Welcome to the fourth installment of our Be Aware group posts.

Donovan Beery – Web Tips

*If nobody sees it, does your cover page exist?*

This is the one thing that you always need to keep in mind when designing for the web. As a large amount of viewers get to your site through search engines, links from other sites, and links sent to them via email, they may never see your homepage. Always be sure that any one page of your site will make sense by itself. It’s no fun making sure links back to your homepage, and site identifiers are on every page, but it is a necessity. Links labeled “back” make no sense to viewers who don’t even know where they were suppose to have come from.

Drew Davies: Seen and Noted in the Design World

*Design for the Movies*

I’d always wondered about something, and recently had a lot of my questions answered by a clip that Joe from my office forwarded to me. Turns out, by all outward appearances, being a designer on the crew of a major motion picture may be one of the most awesome jobs ever. For those needing any convincing, just check out this mini-documentary on the design team for the new Superman film.

Sure, there’s no actual strategy involved, no deep concepts, no measurable results. But look at all of that awesome stuff they get to design from scratch: identities for dozens of companies, complete city maps, a city-wide signage system…every last artifact of design you see in the movie. Maybe it’d get old after a while, but I’d sure trade jobs with any of them for a year.

Travis Gray: TypeWatch

Adrian Hanft – Alternative Photography

Does size matter? Here are some links to a few unusual sizes of cameras:

Bite size – Justin Quinnell builds pinhole cameras and takes pictures looking out his mouth.

Oversize – Justin also makes large pinhole cameras out of trash cans.

World’s largest camera – The Mammoth camera was built in 1900. It weighed 900lbs and made an 8 x 4.5 foot negative.

David Kadavy: Design and Technology

With the merger of Adobe and Macromedia, there has been a great deal of talk about a possible integration of PDF and Flash. That sounds good to me, but I want to see an integration of Flash, and a page-layout program such as InDesign.

Sure, someone can learn to automate tasks in InDesign through scripting, but with the increasing need for designers with web and print skills, why not harness a great language these people already know – ActionScript – to make automation even easier?

Imagine, for example, that you have a series of business cards to create. You could try automating it with scripting or even Illustrator Data Sets, but why learn yet another language, or use a very limited method of automation? Your master pages could hold arrays of the various people’s names and other information, as well as functions that dictate placement of various elements on the business card based upon the characteristics of that information. For example, you may want to place a graphic element based upon the length of someone’s name. All of the elements on the page could be “Movie Clips” so it would be easy to call them with scripts and dictate their placement. The individual pages could be “frames” that could hold still more variables and functions.

This would of course take some adaptation, but it would give a familiar language and conceptual model a new and powerful use.

Tom Nemitz: Awesomely Bad Website

There’s been an awful lot of spoof/parody websites lately purporting to be promotional material for a celebrity running for President in 2008, some better than others. The Christopher Walken site is an example of a spoof done well, as it was just good enough to put some doubt in your mind as to whether it was actually real. Some just are done so poorly, they never fool you for even a moment. In that vein, I present to you MacGyver For President: 2008. (Suspend your disbelief for a moment that the entire site is an offshoot of a blog and doesn’t have a distinct URL, and humor me.) This site has it all: wretchedly pixellated photos, hideous kerning, murderous widows, canyon-esque leading, sloppily inexcusably bad grammar spelling and punctuation. That makes it bad. But, a staple of political sites is quotes from the candidate, and its here where this site goes from “bad‚Äù to “awesomely bad‚Äù. These gems that randomly appear on different pages don’t disappoint: “A paperclip can be a wondrous thing. More times than I can remember one of these has gotten me out of a tight spot‚Äù; “Human nature. I do something nice for you, you do something nice for me, like not kill me. Next thing you know, we’re friends.‚Äù I’m speechless.

The group post that needs no introduction . . . Be Aware number 3.

Paul Berkbigler: Design Education

Continuing on last month’s theme of typography tools to add to your classroom repertoire, I’ll borrow a link from Veer’s blog and mention a fun little Flash instructional piece that the University of Delaware’s Visual Communications department put together – it’s an extremely nice “illustration” of the rigors of letterspacing. This buttresses Ellen Lupton’s “Type Crimes” illustrations nicely and really works with the ability of interactive media as well.

Check it out at: http://typography.art.udel.edu/

Clinton Carlson: Design Quotes

“Designers should understand that the forces shaping dominant design norms run deep. The governing mentalities that shape what is “good,” “right,” and “true” are the most difficult to identify and the most important to challenge. While governing mentalities cannot be rejected outright, they can and should be continuously challenged in design practice.”

Dean Nieusma. “Alternative Design Scholarship: Working Toward Appropriate Design” In Design Issues: Volume 20, Number 3 Summer 2004.

Kyle Heinemann: InDesign Tip

Productivity is something I value a lot in my work. I quickly switch tools by pressing letters on the keyboard, and quickly choose menu commands by using combinations of Command/Control and other keys. Especially helpful are keystrokes for those character styles and paragraph styles you choose every other second. It sounds like a no-brainer that keyboard shortcuts save you time, but you should really try it–especially if you have multiple large monitors.

You can learn which key is assigned to each tool by mousing over the tool for a few seconds. For example, the selection arrow is v. The direct selection arrow is a. The text tool is t. My favorite: press w to toggle to preview, bleed, or slug mode. In normal mode, you can see all your guides and baseline grids, paragraph markings, whatever. But when you switch to preview (by pressing w), all those go away…all you see is your art with a nice grey field outside the document edge (or outside the bleed edge if you choose bleed mode.)

Bennett Holzworth: Letterpress

If you would like to read an overview of the history and current state of letterpress, check out David Jury’s book, Letterpress: The Allure of the Handmade. There are some great examples of work and an overview of where letterpress has come from and where it is today. To someone just mildly interested in letterpress, it might be a little dry. However, this is also not an instruction manual of how to do letterpress. It does come off as a bit snobish in some parts as well. The complete exclusion of Hatch Show Print is one thing that confused me. Mr. Jury also doesn’t appreciate the deliberate use of inconsistent printing or printing that shows up on the back of the paper (both of which I am gladly guilty of). Most of the examples shown are helpful and beautiful, but some of the photography is lacking. Overall this book is a great resource despite a few flaws.

Nate Voss: Grunt Designer

*Your Spam Will Not Get You Hired*

As I grow in the world of the designer, and become a little more recognized in my own community (these are baby steps, people), I find myself working at a well-known and respectable ad agency. My photo, if not my work, was just featured in Graphis (that’s me, waaaay in the back), and we were listed as one of the Top 20 agencies in the country. I wonder if my company’s newfound standing is why my email is now flooded with photographer’s junk mail? I sure didn’t get them before.

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Welcome to the second installment of our Be Aware group posts.

Donovan Beery ��� Web Tips

website _ file _ naming _ for _ search _ engines.html
When creating your website files, take the extra few seconds to name files properly. Rather than naming something “image.gif,” changing the name to. For example, “graphic _ design.gif” will help search engine rankings for “graphic design.” But remember, spaces and special characters like “&” can cause problems with old browsers, so leave these out of your file names. A simple underscore (_) will be read as a space by search engines, so use them instead.

Drew Davies: Seen and Noted in the Design World

Let’s face it. As designers, we hate being called “graphic artists” or worse yet, “commercial artists.” Rest assured that’s still true for me, but recently I’ve been taking note of the work of the people who still wear those badges proudly. These days they’re calling it “window splash,” but we know it as custom, hand-painted type and images. You’ll find it on big signs, sides of vehicles and vast windowscapes, and often associated with pawn shops and quick check cashers. It’s the epitome of “commercial art,” and some of it is downright gorgeous.

If you haven’t recently, stop by one of these places sometime soon and take in some of this art. No, it doesn’t involve heady concepting, deep strategy, or any “brandscaping.” (Bless his heart, my grandfather did huge, custom-lettered banners for local grocery stores for years, and still never quite understood what I do for a career.) But if you find the right piece, you’ll see that it’s crafted with a honed skill that is almost extinct in our digitally-evolving world. Only a few people are left who really do this well, and their work should be celebrated.

Travis Gray: Flash Animation

With the advent of Flash it has become very easy for anyone to produce their own animated cartoons and shorts. And since I wanted to be an animator before I wanted to be a designer, I still occasionally get the urge to animate a few characters every once in a while. So here are a few references and resources that you might find helpful if you also animate for a hobby.

Books:
Hollywood 2D Digital Animation by Sandro Corsaro & Clifford J. Parrott
The Animator’s Survival Kit by Richard Williams
Stop Staring: Facial Modeling and Animation Done Right by Jason Osipa
Timing for Animation by Harold Whitaker and John Halas

Websites:
Macromedia Flash Animation Examples
Flash Filmaker
Cold Hard Flash
Sound Dogs

Adrian Hanft – Alternative Photography

An easy way to create a unique photo is to use different lenses. Here are a few very unique (and relatively cheap) cameras that use non-traditional lenses.

The Horizon 202: A swing-lens panoramic camera that captures 120 degrees
(buy here, gallery here )

Fisheye Camera: The only camera with a built-in fisheye lens.
(buy here, gallery here )

Oktomat: A camera with 8 lenses
(buy here, gallery here )

Holga 120s: Don’t forget the classic Holga with its plastic lens.
(buy here, gallery here )

David Kadavy – Design and Technology

A post and conversation at The Long Tail examines blog design in the age of RSS, and hints that with RSS, maybe the graphics aren’t as important anymore. If so, this would make clear typography increasingly more crucial. Personally, I stopped using an aggregator because it gave me RSS-induced ADD, but I’m sure Aldus is jumping for joy in his grave over the accelerating rate of information transfer.

Tom Nemitz – Awesomely Bad Website

Billy Zabka. You know him as Johnny Lawrence of the Cobra Kai dojo, and the guy who loses to Daniel-san at the end of Karate Kid. Prepare to know him as the subject of a bizarre club — The Fraternal Order of Zabka (FOZ).

From a design standpoint, you’ve got to, um, love the sloppy site navigation and the unnecessary frame-action which forces you to scroll about twice as much as you’d really need to. And the quote from Billy’s dad, “Good job with the website!”, is classic. But what seals the deal on this being an awesomely bad website is the photo of The Godfathers of the FOZ.

Sweep the leg, indeed.

In an effort for our site to be even more “group” oriented we are going to have a group post called “Be Aware” twice a month. This is the first of many to come. Half of our authors will be in the post at the first of the month and the other half in the middle. Each author on our site will consistently write about a chosen subject that they are passionate about. It is amazing what you can observe if you are aware of your surroundings. Enjoy!

Paul Berkbigler: Design Education

It’s still early in my practice as a teacher, so my fervor for the subject of typography and drive to nearly hammer it into the brains of any student I come into contact with may still mellow as my career continues. All that aside, though, if you have a need to brush up on typography basics or find yourself faced with a classroom of folks looking to know more about it, Ellen Lupton has again been prolific and generous enough to compile an excellent type primer and a great website companion to it – take a look at a copy of Thinking With Type the next time you’re in a bookstore, or browse the fairly extensive content that she’s also offering on thinkingwithtype.com.

Among my personal favorites that she’s included are the “Crimes against Typography” section and her “Tools for Teachers” section – simply terrific little supplies to dole out in the classroom.

Clinton Carlson: Design Quotes

“Designers can no longer only be concerned about the interaction of word and image; they also must be concerned about the interaction between the audience, the content of the communication and the outcome of the design. In order to create dialogues that effectively persuade the viewer to adopt a new belief or change behavior, the communication designer can no longer rely solely on intuition.

Designers have to devise methods for creating empathy with the viewer who will play a part in constructing meaning from the message.”

Jodi Forlizzi and Cherie Lebbon. “From Formalism to Social Significance in Communication Design” in Design Issues. Autumn 2002.

Kyle Heinemann: InDesign Tip

*InDesign Guides*

Do you know how much InDesign guides can do for you? You’ve probably already realized you can select one, and enter an exact (x,y) value in the Transform window. You can also select multiple guides of the same orientation and align/distribute. Or, just move a bunch of them at the same time by selecting only guides (although once you select an object, your guide selection will be lost) and either drag or type a new value. This is particularly helpful for adjusting book layouts to new spine sizes.

Bennett Holzworth: Letterpress

If you happen to be in north central Kanas anytime soon I would recommend visiting what I would like to call the “ghost” letterpress shop. Jewel Kansas has a little history museum with an old practically untouched letterpress printshop in the back. It is sad to see the rollers melted on the ink plates, but it is fascinating to look at the tympan paper and still be able to see what the last job printed was. Just be sure to call and make an appointment before you go, because that is the only way to get in.

Nate Voss: Grunt Designer

Stock Photography is saturating the world with tameness. A quick search of stock-site Photos.com for “Anger” gives you near-emotionless, unevocative, frowning portraits. The problem? In order to sell photos, the shots need to fit as many applications as possible. My “Anger” photo could fit the square-hole for “Need a New Printer?” just as easily as it could fit “So You’ve Committed Murder?”

There’s such a glut of non-specific imagery in the world right now that it may-well become this decade’s design trend.