Response 1

Defining design is no easy tack, but I believe it is important that we continue to think about and redefine was design is. From our reading of this week’s articles and our lecture last Tuesday, the conversation of ‘what is design’ means different to person to person. This makes sense since we are still young in our career, and our definition is based around our experiences in college. Although, even that changes from person to person. What I didn’t truly understand in the reading was the line,”To truly define design would be to kill it.” I don’t understand that comment even after reading the articles. Design and designing things is a constant. As humans, we seek knowledge and better understanding of the world around us. We understand then change the world in a that fits our needs. We designed our communities, our methods of taming and domesticating animals, our farms, our cites, our roads and streets, and etc. Thinking in terms of graphic design, companies will always come and go, and those companies will always need a brand. They will always need marketing, and even with new software that is supposed to make that easier. This softwares are going to produce brands that don’t feel tailored to the company. Defining something so complicated and ever-expanding as design shouldn’t and wouldn’t kill it, but I believe trying to define something so fluid is very hard. However, it also depends of the context.
In our lecture, we classified design the verb and design the noun, and even then that’s very complicated. You can design something like a product, but the product isn’t the design itself. However, the product cannot exist without design. For instance, the Ninja blender will be my example. A engineer created the blueprint/schematics of the Ninja. That person designed the Ninja. A graphic designer designed the packaging to go with it. A marketer designs the marketing strategy and the advertisements, but those aren’t the design. 

Chapter 6

Chapter 6 of within Design is a Job, was interesting to read, because Monteiro discussed the importance of designers sticking with their design process.

The beginning of the chapter, the author explained how to succeed as a designer. Monterio explains in detail how to research the client’s goals, content, brand, how they made their money, their audience, competition, technical constraints, editorial process, and content strategy, which this is information that we were told very early ing our school careers. Then, once the designer has a clear strategy, then they could propose a solution for the problem.

Recipe Website Inspirations

https://www.finedininglovers.com/recipes

I like this website because the layout of it. It screams fancy but family friendly. I also like the treatment of the titles.

https://www.epicurious.com/recipes-menus/19-ice-creams-of-your-dreams-gallery

I loved the fixed position of the recipes. Even though it is just showing adds, I think it would be cool to have information there that would help while you are looking at each step. 

Reading#1 Response

In a list Apart: Responsive Design Won’t Fix Your Content Problem by Karen McGrane, she talks about responsive design and how responsiveness is not a good enough content strategy for fixing a website. This surprised me a little, since I knew that responsiveness isn’t the only thing that makes a website a good website. Content management is the key. She goes into responsive design and starting from the mobile version. She continues on, taking about breaking the website down to its absolute necessity. If we add filler content, then the website could be hard to navigate. Looking back on the previous semester, planning the website is the hardest yet most important part of website design. She continues discussing this exactly. Karen continues discussing your content and revising your content. She says and I quote “even though the long-term goal is to serve the same content to every platform, organizations can’t just use what they already have. Smart companies will seize this opportunity to … clean up and pare down their desktop content.” This made me think about my design, and moving forward, how to strategize my content. When I was making my website, I was thinking about my portfolio as a 960 grid. When optimizing for different screens, I realized my design is hard to transfer to other sites. Something else this made me think about is my ‘future proofing’ of my site. Content is always evolving, so thinking about your content as an ever-changing thing is really important. Karen finals out her argument saying that responsive design will not fix the content. If the process, optimizing the design, and managing your content isn’t there, then adding responsiveness doesn’t change anything. At the moment, adding responsiveness to a website that was designed to be stationary is very difficult. Having the design move and change isn’t easy, but is very rewarding. I believe my content can change accordingly. 

Chapter 6

Chapter 6 is mostly about background information about the systems of professional disciplines and languages for typographers. The book started, as it always does, with the primer and the assortment of typographical information, I always lover these, because they give really good examples to their subject matter. Continuing further in the chapter, there is a segment for measurement systems. Like the name implies, it goes over all of the measurement systems in typography. A lot of these where covered in Joe’s advanced typography class, but it was a good refresher. Alongside the beginning of this chapter, there was aa really cool image of letters that where made out of overlapping shapes. I really enjoyed that, because I thought it was interesting to look at as a visual. The text starts further elaborating different measurements for different situations. There were many sub-categories just for sections of text. It went into greater detail talking about the differences in typefaces, which was something that was covered before. Continuing through the chapter, there was a section for classes, nomenclature, and name calling. This chapter wasn’t what I was expecting. This section was all about classifications and their associate names. There was a part that was all about the different classifications of a letter. This was also something that we wen’t over in advance typography, but it was nice to see that I remembered most f this information. All in all, this was a good end t the book. It went over a lot of what we’ve seen, but the book gave a more elaborate explanation. This will definitely be a book that I keep in my repertoire for a long time. 

Chapter 12 and 13

Chapter 12 of the Don’t Make Me Think, Revised Accessibility and You mainly started talking about, as the title suggest, web accessibility and why it’s important. It also goes over how to implement we accessibility options to your websites. It started by explaining what the developers and designers hear. This section was rather boring, because web accessibility has been hammered into our brains. So, this isn’t something new. This section talked about how making your website more accessible is a good marketing strategy. I thought this was interesting, because I wouldn’t think this would be a marketable thing. Making your websites assessable is part of the law and should be a common practice. Saying that my website it very accessible shouldn’t be a think to market. It should be inherit to all websites. Going further into the chapter, it talks about how designers and developers have some fear when it comes to web accessibility. Some of those fears are that it will be more work and compromise the design. I thought this is very silly. If a web designer and a web developer wants more people to browse through their site, then making it accessible to the widest range of people will ensure that. I thought these fears are just excuses. Later, it goes over the truth of the matter and something you can due to better understand web accessibility. It says that web accessibility is complicated and can be easy if you have that in mind. The author explains that if you have web accessibility in mind when designing the website, then it will be very easy, due to the fact that the designer or developer will have to go back and make changes. The four rules that it said where really helpful. Reading your website or hearing your website was very insightful, and the section that explained some of the easy fixes was equally as helpful. 

Chapter 13 Guide for the perplexed was a very helpful section. This section seems to be a overall summary of making an affective website. It goes over a lot of the main ideas of the previous chapters, but it complies them all in one place. This was a very helpful way to end off a book, because it allows the reader to get a main idea, but they could go back to the chapter that the section was referring to. It goes into the usual advice, which are pointers that could help your website overall. Something I noticed is that this chapter used a lot of conversational language. This chapter, with its prompts, seem less formal and more ‘ These is some pointers that will help you succeed, and I know this from experience.’ If eels like the author is talking to you, and it was a nice way to end a book. Overall, I will be keeping this book, so I may refer back to it.

Chapter 5

Chapter 5 Language Systems of the Crisp reading introduces some components of visual language, including hierarchical syntax, visual irony, and simile. The chapter starts with the section called,”Saying and Playing.” This section talks about how type can changed, or arranged to play on what it is saying. For instance, naming the brand nice, but changing the type to look like a smiley face. I remember that Kofi was talking about something like this in last years class, and it was nice to see an overlap. Continuing in the chapter, it starts talking about semantics and syntax, which is something that was taught to us. Again this was something that was taught to us in Kofi’s class. I kind just breezed through this section, but I did stop at the semantics and syntax of hierarchy section. This section went into different way to make the reader read what you want first. I know changing the point sized or weight of the type will do that, but it was nice to have a further elaboration to that. It was also nice to see some examples of that. Later in the chapter, the author started going over similes, metaphors, metonymies, and synecdoches. This was something wasn’t new but the book further elaborated these concepts. 

Crisp Chapter 4

In chapter 4 of the Chrisp reading, the author begins to talk about the physical forms of typographic production and reproduction, and they elaborated what the tools and terms mean. The chapter begins with an explanation of the first produced typography. The first produced type was in the form of inscriptions. The chapter also mentioned the Gutenberg Bible, which we all love great-grandad Gutenberg and his inventions. It talks about his movable moveable type  that was made of hand-cast metal. This was all stuff that I remember from Graphic Design history with Kelly, and I was nice to see a little snippet of that. 

Continuing the chapter, there was a sections that talked about  how type evolved into things such as calligraphy and lettering. It was pretty cool as a graphic designer to read about the evolution of how typography became something more contemporary little calligraphy ad lettering. Reading this, I realized that lettering is something that I’m really lacking in my portfolio. Reading about the history of type and how it evolved into calligraphy and lettering really got me interested in it. I will say, reading this chapter, I don’t really see to many similarities to the project that we are doing, but maybe I need to read it again.  

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