This is the end

Dana and I have accomplished and amazing amount of work in the past five weeks. We have researched almost everything there is to research about the Gulfstream Center For Design's shop policies and machines, we have sythesized the data collected during that research, and we have revised, revised, revised, until the result was satisfactory. I love the signs we have made, and I am in love with the process that has gotten me to where I am now.

I feel like the result of these five weeks is a set of approximatly 35 signs, that can be replicated and produced for other shops around the country. They are simple, straight foreward, easy to read,and highly valuable to anyone who uses shop equipment. In hindsight, I can hardly believe that no one has created anything as remotely useful as our signs before, and there is no reason that they should not be implemented as soon as possible. Despite the fact that there are some kinks to be worked out, these could go up today (if they were all printed out).

dangerous machines...

dangerous machines...
Posted by: lschlam.

We are so psyched!

I love when you have a really complicated problem that needs to be fixed and within five weeks, you can see the light at the end of the tunnel. It is my favorite feeling besides the feeling you get when you are well rested.. it almost makes feeling like a crazy meningitis saying person worth it to have created something so beautiful as a well thought out signage system. Does that make sense? Yeah yeah, "write when you have slept, don't waist our time," I know Iknow, but I have to say one more thing. Our signs are really good.

Menegititis is a funny word, but not as funny as mitten

I am STILL doing illustrator drawings of the dangerous machines. Who knew it would take like, 5 bagillion hours. HAAAAAAAAAa slepp is for loosers

Progress Report

I have been the illustrator monkey for me and Dana for the past 48 hours, and fourtunatly we are making some progress on the illustrations we need to put in our signs. Unfourtunalty there is still a lot more to do, and time is running low. Dana met with Erin yesterday, and he gave us some very useful feedback on the content of all 36 of our signs. Dana spent several hours yesterday adjusting our content based on that feedback, and if you look at her blog, you will see how awesome they have come out. We have emailed Jon a copy of the almost final layout, and after he gives us his final critique of the content and visual hierarchy of information, we will go ahead and convert all of our signs to match each other. We still need to do some visual style variations, but we think that the content is very cohesive and will be well recieved by all who see it. I am trying to post my illustrations on my blog, but I am having some trouble, so I am going to continue doing my illustartor work and catch everyone up later.

Timetable of Work Completion

Dana is going to be the one giving the presentation on Wednesday, so she decided that instead of us brainstorming together on it, she needed to sit and stew in her own mind on how to put it together. I told her that was cool, and that I had no problem working on the illustrator machine drawings that we need to complete in order to finish up our sign prototypes. We did manage to accomplish something together though. We were able to come up with a timetable of work completion, that outlines everything we have to do until Wednesday. Here it is:

THURSDAY 3.03.05

-Power Point outline complete

FRIDAY 3.04.05

-Meet with Erin to see if we have covered all pertinent information on our signs
-Ask Jon if he liked our scenario things, and if we should include them in the next presentation
-Have all (simplified) illustrator drawings complete
-Have all 5 visual style variations complete, with 5 color choices for the top pic
-Decide on final visual style
-Start changing all signs to new style

SATURDAY 3.05.05

-Make all changes and corrections so that final prototypes are ready for user testing

SUNDAY 3.06.05

-Plug in all information we have so far in to the power point presentation
-Write sign Heuristics
-Print sample signs for user testing and develop set of actions user needs to complete

MONDAY 3.07.05

-Do two heuristic evaluations
-User test our signs

TUESDAY 3.08.05

-Print out final signs
-Do photoshop work, to make it appear as if our signs are all in place in the model shop
-Work on the benchroom renderings, and place appropriate signage where it belongs

WEDNESDAY 3.09.05

PRESENTATION DAY!!!

Sign System

Dana and I have decided to meet tomorrow to discuss the layout of our presentation before we move further ahead on our system design. We would like to, in addition to creating a whole lot of signs (approximately 36 of them), make additional suggestions to our client. Such as, a specific training manual for the monitors, a list of things model shop professors should teach during their machine demonstrations, and redesign suggestions for the bench room. We assume that it will be advantageous for us to design the content of our presentation a week before we give it, in order to make the content more succinct. We want to learn our lesson from the last crappy presentation, by managing our time better and attempting to have a more professional level of content. In addition to organizing our presentation in this way, we would like to meet with Erin or Dave to receive some feedback on the content of our final signs. Only after we do a heuristic evaluation of the signs, and make some visual design changes.

Today in class...

I had a very valuable experience. There were only three people in class (including me), and two very interesting professors. I learned how graphic design has become a commodity, and how industrial designers can prevent our jobs from becoming one as well. The way we can prevent it is to give the consumer quality and competency, and to quote Bob Fee, "Quality is giving consumers no more than they need, but more than they expect... Competency is what you do better that cannot be copied." My take on that is, we as designers must distinguish ourselves from the competitors in manufacturing (Asia), by giving the consumer what the competitors can not. That is, creating a product that not only looks good and works, but has a cultural significance (?) about it that only someone from our own culture can produce. What makes something culturally significant? Maybe it is the knowledge of the response the consumer will have to a product. The only way we can know about that response is to know the audience. I know that some designer overseas has no idea about how I will respond to a bright pink cube. Maybe some designer here (in America), who has done some contextual research of people in my demographic
would have some idea.

Scary to think that it is possible all of the schooling I am going through right now could become a commodity.