GIDE 2012 + Other Business

mind maps + scribblin'

I have been rather quiet as of late on this blog, as I have been beavering away so to speak at several other things.

GIDE is one of the main things on my mind at the moment - for more information see my separate blog for all related posts over on the dark side at Wordpress!

Aside from that I have been working away in the studio, and have taken well to the new course structure, including my new module entitled Critical Making. I shall post separately on this.

I have also this year become a student ambassador for the University of Dundee, attending visitors days and helping the University promote itself to potential future students by providing tours. This has been a fantastic opportunity to meet other students as well as learn more about how our campus operates.

We have of course also moved to our new studios, which, although are having heating issues at the moment look set to be brighter and more spacious than our old location - and I also have a wall space to populate, which I can't complain about!

Sketchup and AutoCAD however, are calling...I have to admit I've missed the project buzz!

Design Studies: Service Design Tools

For our current Design Studies assignment we had to visit some websites that document ways to help you when researching for design. One of these was designstudiestools, to which I found the case study for Blueprint quite helpful.

Blueprint is similar to how we work during the early stages of a project - listing the main issues on post it type notes and sticking them under the corresponding group. This enables you to see patterns and visualise connections between topics. This also ties in with my relatively recent interest in Infographics - which also aim to visualise information, in a more simplified form.

For future projects I may continue with my front line of attack with sticky post-its, however I may then re structure my findings in a more easily understood visualisation in the likes of Photoshop, for future reference. The clearer a picture you can get before delving into designing, the cleaner design you will end up with, so it would seem.

Infosthetics!

The Illusion of Diversity

I'm still glued to my screen like a 16 year old when the new Halo is out, but I'm currently creeping on Infosthetics, which is another data visualisation website, similar to Infographics, which I mentioned in a previous post.

You will lose hours, if not days to this if like me you enjoy geeking it up on data, statistics and random facts.

It helps when they look cool too!

Infographics!

On possibly my new favourite website Flowing Data - which displays a variety of data visualisations called "infographics" - I came across this: 

Above is an image from the site, documenting the Beetles hairstyles throughout the height of their careers. Notice that the 1965-1966 styles seem to have resurfaced recently in the form of Dundee's youth. I think however, we have the more local band The View to thank for that one. 

Cheers.

Another example of fusing graphic design with data representation is this chart documenting the fractions of each ingredient for different types of coffee. I don't know why I find stuff like this so fascinating, but so far I have been going through this site for an hour and a half, and I can't see me quitting it any time soon!