Rachel+H+R08

Architects have a real challenge when presenting proposals to a group of rich people commissioning buildings to them. Architects need to win them over with a beautiful end picture; however, skeptics can see the unrealistic features of the plan, they spot the lack of technical detail. I guess architects, like any other artist, need to know their audience. The renderings are not supposed to be that realistic, to show you every gear and system, they are a fantastical idea meant to appeal to and help convince the clients to choose your plan. I would rather have the architect simplify the drawings and spend more time with the blueprint as that is the important part of the operation.

Rachel+H+R07

I found this excerpt to be particularly amusing as I often wonder about the effectiveness of those damn crossing signs. Now knowing that they rarely work I find myself naturally wondering how much each one of those devices costs and where that money could have been better spent. The crossing lights are just another useless piece of technology that clutters and complicates our lives while offering little or no benefits. I've been at the corner with those antsy people who push the button 7 times because they think it will make the “walk” sign come faster and I just think to myself, eventually it will change so we all just need to calm down. I think whoever came up with this clever gimmick is pretty smart, it gives people peace of mind that they are doing everything they can to get to their destination as quickly as possible which is the end goal.

As for the security system sticker being as effective as the armed system, I can see that being true although I don't know much about it, but if I were a robber and was going to break into a house that had a sticker on the window I know I would think twice, why take the chance. The color coded security warnings seem kind of like a joke to me because regardless of what they say we still have to live our lives. What is the criteria for each classification? How is this judged? Seems to me that the system just makes the paranoid even more fearful.

JordanO_R08

Architectural rendering has an interesting place in my heart actually. Before I decided to go to school to become a Graphic designer and photographer I was to become an architect and attend the architecture school here at UWM. I loved playing around with Auto Cad and loved to build models and draw renderings. Naturally I loved to look at them as well. I was really fascinated in the area of stadium architecture as the other side of me was somewhat of a sport fanatic. I would hopefully some day design stadiums for great sports teams. I would spend hours upon hours looking at renderings of new stadiums to be coming in the future years and would marvel at the new editions as they would come out and greater and greater things were being added to these stadiums. When I found out that Miller Park was to be built I could hardly keep myself off of these websites and every time a new rendering would come out I would get more and more excited as to what I could expect. Of course this is all in the past for me and I have chosen a much different, but equally satisfying road. However I can see the relation to people fantasizing over what is to come or what could be possible.

I think especially in New York that this kind of excitement is necessary! After 9/11 that city was at an all time low, as we were as well as a Nation. New York is one of the most visited cities in the world and deserved to have it pride back. Something that could be built for New Yorkers and people from all over the country to stand behind would become a tremendous project and a great reason to be excited! This fantasy world may seem a little far-fetched and I might agree. The idea is though to get the people excited and build the city moral back up. When Al Qaida struck us down with the blow they made to New York City it hurt us deep. We soon all stood together and seemed to becoming out of this stronger as a nation. After a few years this starts to wear off and people go back to worrying about themselves once again. I think that is where these wonderful renderings play a crucial role. People can see what is to come, and what there is to be excited about and they can do this together. In the case of the 9/11 monuments there will always be remembrance of what happened in New York on that devastating day in September. As we move forward as a country we will stand behind this monument and this city, and will be reminded of this daily through these designs and the eventual monument. If there is something to get excited about why not get excited! It is good for our nation, and good for our economy and that is exactly what we need at this point in time.

Kate+D+R06

I just realized that my posts of readings 6 & 7 never successfully posted so i'm re-posting them now.

The topic of arrows is interesting because of their common use in charts and graphs. The positioning and direction of arrows can tell you more than 5 pages of writing can. The chart that showed the different art movements and their connection was particularly interesting in its use of the arrow to show how the movements relate to each other. So many types of graphs and charts that are used in everyday life include arrows as arrows are universally understood. I’m interested then in how I can apply arrows in my own graphing. In the sample made for class I ended up using an arrow as a temperature indicator and found that it read easier than a straight line. I like how graphs using arrows can still include several variables and have multiple layers while still including an ease of understanding. Barr’s art graph was incredibly interesting to read and surprisingly easy to follow even though it is so layered and includes a lot of information. It reads as both an informative piece as well as an art piece. Using this style of graphing allows the designer to include so many different types of information and join them in a variety of ways to appeal to the viewer.

Kate+D+R07

I found his reading to be interesting because of the author’s use of humor. I have always had some question about those little walk buttons and if they actually do anything at all as I have friends who are die-hard button pushers but I myself am skeptical. The point raised in the article of buttons functioning merely as therapy for the overanxious was funny as well as alarming to the current trends of instant gratification. “The light will change soon, I pushed the button” is something I have actually heard before from a random pedestrian. No one likes to wait for what they want rather it be crossing the street, elevator doors closing or their delivery food to arrive. Now, skipping to the end of the article, the color-coded terrorism alerts have irked me for some time now because they offer no plan of action to their anxiety inducing “alert system”. All it does is make the average person worry a little more or a little less about walking out of the house every morning. What exactly does an “elevated” level even mean? How should we react? The least the government could do is offer some sort of action plan if they’re going to constantly bombard us with the possibility of getting attacked. It’s only fair. All in all this type of button pushing is just a way to get under our skin and humanizing everything around us.

Kate+D+R08

The title of this article, The Rendering and The Reality, made me think literally about my own renderings and realities. As a photographer embarking on a new project whether it is for a class or for a client I like to first write about my idea in a brainstorm session. Getting the ideas out and on to paper helps me to then sort through the ideas and decide which one/ones are worth pursuing. I’ve learned over the past few years of doing some freelance work that clients tend to like to hear about your final ideas before beginning the shoot. If I’m doing work for a client that’s usually where the rendering stops and the reality starts to take shape but when I’m making something for class I take the rendering one step further and start to sketch out a few ideas before I start the photo shoot. That tends to help me sort out which photos are going to be necessary to avoid redundancy and the length of shooting time. No matter how much writing and sketching I do though the final project almost always is slightly different than the initial rendering. When working in any sort of creative and artistic field it needs to be understood that the final project isn’t necessarily going to look exactly like the original idea.

JordanO_R06

This Chart by Alfred Barr is a great piece of information design. You can easily navigate through this chart and relate a piece of information whether it is an artist or an era to another. I find the typographical hierarchy in this graphic to be especially effective and easy to see the difference in importance between more important movements, or more influential artist. You see cubism on this chart and it is represented with the largest font size. This is a chart stating the importance of cubism and how it had an impact on modern art. From there you see a number of other very important artistic movements, but there font size has been greatly decreased to stress that these movements are less important than the cubism movement. In even smaller text the city of the world that these movements started in and the year that they started are listed. This is important information to the graph but as soon as we are able to find the movement itself we can thin out the information with smaller text, and create less noise decreasing the appearance of chart junk. Down farther in the article you see an example of how the chart looks without arrows. The chart looks barren without the arrows and greatly decreases the visual value of this chart. Another visually interesting aspect of this chart is the descending time line. It is mentioned in the article that this is supposed to represent a old movie strip and that the years running down the sides would give off the appearance of the holes used to guide the film through the camera. This text is all so represented in orange, which is maybe the only flaw that I see in this information graphic. I see that there are certain other areas of this chart that are represented in orange and I am not sure of the correlation between the years and the movements represented in orange. I can probably conclude that the orange was chosen to give the chart some more color, and to save money areas needing other emphasis were all characterized using the same color. These influences that seem to be brought in externally or have a different relations some how could use the benefit from a key or some kind of additional indicator or another color to represent their importance separately from the dates and chart title.

The other article that we had to read I found to be very interesting as well. I like all of the different examples how I can represent information in future information graphics. I can see myself using all of these different examples at some point in my future design work. Exploding views, ghosting, cutaways, and small multiples are all great ways t display design. For my final project I will be producing a diagram with information from all of the Brewers games I have been to at Miller Park. I plan to chart emotional responses, memories from the game and tidbits I know from around Miller Park. I will defiantly be incorporating these techniques in my final design.