Week 14A

Monday

In class we reviewed over our projects and received feedback during our mini critiques. We spent the time going over each student's project. During the critiques I really enjoyed how Kelly used the Insight Research to gather the problematic areas and ask open ended questions through a five step process. Every question you responded by asking "So What?" to gather problematic end results. I think I may switch my research method to the Insight Research instead of the As-Is Experience. I feel the As-Is Experience is fairly similar to the Heuristic Markup and by switching the methods I will gain better knowledge of the problem areas.

Some of the students suggested that I...

• Should not over stylize the webpage by using too many colors in my visual style tile but keep it clean and make small accents with the colors. 
• That I should not rely on the Lightbox feature but show my images on the webpage at a larger size. 
• The green color on the persona is hard to read. Add some black tone into the green for the quote.

Monday- Outside of Class

OFF CAMPUS EVENT

Timothy Goodman – AIGA Central PA. – Pennsylvania College of Art & Design – “How to get away with shit”

The AIGA event was featuring Timothy Goodman and how he got from point A to point B in his career. Timothy focuses his designs around 3 areas. 1. Stupid shit. He is inspired by silly, immature, interesting information and anything that makes him laugh. 2. Stand up comedy. Observations are highly important as a design. 3. Design. Taking cliche material and making it into something new. Taking the ordinary and making it memorable. In the beginning Tim graduated from the School of Visual Arts in NYC where he now teaches and after a few years of freelancing received a once in a lifetime opportunity at Apple to work for a few years. He noticed that Apple became very mechanical and that wasn’t the right fit for him.

By finding inspiration everywhere and being a designer there were a few rules to know when trying to “get away with shit”. 1. Know the rules. 2. Have adversity by taking risks. 3. Don’t ask for permission for anything. 4. Listen to yourself. 5. Get into your work. 6. Being curious about everything. To make his story different from everyone else he needed to be bad. He started off copying tardy slips in work and forging signatures. This one only one example during his earlier years.

Some main points that struck out to me was how he came from a fatherless home and by writing a thesis statement to the School of Visual Arts to apply for a scholarship was the beginning of his career. He was inspired by writing which lead to his acceptance because he was different. He created poetry slam projects. Made editorial illustrations for almost every major publication. Wrote on walls and focused a whole phrase of his career around sharpies. His whole thought process is around the idea that if you don’t like the way your designs look then you need to change your tool. By changing the tool then you can change how you start every project. By rethinking the way you normally design, you can change the result through accidents which can lead to great projects.

His one experimental project was called “40 Dates of Dating “. The fundamental questions was about understanding themselves as people and as well as designers. They structured guidelines for themselves to follow such as seeing each other every other day, going on certain amount of dates per week, etc. It was interesting because this one idea lead to one thing after another. Their project became famous and every producer, tv show, newspaper, magazine wanted to get in on their story. Because Timothy broke the barrier of letting his personal life into design which is very taboo lead to a hallway of open opportunities.

This lecturer was very inspirational and got me inspired to keep sketching everyday. By drawing on everything you can get your hands on, allows you to work with new mediums. I enjoyed a few of his quotes. “Find what you love and let it kill you” and “approach design as a practice and not a profession”. His work opened the doors into the experimental world because he was using cliche material and recreating it into something you wouldn’t expect.

What are some things you liked/didn’t like about the lecture/event?

I really enjoyed this event because it got me inspired to do more design experimental work. Sometimes I believe I hit a designers block and I get stuck in my designs. Timothy explained that once you hit a wall then you should find another avenue to explore and take a U turn to get over your troubles. I thought it was inspirational that Timothy believes in mistakes and they are a good thing because it allows a design to improve themselves.