Welcome to Room557

Areas of Concern + Clauses of Causation

One of the most useful tools in communications design is an Audience Profile exercise — defining who you're talking to is an important step in reaching them. However, too often, these personas are hollow and mostly meaningless.

Who cares if you like to buy organic produce or have three credit cards if (1) it has nothing to do with your brand and (2) we have no context for why you have three credit cards. For instance, you might have three credit cards because (a) you got a promotion at work and are flexing your spending power ... or (b) because the first two cards are maxed out and you still have to feed your kids even after you've been laid off. These are very different things here, but both from the same hollow trait.

In my classes, I'm prototyping two ideas to help alleviate this: Areas of Concern and Clauses of Causation (CCBYNC).

I've cut a video explaining it all here

Putting your best face (and name) forward

One of the things that we insist our students do is to begin to build a brand for themselves. This starts by figuring out what people should call you and how you'd like to visually appear.

A consistent name and a headshot that looks like you is simple enough, but it's a hard slog when communicating this to our first semester students. Using a consistent name and having a representative photo helps do many things University-side, including letting your peers and instructors get to know you better... which are good things.

What is Design Process?

Developing a personal, documented, repeatable process is a crucial part of learning in design school. I often say that a potential employer will not necessarily hire you for the good work you’ve done. They’ll hire you for the good work you’ll do for them — and the best way for you to show them that you can do this is to show them your process work. After all, when you look at a portfolio, how can you be sure how much of the work came from the student... versus classmates, the instructor, or even the internet*? In most every class we teach, we have students keep a process/sketchbook — and in some classes elevate this to a more annotated version worthy of a place in a portfolio itself.

Each week during critique, we generally quickly thumb through the books and move on to the work. We refer to it if something comes up — but otherwise, we just want to know it's developing nicely. However, distance learning has made reviewing process work a bit harder. I wanted to formalize it a bit more and add examples.

 

... A potential employer will not necessarily hire you for the good work you’ve done. They’ll hire you for the good work you’ll do for them — and the best way for you to show them that you can do this is to show them your process work.

(*tip: good process is also the best antidote for a plagiarism charge)

Brand frameworks: Circles and lines

We know that people have a need to wrap things up, compartmentalize, and see things in tidy boxes. It's how we're wired. When creating communications, we keep that tendency in mind and find ourselves boiling down complex ideas into more manageable bites, or diagrammed out via doodles... or both.

The framework of the universe that a brand creates is no different. The idea behind Mr. Clean is just as easily drawn as it is conceptualized... but when drawn, you can see how something might live outside of the "brand universe" it has created.

In our branding classes, I encourage students to "draw it out" as well. Following my mantra: If you can't draw it, you probably can't properly explain it... by drawing out how a brand presents itself (and where it lives and/or doesn't live) can help to structure it in any number of positive ways for both the designer and the audience... generally helping to frame it in the minds of both.

Typographic How-to (some basics)

Combining type has often proved vexing for early designers in the same way that combining flavors might be vexing for early chefs. Proficiency will come with experience and you’ll begin to rely on a few tried and true combinations, but you’ll need a place to start. Like with many things, you have your go-to's: Those jeans you look great in. That song-list that always lifts your spirits. That combo of wine and chicken risotto that is always a crowd pleaser. What's your type go-to?

In your earliest type classes, you might have been presented with a list of approved or safe typefaces. These are like the USRDA is to nutrition: this is the amount of vitamin-C will prevent scurvy, but might not lead to optimum health. In the same way, those dozen or so faces might not get you in trouble (and they're a great place to start), but they probably won’t turn heads either. At this point, you need to begin to do your own investigation and find your own solutions to create your own plan for optimum typographic health. We’re not saying that you’ll never use Garamond and Univers again, but it’s likely that you might find combinations that evoke more of the type of style and emotions that you’re after with a bit of investigation. Also, this list does not take context into account. In many cases, you'll want to choose type based on context in the same way you choose an outfit for a party... what type of party is it? Not every party is a white-Tshirt-and-jeans type of party (that's you, Helvetica.). However, few parties are costume parties, so be careful of faces that are too decorative—or costume-y.

[You might even consider a categorical "pick-one-from" approach to type selection...]

Production Thinking

We've all heard of Design Thinking and it's a great way to envision how designers see the world — and how we can help the world see itself. However, there's a practical side that we might call "Production Thinking" that's sometimes hard to teach in design school.

Recently in one of my classes, the topic of designing for production — especially when designing logos — came up.

The importance of sketching... (and research, and reflection)

(... and keeping boxes of old stuff.)

In my identity-design courses, one of the assignments is to deliver 300+ sketches in the first week (after a few weeks of strategy and research). The students usually always protest.

However, if you don't believe me that sketching is important, listen to Aaron...

 

Handwriting typefaces... (throw them away)

[Note: This comes up often enough that it deserves a mention here]

When you use handwriting in a design project, you're trying to evoke a hand-created feel that connects to the audience in a very personal way. When done correctly, it can work quite well. When done poorly, it can seem as impersonal as telemarketer who can't pronounce your name.

GDIF: The Right ___ for the Job

In class the other day, we were talking about typefaces and their use... which lead me to a story — the later should be no surprise.

When my wife and I lived in Oakland, we owned a small two-seater car. For a lot of things, it was perfect — we were able to commute across the bridge in the car-pool lanes, parking was easy, and it was fun to drive. However, I have a picture somewhere of me trying to haul three 10-foot rolls of carpet in it. It was not a pretty sight.

Print Production for the Student-Designer: Part-1 // Paper

This is a pair of essays on production-specific topics that I hope to post in the next few days. The first is about paper and the next is about ink — both are topics that have come up in class recently. If you’ve something to add, please feel free to post in the comments section.

When beginning a discussion about print-production for the graphic design student, there are many places one could start. The other day I was thinking about how I learned this stuff and what was the most baffling and clarifying to me — and how I might explain it today to our students. Paper and ink have been a fundamental part of the communication designer's toolkit and  — even in a digital world — paper has a place... yet is perhaps the most difficult your get your head around when thinking about type, weight and size.

[Most production-orieted things I learned while on the job as we didn’t have production classes (or the internet) when I was in school. I also picked up a lot by working as my own production manager in my first job at a very small studio and later with production managers at larger firms. Many thanks to Elizabeth, Jan and Melissa for their patience and understanding.]