Every once in a while you catch yourself using the same approach to solve different problems. Sometimes that’s a good thing, and the insight gives you another tool in your repertoire. And sometimes, you realize that you’re applying the wrong solution, and a different approach might work better. Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve come…
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History ID: Genealogy project
We were assigned a genealogy project in my History of Information Design class, where we were to choose a topic and create an infographic to show a lineage. While I was pondering my choice of topics, I was also studying from A Type Primer by John Kane for VisComm. As I puzzled my way through…
ID Studio: Map Project Progress
I am behind on my posting – a lot has happened with the map since last time! I had some ideas of where to head when I checked in last time, and have spent the past couple of weeks developing the map with a whole new structure using a revised concept. From this: it became…
VizTech: Learning the basics
I feel like VizTech has been getting a bit of a short shrift on the blog lately, but that’s largely because we’re not yet to the point where we’re doing anything interesting (last week, we programmed some colored boxes in a responsive design for a webpage). This course has a lot of groundwork to be…
IDStudio: Map project crit 2
The second crit session for the Design Studio Maps project was on Monday. I brought both of the versions from my previous post to class with me, but wasn’t feeling excited about either one. I think there are some good things in there, but the design feels confused to me, like it’s trying to do…
VisComm: Rights of Man typesetting crit 1
The first assignment for my Visual Communications class was to typeset 10 versions of Article 4 from the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen. The first 5 versions were to be kept simple: one size of font, and formatted as simple paragraphs. The second set of compositions could be more elaborate: multiple typefaces,…
ID Studio: Map project crit 1
After deciding to stick with straight lines and stripped down symbols for my map project in the last post, I started playing around with ideas for how to humanize the design to keep it from feeling barren. I had stripped out all of the non-essentials to focus strictly on content and utility in the first sketches,…
IDStudio: Map project
The first project for our ID Studio class is to make a map. Three maps, actually. Each one begins at our home and shows a trip to a) school, b) our childhood home or c) an international destination. Eventually, we will need to put all three maps on the same piece of paper in a…
Back in school
In August, I was accepted to the master’s program in Information Design and Visualization at Northeastern University. My original plan was to go back to grad school in a year or two, but the way things have unfolded I find myself standing at the end of the first full week of class, and really looking…
LED Grid: Hardware development
This is a guest post by Branden Gunn, about building the LED Grid for our collaborative design project The hardware for the LED grid project consists of two major elements: The LED lights, and the IR touch system. The first idea for the board had the main LEDs spaced out in a 10mm grid. I…