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Scribble!

Thank you to everyone who came and scribbled with us! Here are some photos of the event:

And the winners are:

1st place   

2nd place  

3rd place  

 Honorable mention:

Release Your Inner Monster

Release Your Inner Monster was an event put together by ART 470 students; Angie Thomason, Andrea Brock, and Liz Wolcott. Our goal was to give the PSU Graphic Design students a chance to draw what they would think was their inner monster and then set it free by attaching their drawing to a balloon and releasing it into the wild. The three of us came together as a team and put together promotional materials along with cookies and stickers to give to the students after they participated. The monster event started off a little slow but all and all it was a great success. I think that the students really enjoyed drawing and releasing there monsters into the wild. We ended up with 24 monsters all together. Thanks to everyone for coming and participating!!

Everyone got a cookie and sticker after they released their monster into the wild, the cookies were great Andrea did a wonderful job on the packaging and thanks to Liz for creating the stickers.

Drawing away

Here's some students releasing their monster into the wild!

Good bye silly monster float away

Scott Clum of Ride Studio, (in person!), Thursday 11/12 at Noon

Scott Clum's Pratt, NYC Lecture posters.

 

Jordan poster

 

Self-authored posters. Experiments that Dan Kinto, PSU-GD Grad and Scott worked on.
They started from simple charcoal line drawings and paint.

Work for Ford Taurus

 

Scott Clum's Pratt, NYC Lecture posters.

 

Dubai Films, Tony Kaye

Thinking about interning in Portland? Want to learn more about film editing, video, print design, advertising and action sports design? Come and hang out with Scott Clum of Ride Studio this Thursday at noon in room 170! He wants to meet you. Scott has a studio in Portland and has worked with PSU-GD interns and grads. He is excited to share his work and talk with students about design, motion graphics and working in the real world. Scott will show some personal work he created with British artist Damien Hirst and flim director Tony Kaye (American History X) and a current project he is working on. 

From Scott's website, "The history of ride design studio is a combo of two worlds. My life as an action sports athlete and my life as an artist. Right out of art school i started combining my interests in fine art and advertising as one world. Taking refined layouts that looked way too perfect and instinctually re-positioning them within a world of broken type, paint and a barrage of organic materials. This to me represented a more defined picture of reality. An energy and fluidness [ or lack of.. ] That made design much more integrated and challenging." For more about Scott Clum.

A few of Scott's clients/projects include: Kaiser Permanente, Johnson & Johnson, music videos for The Hours and Lisa Marie Presley, Ford, American Express, The Verve, Tony Kaye Dubai and Metallica.

ANYWHERE BUT HERE

'Anywhere But Here' was an event brought to the PSU GD students and faculty by Christy Lee Zilka, Nicole Lavelle and Orion Jackson. We brought together the desire for freedom and relief of the everyday stress to offer people a moment to create a flag that would represent where they'd rather be than here. Some wanted to be in bed, on a hike or in another country, and some just wanted to be eating lunch.

Our days are busy with school, work, family, friends, meetings, dates of all kinds and obligations that either do or don't satisfy. We asked our participants to us there imagination, to reach deep down to find that "happy place" that is in each and every one of us.

The event was successful in that people enjoyed taking 5 minutes to think about that place they'd rather be, plus we had cookies to fill their hungry tummies. Their creations were hung out in the art annex hallway as a friendly reminder that we all daydream about that special place we'd like to be than in class, work or in the dreary Portland fall/winter weather. We are together in our journey for greatness, success and graduation! Together we are unique individuals that all want to be happy with a cookie and on a trip to anywhere but here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thank you to everyone who participated in our event!

Group Post: Personas

On "Personas: Practice and Theory" by John Pruitt and Jonathan Grudin

This article is about designing for imaginary people called personas. Personas are a marketing concept that involves creating fictional characters based on actual data and research. This research is highly in-depth, making these characters are very detailed, as they would be in a movie or a tv show.

Imagine if the Beverly Hillbillies were part of the audience we were designing for. How would we reach them? Well, if we studied their habits, we could make them into a persona. That persona would probably love Corn Flakes.

Designers often have trouble designing for people outside of their own realm. Designing for these characters is useful in the design process by providing a very specific target audience to design for. We can connect to these persona much like we would an actual person, rather than making decisions based on basic market research and assumptions

 Designers need to cut themselves out of the picture and start thinking about their real audience.

“A subset of perticipants in the usability study had problems with that search tool.”

That doesn't let me know who I am designing for, let’s try that again.

“Abby cannot use the search tool on your web page.”

That’s better. Now when I make a decision about how the search tool functions, I can imagine myself as Abby the Persona who isn't as web savvy as I am. 

Don't rely on finger puppets to guide your design choices.

The question is: does it actually work?

There is an argument by Portigal Consulting that says personas actually distance a team from the actual user. They say that personas are thought of as just cartoons, and therefor not taken seriously.

A controlled experiment recently showed otherwise. Two groups of students were asked to solve a design brief, one used personas while the other did not. The results showed that students using personas produced designs with better usability attributes. It also showed that groups can improve communication and facilitate more constructive and user-focused design discussion when applying personas.

"Meet My Fridge": A Reflection

Poster design by Minji Pak; Photo by Scott Bryant

A Minji Pak, Scott Bryant and Michelle Vargas social practice project.

Many weeks ago, After many ideas, we suddenly realized, "What do fellow graphic design peers like to eat?" From there, "Meet My Fridge was born. The concept behind the social practice project was to gain insight into what fellow graphic design students' eating habits were (and what the inside of their refrigerator looked like).

After weeks of hard work, the group held an event on October 27th, where a total of 19 participants took part in filling out a questionnaire and snacking on delicious muffins (made my Minji Pak). After the event the group collected all the questionnaire responses (along with corresponding headshots of the participants) and transferred it all to the official Meet My Fridge blog: http://meetmyfridge.wordpress.com/.

The group also established a Meet My Fridge Flickr group, where 21 participants joined and 13 refrigerator photos were submitted => http://www.flickr.com/groups/whatdoyoueat/

Overall, the team was very pleased at the enthusiastic response to the project. It was a great opportunity for other students to

PHOTOS FROM OCT. 27th (photos taken by Scott Bryant)

Team Post: Emotion Through Design

  

Touching someone’s heart through graphic design is all in the viewer, you can never touch everyone’s heart at once because everyone is different. But is there a way to touch at least one person’s heart? In Sagmeister's article, the meaning of design is questioned. An image can be beautiful but did it move you? Did the designer actually stand for something or did they just slap pretty pictures on a page? Things such as movies and books have a long time to connect to an audience, design usually has a few seconds to try and do the same. If the designer stands for nothing or has nothing to say the end result will reflect this and be ineffective. The reading noted that "design can never rise above its content," if you have a weak message design can only help so much.

Fortunately for us Sagmeister provides a list of variables that can help a design move its audience or "touch it's heart."

How to touch someones heart:

--Make someone see something in a new way. For example, Salvation Army did an advertising campaign to help end homelessness. They came up with the idea of putting nutritional facts on garbage cans to raise awareness. Many people don't think much about garbage cans besides it being a place where they get rid of their trash. By adding the nutritional label to the garbage cans it gave them new meaning, not only are they places for our trash, but also a food source for homeless people.

--Trigger memories. Design can be more effective if it has the viewer recall events from their past. Not only does this connect the viewer to the design more, it is less work for the designer. Different objects, events, places, etc. already make a person feel a certain way and the person already has an understanding or interpretation of what those things mean.

--Show passion and commitment. Honda released an ad awhile back with an intricate contraption to demonstrate how their product just works. The more effort put into the design the more it shows.

Honda Ad - Rube Goldberg ContraptionUploaded by jeromeerome. -

--Create an element of unexpectedness. Surprise the viewer and they will be more drawn into your design. A Cordaid ad about feeding hungry people in Africa takes poverty stricken Africans out of their element and has them pose like models next to different products. The somewhat strange and unexpected image of this ad is what makes it so successful.

--Become virtuous. If you do something, do it right. Become obsessive and make sure each aspect is perfect whether it is the materials you're using or the craft you are doing to execute the project.

--Make sure the design is beautiful. This one is pretty straight forward and expected.

Scribble!

 

Scribble your cares away!
Give your brain a vacation, join us in the Art Annex on Tuesday from 12:00pm 'til @2:00pm

Top 3 drawings win vintage style 64-pack of Crayola crayons!
$15 iTunes gift card for 1st place, $5 Starbucks gift card for 2nd.

Free coloring books to all contestants while supplies last. Ages 6+

Confessions of A Graphic Designer

Calling all Portland State graphic design students!

Graphic Design Seniors Linda, Suchita and Alana would like to invite you to come participate in "Confessions of a Graphic Designer." Exactly like the title says, we want to hear what you have on your mind or rather what your "confession" is; anonymously of course!

What's this about? Well, our team is curious about what kind of things are on graphic students mind's as well as maybe helping lift a weight that might be on someone's shoulders. For your participation we offer FREE cookies and stickers. You can't go wrong with free food and sticky stuff! So come, join us on Thursday October 29th from 12pm to 2pm in the ART ANNEX room 170. 

See you there! ^_^

Plays Well With Others

 

1920 Girls Basketball Team

Teamwork Assessment Assignment (your project is incomplete without this evaluation): 

As designers we work on teams: creative teams; marketing teams; interdisciplinary interaction teams; in a design or ad agency you may work with: media placement, strategy, producer, account manager, production artist, illustrator, photographer, etc and always (!) critical the client and designer relationship. Critical to the success of the project and your success is your ability to work well with others. Especially others who may not see things the same way you do.

Once the team project is completed (event, documentation, final brand book and reflection on the participation and interactivity created by your event) each of team member grades themself and each member.

 TEAM "ABC"!:

 

For each team member (including yourself) email me the answers to # 1, 2, and 3. 

1) Write a short narrative that describes each team member's CONTRIBUTIONS (include yourself) to the success of the project (how, what, when) include a link to your flickr page that shows the design work you created for the project.

2) Note BARRIERS you created or your team members created that slowed the teams' progress and/or made it difficult to work well together. How might you address these barriers in the future? How might you change your behavior, thinking and approach to enhance cooperation and team effectiveness?

3) Make a list of each team member and using the rating scale 5 (high) to 1 (low) evaluated each member on:

a) CONTRIBUTION/ROLES. consider each members design contribution, ideation, planning, support and execution of project; leadership and support roles. 

b) EFFORT. rate the effort each member (include yourself) put toward the project

c) OPEN. flexibility, open to others ideas and opinions, willingness to work toward the good of the team and project (for yourself and each member)

d) ATTITUDE. enthusiastic; easy to work with; excited; supportive; generous; positive outlook; OR blah; negative; did not demonstrate thoughtful interest in project.