude from the creative to their genius. See, the “genius… would come and go as it pleased. If one could not be bothered to capture the ideas the genius was bestowing upon us, the genius would leave to find another recipient and use as a vessel. But when the creative was receptive, oh! well, incredible things will happen.

to me the most important part of the video was how she described her relationship with her “muse,” her “genius.”

 

BUS EXPO 2010— Lessons learned

It has been exactly 2 months since my last post. Somehow between teaching and doing the daily designs (#daily365 for those of you who do twitter searches), time has just flown by. While those two months were going by, many ideas for posts came to me but somehow they would not materialize. I guess that is what a “dry-spell” looks like. In any case, here I am again today writing about one of my latest adventures: participating in a business to business expo sponsored by the surrounding areas chambers of commerce here in the western Chicago suburbs. Thus, it was a big event. Since I had never been involved as a business owner in one of these expos, I scrambled trying to think what to do, what not to do, what souvenirs to give away, and many other details. To help me with these decisions I consulted with Ilise Benun from Marketing Mentors. Ilise helped me think through the process and gave me great ideas. It was a great experience and though a long day I met many people and made connections. But more importantly, my freelance name is out there. Following are some of the things I learned, what I think I will do or not do next year, and of course some photos of our display. So, here it goes:

 

Beautiful paragraph… how I love thee.

Inherent to layout and typographic design is the use of the paragraphs. Usually other layout elements such as headers, sub headers, captions, quotation marks, quotes, captions, margins, page numbers tend to get all the attention the designer has to spare. Sometimes this is due to the project requirements. In the case of web layouts it is due to browser support or lack thereof, and issues with legibility. A paragraph must be read. It is after all the reason paragraphs exist—to be read.

In its simplest definition a paragraph is a collection of lines placed on top of each other and neatly arranged within a certain width forming a nice looking rectangle. If you take a moment to think about it, a paragraph is either a horizontal rectangle or it is a vertical rectangle in the case of narrow columns. The importance of seeing form in a rectangle is what allows designers to create experimental layouts or even simple layouts with some anomalies that call our attention. Sometimes these anomalies are perhaps out denting the first line, changing to bold weight the first line, perhaps doing both of those things in a middle line, indenting few lines creating another rectangle in the negative space, and sometimes these rectangles can be placed in a diagonal creating interesting compositions.

A paragraph must be read. It is after all the reason paragraphs exist—to be read.

 

Was it honest?

I have a story to tell you. My friend who we shall refer to as Designer S, was hired by Agency Q. Creative Director L did not live up to his promises. That did not stop Designer S from coming up with ideas. Some time went by and one morning a brainstorm session occurred about seasonal promotion materials. Designer S got excited and while this idea was being considered for Designer S’s promo materials, Designer S decided to put the idea on the table. The idea was received with great warmth and positive feedback. Moments passed and a private conversation ensued. In the course of the conversation Designer S was let go just moments after sharing a good idea. Designer S was offered a “settlement” and a condition of never contacting Agency Q again. In shock and not sure of what was going on, Designer S remained quiet holding back the sense of embarrassment. Creative Director L packed Designer S’s things in boxes and was escorted outside. A month in a half or so goes by and Designer S through the wonders of the Internet, discovers Agency Q’s promotional materials. The materials clearly depicted Designer S’s idea. Needless to say, Designer S called a lawyer. Unfortunately, the lawyer said, there was nothing he could do because when the idea was shared, Designer S was on company time. Therefore any ideas discussed, brainstormed, and sketched were the intellectual property of Agency Q. In other words Agency Q was not liable. True enough Designer S acknowledged, but asked “Was it honest?”

 

Just how big is your “X”?

One of the advantages of teaching the basics of typography to new students is that I get to review and relearn the basics. There is always something new to learn. As students grow as designers the ability to distinguish among the visual clues to identify a typeface becomes second nature. Thus, reviewing terms, parts of the letter, type classification and others is always welcome. Among those visual clues, perhaps the most distinctive is what I like to call the “X” factor. The “X” factor is also called proportions. Simply put, the “X” factor is what determines the typeface’s proportions based on the size of the lowercase x from baseline to the meanline.

But before we go ahead and explain the concept of proportions, let’s define some terms. The baseline is the line where the letters rest horizontally. The meanline is the horizontal line created based on the size or proportions of the letter x of each typeface. This line is relative since it moves up or down according to the size of the letter x. There is also the capline, ascent line, and descent line. These lines are also relative to the typeface’s proportions based on the letter x of each typeface. In other words, the only constant line between different typefaces will be the baseline.

 

The Papyrus controversy

The other day a good friend of mine, Paul Bruski who is also a design professor at Iowa State University posted a link on Facebook with the tag “Every font has its day?” The link would direct you to a blog called Pr*tty Sh*tty and a open letter to James Cameron regarding the use of the font Papyrus for his recent movie Avatar. The letter was very well written, it was funny, and it stirred certain controversy among the commentators. I read several of the comments and among them, there was one that caught my attention. This comment asked for an explanation as to why those of us who are designers would call Papyrus a bad font. It seemed, according to the commentator that the ranting against Papyrus had no basis. As it happens, I am in the middle of preparing lectures for the classes I am teaching. One of these classes is Typography 1. While preparing my lectures it crossed my mind to write about the font Papyrus. However, I decided instead to write about two of the principles that help us designers identify a font or a typeface as good or bad.

So, what makes a typeface good or bad?

 

Meet Ryan Peterson… a music lover & designer

Hello world!

I have been away for a bit due to recovering from being sick, Christmas decorations and shopping, and grading my students’ projects. Now I am back and this time I wanted to write about a good friend who is a great designer as well. His name is Ryan Peterson. I met Ryan in the Fall of 1998. He was taking classes with me and I remember thinking “this guy is talented.” Because I was also in charge of the Graphic Design Department at Iowa State Memorial Union, I hired him to work with us. There is a funny story behind that process. I did a portfolio call all along knowing I wanted to hire Ryan. And that year almost everybody applied! I had to sit through endless interviews and portfolio reviews! It was not that there was no talent in that pool of students. Rather, it was that I somehow knew he was the perfect person for our department. And he was! From there we maintained a good relationship through lunches to talk about design and our respective projects. Ryan now is the Art Director at Standard Printing, Ames, IA and in his free time he runs a freelance business and does pro bono work for the Greater Des Moines Music Coalition. I thought that was interesting and decided to interview him. Check out some posters Ryan has made with his blurbs about them. I think the posters are great!
You can follow Ryan via twitter @ryanwpeterson

Please read and tell us your thoughts!

Hi Ryan! Here are some questions for you. Finally!

Alma: What made you want to be a designer?
Ryan: In high school I took the career aptitude test, which after a series of questions conjures up some fantastic career suggestions for you. After displaying an interest in music and art, I believe it spit back Clown, Dancer, Interior Designer, and Commercial Artist. I laughed imagining myself doing the first three for a living, and had no idea what the fourth was. After some research I learned you could apply creativity to a non-circus related field and was sold.

 

But your letter q looks like a person!

I teach a class titled Design Issues at Harrington College of Design in Chicago. This semester the class is more like an Independent Study because there are only two students. However, every Wednesday night we engage in lively conversations and it is rare that we leave the room on time. We have a good time talking and interacting. This last Wednesday, the students were making observations about each other’s work. I was thinking there was a lot of information to keep track of, and I started to jot down some notes in one of their sketches.

While jotting down some quick notes to help them remember, my students noticed the letter q I quickly jotted down. I usually write in print partly because I had always been envious of how architects write on their blue prints. One of the words I wrote had the letter q. This letter q brought a LOT of conversation and my students told me that my letter q looked like a person. That intrigued me and I started writing a bunch of other letters while we were talking.

“well what is the history of the letter q anyway?”

There are two things that intrigued me about our jovial interaction: the fact that my letter q may look like a person to them but it had never looked like a person to me, and the fact that this could be an interesting subject to explore. Thus, I told my students I am going to blog about this! And here we are, you are reading about my letter q today! But let me show you my letter q. I used my drawing tablet to draw a few people or write a few letter qs. See below: