Recently in design Category

Easy, PZ, Beautiful

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So in my enthusiasm over Garr Reynolds' new book, I found myself this semester volunteering to conduct something of a workshop on incorporating visuals into one's presentations. So that workshop will be partly just a hands-on exploration of Keynote--most of us being diehard Mac users--but also partly a little bit of talking head (me) discussing some of the rules of thumb that I tend to go by.

Of course, making those rules explicit is proving to be more tricky. So I'm going to use this as a placeholder for the next couple of days, and add to it as I think of stuff. You are more than welcome to add some comments. The overarching question: What should our students learn/know about delivering good presentations? (There's already an embedded, highly questionable assumption there, namely that good presentations include PP or KN decks. I know, I know.) Okay, so maybe my actual question is: What should our students know about designing hybrid (visual/verbal) presentations?

(That is all for the moment. More on the way, and perhaps even a screencast if I get ambitious.)

Back in Blech

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What you do not know is that I spent the last week on a secret mission, penetrating deep into the heart of country music territory.

What you may not know is that Jewel is apparently on a mission to return to the spotlight.

What you know is that I was greeted upon my return by the incessant snow and bittercold temperatures.

What you should know is summarized with eerie prescience in a short film called "Le Grand Content." If you remember my artcrush on Simon Evans from a couple of years ago, you'll understand exactly my fondness for faux infographics like these:

screen shot from Le Grand Content

More soon.

Comic zen

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There are days where I wish I could do more with Garr Reynolds's Presentation Zen than just send adulatory links his way. But oh well. He has a great piece on translating Scott McCloud's work on comics into presentations. Maybe it's more accurate to say that he's talking about learning from comics when it comes to presentations. Either way, as I gear up for what will be several talks this year, I'm going to keep going back to PZ over and over as I plan out this year's presentations. You should, too.

Update: It is a conspiracy. McCloud is giving a talk next Monday in Rochester, and where will I be? Yes, that's right. At a faculty meeting. AARGH.

Design and Gender

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Over at Misbehaving, Liz posts a link to a CNN report on a study done on web aesthetics and usability. The CNN headline ("Web site's appearance matters"), in addition to being grammatically incorrect (singular/plural) and questionable (web site = two words still?), doesn't quite get at what's interesting about it:

Women seemed to like pages with more color in the background and typeface. Women also favored informal rather than posed pictures.

Men responded better to dark colors and straight, horizontal lines across a page. They also were more pleased by a three-dimensional look and images of "self-propelling" rather than stationary objects.

With those standards in mind, the researchers checked out the Web sites for 32 British universities and determined that 94 percent had a "masculine orientation." Two percent showed a female-favored arrangement.

Not in itself a particularly shocking result, I suppose, but reading this shortly after DP's search for visual rhetoric readings for an FYC class made me think that a study like this would make for a potentially interesting research project for a group of FYC students. There's not a whole lot of question in my mind that gender plays a role in aesthetics, but it would be possible to design a project that tried to achieve similar conclusions about what some of those differences are and/or one that looked at a variety of institutional sites to see what sort of aesthetic they practice and whether it's gendered. And that might make for a nice introduction to visual rhetoric for the students.

Update: Upon further reflection, I'm willing to cede the singular/plural thing. I still think that the story is about how the appearance of sites matters, but I can see how the headline itself makes sense (a website's appearance matters). I still think website is one word, though.

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