infoarch. 95% of typography reading.

first off, i love the fact that reichenstein has at the top of each article the average reading time for the article. so simple yet so wonderfully useful. good information architecture there, the fact he actually gave it thought and felt it important enough to include.

Before I ever read this article, whenever I try to figure out widths of anything the very first thing that pops into my mind is how wide will the content possibly ever get. Making it too small can eventually make the information look weird, if its too big the text to whitespace ratio can just start to look awkward. This is essentially what Reichenstein is talking about. Let the information dictate the interface. Gather your information to find the range you have to work with so you can then figure out what design best facilitates all that information. Save font choices and other nit-picky details for last. Rather, focus on the over-all positioning of the type and let the rest of the smaller details fall into place naturally. I know personally, I get caught up choosing what typeface I want to use and this can end up with two things. Either me never fully figuring out what typeface to go with, or over-analyzing typefaces and not being happy with what I end up choosing. Why do I do this? Because I'm OCD about things and can get nit-picky very easily but this doesn't really facilitate being productive. But, I know this, so I do my best to keep it under control.

i love this list from the follow up reading. this seems like such an amazing list of key points to keep in mind when designing a website:

1. Text-background color contrast>
2. Lazy handling of titles and subtitles
3. Text sizes
4. Text blocks that are not split up into enough small, scannable, digestible parts
5. Indiscernible links. Visited and non visited links are not discerned
6. Text is not treated as an interface but as decoration
7. It’s not clear if the text is a navigational element, a link or plain text
8. Fancy navigations marking the center of attention (content is the center of attention, content deserves the most love from the designer)

as a final side note, i LOVE what possibilites html5 and css3 have within them to help us with all of these aspects of website design.

ux. secondary research.

• Due to technologies today such as the internet and it’s integration into many devices, including our mobile phones, the world is slowly become homogenous. The same information is open to anyone and everyone. With such information, anyone can learn new skills and begin their entry to the DIY subculture, doing projects and repairs themselves rather than calling in professionals.
• The sharing of information and the beginning of the DIY culture likely began with the introduction of written texts and ultimately with the mass production of books in the industrial revolution.
• Guilds of the past also helped in teaching new skills many of those willing to learn.
• The Arts and Crafts movement has been a key element in DIY history. With the introduction of the industrial revolution, a new wave of machine workers replaced hard working craftsman, and the new mass-produced objects had nowhere near the quality of those produced by the human hand.
• The Free Festival Movement also greatly added to DIY culture. In the 70’s, both North America and the UK began green practices, recycling materials and using them over and over again to stand against materialism and capitalism. These goods were cheaper and thrift stores and resale shops became increasingly popular.
• Today, DIY culture is a way of life. With increasing prices and economic hardships, people are adopting green practices, repairing old things instead of buying new things. Their motivations are to save money, create less waste, oppose consumerism, and to create a personal identity for themselves.
• DIY repairs, particularly in fashion and furnishings tend to carry characteristics of their creator, and become a form of expression. Mended objects carry a different aesthetic when compared to new store-bought things, and tend to have more personality to them.
• Most DIYers today have a neutral political stance, only doing their own projects for monetary reasons or simply because they enjoy their old things.
• DIY culture exists in just about everyone, though in different intensities. DIY can be found in career based work and in those working from home or without a desire for profit.
• Today’s digital technologies have also rekindled a love for hand made goods and the hand made processes. It’s this reason people still hand develop film or knit their own scarves. The experience of creating the thing outweighs the material object that comes out of that effort.
• Websites play a crucial role in today’s DIY culture. Social networks have been created to sell hand crafted goods (such as Etsy), and there are many sites with how to demonstration videos for many projects.
• Books have stepped up as well with series like the “For Dummies” books and other how to projects.
• While it doesn’t apply to all DIYers, there is also a love of the story or life of an object. When someone goes to an antique store or thrift store and buy an item to use in a project, or simply to breath new life into it, they love to consider what happened to it in the past and who owned it. Old and recycled things tend to gather character in this way.
• Other sources of media are used as well. There are a multitude of television channels, each with their own website, that give hundreds and hundreds of projects for beginners and professional DIYer’s alike.
• There is a group of DIY activists in existence today however, including Betsy Greer who coined the term Craftivism in 2003. This group of DIYers stands out politically against consumerism and the lack of personality and quality of machine made goods.
• DIY is about being practical and affordable. It also is about being able to be commercial while still being art.
• DIY creates togetherness, helping bring the family closer together. Creating something together requires them to interact with each other and cooperate bringing a sense of unity to the group.
• Doing DIY makes the projects more meaningful because you make it with your hands and take time to craft it just right.

typefour.symposium writing.

Graphic Design is a lot of things, but boring it is not. April 14th will help put the possibilities of type and the alphabet into perspective. You will be involved in hands-on projects that will hopefully create a spark of inspiration and curiosity within you.

Type Spark
A Spark o’ Type
Type ‘o Spark
The Type Experience
Interactive Spark
Type: Inspired
Spark’d Type<
Inspired Spark
Spark, Inspired
Sparked Curiosity
Created Type: Handmade type by the every-day person
Hand-Made: the alphabet re-imagined
alFUNbet

infoarch. improving online experience.

While mind-mapping and coming up with my three directions for my wireframes I studied usatoday.com to figure out the information they had most prevelant to my section and what they currently have and what is and is not working. I started to realize that I absolutely cannot stand their website. In moving from the main page to the subsection's main page to an article within that section, the entire layout can change every single time. No three pages are set up the same way. The organization was all wonky, in the secondary navigation, the link to the taxes, can also be found in the drop-down menu directly to the left of it. There are many things like this where things pop up in more than one spot that cause annoying redundancies. Also, the types of tags within the articles changed from article to article. Some were tags of sections, some were author tags, and some were even different from that. All of this has got to stop. Below are my three proposals.

The first set is a grid-based design with hierarchy within bigger squares.

The second set is based on a left and right scrolling page with information scrolling vertically.

The third set is another grid-based design but more open and less about drastic heirarchy through different-sized squares.

I ended up going with the second set to take further. I was drawn to it the most of the three. Marty commented on it saying that it felt very ipad-like which I completely agree with. But why can't we take the sleekness of ipad design and apply it (successfully) to website design for a computer?

infoarch. wurman reading.

so this article was written around 1996, so some of this stuff is a bit out-dated, but still completely relevant today. in fact, this very class that we had to do this reading for is the very answer that wurman was wanting.

The amount of information out there today is crazy-huge and it seems no one knows what to do with all of it. Us as a society were brought up to come across as smart, intelligible human beings to peers and colleagues. It's supposedly looked down upon if we say don't understand something, which makes absolutely no sense. I must say that I suffer from this occasionally, when I'm in class and everyone else seems to be understanding something and I don't quite get it, I just won't say anything and figure it out later. But how can you possibly grow and become smarter if you never ask questions or push yourself? This is exactly what Wurman is trying to get at with information architecture. There is all of this information out there that no one knows how to sort through it and figure out a logical order to it all. How can we give it order and structure if no one is willing to step forward and say that they are willing to push themselves to figure out something new. Wurman believed that there needs to be an entire degree focused on solely this, the architecture to knowledge, to information, to research. We will only be able to fully understand information to its fullest until it is organized. I personally loved his LATCH acronym. That all information can be organized in fives ways:

1. Location
2. Alphabet
3. Time
4. Category
5. Hierarchy

This is definitely something to keep in the back of your mind from here on out when organizing information. It's quite a nice place to start organizing when you have no idea where to begin.