No. 200 happens to be Johnny Cash (because he died on this day in 2003). Even though I attempt to tie my daily characters into birthdays, death days, holidays and historical events, arbitrariness often prevails.

See 12 example characters below. Their body proportions, pigeon-toed feet and poses are due to their direct stylistic relationship to the primitive QBasic Gorilla, which inspired this whole project.

Mascot Mashup was born in 2009, but was often on hiatus for the first year of its existence. In April 2011, the site became a daily blog of 8-bit characters designed by me to be used in an ongoing Flash remake of the classic QBasic Gorillas artillery game (and possibly other 1980s-era games). Each sprite has four animation states. The first sprites drawn were all NCAA Division I college mascots, but the characters have since branched into randomness.

I plan to continue this daily art project through at least the beginning of 2012, possibly indefinitely? To be determined. See all characters at mascotmashup.com.

I am attending the HOW Design Conference 2011 in Chicago, Illinois. Below are my notes from the sessions I attended on Monday.

9:45 am-11:00 am – 36. All Your Creativity Questions Answered – Deborah Morrison, Heather Lins, Chris Chapman & Chris Elkerton
You’ve seen how Chris Chapman, Chris Elkerton, Heather Lins and Deborah Morrison keep their creative juices flowing and consistently deliver innovative concepts. Now’s your chance to ask them anything you want (preferably related to creativity). Even if you missed their earlier sessions, you’re more than welcome to come join the discussion in this panel-style session.

• Session hashtag: #howanswers.
• disneycollegeprogram.com - internship
• “The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.”
• No idea is ever original; get as much influence as possible; the best take stuff and put their own spin on it.
• “Your ideas aren’t precious.” – Heather
• Get out of the studio to generate ideas.
• Chris C.: My office is the world … my physical office is only where I execute
• Support people getting out of the office, and make the office more open and collaborative
• Everything is a Remix video series
• Statistical proof: The more fun people have, the more productive they are
• More design inspiration (through curation):
  • Brain Pickings – Deborah’s inspiration
  • The Cool Hunter
  • Inspiration Fuse sites
  • Designboom – good to look at 3D when you’re a 2D artist
  • Trend Hunter
  • Lovely Package
  • GOOD magazine
• Be a student of the world and never stop learning
• Get yourself out of your element
• Get engineers (or business people/marketers) and designers together from day one.
• Making the whole company creative might be better than building an isolated pod of creative people.
• Pick and choose your battles wisely.
• Have non-designers describe what’s not working instead of art-directing you.
  • You are the professional designer. Don’t let them move layout. Have them rely on you.
  • It’s really them just putting their thumbprint on something because they want to be part of the process.
  • Ask them: “What is this not achieving?” Big picture, not details. (Define roles, and context.)
  • You’ve got to train them on what their role is.
  • Example question: “Does this design recommendation you’re making impact the success criteria we’ve established?”
  • Don’t let them stand over you as you work.
• Search: innovation-based culture
• Academic credentials and working for universities:
  • Chris C.: All my biggest heroes dropped out of school or didn’t go to school at all.
  • Chris E.: You can go get the letters after your name, but if you’re a dick you’re not going to get the job.
  • Chris C.: “Get them [the manager] an MBA (Manage by Absence)” – your designer doesn’t have ownership because they know they are going to be micromanaged.
  • “Creativity is change. Universities don’t like to change.”
• Find this TED talk: Pixar (at their worst) during the Toy Story 2 process

11:15 am-12:30 pm – Closing Keynote – 39. Fascinate: How to Persuade and Captivate – Sally Hogshead
Why are you captivated by some people and not others? Why do certain messages convince you to change your opinion while others go ignored? And how can you create designs that irresistibly attract attention?

Find out as Sally Hogshead reveals her secrets for creating ideas that both persuade and captivate your audience. You’ll discover:

• which of the 7 fascination triggers you naturally use to persuade and captivate
• how to provoke strong and immediate emotional connections in your design and presentations—and even in your personal life
• how to influence decisions using the 7 fascination triggers: power, lust, mystique, prestige, alarm, vice and trust

What makes your personality irresistibly fascinating? Find out by taking the F-Score Personality Test.

• Session hashtag: #howfascinate.
• Are you selling a green ticket or are you selling an orange ticket? An orange ticket is fascinating.
• We take things that have no intrinsic meaning and we make them more meaningful and valuable.
• “Hi” is the GAP khakis of online dating.
• If your message fails to captivate … you get lost in the crowd.
• 9 seconds is our attention span (BBC study) and our brains are being rewired. You’re designing to goldfish.
• “In a competitive environment, the most fascinating wins.”
• The about your name that makes it different will one day make you love it.
• What makes you different, what sets you apart.
• Free digital version of her first book, Radical Careering: 100 Truths to Jumpstart Your Job, Your Career, and Your Life: sallyhogshead.com/rc
• Expressing your truest self is ultimate competitive advantage.
• You can be comfortable, or creative, but not both.
• Better to fail by going down in flames….
• Design comes in two flavors: Vanilla and Pistachio. If you want to create Pistachio, do not work at a (soul-crushing) Vanilla company.
• The 7 Triggers of Fascination (triggers are like instruments; the reasons why are almost compulsive about certain people & media).
• Mystique is almost the opposite of Passion; it is the most delicate of all the triggers.
• Rebellion is the trigger of creativity.
• Trust was the most dormant by a longshot among the HOW attendees.
• Trust is about consistency and reliability – make you work exciting and your structure boring if you want trust. Establish and repeat patterns to build trust long-term.
• Alarm is about deadlines and consequences. What is the negative consequence of not taking a particular action? If (not) X, then Y. Now your own emotional journey.
• Emotional journey of creative process: 1. possibility, 2. doubt, 3. agony (I am a hack and world is going to figure it out; I actually suck and this project is going to unveil me), 4. epiphany, 5. craft. The most important part is the agony, where you work through all the things that have already been done. Truly revolutionary ideas happen during the Throne of Agony. The worse it gets, the better the epiphany is going to be.
• Take the test: FScoreTest.com
• Mark Zuckerberg: Power and Mystique.
• HOW Design attendees:
  • 43% on the Passion trigger, secondary on the Rebellion trigger. (18% is statistically significant.)
  • You defend the world from predictability.
  • Passion is not a luxury. It is an imperative.
  • You rarely sort of care. The world is not changed by people who sort of care.
  • Use your natural fascination talent. It’s not enough to be the better (or best) unless it’s you.
• Make people fall in love with your ideas.

Thanks, Chicago. Back to Oregon.

I am attending the HOW Design Conference 2011 in Chicago, Illinois. Below are my notes from the sessions I attended on Sunday.

9:00 am-10:15 am – 20. Where Ideas Come from and Where They Go – Stephen Doyle
While designing brands for Barnes & Noble, Martha Stewart and his alma mater Cooper Union, you’re likely to find Stephen Doyle using a handsaw and a glue gun to create a piece of type…or casting a clay sculpture in bronze to create a sign. By nights, he’s transformed into a maniacal sculptor working with books or even dollar bills.

Tracing his career through magazines, books and package design to film titles, wayfinding systems and environmental graphics, he’ll explain how this unique combination of mass market and poetry—along with a heavy dose of craftsmanship—continually fuels his creative fire.

• Stephen: I’m successful because I’m “ambitious, naïve and selfish.”
• The Six Senses of Design
  1. A Sense of Appropriateness
     • Be cognizant of expectations and context.
     • Transportation Alternatives logo
     • GE ecology ad – LED light bulb
  2. A Sense of Community
     • Choices that are responsible to the community
     • Cooper Union – geometric box kite – CU
     • Actually more interested in language and semiotics more than typography
     • Peter Pan had forgotten his shadow so he comes back through Wendy’s window – an example of existential semiotics
     • I don’t think you can own an idea. I don’t think ideas are original. Ideas are fluid, like water.
     • Intersection of air, fire and water
  3. A Sense of Scale
     • LOGIC paper cutting – Thinking With My Fingers – a monument to lack of logic – lack of logic can sometimes lead to things logical
     • Sea Glass: The Carousel at the Battery – signs in the style of the perforation
     • Wrangling a client’s design project into a personal art project
     • Aquarium on Coney Island – shimmering tiles and bioluminescent
  4. A Sense of Wonder
     Bright objects hypnotize the mind
  5. Nonsense
     • You never know where it’s going to go. Logic doesn’t go everywhere.
     • Book and dollar bill sculptures – cutting up a book and gluing lines into forms
  6. A Sense of Purpose
     • Equate time that’s a little bit maniacal as value, because of this saying: time is money
     • Infrastructure – the story of civilization
     • Intelligence is nothing without delight.
  7. Bonus: A Sense of Gratitude
     • Taking on jobs only if you can move the needle (meaning: manipulate the jobs you accept: Fun, Fame, Fortune). Take on a job that fulfills 2 of the 3.

10:45 am-12:00 pm – 25. The NEW Web Typography: Where The Sexy Is REPEAT – Jason Cranford Teague
2010 was a big year for web typography—new technologies came online that will forever change the way information appears on our browsers. And as the dust from these changes settles, a new style of web typography is emerging, one that reflects print origins, but also experiments with the unique strengths of online communication.

In this session, Jason Cranford Teague will review the latest technologies and share case studies that push the boundaries of type on the web. You’ll learn how to find, choose and use web fonts, and discover new inspiration for web type techniques. In all, you’ll learn how to expertly use new web typography to set your work apart from the rest.

• Follow Jason on Twitter: @jasonspeaking. Session hashtag: #howsexy.
• His website: FluidWebType.info
• What is sexy? Makes you look again. Changes over time.
• Web Typography = the applications of HTML style to CSS text
• Humaan
• festivalmundo.com
• citizenmusician.com
• sweetlifefestival.com
• forumone.com
• 150,000 fonts
• 5 fonts commonly used on the Web out of 10/11
• If fonts were dogs … Comic Sans
• The Fatal Five: Arial, Verdana, Georgia, Trebuchet MS, Times New Roman
• 2010: The Year of Web Typography
• Webtype Basics
• Webfont
• SVG – caused Safari for iPhone to crash, avoid
• WOFF is the future of web fonts
• Upload an EOT, TTF/OTF and a WOFF version of your font in order to cover all browsers.
• Convert, Buy or Lease?
• A font is a piece of software that tells the computer how a particular glyph should be displayed.
• Choosing the right voice for your text is the job of the designer. Choose the voice that represents the brand message.
• Typography is to type what voice is to speech.
• Make web typography sexy:
  • Either high-color contrast and low-color contrast.
  • Scientifically shown: making things a little harder to read (such as with low contrast) improves content retention (memorable) because people have to look again and work a little.
  • Width contrast.
  • It’s not the ordinary.
  • lifefroots.com
  • lilaccreative.com
  • aifestival.org
  • “Above the fold” is a myth and has been substantially disproved. Space is what will draw them down into the rest of the page.
  • effectlab.gr – gives your eye time to move around in the space
  • Use scale: large and small
  • Text on the screen has been made too small on the screen for too long. 12 pt isn’t 12 pixel. People will find it easier to read your site if you go a little bit larger.
  • 18px body intro, 14px content
  • faciodesign.co.uk – all caps and regular font
  • A drop shadow is meant to simulate texture on a page.
  • Drop Shadow, Emboss or Bevel – use multiple shadow effects to create combination effects
  • e-shop.effectlab.gr
  • Letterpress effect – an emboss on the web
  • jaxvineyards.com
• Forum One – his company
• Fluid Web Typography book
• Download slides, posters and tools: bit.ly/howwebtype

2:00 pm-3:15 pm – 30. The Un-Guide to Creativity and Brainstorming – Chris Chapman
If you’re tired of having your ideas shot down, this session is for you. Disney Design Group’s Chris Chapman will explore the creative processes of some of the most innovative minds in history and show you how they found success.

Chris will explain how your creative mind works and give you the specific tools you need to break down the creative barriers imposed by clients, collaborators and even yourself. You’ll head home with loose guidelines to help you become a more efficient problem solver and brainstormer and—in the end—a stronger design thinker.

• Follow Chris on Twitter: @chapmancatalyst.
• Disney Design Group; Disney Creative Inc.
• You cannot act like an adult if you want to come up with big ideas.
• Pyramid chart: Arts (top), Crafts (middle), Sciences (bottom)
• People have been told they aren’t creative
  • By public school
  • Children go into school as a “?” and come out as a “.”
• You have to fail in order to find success.
• Orbiting the Giant Hairball book
• Statute of limitations – if there are rules you’ve got to bust them
• Line graph: A large segment of the “Creative Occurrence” line graph is an “invisible creative occurrence” and a smaller segment is a “measurable creative occurrence.” You need to give your creativity time to expand and breathe
• Jennifer Chatman – innovation-based culture stats … found this example article: “Investment Banking Serves as Case Study in Investigation of Services Innovation“
• You have to take great risks for great rewards
• ANTI-creative mood – “processed creative”
• Create the box: Fear, Knowledge (too much knowledge is incredibly damaging; don’t be an expert), Habit & Complacency (conformity, a blanket for people who can’t change), Assumption and Rules (break and bend the rules).
• Brain waves:
  • Beta – “you’re getting me in beta because you’re slamming me with pressure” – we’re not saving lives here (creativity can’t be forced or pushed)
  • Alpha – relaxed and effortless alertness, ideal for creative visualization
  • Theta – deep meditation
  • Delta – deep REM  sleep
• We live in a culture of judging ideas too soon.
• Brad Bird innovation article, with nine key lessons: “Pixar’s Brad Bird on Fostering Innovation.”
• How to be:
  • Positive minded
  • Be present – check your Blackberrys before the meeting
  • Share air – talk out to each other
  • Can it (wait) – do you have to?
• Conference tables are not for brainstorming
• Brainstorming “energizer” (ideal): 6-8 people, 4 hours tops w/breaks, 5 ideas
• 4 steps:
  • Vision – what question/topic are you trying to solve for (see success criteria)
  • Explore
  • Stretch – ideation phase, borrow it, twist it, re-express it
  • Ignite – judging the ideas like an adult, potshots
• Success criteria:
  • Do (what do you want it to do), Restrictions, Investments, Values, Essential outcomes
  • Catalytic question: “How might we…”
• Focus groups: Steve Jobs hates focus groups, and we (Disney) will never use them, ever
• Go out and ask individuals instead
• Stargazing: map the ideas (w/connections like star patterns)
• Brand guidelines don’t let you explore and make it your own; limits personal ownership, creativity and joy. (Designing in rigid environments becomes detached, soulless.)
• Recommended books:
  • Thinkx’s book: Think Better by Tim Hurson
  • The Five Faces of Genius: Creative Thinking Styles to Succeed at Work by Annette Moser-Wellman
  • Sticky Wisdom: How to Start a Creative Revolution at Work – The ?What If! group
  • Orbiting the Giant Hairball: A Corporate Fool’s Guide to Surviving with Grace by Gordon MacKenzie

3:45 pm-5:00 pm – 31. Letter for a Living – Jessica Hische
Jessica Hische, letterer, illustrator and founder of Daily Drop Cap, will take you through the differences between lettering and type design and show you how to break into each industry. She’ll examine some of her own projects, as well as those of other lettering artists and illustrators, to show you the differences between these two seemingly related industries.

You’ll discover when type is more appropriate than lettering (and vice versa), and uncover the biggest differences when it comes to getting work, making work and getting paid in each of the two fields.

• Follow Jessica on Twitter: @jessicahische. Session hashtag: #howletter.
• Daily Drop Cap
• icanhasartschool.com
• Package Your Baggage game
• Chalk type – use pencil and smear it around, scan it in and invert it
• Crazy cat lady rule: you can have no more than +1 cat per bedroom in your house
• shouldiworkforfree.com
• Lettering – type as image
• Type design – full alphabets that are turned into fonts (which are software loaded on your computer)
• theinternetismagical.com
• Typography (the arrangement of letters) vs. Type Design (the people that made typefaces) vs. Lettering (type as image)
• photolettering.com – House Industries – all three rolled into one
• Type designers are the unsung heroes of the design community. Most people have no idea about the type designers.
• Text type designers:
  • (missed about three of them here)
  • Christian Schwartz
  • Chris O.
  • Okay Type
  • Jackson Cavanaugh – All Right Sans
  • Hannes von Döhren – Brandon Grotesque (similar to Futura)
    • Don’t Fear the Internet project uses Brandon Grotesque
  • Jos Buivenga – Exlibris – cheap fonts
  • Text type has to be a workhorse, but display type … not so much.
  • Mark Simonson – Coquette font
• Display type designers:
  • Alejandro Paul – AudioScript – every letter has like nine alternate characters
  • Compendium by Alejandro Paul for Sudtipos Type
  • Underware – alternate endings makes their fonts look more customized
  • Type designers are the most type-A people ever.
  • Liza Display Pro – insane features – 1300+ glyphs
  • There is a glyphs palette in most Adobe software
  • Carol Twombly
  • Zuzana Licko – Mrs. Eaves
  • Veronika Burian – Bree
  • Broiche – lots of alternate swashes

Continue to HOW Design 2011 in review: Part four »

I am attending the HOW Design Conference 2011 in Chicago, Illinois. Below are my notes from the sessions I attended on Saturday.

9:00 am-10:15 am – 3. Galumphing, Goats on Roofs and Other Revelations to Spark Inspiration – Sam Harrison
You come to the HOW Design Conference looking for inspiration. Jumpstart your first full day with this idea-igniting session hosted by industry veteran Sam Harrison. He’ll show you how to get up out of your chair and chase down inspiration, moving past the ordinary to discover the extraordinary. You’ll head back to the office with renewed powers of passion and play, all so you can fill your work with life—which is much more inspiring than filling your life with work.

• Session hashtag: #howgoats.
• Proficient → efficient → sufficient (at any skill)
• Galumphing (a Lewis Carroll word): proud play, to be silly, to be playful
• Nothing intelligent gets done with silliness
• Need permission to be lighthearted
• “The lightness of a beginner frees up creativity.” – Steve Jobs
• Paraphrase: “A mind stretched by a new idea never returns to its original dimensions.” – Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
• Fail earlier to succeed sooner
• Does what I’m doing inspire me or tire me? Am I just doing it out of habit?
• Creativity is the encounter of the intensively conscious person with the world
• Go out there and gawk
• What we focus on is what we’re going to see
• Does your environment/mind have an “atmosphere of generosity”? (giving/receiving ideas freely)
• Related: Have a creative network
• Book: The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America by Erik Larson
  • Chicago World’s Fair and serial killer in Chicago
  • Ragtime, zipper, Walt Disney’s father
• What really inspires you?
• Money is a threshold motivator – not a strong force once your needs are met
• “Passion is not the quantity of emotion; it’s the quality of commitment.”
• “You are the greatest asset you will ever own.”

10:45 am-12:00 pm – 8. Creative Stuff: The Comprehensive Bulleted List – Chris Elkerton
Join Chris Elkerton as he divulges a wealth of secrets and ideas for staying creative when the daily grind is getting you down—amazingly, they’re all tips he gathered from friends, family, colleagues, design industry pros and everyday creative people.

You’ll see that it doesn’t take a lot of time and effort to get the creative juices flowing and you’ll leave ready to tackle your next great project with excitement and enthusiasm. Come prepared—this session will feature hands-on interaction from the audience.

• Follow Chris on Twitter: @opieshuffle. Session hashtag: #howbullets.
• Founded 3 Dogz Creative Inc.
• Get inspired
  • Theo Jansen – Kinetic Sculptor – walking on sand dunes in Holland
  • “I never lost the kid in me. I still look at design with the same eyes as when I was 10.” – Dominic Ayre
  • Homeless World Cup
  • Obituaries in the paper
• Start simple
  • “Fuck Photoshop” pencil – James Victore (2011) – “It’s a class about thinking. How the fuck do you do that in front of computer?”
  • Meridian acupuncture point energy diagram
  • Margo Chase: Keep it Fresh – emma.com
  • Line Drawing Madness exercise
• Get hands on
  • Taking photos of letters of the alphabet in the everyday
  • Refinished pinball machine
  • World maps made of type and letterpressed – Nancy McCabe
  • You have to take the time to work on your projects
• Keep a healthy mindset
  • Stay positive in order to achieve any good work in the design industry
  • You need to change your perspective sometimes – approach visuals from a different
  • Alex McClain: aerial photography to create patterns
  • Brand New website – Armin Vit (so much negativity related to design/web comments)
  • John Gabriel’s Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory
  • Cow diagram: Design → Public Relations → Marketing → Advertising → Branding
  • “HELLO my name is” sticker: 2nd most important design piece in history – according to Art
• Bring it all together
  • “Mad Men” signs
  • Force yourself to push the design
  • Collaborate!
  • “Playing for Change” video – “Gimee Shelter” cover – playingforchange.com
  • “If you hit this sign, you will hit that bridge.”
  • “Master your instrument … master your … forget all that bullshit and just play.”

2:00 pm-3:15 pm – 13. Get Out of Your Rut! – Cami Travis-Groves
Clearly picture your rut: using the same colors, patterns and fonts, falling into the same kinds of situations, doing the same kinds of projects…over and over. Are they just old habits or are you afraid of change?

Cami Travis-Groves will help you get—and stay—out of your rut by identifying what’s keeping you there in the first place. You’ll learn ways to let go of your fears and coax creativity from deep within you. You’ll even get the chance to share your pearls of wisdom with the rest of the audience.

• Follow Cami on Twitter: @imaccami. Session hashtag: #howrut.
• Stories of quantum physics, caterpillars and cilantro to help you get—and stay—out of your rut!
• Sometimes you just need to take a step.
• Giraffes are kept in by a psychological moat. Because they are afraid of falling (from birth when they fall six feet?). Be aware of your psychological moats so can get past them.
• There’s only one flavor of you that can do what you do how you do it.
• Underpromise and overdeliver.
• Stay humble.
• Monkeys in a cage with bananas story. Try a new approach.
• Your personal economy is what you can afford to give – and very little of that has to do with money.
• Quantum designing – Aaron O’Connell, quantum physicist – the golden time between sleep and awake – in a quantum world, multiple universes are possible and probable – so, the answer is always out there an it will come to you if you look for it. Our surroundings dictate who we are – the nature of our interactions with you and other people will shape who you are. Future book: “Whatever flips your Twinkie.” Don’t hang out with people and places that don’t inspire you.
• Diffuse the emotion, restate back what the problem is, and then step out of the equation.
• You are not your designs. You are not your creations. You are not your illustrations.
• Geeking out: BaconIpsum.com
• Never, never be afraid to single yourself out. It may pay off.
• Ask questions. Especially of kids.
• STOP – Share This (yourself) with Other People.
• Download the “Get Out of Your Rut” handout.

3:45 pm-5:00 pm – 18. Turning Your Creative Obsessions into Opportunities – Armin Vit
Whether it’s collecting, drawing, imagining or writing, we all have creative obsessions that we tend to neglect for fear that they’re a waste of time—or because they’re not billable. But there are designers out there who’ve been able to turn these obsessions into profitable and well known projects through books, websites or even just an expanded client base.

UnderConsideration’s Armin Vit will take a look at the paths some of these designers took, exploring the obsessions that led to these projects and the results they generated. You’ll learn different ways to channel your own creative pursuits, along with tips for making sure they get noticed.

• Session hashtag: #howopps.
• What is creative obsession? It’s the unnecessary expense of time, energy and thought put into any given subject or object that manifests in a tangible way.
• It can last a week. It can last years.
• What is opportunity? A situation that may provide a return on investment in the form of money, exposure, or validation. Or all.
• Examples: From creative obsession to publication, Internet fame and/or business.
• To Publications:
  • Collections:
    • Lisa Congdon – A Collection a Day
    • “In the age of the Internet, good enough is pretty damn good.”
    • PK – Bibliodyssey
    • Noah Scalin – Skull-A-Day
  • Monsters: Stefan Bucher – The Daily Monster
  • Generate content ^10
  • Variety is the spice of life. Prep your pitch.
• To Internet Fame:
  • Good Taste: Tina Roth Eisenberg – swiss-miss.com
  • Color & Outfits: Jessi Arrington – luckysoandso.com
  • Type & Humor: Jessica Hische – jessicahische.is – The Daily Drop Cap
  • Data Visualization: Nicholas Felton – feltron.com
  • Mashups: Olly Moss – ollymoss.com
  • Lessons from this model: Find a niche. And explore that. And if all else fails…
    • Double Rainbows – Paul “Bear” Vasquez
  • Stupid can work.
• To Business:
  • Detail & Style: Marian Bantjes – bantjes.com – “A Wonder” book
  • Simplicity: 37 Signals – 37signals.com – “Getting Real” PDF – Basecamp – “Rework” book
  • Letterpress: Jon Selikoff – voteforletterpress.com
  • Packaging: Andrew Gibbs – thedieline.com
  • Graphic Design: Us – underconsideration.com
    • Speak Up blog
    • The Design Encyclopedia
    • Brand New blog and Brand New classroom
    • FPO (For Print Only)
    • Quipsologies blog
    • Books: The Word It Book, Women of Design, Graphic Design Referenced and Flaunt
    • Brand New Conference – September 2011
    • Brand New Awards
• Lessons: You can’t anticipate. You can react. Look for the opening. Have money in the bank.
• 2. The Secret Ingredient: Stupidity.
• Cites “The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity.” Third Basic Law: Stupid people create a loss for themselves and for others. Four quadrants: Intelligent people – Bandits/Douchebags – Helpless – Stupid.
• Stupidity can lead to creativity. Creativity can lead to your obsessions. You obsessions can lead to opportunity.
• Examples of stupidity:
  • Idiocracy
  • Matt Stevens in Charlotte, North Carolina: Dunkin Donuts rebrand → Varsity Donuts
  • Type Sandwiches by David – everyday
  • Comic Sans – Brad Gilbert, Cleveland Cavaliers: using Comic Sans in the context of his LeBron James letter was like Strawberry Shortcake saying, “Fuck off.”
  • Netflix Prize – Dyslexflix: recommending wrong since 2008
• Stupidity beats inhibition. (And inhibition is what stops us from doing things we’re afraid of doing.) Lack of inhibition prevents obsessions. Stupidity leads to creativity. Creativity leads to opportunities.
• Do something for yourself. Put it out there. Expect the pot of the gold at the end of the rainbow. Do expect the best, but prepare for the worst.
• If opportunity knocks, just open the damn door.

Continue to HOW Design 2011 in review: Part three »

9:00 am-12:00 pm – Morning Pre-Conference Workshop – Vector Basic Training – Von Glitschka
Whether you’re a student or a veteran, it’s well worth it for every designer to spend some time improving their skills when it comes to creating and building vector shapes in Adobe Illustrator®. And that’s where illustrator Von Glitschka comes in.

He’ll show you how to create a systematic creative process for building precision vector artwork, and explain why it’s important to create a process that relies on good research, sketching, refined drawing and plugins. There will be plenty of time for Q&A, and the best questions will get a free license to a second-party plugin for Illustrator, as well as a book that exhaustively covers all of the info you’ll learn in this session.

• Removing visual tension from your work (where lines/edges overlap). About simplicity and clarity.
• VectorScribe plugin for Illustrator
  • PathScribe – Dynamic Corners Tools
  • Smart Remove filter to remove points without affecting the integrity of the shape
• Other plugins: Xtream Path and Better Handles
• Redundant point bug in Illustrator – PathScribe can remove these
• Clockwork method to discern where point locations should be on a shape.
• Organic shape creation: (1) rough build (anchor points in right positions), then (2) using PathScribe tool, mold the paths and push them closer, then (3) Refinement.
• Get away from using strokes and think in just fills/shapes.
• Creating the monster – IllustrationClass.com
• Halftone effect – search for Big Dot at IllustrationClass.com

6:30 pm-8:00 pm – Opening Keynote – 1. Being Available in the Moment – Kristina Robbins & Jo McGinley
No doubt you’ve heard that living in the moment will benefit your health and well being. But, according to Juice’s Jo McGinley and Kristina Robbins, it’s equally important for your creative process and collaborations. In fact, being open to your own deepest insights and the inspirations of your collaborators is the best way to kick-start the creative process. Unfortunately, looming deadlines and client expectations can cause you to lose sight of the moment.

In this session, Jo and Kristina will show you how to bring yourself back into the moment whenever you feel yourself getting off track. You’ll learn:

• how to identify the physical and mental signs of being in the moment
• how to bring yourself back into the moment using specific tools
• how to apply your awareness of the moment to the creative process and your collaborative relationships

Continue to HOW Design 2011 in review: Part two »

On Wednesday through Friday, May 25-27, I attended the WebVisions 2011 conference at the Oregon Convention Center in Portland. Below is a quick overview of all sessions I attended on Friday, with links. Many of the slides from these sessions and others are available at SlideShare. See Twitter updates using #wv11.

Design Camp: What’s Next for Web Fonts in CSS3 – Thomas Phinney
(8:45 am to 9:30 am | session details)

• @font-face – choose whatever name you like: BodyFont
• Many font formats required, but converging on WOFF
• Self-hosting vs. web font services
• CSS3 typography:
• Text module: Hyphenation, Grid-based layout, various wrap options, handing punctuation, multiple columns
• Fonts Module: kerning and ligatures (turn on optimized legibility in CSS in Firefox), full OpenType features and alternates
• Firefox OpenType font feature support: mzl.la/ff4-ot
• OpenType in Action
• Ligatures: multiple letters colliding: f-i collision – use standard ligatures all the time – happens via alternate glyphs (built into many fonts)
• Tabular lining, proportional lining, proportional oldstyle, tabular oldstyle
• Stylistic sets for levels of swashiness (swashes)
• Contextual alternates of glyphs plus ligatures

Ambient Location and the Future of the Interface – Amber Case, Aaron Parecki
(9:15 am to 9:30 am)

• Geolocation: MapAttack!
• Invisible location-based where you can actually live; the best interface is invisible.
• See slides.

30-Minute Prototyping – Brad Nunnally
(9:30 am to 10:00 am)

• Sketching starts out with defining the real estate of your site. 70% of my design is done on paper before I start using software.
• Protyping software: Axure
• Define the visual hierarchies; define the location of the navigation bar
• Can turn it into a navigable prototype and can user feedback on how the navigation is behaving
• Annotate placeholders (or representative content) to then hand over to a visual designer to fill in
• Gray-box aspects of the design out
• Lorem ipsum is a technique I try to avoid as much as possible
• [skipping the rest of this Axure demo for the sci-fi/interface design presentation]

Make it So: The Uncanny Relationship Between Science Fiction and Interface Design – Nathan Shedroff | session details)
(9:30 am to 10:00 am)

• Science fiction television shows and films yield practical lessons that apply to online, social, mobile and other media interfaces.
• Sci-fi interfaces allow us to see current issues from fresh perspectives.
• Sci-fi is a good and legitimate way to prototype and design.
• “Businesspeople are fiction writers.”
• “R2-D2 is probably the best-acted character in Star Wars.” Simple beeps and buzzes carry the anthropomorphic effect.

The Mobile Frontier – Rachel Hinman
(10:30 am to 11:00 am)

• Summary coming soon.
• See slides.

Experience Design: Getting a Seat at the Strategy Table – Samantha Starmer
(11:00 am to 11:15 am)

• Business/marketing speak: Pre-sell, pick your battles, offer solutions, talk the talk, walk the walk
• See slides.

Deep Tissue Massage: 6 Tips for Alignment Across Device Form Factors & Input Models – Nate Koechley
(11:15 am to 11:30 pm)

• Yahoo (design prototypers and design architects)
• 6. Balance: Device vs. brand; custom vs. native
• 5. Create familiar experiences: familiar ≠ same; experience = familiar; platform = natural
• 4. Balance your research: understand your medium (learn your medium); conventions
• 3. Align your designs over time: prototypes feed architectures feed prototypes
• 2. Quest for magic: in different devices; newer web standards for gloss, transitions, skew
• 1. Generous hit areas (for mobile)

On-Demand User Research – Nate Bolt
(11:30 am to 11:45 am)

• See slides.

Superconsumers – Michael Claypool
(11:45 am to 12:00 pm)

• Huge digital marketing agency: “Design with the intern in mind.”
• The “superconsumer” demographic creates and consumes an enormous amount of content
• Email is waning in its power from a social standpoint
• Digitally dependent: life is “unbearable” without
• Their brains are literally wired differently
• Daily documentation is the norm
• How to earn the superconsumer’s very short attention span?
• Gaming mechanics: make the product extremely addictive
• Be authentic; don’t bullshit them; they can see through marketing ploys
• They’re looking for genuine; be careful about stock photography (skeptical)
• Design. Fail. Evolve.
• Follow on Twitter: @m_claypool

From Muppets to Mastery: Core UX Principles from Mr. Jim Henson – Ross Unger
(1:30 pm to 1:45 pm)

• Jim Henson’s Wilkins Coffee commercials
• A good experience is invisible – give the audience enough to work with and they’ll do the rest for you. (Suspension of disbelief.)
• Visual thinking book: Gamestorming: A Playbook for Innovators, Rulebreakers, and Changemakers
• Storyboarding and sketches as applied to UX design.
• UX is a very young field. We are just making this shit up as we go along.
• See slides and follow on Twitter: @russu.

Hacking RSS: Filtering & Processing Obscene Amounts of Information – Dawn Foster
(1:45 pm to 2:00 pm)

• The real magic is in filtering RSS
• RSS filtering tools: Yahoo Pipes (my favorite). Others like FeedRinse. Many RSS filtering services have gone out of business
• Hacking RSS using Yahoo Pipes, Twitter API and BackType.
• Nice Yahoo Pipes article.
• See slides and follow on Twitter: @geekygirldawn

Crafting Rich Experiences with Progressive Enhancement – Aaron Gustafson
(2:00 pm to 2:30 pm)

• Relating finch evolution on the Galapagos Islands
• HTML and CSS designed to be forward and backward compatible—the perfect finch: take advantage of whatever situation they’re placed in
• Fault tolerance: the ability to adapt
• Browsers ignore what they don’t understand
• Graceful degradation actually undermines the accessibility of content. Progressive enhancement instead.
• Progressive enhancement is focused on creating a positive, useful experience regardless of device or browser.
• All progressive enhancement is graceful degradation, but not all graceful degradation is progressive enhancement.
• Progressive enhancement isn’t about browsers. It’s about crafting the experience—working from the content and moving out. Improve the overall user experience based on the advanced features of browsers.
• Start with content, layer on semantics (plus optional microformats), then design (HTML/CSS), JavaScript and accessibility.
• Text/HTTP → HTML → CSS → JavaScript → ARIA (accessibility)
• See slides and follow on Twitter: @AaronGustafson.

Can Media Queries Save Us All? – Tim Kadlec
(3:00 pm to 3:30 pm)

• 35 billion devices connected to the Internet
• Mobile device vs. context. Small screen vs. out and about.
• Defining a device as mobile had become very difficult. Mobile location vs. mobile usage.
• Form does not equal function.
• The device doesn’t necessary equal the function anymore.
• Make separate sites or adapt.
• The three things in this “Responsive Web Design” article are not enough anymore: Fluid girds, flexible images, media queries
• Device classification: by device type, capabilities, UI mode (touch, pointer), etc.
• Slides by Bryan Rieger: rethinking-the-mobile-web-by-yiibu
• Respond.js – fixes IE’s lack of support for @media queries
• Article by Jason Grigsby: css-media-query-for-mobile-is-fools-gold
• Use responsive images, not flexible images. One way: use Sench.io
• Another way: Responsive images script: filamentgroup/Responsive-Images
• Responsive assets (not images)
• By Media jQuery: paulirish/matchMedia.js
• Device Detection vs. Responsive Approach – do a little UA sniffing, then use progressive enhancement, use feature detection to build on
• Summary: Start with Device Classification; Mobile First; Resize Images – don’t just scale; Responsive assets; Pair with device detection; Challenge traditional assumptions
• See slides and follow on Twitter: @tkadlec.

Progressive Enhancement with ARIA – Aaron Gustafson
(3:30 pm to 3:45 pm)

• Accessibility on the web – three blind men and the elephant fable
• Semantics not be followed
• Accessible Rich Internet Applications spec
• How does ARIA work?
• ARIA landmarks are a way to tell assistive technology what a region of the page is for
• Define roles: <nav role=”navigation”>
• Redundancy in HTML5 is necessary at this point because not all assistive tech understand HTML5 semantics
• ARIA live regions – notify user of frequently updated parts of page: <span aria-live=”polite”>
• See slides and follow on Twitter: @AaronGustafson.

“Portlandia”: The Story Behind the Series – Marie Moore, Andrew Singer, Colin Moore, Carrie Brownstein
(3:45 pm to 4:30 pm)

• Interesting panel discussion with the @ifcportlandia team on the origin and marketing strategy for IFC’s “Portlandia” television show. Lots of clips. #putabirdonit

Thinking Visually – David Armano
(4:30 pm to 5:30 pm)

• Tell me and I’ll forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and I’ll understand – Chinese proverb
• His blog: darmano.typepad.com
• Awesome graphic: Wheel of Marketing Misfortune
• The eyes are not responsible when the mind does the seeing.
• 1957: when computer era began; video: History of the Internet (PICOL)
• The 4 M’s: metaphor, model (metaphor & model), mind maps, manifest (make obvious)
• Six steps to getting visual:
  1. Empathize: See the world as a child
  2. Memorize: Commit thoughts to memory
  3. Analyze: Take a step back
  4. Synthesize: Filter signal from noise
  5. Visualize: See it, then do it
  6. Materialize: Make it tangible, make it stick
• The 4 C’s of community
• Tools/software don’t matter as much as ideas.
• Flowtown infographic: What is the ROI of your Mom?
• Venn diagram: Skate & Fall on Ass (can’t skate without falling on ass)
• Resources:
  • Envisioning Information by Edward Tufte
  • Selling To the VP of No by David Gray
  • The Back of the Napkin by Dan Roam
  • Don’t Make Me Think by Steve Krug
• See slides and follow on Twitter: @armano.

That is all. Time to bring some Voodoo Doughnuts up to my sister who is currently visiting Seattle.