Museum of the City: Journal for 7/7/2010

Urban Blocks to City Blogs

Questions in follow up to the Article:
1: What role can museums play in defining social media, rather than just following the crowd. What can they do different than more commercial ventures?

2: 3 years after the initial survey, how have the statistics changed? Are the efforts towards people focused museum management actually paying off?

3: Shouldn’t the focus of museums be on making their exhibits more engaging rather than connecting better with people. Engaging exhibitions inherently connect with people. Kind of a case of “what came first, the chicken or the egg”.

Defining a Research Agenda for City Museums in a Peripheralizing World

I haven’t yet had a chance to go over this article.

Urban Icons

Questions in follow up:
1: Do Urban Icons mean more to the residents of the city or to the visitors? Does all of Portland want to be associated with the Fremont Bridge? Portlandia Statue? OHSU Tram?

2: Should Urban Icons be a goal of city planning?

3: Are Urban Icons that fall out of favor worth documenting in museums?

Museum of the City: Journal for 7/30/2010

Cities and Museums about Them

Towards a City Museum as a Centre of Civic Dialogue

Museums of Cities and the Future of Cities

Thinking About Exhibit Project

The role of sports in cities is a point of great civic pride. Additionally they have historical significance. Just look at the monuments of Rome and Athens, and you’ll find sporting venues as a key point on any tourist’s agenda. Modern sports have been making a push in recent years towards stadia that are housed in the urban core of cities, rather than the suburban fringes. The sports that are doing this are finding success with this strategy. I have a primary interest in Soccer, and I’d like to explore this more as it relates to cities throughout the world, although focusing on a single league might be more feasible for this class.

Knickerbocker Glory Movie

There were a few different pieces that I tried to have for a promotional item. I made a live action flip book, which was somewhat successful, but lacked the crispness of the original. I’d like to re-attempt the flip book, but under more controlled lighting situations, and with a better camera/animation setup. I was able to show the animation digitally, but it still needed more. I revisited the animation using the original vectors. Set up as a four frame/second animation, the choppiness is there like it would be in a flip book (I definitely didn’t want it smooth). I drew inspiration from this movie as well, which this design group used to promote their clock face. Disappointingly, they only did a few letters, not a complete set. I intend to, in the future, create this font as a true usable face.

My animation coming shortly (waiting on the compressing from Vimeo)

Project III – Paula Scher Rad Maker

Paula Scher is extremely influential in terms of her typography. Her “Bring in the Noise, Bring in the Funk” typography was copied extensively in the 90s. Immitation is the sincerest form of flattery. It was so heavily used, that Scher looks at that style as not her own anymore. It exists in the ether now.

My focus for this project is on the Public Theater posters and works, although Paula Scher is much more prolific than just that. Setting new standards in environmental typography, as well as signage and album art. I wish I had more time to pursue these forms; perhaps in the future.

Him/Her Poster

One of the posters Scher did for the Public Theater was for a play called “Him”. It was written by Christopher Walken, which I find most excellent </billandted>.

The play is about Elvis in Heaven, and the poster uses Elvis’ signature Duck Tail haircut, disembodied from his head. I appropriated this style with Paula’s hair. Although it isn’t as “signature” as Elvis’ hair, the text does back it up quite nicely.

Project II: Magazine Redesign

Needing to work more with editorial design, I chose the magazine redesign as my next project. Previous to coming to school, I did a summer internship with Outdoors NW Magazine, previously Sports Etc. Magazine. Mired down by the ultimate veto power of the Publisher of the magazine, the look of the publication is stale, and quite poor in appearance. My goals with the redesign were to give an overall cleaner look, use more eye catching images and provide more visual pace on the inside of the magazine. To the right, I have my redesigned cover (Images of the magazine in its current state are at the bottom of the post.). The nametype logo gets away from artificial effects and opts for a face that pulls the eye across the cover, and down to the featured story headline. The overall angle is mirrored in logo, feature story headline, other story teasers, and barcode.

Table of Contents

The table of contents in the original itteration of the magazine was compressed onto one page. As stated earlier in the goals, I wanted to provide more visual space. Again, the logo’s line is pulling the eye across the two page spread of table of contents, and the color scheme is reflected from the cover. The whitespace in the photograph served as a backdrop for the TOC information. The same font was used that is used on the logotype.

The Feature Spread

On the teaser spread, the headline of the story is in the same face used on the cover. I created the font used for the “Shift” part in Illustrator using a pattern brush. The cogs were also created in Illustrator using a pattern brush applied to a circle path. These are re-used on the following page to backdrop the pull quote. The sign graphic uses Portland’s Bike Boulevard signage, but changes the neighborhood listings to real estate listings. It is vague, but I feel more impactful when the reader realizes that there is the change.

The next two pages are the meat of the story, paired up with a sidebar story that relates to the main feature. The leading was kept loose to provide plenty of breathing room for the text. Picture captions are done in the same red used in the logo type, but in the same face (although a larger point size) as the body copy. The pull quote shows the cogs that were used on the front spread, placed behind the quote. The punctuation is hanging, and the quotes are red to match the captions. The sidebar’s background starts at the column gutter, and continues to the edge in a bleed. The text loses about a pica of space due to the sidebar starting where the text usually would.

Original Layout

Here is an exmaple of what Outdoors NW is currently doing. All graphic designers would be shocked to see this. Orphans and widows all over the copy, terrible picture choices, and stretched typography on “Table of Contents”. I have a feeling that this publication is thinking, we’re a free magazine, so EFF-YOU good design!

House Industries Interview

There is a great interview over at Grain Edit that offers fantastic insight to drawing inspiration from past works to create new works. House Industries uses previous work to create font faces, and then rides the creative train to create companion pieces for the faces. Definitely worth a look. They uncovered so much fantastic work that hasn’t yet been absorbed by design yet.

“We also picked up two new heroes along the way; John & Marilyn Neuhart. Spending time with John & Marilyn and hearing them tell stories about working with Sandro during the golden era on projects like the T&O store and the Braniff Identity are the things that the design history books have yet to cover.”

I drew inspiration from a music video for a project that is nearing completion. Fujiya & Miyagi’s Ankle Injuries is done with hybrid hand animation and video filters. The entire video is essentially stop motion dice. I loved the interplay of the die with one dot versus the die with six dots. Here’s the video and the font in progress.

Brief History of Type: Reading Response

This is a response to the “A Brief History of Type” article by Thomas W. Phinney. The article is available here. There are a few dead links for type examples on there; be aware.

Phinney offers some additional insights to anatomy of time to my vocabulary. The “Stress” of a letterform, for example, is a subtle, but important element of the flow of a body of text. A sensitivity to this can be very important to how a page appears to the reader.

Breaking down the types of fonts was quite enlightening. The classification again adds to the vocabulary, making it easier for me to get a point across to other designers. Saying, “Use a Blackletter face,” instead of “Use a decorative scripty, medievally face,” allows me and my fellow designers to stay on the same page. Efficient collaboration is a good thing!

Experimental Type Formulation

So the first big project that we are working on in Typography class is an Experimental type assignment. Not only are we to create a typeface, but we are also to create a marketing piece to go along with it. This is taking a cue from other type foundries that are using a promotional item to get people excited about their faces. We have fairly complete freedom when it comes to what we construct the type out of, as well as the kind of face we choose to work with (serif, sanserif). Here are a few ideas that I’ve been working on both in my head and in my sketch book (images to come shortly, as they get fleshed out).

1.) Maze Type – This face will be constructed with the walls of a maze. The solution of the maze will take the reader through the entire range of letter. This face will be a modern, sanserif font, with blocky angles. For a marketing piece, I will reconstruct a Brio Labyrinth game that the user can navigate a marble through.

2.) Snow Type – I love skiing and the winter time. This face will take that joy and energy that I have towards the snow and put it into a modern, sanserif font; reminiscent of Helvetica. The medium will allow me to make a variety of shapes, with 100% freedom. I’d love to set up the alphabet along the road leading up to Timberline Lodge as well; Typography as installation! I’ve yet to figure out a marketing piece for this one. Some ideas I have include a snowboard, with the alphabet, or name of the font, as the base.

3.) Dice Type – This face will use dice (specifically the 1, 3 and 6 face of the die) to spell out the words. The dice will be placed in a grid next to each other, and the density of the dots, as well as the direction of dots (such as in the 3) will spell out the letter.

The marketing piece for this face will be a packaged game of Liars Dice.

Excellent Web Design

I found this site on the Web Design Depot blog about websites that use landscape illustrations. A majority of the sites had headers or footers that used illustrations, others had the illustration saddling the information, or going behind the information. This one (http://www.geticeberg.com/) caught my eye because of how the landscape was integrated in a way that was functional and cute. I think I’d like to try something along these lines in the future.

10 Typography Selections & A Bit About Me

To the right are a few of the type faces that I find visually interesting. Some of them I use regularly, while others I simply appreciate the lines. Overall, I favor more modern type. It is definitely easier for me to select a sans-serif face than a serif face. The serifs that I did choose tend to show the hand of the designer a little bit more, Garamond to be specific. The upswing of the letter form before it drops into its serif is such a great move. The lower-case p, for example, doesn’t have a flat serif, it drops at the left side of the decender. It’s got just the right touch of imperfection that I really like.

The san-serif fonts seem to offer much more utility to me. A stronger place to start; a foundation to stand on. Myriad is a type face that I use regularly. It has a bit more flavor than faces such as Helvetica; it shows a little bit of playfullness behind its rigid formal structure.

What Am I Excited About?

I find excitement in many things inside the city and outside the city. I am an avid observer of architecture, while loving to get away from it and get into the forests and mountains surrounding the city (So far this is reading like a personals ad, keep it up). I love going to concerts, especially for small local bands. In another life, I could easily be a restaurant critic. A big passion of mine is soccer; both watching and participating. I’m very excited that Portland will be getting a Major League Soccer team in 2011. I pass time in the winters by skiing, and find some great inspiration out there in land forms, ski tracks and forests. Summertime is biking time for me.

Career-wise, I see myself moving more and more towards web design. Since I love the outdoors, and many people that are working in the outdoor industry, I could very easily find myself at company that produces skis, raingear, or hiking boots. It would be an excellent conglomoration of what I enjoy.

Favorite Books & Magazines

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer is a great story, with some fun visuals in both image and typography. I highly suggest it to everyone. I like reading about local history. My home town is on the Puget Sound in Washington, and can’t get enough of the Native American history narratives that take place up there.

I fairly religiously read Communication Arts, its a great way to see what people are doing out there. The Bear Deluxe Magazine, which comes out quarterly, is one that I always look for. It blends conservation and environmentalism with visual arts, prose and poems.

Favorite Websites

There are a few design blogs that I frequent.

The Webdesigner Depot offers excellent advice from website specific to general advice about working with clients. A great read for anyone in design, not just web design.  http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/

Viget Inspire is a blog set up by a design studio in Virginia that is slightly web design biased, but again has some great information for all designers. http://www.viget.com/inspire/