Summary
Metro Design Studio
Metro Design Studio in LA is focus more into templates, where they believed templates is more helping people out rather than design feature. Templates provide a structure to help people organize information. “The real promise of guidelines is to help people work with templates”

Hunt Design
Hunt design is very famous for his wayfinding system, hunt design also created interpretive graphics to help visitor explore area better. In designing environmental graphics hunt design also use interesting message or article to get people attention. But most of all It's important that the interpretive signs are of interest to all age levels.

Bureau Mijksenaar
Bureau always try to make a good sense of sequence when creating a information graphic especially when it talks about transportation. People want to see the start and the destination point before jumping to their ride. Color and lines solve a lot of problems in story telling the information in the picture

Durfee Regn Sandhaus

Layering and categorizing information in the exhibition helps people to find what they are looking for easily. Try to create a dialogue with the audience since it is a physical experience that needed to be communicated.

Poulin Morris
Poulin Morris company main focus is try to make a high class occurrence. That would observe, enlighten, and express of a story. Normally, when designing an exhibit, designers try to create an overarching narrative, something a larger group of people can understand. But with projects where the subjective point of view is very important, people are terrified of losing their individual stories. Therefore, it's critical not to homogenize or generalize.

Infinite Scale Design Group
It is hard to make a lot of information seems simple. Infinite Scale Design Group always tries to make the more depth information about a particular object available only when they are looking for it. That’s it how manage communicate the message of the object to the target. A grid also helps the audience to find the information a lot faster.

Summary
"The challenge in creating a good infographics was to turn something extremely complex into an understandable, attractive informative graphics, and to give less sophisticated audience a better understanding of the technological innovations taking place within the company" I believe this quote is the main care of what we are studying in this class. Another challenge is that it is true that engineers are the one with the knowledge, but we as designers are here to help communicate their knowledge to anyone who need to understand the process of the given subject.

We as designers need to really understand the data, and process them ourselves in order to create a really good graphics. We need to immerse ourselves in the subject and do our own reporting. We constantly need to search for ways that graphics can support the stories. We want to help people to understand what is going on in the stories. As a famous proverb say a picture say a million words. Find a balancing act for each infographic; provide enough detail to illuminate the content, but showing too much content may alienate some readers. The main point is that a good information designer needs to know their subject, and have a passion for it.

Generalizations are not dumbing down. It is a way to make sure that every audience can understand the message that we convey in the images.Other way that Funnel incorporated do to help people understand their maps quicker and easier are by icons. Icons are embedded into the maps. The icons would also provide the client with a set of hieroglyphics symbolizing each product or service.

Topics Covered
Alejandro Tumas
The New York Times
Funnel Incorporated
White Rhino
Nigel Holmes
The Wall Street Journal

Two links germaine to topics covered
1. http://www.designcrux.netfirms.com/designex_infographics.html
The acticle is Exploring Visual Information Design. It states that visual information has the difficult task of revealing the vital essence of a situation without needless complexity. The article will help us to achieve those things.

2.http://www.instantshift.com/2009/06/07/infographic-designs-overview-examples-and-best-practices/
A site that shows a variety of a very good infographics examples with some explanations of how to make a good infographics.


The Wall Street Journal Guide to Information Graphics
The Wall Street Journal Guide to Information Graphics

Summary

The first part talks about how Carbon Smolan Agency maintain one of its biggest and profitable client Morgan Stanley. There is one project when CSA helped Morgan Stanley to develop an architecture for its calender of events. CSA quickly create a clear informational hierarchies for everything from invitations to signage and programs. The calendar was so successful that it was embraced with 99 percent adoption rate worldwide.CSA also regulary work on Morgan Stanley overall graphic standards.

The second part teach us how important packaging needs to meet performance objectives, just like the product itself. Focus on product features , so that the consumers can figure how the features become beneficial by themselves. Heavy emphasis on white space can help the products to stand out more in the market clutter environment.

Pentagram design show us the importance of having a grid system in a cover design as readers usually only have seconds to scan it. That is why we still need to use retrained type and restrictive color palette. Hayman have been working for Time magazine cover for three years. We learn that the goal of any collaboration between designer and client is the development of relationship and trust. "Information today is a commercial product, nonetheless, the array of detailed yet redundant information from various sources prevents us from seeing the forest for he trees"

Topics Covered
Carbone Smolan Agency
Smart Design
Addison
Pentagram Design
Simon & Goetz Design


Two links germaine to topics covered
1. http://www.ebendesign.com/portfolio_main.cfm
As a creative services agency, Eben design work with companies and organizations during periods of growth and transition that can put their leadership, teamwork and vision to the test. They undersatnd that the importance of clearly defined values and ethics in helping clients Brand Well, especially in times of change.

2. http://hovie.com/web_shoesnfeet.shtml
Seattle graphic design firm, Design Hovie Studios, Inc., has designed the new web site for the Shoes N Feet.

Topics covered:
Color
Type styling
Weight and Scale
Structure
Grouping
Graphic Element
Imagery
Sound and Motion

Summary
Designing a web site, the importance of color is always overlooked by many web designers. But, keep in mind that we depend on our company and our company depends on your website and your website really depends on the color. Thus, the color should be one of your first concerns when the web site design. More difficult to read the text on the screen compared to paper and you'll have to choose colors that will work well. Through color you can make your guests feel comfortable, relaxed, confident and also surged.

Web browsers can only display 256 colors and even some browsers can only see 216 colors. If you want the colors you choose for your website, will appear for all people, exactly as designed by you then go ahead with the 216 color palette. Always use a color safe web browser.

Color combinations are also very important. Some color combinations are not as impressive as the Blue Text Yellow Background. That is why the black text on a white background is the color combination of the most easy to read. What can the purpose of any web designer? Clearly, to make web pages interactive and interactivity comes with the colors we choose for a web page. Color affects our feelings, our perceptions and our interactions.

If you are trying to create contrast with fonts you should avoid using two very similar font faces and sizes. The similarity of the fonts tends to create confusion and blur the design. However, it can be very effective if you make the font sizes very different, or mix the lightest version of the font in combination with the boldest.

2 links:
Principles of a good website design
Principles of a good website design: contrast, repetition, alignment, and and proximity

Color lovers
I think this is a really awesome website that have everything you want to know about colors.
It has pattern, palettes, trends, news. Totally a website for a color lovers.

Summary

Topics Covered
Sitemap
Blueprint
Research and testing
User center design

Working in a big picture is a lot easier especially when we are dealing with a lot of complex data and group projects. A sitemap or similar flowchart outlining can help us a lot when dealing with this kind of project. There are a lot of ways to create a sitemap. We can draw it using illustration, lines, or just a simple index / listing. Just remember to be clear and precise in the sitemap. Since it is often the first thing that the clients would likely to see after the creative brief.

Just like sitemap, blueprint is also a document that often found in interactive design which basically covers all the planing of the project. It is a wireframes flesh out of a project. We do not need a lot of details like typography, shape, and color in a blueprint. Without blueprint, designers can ind themselves working so hard in a detailed part of the project just to find out that they need to change some part of the project.

Most of the time, the blueprint/wireframes will look a lot different compare to the final design. It is because blueprint does not to be ugly or beautiful, as long as people can understand the information that they contain. It is a good wireframe.

"Test early and often. Iterative testing means you don't wait to test until you've spent weeks or monnths on the project"

After we've done everything we can from the scenario, blueprint, persona, and many others, in the end we arrive at the final step which is to actually test our design to real users before launching it.

2 links:
Sitemap tutorial
A detailed tutorial of how to make a good sitemap for a website

User center design
a very nice website that taught us methods to approach a user centered design. They really cover everything from how to use the design to why using them. The six methods are:
1. Focus Group
2. Usability testing
3. Card sorting
4. Participatory design
5. Questionnaires
6. Interviews

Summary

Continuing our last chapter, the book shows us how important it is to organize our information to increase company’s efficiency and saving consumer’s time to find the information needed. We then move on with the topic creative brief. Every professional project needs to have a creative brief that explains why the project is done that way and the concept behind it. Creative brief typically ranged from one to 10 pages. Not all companies call this a creative brief, some might call them shared understanding. I believe that all projects need this kind of explanation of the project especially when we are working as a team. Persona basically means imagining the users. As a designer we want to do a research of the market. So we know exactly what is the demand in the market. Hence, we made a persona that can reflect the specific personal attributes, desires, needs, habits, and capabilities of certain user group. On the other hand, scenarios show us how users interact with information design itself. A scenario can be a specific story written in a narrative form, a diagram, or many others form that reflect how a user completes a detailed transaction.


Topics Covered
Organizing data
Creative brief
Project Overview
Personas and scenarios


Two links germaine to topics covered

1. Two images of a good persona example

http://chopsticker.files.wordpress.com/2007/09/personasample2-p1.jpg

http://chopsticker.files.wordpress.com/2007/11/personasample2-p2a.jpg

2. A very good simple and easy to understand example of how to make a good scenario for a given project.

www.infodesign.com.au/ftp/Scenarios.pdf

Summary
More and more information designers find that to be a successful information designer, one need to understand what is the goal and purpose of the project or company that they are working for. This is really making sense to me. If you think about it, how can one solve a problem without knowing what the real problem is. Designers need to know a client decision-making process, internal challenges, develop a solid relationship with the people in the company to give you more insight, and know who wields the power in the company.


“Information design project require careful thought, collaboration, planning, and a process that goes beyond the intuitive, gut-level, and sometimes solitary approach that many designers have been trained to use”

A couple of things that a designer should notice when starting to make their project would be to outline the process, know who is in the team, and assign the work for the people, and know when is the due date of the project. In conclusion, after we understand what we suppose to do with the assigned project, then we should start doing it. However, our job does not end here. The next thing we need to learn is to know who our audience is. Even though we succeed to convince the company with our solution, the solution will not be called succeed when the audiences who are suppose to receive the information did not get it. Organizing the information both for the inside and outside of the company is needed for the efficiency of the company itself. Without proper organization, especially in a big company,

Real World Experiences

1. I once was tasked to do a website for a non-profit organization. I was so ready to make the website and ask them what kind of information do you wan to put in the website. The people said that I just need to wait and they will send me the data that I needed. I wait for a couple weeks and ask them again. They dent me to one of the organization member for the data. I asked for it and he said he is going to send it to me. Again, I waited for a couple days and ask them what do I suppose to put in the website. Not surprisingly, they said they would send it to me. I still have not got the information that I needed to make what kind of website is suitable for this kind of organization. And they still don’t have a website until now. This story shows me how important it is to stay connected with the client and how the company works to make a suitable solution for them.

2. Around one year ago, a client asked me to make a flyer for an event got his company. It was just a small company and the director himself is still very young. He does not seem to know much about design and what he really want. There are actually two guys who have the power in this company. One of them said I need to do this, and the other say I need to do that . This show me how important it Is ot know who has the power in the company, and know what they really want. Or you will end up mix up what to do with the project and keep redoing it.

Related URLs

http://www.capturedeliverexcel.com/


I took a business writing class around a year ago, and this is the website and book that I need to read. It talks about how to write a business deal or any writing while engaging and informative to the audiences. There is a whole chapter that talks about clarity that I feel has the same meaning with plain language. We should use a simple and understandable words rather than fancy words with ambiguous meaning.

http://research-writing-techniques.suite101.com/article.cfm/organizing_howto_content

This site shows us a lot of extremely useful tips to organizing contents in our writing to pitfalls in writing. If you get stuck or does not understand the guidelines in writing, and how to communicate with our audiences in writing, I would recommend to visit this site.