During the semester, we have spoken about different aspects of design quite extensively. I found that typography was one of the more interesting topics that we covered. The power that different font faces, colors, sizes, syles, and positions hold is incredible. Reading ads are just not the same once you begin to understand the subtle uses that typography has. This article has excellent examples as they use art that is centered around a person and their words. This gives you a basis in which to see what the typography is really achieving. You get an emotion and scenario before studying the typography. Once you have that knowledge, you can then see what the artist is doing to achieve that exact same emotion in their work. The capitalization of certain words, the italics in others, the different fonts used, all this comes together to form a message. For example, the example of Lubolin’s work. The diplomat is orally able to make “going to hell” a pretty and nice thing, as the quote says. So Lubolin uses a very fancy-like font for one specific part of the text: “Go to Hell”. Why? Because it makes it look pretty. The message being conveyed is the same visually as it is orally. And I find that kind of subtle design to be amazing and beautiful.
I really like this article because it tackles an aspect of design that I myself have been wondering about. To start off, the writer goes over certain areas where sound integrated into UX design by mere common sense, such as the GPS or games. But as it gets into the reasons as to why audio is used in these examples, it gets interesting. There are small things that seem to be taken into consideration as you design certain things with audio. For example, turn by turn directions a GPS because of the inability to look at the screen itself. But the most interesting aspect was the fact that people can develop an attachment to the device through the use of audio. The example of Siri is perfect. Siri learns the users name and uses that name in it’s responses, thus giving the illusion of the user having a conversation with another person, not some automated system. This strikes me as intriguing because it seems that by developing that connection, it creates a more pleasant user experience, which is what the goal is in the first place.
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What I liked about this article was that the writer used real life examples to demonstrate his point. He quoted certain people to get his point across. I can agree with his argument. Having separate websites for different devices because of incompatibility issues confuses some users because of the changing interfaces. He makes good points that full websites should be similar to mobile sites, meaning that they should be minimal and concentrate on the user. And then this kind of design can be translated to mobile devices without the hassle of stripping away pieces of the site. It just seems to be another way of saying that your site contains a lot of useless features that serve to do nothing for the user other than giving them an extra option to click on. This argument I can agree with because it is very intuitive. However, he also mentions budgetary limitations that may lead to creating a separate site for mobile devices. This sort of problem may keep this kind of change in design from happening.
This wasn’t a very long read but it has very good pointers for digital painting when using reference pictures. The cat example was especially good because it spoke about the fur and how many would use a thin rough brush to paint it, giving it a porcupine look. In reality, a large soft round brush would work well, aslong as you follow the direction of the fur. The article basically focuses on looking at a reference photo thoroughly and pick out specific features of the photo so that you can accurately create a very realistic painting in relation to your reference.
The thing I like about these designs is the modern style that they have. They look very new-age and a lot of people like that kind of stuff. The subtle animation in the middle of the first picture is a nice touch. It’s not so excessive that it draws the users gaze towards middle for long periods of time, but it adds a nice motion on a static page making it less boring.
19 Real world advice
This article really highlights important misconceptions that many design students, including myself, have/may have had. Students are raised with the idea that once you graduate from college, your diploma will mostly carry you credential wise when you are hunting for work. However, as the article states, this is different in web design. Education comes second to talent and skill design wise. Education is important of course, but skills hold more weight. Students also should learn to network and advertise themselves. The more people they can meet earlier on, the more chances they have of finding work later on in life. The business aspect of the article is important as well. Some students dont realize how responsible they have to be when entering the life of a working person. They are responsible for their decisions and the jobs they take. understanding business will help a freelancer make educated decisions that are based on reliable knowledge. These are the very important aspects that college fails to convey, depending on where you go. Students would do well to remember these points and read this article to get a head start.
This was an interesting article. Having worked with After Effects before, it did not occur to me that there were that many differences between working on stills in Photoshop or After effects. I had read somewhere before that working in stills using After Effects was just as effective (if not more) as using Photoshop. It interested me, but i didnt read too much into it. Reading through this short article really reinforces what I had read back then. I can see some of the points now that I think back, such as the more realistic effects and linking to files as opposed to embedding them into the project file. The points on the workflow were the most interesting to me. I didn’t think of it that much before now. But I can see how After Effects workflow is cleaner than that of Photoshop. Photoshop gets very bulky with the amount of layers that have to be made for different effects. After Effects makes it easier by allowing each effect to fit under 1 layer. I may try working on stills using After Effects to see the difference for myself, but I expect it to be a good experience.
15 Splash pages
Before reading this, I wasn’t aware of what the term “Splash pages” meant. Now having read it, i can attribute a name to something I don’t like very much. The reasons were highlight in this blog. Mainly some of them do indeed take forever to load, and that keeps the user from entering the main site for just a little while more. People sometimes underestimate the power of 10 seconds, but I myself have left websites because the splash page was taking far too long to load. I think that if the splash page serves a purpose more than showing off, then of course by all means keep it. However, designers should be very careful when trying to use splash pages as part of their design. Do it incorrectly, and one could make a huge error in user interface design. I strongly agree in the use of splash pages for advertisement, but only if it isn’t too complicated for the user to use. If they can’t intuitively navigate through or are not impressed by it, then it may be the weak link in your design. These are a few points, but i feel that these are very important aspects of the argument. It all comes down to the use and presentation.
16 Navigation bar
Tutorial: http://www.sigtutorials.com/tutorials/other/banner-navigation-tutorial.html
