Culture 3/27

For my 4th project, I am redesigning the menu for the company Potato Shack. Here is what it looks like now:
http://www.potatoshack.biz/menu.php?store=NorthGate

I'm not quite sure how I can talk about perception, culture, or rhetoric in my redesign. The only thing I can think about doing is adding some decorative pictures of a few of the potatoes they have to offer. I'm not redesigning their logo or anything along those sort. I'm mainly going to be adding some contrast and different colors to help identify between the description and the name of the potatoes. Any ideas?

TTU Typography

Using different kinds of typography is a good way to differentiate between different information. TTU has a strict set of typography found at this website: http://www.depts.ttu.edu/communications/identityguidelines/idguidelines/ttu/elements/type.php. The body text is Roman Charter and Helvetica Neue for important information like class schedules and catalogs. Helvetica is one of the most generic fonts to choose, but I don't really expect anything less from Tech. I feel the colors are kind of dull looking. The darker red background makes the page look boring. I do like that they make some statements a softer gray to make it more friendly. Tech also makes some of the important headers like course schedules a larger font and in a bright red. This shows importance in the text and makes that paragraph recognizable. Tech also uses Edwardian Script for important announcements like graduations. I like this script because it is elegant looking and it does look like it is talking about something important.

Redesign # 3- Resume

Proximity- The proximity that I did in my design was grouping related content together. For example, in my "Education" and "Employment" section I put spaces in between each job and school I went to to show the information underneath the title related. I also drew a line between each section to help divide them and make the resume easier to read.

Repetition- Keeping everything consistent in a resume is very important. For my resume, I kept the same font, Century Gothic, throughout the whole document. I felt this font was easy to read. Looking at this font, I would say it is in the san serif family since it has the same thickness all the way through and there are no serifs on the ends of the letters. I strayed away from the regular helvetica and arial since those are so common and boring. I also used the same line to divide the sections. It is just a one point solid thickness. I did not want to get too crazy with a distracting dotted line or something of that matter. I like boring sometimes.

Contrast- This was a major part for my resume. I used a combination of bold, italics, and caps to highlight different parts of my resume. For my headers, I bolded and used all caps to show their importance. Looking at my document, you can easily see what each section is about because of the boldness. I also left aligned them all the way to the left so they would not get jumbled with the rest of my content. On the right side where all of my content is, I used a combination of bold and italics to emphasize the different content. All of the bold parts are the name of the job, school, or activity I was involved in. Making them bold shows their importance, but not more than the headers where were in upper caps. Second, the italicized parts are my title or degree that I got from those schools. These are important parts too, but they don’t out-shine the actual place or activity that I was a member of. Last, the regular text is explaining what I did at my job, skills, or relevant courses. Explaining myself is an important part of my resume, but these parts need to be easy to read and I would like for them to read the other parts first so they can see the relevance.
Alignment- This is something I find the most problems with in people’s resumes. I think this is very important because at first glance this is the first thing that employers will notice. Alignment issues will definitely show up on paper, which is usually what you turn in to an employer at an interview. For my resume, I kept all of my content lined up at 2 1/3”. I played around with that size to see what would be a good distance from my longer headings, but still give me enough room to talk about my accomplishments. I also made sure that my lines were flush against the outside border. This makes the document seem full and well put together.

Picture

Page Design

Page Design has three perspectives: Perception, culture, and rhetoric.

People like to look at documents that have consistent figures on a ground. Having clean, consistent edges on the pages identify the text within our line of vision. We also see figures on pages. there's a design object we recognize as where text goes, text field. We recognize smaller areas like paragraphs and headings. we also see some areas in the text field that take as separate graphic elements. We also have to consider someone's culture. For example, now-a-days the sender has to pay for the postage and the amount of papers in the envelope doesn't really matter. Back in the day, they charged per paper and the receiver had to pay the postage. People got clever and would use a technique called crossing. This is where they would make a grid by writing on a page normally, then turning it horizontal and write more. Another example is people in foreign countries. American's read left to right, where China reads right to left. Also, when deciding on page design ideas, we need to consider the rhetoric. For example, page design can promote an ethos that reflects well on the client, matches the purpose, sets a tone for the document, and encourages users to use it. As designers, we need to figure out who our target audience is, and design the page around that.

Assignment #2- Valentine's Day Google Logo

For this redesign, I decided to do a Valentine's Day Google logo. Google is infamous for changing their logo on the home page for holidays or just random facts about that day. Valentine's Day is on Monday so I found this redesign to be fitting. Here is the classic Google logo:

Here is my new Valentine's Day logo:

Contrast- I looked at some older Google logos that they have done just to get an idea of what they look like/do for design. I noticed that sometimes, the lower case "g" is the only letter that is completely different. I think it's obvious that the hearts are "O"s because that's a common thing people do in cutesy designs for Valentine's Day. The "g" takes a little more imagination. I think Cupid is very symbolic part of Valentine's Day and everyone thinks of Cupid. So, I made Cupid stand out more by having him be other colors besides shades of red. I will say that Cupid turned into more of a pain than I was expecting. He was originally black and white and I figured that would be a quick-fix by just using the paint bucket in Paint. Wrong. Doing that, made the paint blotchy and I had to go into Photoshop and color in every pixel around every edge. Then, when I shrank it down, it made it pixelized and I had to touch it up, yet again. I have a copy of the originally colored Cupid. If you zoom in on this one, it is very pixelized.

Repetition- I looked up past Valentine's Day logos for Google, and I found one that was in all red. I cropped out the "G" and "e" so that I would for sure get the right font and size for the logo. I then took the same color of the hearts and put them as the color of Cupid's tongue, and edited the arrow to match the same one that Cupid is holding.

Alignment- I made sure to keep everything in-line, down to the pixel. I drew a line from the bottom of the "G" and lined the bottom of the first heart, and the bottom of the "e." I would have lined up the bottom of the rose too, but I think it would have made it awkward looking sticking up past everything else so far. I like that it is in the center of everything and makes Cupid look like he's not down as far. Also, I tried shrinking the rose down and it made it really pixelized again and if I tried filling it in, it would be a black rose. I then lined up the top of the hearts with the top of Cupid's head. Again, I thought lining up the top of Cupid's bow would make it look like he was hanging down too low.

3 Major Concepts

Repetition- I think this is an important concept because looking at a document that has a million different colors and fonts going on is a bit confusing and hard to look at. Having words the same font and boldness can create unity between them. Like in the example on page 52, the business card has the name of the business and the phone number bold to unify them and amplify their importance. Repetition helps with grouping things together, which is also an important concept. Repetition can include bullets, numbers, boldness, fonts, colors, etc. The purpose of repetition is to unify and add visual interest

Contrast- This is an importance concept because it makes your document stand out from the rest. Using colors and lines to help group things together makes documents more easy to read and understand what is going on at a glance. Using different fonts and colors make the document more fun to read and people will be more willing to pick it up and read. I really like when the examples used washed out images in the backgrounds. It really makes them look better and stand out from the boring examples. The important concept about contrast is to create an interest on the page.

Alignment- This is important because it helps keep documents organized and together. For paragraphs easy to read, keeping them left-aligned is best. making things center aligned makes the reader have to go to different points each line, making it unpleasant to read. One of the few times left-aligned is bad is when there is a picture on the right, making awkward spaces between the edge of the picture and the text. The basic purpose of alignment is to unify and organize the page.