Mini documentary about some of the design decisions made behind the 'avatar' for IBM's supercomputer Watson that recently trounced two Jeopardy! game show veterans on the same gameshow.
Although the computer can answer questions and use information in a similar was to humans the avatar chosen was distinctly abstract (although could show emotion) perhaps because of the uncanny valley anomaly.
IBM Watson: The Face of Watson
Mobile App Wins An Oscar
The iPad book The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris won the 2012 Oscar for best animated short which shows that these new digital platforms gaining some much deserved recognition. I've seen some great trailers for the book and am going to download it to experience it fully.
Here is one of the trailers:
Mobile UI Trend Websites
I've recently discovered two mobile UI trend websites that I've been looking to for inspiration. I think there is a broad range of styles on these sites that will help to inform my own designs to be fresh and interesting.
Studio: Made By Shape
Made By Shape is a graphic design studio based in Wigan (near home!) that deals primarily with website design, but also produces printer work for several clients.
A student who I studied with at my old college was on their blog because of an internship, so I contacted them and they said it was a good experience and that if I'm interested in design or web I should get in touch with them.
After I finish my current website brief I'm going to email them with my portfolio and a few questions about their studio.
Talk: Wilson Miner
Brilliant talk by Wilson Miner about how digital tools are helping to shape our future and behaviour and that as interaction designers, and we are are ones choosing what goes on to the screens of this technology. Really interesting view on interaction design and an all-round excellent talk.
Mailchimp Website
Mailchimp is a very successful email marketing web app that is very popular amongst designers and other creative types because of its excellent user interface and humorous design style. This video shows a quick review of the main site and what makes it work so well.
BERG: Little Printer
Little Printer is a new product being released by the interactive design company BERG. The printer will work in tandem with an mobile app and 'cloud' data services to produce printed content pulled from different online sources.
Fundamentally it is a traditional ticket/receipt printer empowered with web technology to print useful content for the user. This content could include anything from personal agenda's up-to-date world news or daily puzzels.
The essence of this accessible and easy-to-read information delivery system is something I want to capture in my own designs for a daily information app.
Offscreen Magazine
Making of: Repeat Timer Pro App
I found some excellent information about designing, developing and marketing a successful mobile app over in this article. I think this information could be very handy for when I'm trying to create a fully working app in the near future.
Yearbook Ideas and Infographic Mockups
Here are some general notes about the direction our yearbook project is taking:
And some ideas for the infographics we could include:
I digitalised some of the better ideas loosely using an RGB colour scheme:
Surveyor Website - Initial Homepage Mockup
Here is a mockup of my initial ideas for the surveyor website homepage and logo. The purpose of this mockup was to see what the client thought of some of my initial ideas and design decisions. I will create some more detailed wireframes from the feedback received.
Here are some points of feedback that I need to take into account:
- The site looks quite corporate at the moment and could benefit from looking more informal and approachable. Use of colour will help this I think.
- Content showing reliability will make the company seem more approachable, with content like testimonials and important qualifications/certificates shown on the homepage.
- Once the correct images and copy are used it will look cleaner and more complete.
The next step is to create some new sketches and wireframes to improve the layout and hierarchy.
Surveyor Hierarchy Notes
Here are some of my initial Ideas for the hierarchy of the website, taking into account what the users will need to see/know first to keep them interested. I have also sketched an basic idea for the homepage and navigation layout that I will mock-up and show the client for some initial feedback, I will then create some more detailed revised wireframes and mockups.
Surveyor: Initial Layout & Logo Ideas
Here are some of my initial ideas for the layout and logo design for the surveyor brief:
Information is Beautiful Book
These are a selection of infographics from the book Information is Beautiful (who also have a pretty good blog). These are all good inspiration towards the graphics I will be experimenting with for the DFGA yearbook.
The circles effect reminds me of some of my initial experiments with colour and shape.
The colours are again interesting here and the spike shapes could be good to experiment with.
The idea of creating colour pallets from objects could be applied to the student's work.
Linking the digital with the physical world has created a clever contrast here.
I using the student's portraits could possibly be a good contents system for the yearbook.
The pixellated graphics on the right remind me of the QR codes we were thinking of using in the yearbook.
Another pixellated bar-code style aesthetic.
Really attractive infographic using simple blocks of colour to represent information.
More 4 Reband
The new More 4 branding from studio ManvsMachine is very striking and the tie-in between the logo and cinematic idents works well. These kind of abstract shapes and movements are something that we discussed in the first DFGA meeting as something we and Mike all liked. This is probably the kind of abstract visual aesthetic we will focus on in our initial experiments.
Talk to Me - Book with Digital Link-in
The Talk to Me book features a variety of interactive projects that are all very interesting sources of inspiration for my own work. The main reason for this being a contextual resource is that it links in the print based content with an online website with videos of the featured interactions. The book uses QR codes throughout its pages to link each relevant piece to its online content.
After talking to the DFGA tutor Mike I think we will be implementing a similar system in our own yearbook publication.
Design Context Presentation
Here are the slides I created for my design context presentation:
[feedback]
Yearbook Initial Ideas & Logo Concept
After our initial meeting we got some good feedback on our initial concepts and Mike went though some of the things he wants from the yearbook. Here are some of the key points:
- Gender Neutrality
- Don't over-emphasise the digital aspect of the course
- Communicate how the course is evolving without provoking a negative attitude towards the current course structure.
- Show the storytelling aspects of the course.
- Show the transmedia nature of the course.
- Mike likes abstract patterns and the style that 'processing' can generate.
I then started to jot down some ideas for the branding of the yearbook/course thinking about what he wanted to communicate:
I then moved into illustrator to tidy-up my logo concept, taking into account some of the contextual designs we had discussed previously:
These are the two variations I want to show at the meeting tomorrow:
