This article dug into what design thinking is today and how it has evolved, especially over the last decade. Even though "design thinking" can have a very broad definition, they narrowed it down to reasoning tools with deductive and inductive logic. The article also touched on methods designers used and also the stereotypes they can be applied to in the business world. In addition the article also discussed how it was first thought that understanding came just from experiences. But now this is expanded and now it is acceptable to think that understanding can also come from wondering.
Roger Martin is the leading proponent of design thinking at business schools. He doesn't mean merely teaching students about the importance of cool-looking stuff. He sees value in the designer's approach to solving problems -- the integrative way of thinking and problem-solving that can be applied to all components of business. Martin's take on the future of management is shooting through innovation circles: "Businesspeople will have to become more 'masters of heuristics' than 'managers of algorithms."' What does that jargon mean? Martin is saying that corporate managers will have to become flexible problem-solvers rather than sophisticated number-crunchers if they're to be creative and successful. "With the forces of competition today, it will make the difference between success and mediocrity," Martin predicts.
This article brought up several important points:
-design thinking has involved into "a discipline that uses the designer's sensibility and methods to match people's needs with what is technologically feasible and what a viable business strategy can convert into customer value and market opportunity"
-students are exposed to formal logic only by inference and then only to the two dominant forms of logic: deductive and inductive reasoning
-deductive: logic of what must be-general to the specific
-inductive: logic of what is operative-specific to the general
-both are reasoning tools
-understanding shows evolving interaction with a context or environment
-James Dewey and company formed American Pragmatist philosophers and thought one could gain understanding only through ones experience... now thought that no new idea could be proved deductively or inductively using past data
-first step of observation is now wondering... called abductive logic
-look for new data points, challenge accepted explanations and infer possible new worlds
-design thinking isnt something business people are comfortable with- don't like to deal with "creative types" thought to be less productive and lazy
-they like having a set right and wrong answer that is not true with design thinking
-innovations now must make business sense
-designers need to strive for balance with abduction, deduction, and induction
-best way to prosper with design thinking, embrace abduction
Monday, November 30, 2009
1. There are many advantages of a multiple column grid; they allow a designer to organize text and images in a rational, easy to absorb manner. They allow designs to be divided up in a way that have a cohesive result.
2. At normal reading distance the arc of the visual field is only a few inches - about the width of a well-designed column of text, or about 10-15 words per line.
3. A baseline grid can be your best friend when creating documents that require a clean, structured look. Far from constraining your design possibilities, baseline grids are liberating, taking the hassle out of trying to figure out where to put things relative to other elements on your page. InDesign’s implementation of baseline grids is elegant and efficient.
4. In typography, rivers, or rivers of white, are visually unattractive gaps appearing to run down a paragraph of text. They can occur with any spacing, though they are most noticeable with wide inter-word spaces caused by either full text justification or monospaced fonts.
5. Line/part of a layout that helps the reader go through the entire spread.
6. Using a grid is a great way to allow for whitespace to be incorporated into a design by grouping elements together. White space can be a great aspect of a design in order for the spread to not be too crowded and can also make it easier for the viewer to read through the page.
7. Type color refers to the weight or boldness of a typeface and is used by designers and typographers to describe the visual tone of a mass of text on a page. The type color of a particular typeface affects the amount of ink on the page, also known as its blackness. "Black" faces are bold and heavy.
8. In typography, the x-height or corpus size refers to the distance between the baseline and the mean line in a typeface. Typically, this is the height of the letter x in the font. It can effect type color because X-height can be in direct relation to the "blackness"of the text on the page.
9. The space between words: minimum is the least, optimum is the concept/idea, and maximum is the most you would want/need.
10. Paragraphs can be indicated many ways, for example: skipping a line, simple space, indentation, bullet, hanging indent, color, size, etc. There are not many rules when you are designing a spread other than not to indent the first paragraph.
11. Use hyphenation to improve text alignment in a given area by reducing the amount of white (empty) space between the last word on a line and the right margin. If a word is too long to fit entirely on a single line, the word is hyphenated at the proper hyphenation point, which forces a line break as close to the right margin as possible. Hyphenation makes each line of text approximately the same length to give the text a more uniform layout.
12. Collection of written work.
13. The CMYK color model, referred to as process color or four color, is a subtractive color model, used in color printing, also used to describe the printing process itself. CMYK refers to the four inks used in most color printing: cyan, magenta, yellow, and key black.
The RGB color model is an additive color model in which red, green, and blue light are added together in various ways to reproduce a broad array of colors. The name of the model comes from the initials of the three additive primary colors, red, green, and blue.
14. Hanging punctuation or exdentation is a way of typesetting punctuation marks and bullet points, most commonly quotation marks and hyphens, so that they do not disrupt the ‘flow’ of a body of text or ‘break’ the margin of alignment. It is so called because the punctuation appears to ‘hang’ in the margin of the text, and is not incorporated into the block or column of text. It is commonly used when text is fully justified.
15. An apostrophe is a {'} quote mark while a foot mark is a single vertical mark.
16. An inch mark is two vertical, straight marks while a quotation mark is slanted {"} apostrophes.
17. The hyphen ( ‐ ) is a punctuation mark used to join words and to separate syllables of a single word. It is often confused with dashes ( –, —, ― ), which are longer and have different uses.
The en dash, or n dash, n-rule, etc., (–) is roughly the width of the letter n. It is shorter than an em dash. The en dash is used in ranges, such as 6–10 years, read as "six to ten years".
The em dash (—), or m dash, m-rule, etc., often demarcates a parenthetical thought—like this one—or some similar interpolation. It is also used to indicate that a sentence is unfinished because the speaker has been interrupted. For example, the em dash is used in the following way in Joseph Heller's Catch-22:
18. In writing and typography, a ligature occurs where two or more graphemes are joined as a single glyph. Ligatures usually replace consecutive characters sharing common components and are part of a more general class of glyphs called "contextual forms" where the specific shape of a letter depends on context such as surrounding letters or proximity to the end of a line. When used they help keep a typeface uniform
Monday, November 23, 2009
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
What is Flash?
Flash has become a popular method for adding animation and interactivity to web pages. Flash is commonly used to create animation, advertisements, and various web page Flash components, to integrate video into web pages, and more recently, to develop rich Internet applications.
Flash can manipulate vector and raster graphics, and supports bidirectional streaming of audio and video.
Designers use flash because it is a way to create interactive works through animation. It is a way to create movement and interest in an otherwise still frame. It has a lot of possibilities and abilities that can be utilized to make great flash projects.
One flash project I liked was from Trollback+Company that they did for Miller Lite. I especially liked how the blue dot was transformed throughout the entire project and helped form different elements of the add. I also like its simplicity and how it sticks to the story and what they want the audience to remember from the ad. They keep it simple and to the point without providing distractions for the viewers.
Another project I liked was for Nike's New Geometry golf club. The motions keep the viewer on edge and in suspense about what the product being advertised is. The sound effects are also very effective to add to the overall feel of the project. The black background also adds to the intensity of the ad.
Lastly, another video I found seemed to be something more closely related to what we are going to be doing with our project. It just narrates lines from pulp fiction. It make the words come to life without seeing the actual movie. It uses interesting ways to highlight important lines to create hierarchy with just moving text.
Monday, November 9, 2009
NEW Font-Gill Sans
From Kenzie's Blog...
The lowercase letter 'a' is considered to be a double-storey with a plain final and plain terminal or possibly a beak stroke terminal. The bowl of the 'a' is higher than most lowercase letters of this font.
The lowercase letter 'd' has an ascender that reaches cap height and is completely flat. There is no terminal to this letter and it sits on the baseline without descending below. The counter of the letter looks like a backwards capital 'D'.
The letter 'G' does not have a spur. The bowl of the letter is at cap height.
The lowercase letter 'g' is considered to be a double-storey with a closed tail. The ear of the 'g' is flat and does not have a serif at all. The link is weaker and longer than most other fonts. The bowl is lower and the counter is a perfect circle.
The letter 'M' has two flat apexes and both terminals are obviously sans serif. The apex of the letter reaches the the cap height and does not go below the base line.
The letter 'Q' has a tail that goes below the base line and the counter is a perfect circle. The bowl of the letter reaches the cap height and goes all the way to the base line.
The lowercase letter 'x' reaches just above the x-height line and there are flat apexes and flat terminals. The counter that is formed creates an arrow like figure without the indentations. In other words it looks like for different triangles facing one another.
The letter 'R' pretty much has one straight leg and another that is slightly curved. The crotch that is created is formed by the loop and the right leg connecting to that loop, not to the left leg. There are terminals that are sans serif and no ascenders. The counter that is created forms the shape of the capital letter 'D'.
The lowercase letter 't' has a ascender that is 'roman' with a sharp and refined serif. The letter does not go below the base line and the cross bar is just right underneath the cap height.
The number 4 has a flat apex and the cross bar crosses directly in the middle of the number. The number goes all the way from the cap height down to the base line without ands serifs.
The question mark is very unique. The dot is a fully enclosed circle and the curve of the question mark kind of has a handwriting-derived tapered serif at the top of it while the end of it comes to a sharp point.
The stroke width in all of these letters when they are just normal font is normal. And when looking at all of the capitol and lowercase letters, there are no other unique letters that I can see.
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
After looking through the readings, I was very interested in the rhythm and texture posters. I think the designers found a new and interesting way to represent data that didn't fit into the typical bar graph or pie chart. The "tree ring" poster was very interesting to look at; I feel like even though this type of graph would require the reader to look into it a little bit more since its not the typical way to represent data they still would since it is something that would grab their interest. But with this, it would have to be used appropriately and fit with the data.
Monday, November 2, 2009
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