Archive for the ‘creativity’ Category

Stop the Death Star madness

Wednesday, October 1st, 2008

Barclaycard just unveiled their new corporate identity.

Yep, another Death Star.

I leapt to these comparisons right away (as did, it appears, the Creative Review). I mean, c’mon, do we need more of the same? We get it. You’re global companies. You’re bright and forward-thinking. You connect people. Blah blah blah. How much did this lazy, 5-minute bullshit cost you, again? I feel for talented graphic designers, having to watch these shiny, multinational clichés being mechanically squeezed out.

That said, it’s easy to criticise and perhaps I ought to relax. As some of the Creative Review comments accurately point out, it’s unfair to denounce logo design without context. The main sticking point is that identities aren’t solely aesthetic. The brand is what counts – and that goes beyond graphical elements (logo, colours, typography) into marketing, advertising, customer service and, of course, user experience. What does the company want us to think about them? This is a much deeper and more complex thing than whether we like a graphical device.

As an example, I’m coming to the end of my first big Clearleft project, a travel startup, in which part of our brief was to create the logo and overall brand identity. Obviously we produced several logo candidates, one of which was, although incomplete, potentially truly beautiful – exquisite typography, wonderful balance. It also completely missed the mark. In the end, we’ve chosen a logo that lacks the “beauty in the eye of the designer” but is far more in tune with the stance and ethos of the company in question.

I don’t know Barclaycard’s intended brand message, nor do I know their business objectives, so perhaps this is utterly in keeping with both. Or perhaps it’s just another sixth-form metaphor watered down further by design by committee. You decide.

Posted in creativity, design | 4 Comments »

Wolfenflickr 3D

Monday, July 14th, 2008

Some mashups are unlikelier than others. However, none as unlikely as the collision of Flickr and id’s classic shoot-em up Wolfenstein in Wolfenflickr 3D.

The Web truly is a mysterious place.

Posted in creativity, web | 1 Comment »

Thing-A-Day

Tuesday, January 22nd, 2008

I do find that creativity is hard to sustain in these grim winter months. Those creative juices flow much more freely in autumn. So big whoops of mild interest for Thing-A-Day (via Iain Tait):

Which I’m going to do. The thing that’s swung it is the flexibility: any creative act counts, meaning there are days when haiku will act as suitable filler, leaving my quieter days a lot freer to try something more impressive. 1 February will be a very short cartoon, I have decided. Please help me choose the topic…

Posted in creativity | No Comments »

The Urge

Sunday, December 30th, 2007

Posted in creativity, personal | No Comments »

Comics and personas

Sunday, October 14th, 2007

Inspired by Rebekah Sedaca’s Boxes and Arrows post, some workmates and I took a social day out learn the art of comic drawing. I can barely remember the last time I attempted to draw anything ‘for real’ – it’s long been something I’ve decided I couldn’t (and therefore shouldn’t) do.

And, well, I’m still not hugely talented, but I must admit I surprised myself. Somewhere, previously untapped, is a minimalist and amateurish style that I appear to have plagiarised from Julian Opie and John Porcellino.

Of course it was a very fun day, but it’s also not entirely frivolous. Let me explain.

Scott McCloud talks about closure being an important part of the appeal of comics. We see faces in all kinds of inanimate objects: plug sockets, houses, fishsticks – this is an effect called pareidolia. Even the simplest of structures are recognisable: two dots and a line.

Photo from http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=409536472&size=m.

But this face obviously lacks detail, state and emotion. So we interpolate these; in effect we fill in the gaps with our selves. In this way it’s possible for us to relate more to a stick figure than a highly-detailed 3D rendering.

And this empathy is precisely what User Experience folks try to achieve with personas.

Now, honestly, I think some people go too far with personas. I’ve heard tales of UX people dressing up as their personas, adopting their accents and basically acting them out over the course of a day. I’ve heard of people decorating entire rooms with the artifacts of the personas’ lives: “Bob’s room” etc.

If you have time to do all that then you’re clearly not busy enough – get on with your wireframes! (Although must confess I do actually like the idea of lifesize cardboard cutouts to take to meetings.)

Comics can be much quicker, particularly if you spend a bit of time up front to create a character sheet, showing how to draw them, what clothes they wear, what their regular scenarios are like. Using these prefab elements, we can knock up a quick storyboard in 10 minutes before a meeting. And the comic can act as the agenda: “Here’s the scenario we need to design a solution for” or “User tests show the following reaction to X. What can we do to improve it?”.

But we’ll see. There’ll be some people who ‘get it’ right away, and some who think we’re just faffing around with cartoons. If nothing else, at least I know I can now draw a passable female arse.

Tags: comics, personas, userexperience, drawing

Posted in creativity, design, psychology, user experience | No Comments »

Why become an Information Architect?

Monday, August 27th, 2007

I can’t remember where I heard it, but I was surprised it came from someone in the field. The sarcastic tone surprised me even more than the chuckles of agreement.

Hang on, I thought with astonishment, surely we’ve not reached the stage where we reduce ourselves to hackneyed self-criticism? In my experience, passion for their craft is common to every IA, and it’s one of the few careers you can’t really ‘phone in’. So, it’s taken me a while, but for the record here is my response.

[Note: Yes, some of what I'm talking about could be called interaction design, user experience etc. Change the post title if you like. I'll leave defining the damn thing to others.]

It’s creative
Every job has its drudgery. I’m sure some IAs would say that churning out wireframes comes pretty close sometimes, and certainly it can if you allow yourself to drift on autopilot. But any job that pays you to think and to listen, then to turn that into something meaningful, usable by everyone but retaining one’s own creative influence, is a rare thing.

It’s important
You’re making decisions that can have a lasting effect. We all know that bad site > unhappy users > no revenue, but IA can matter beyond the realms of the bottom line. I have true respect for IAs working, say, on medical information sites, improving access to information that can change (or even save) lives.

It’s varied
IA undoubtedly can lay claim to some of the largest changes of scale of any job in this domain. You may be looking at wide strategic decisions affecting thousands (millions, if you’re with the big guys) of people. Or you may be arguing whether 18pt leading is appropriate for this type, or whether icon A is sufficiently differentiated from icon B. I’ve spent mornings looking at numerous shades of pea green and drowning in a sea of RGB hex, followed by afternoons trying to convince others that semantic markup should be a central platform for our business.

It pays
Salaries are going up, and not showing many signs of abating. This is a specialised profession in great demand. Of course, we will have to wait and see how it survives the next tech dip, but even the IAI’s year-old figures are pretty impressive.

It’s part of something bigger
This, for me, is what seals it. The chance to help create the future of the web, to create a shared language of interactions, of new features and that wonderfully vague world of ‘cool stuff’. Things that will turn a sceptic into an ardent supporter. Sure, of course I’m here to make money for my employer, but ultimately I think I’m also here for the greater good – to make the web a better place. And because the industry isn’t at ‘idea saturation point’, in a small way I can help to shape the whole industry. How many accountants can say that?

Perhaps this all needs to be balanced with the negative aspects. Perhaps that’s another post. But try adding the prefix “Only you know” before any of the above headings for a flavour.

Tags: careers, informationarchitecture, ia

Posted in creativity, user experience | No Comments »

Delettering public space

Wednesday, February 14th, 2007

Europeans really know how to execute large-scale public art:

The installation “Delete! Delettering public space” saw all non-essential signage in a Vienna district covered for a fortnight. It would have been fascinating to see how people navigated the streets without their usual visual prompts. Not particularly well, I’d wager.