I thought you would enjoy this video from http://www.aiga.org.
The video is Understanding Web Design with Jeffery Zeldman. As you may know Zeldman is the founder of A List Apart, one of the oldest and most successful Webzines on Web design. Enjoy the video. You will be taken to the aiga web site for viewing.
http://www.aiga.org//content.cfm/video-gain-2008-zeldman
I saw the screening of the documentary Helvetica in Nashville, TN as part of the community screenings. It was sponsored by the Davidson County Downtown Library, Nashville Public Television (NPT), the Independent Television Service (ITVS), and American Advertising Federation Nashville. A panel discussion followed. It was interesting to see the polarized emotions on either side of the love/hate relationship with the Helvetica typeface both on film and in the audience. My personal thanks to the director, Gary Hustwit, for creating such an interesting film. I will use it in my classroom.
I particularly found it interesting that the majority of the designers interviewed were from the print industry and were mostly illustrators in the sense that they used type to emote. The other interviewees were primarily type designers. While I found it very entertaining and informative to understand the “why” of the type, the fact that it was focused on print delivery gave the film a particular skew and caused the discussion to toggle between the issues of utility and expression – which after all is the main crux of the debate. So is it really a debate about the purpose of design?
Design is far more than visual. There is sound design, architectural design, mechanical design, curriculum or instructional design. All of these disciplines use the word design. So design is far more than visual. My undergraduate is in Mechanical Drafting and Design. My graduate degree is in eLearning Design. Both my undergraduate and graduate work gave me strong fundamentals in design – which I summarize to be creating a system with a particular objective while understanding the various forces that will impact that system. With that broad definition of the word design comes inherent the principle of utility. They touched upon it in the film, but the director chose to focus more attention on the emotive principle – i.e. Visual Design’s mission to elicit emotions.
I would have liked to see the director address the importance of the advantages of using Helvetica in the design and delivery of information. True, all messages conveyed visually are information – whether through print or screen. However, maybe it has to do with the quantity of information. As a designer of online training, I frequently need to design a product which conveys a large amount of information. A principle that influences my design decisions is the principle of Cognitive Load Theory1. My objective is to maximize the learning taking place – not the emotional impact of the font. I’m not saying that keeping it interesting is not important, just that it is not the primary objective. The principle of “information chunking” is used to maximize the effectiveness of the lesson. Basically this means the information is delivered in digestible amounts. It all has to do with how much information the brain can absorb at one time.
The demand on energy can be regulated easier if the consumer does not have to struggle to make out the characters on the screen. More energy expended in the acquisition of the content, is energy not utilized in the deciphering of the message. That’s a good thing. You don’t want to waste your energy trying the read the display, you want to walk away from the screen having understood the concept. From a display, or illustration, point of view, Helvetica may be boring. From an ease of use point, i.e. utility point of view, it works beautifully and therefore is good design and has a place in every designer’s toolbox.
A student sent this link to me. What a wonderful example of what is possible in the world of new media. http://www.adobecards.com/
I heard the funniest response to a news item on NPR today. Yesterday, 12/11/2008, NPR broadcasted an amusing story from Yuki Noguchi about people’s reactions to dropping their cell phones in the toilet. Some fish it out, some don’t. Today, they read several comments from listeners that felt compelled to respond. One was from a woman telling a related story about how her boyfriend dropped his iPod into an airplane toilet. He made the decision to leave it there. That wasn’t the funny part.
The funny part was how in flight attendants saw some electronic device floating in the toilet and diverted the plane to an alternate destination in case it was an explosive device. According to the story, everyone on the plane was interviewed to determine the source, and intent, of the device. Hmmm, I guess sometimes an iPod is just an iPod.
OKay… as I was musing over all the [other] possible jokes inherent in that story it occured to me that maybe one of the artists on the iPod was the Butthole Surfers. Come on… admit it. Now THAT’S funny, and such a welcome distraction from the latest bailout news.
The following YouTube video illustrates a wonderful use of animated text to illustrate a message. I’m posting it as an example for my multimedia students. Uh… the message is pretty important too.
Pay particular attention to the use of the symbols being used to illustrate the text. Also, note the flow. The text appears on screen at the comfortable rate of reading the passages. Nice. The creator was not mentioned. I’d love to know who it was. If anyone knows, please post a comment.