To Suggest - throw after effects out the window

I would love to be in the stage in my after effects project where I could deal with the finer details, but I still can't get my images to render. I relinked and everything. Any suggestions?

Also, audio. Won't even play when I hit the space bar in the editing window.

Love the easy ease. I have no problem with editing. I am wondering what everyone thinks about using drop shadow in videos. Don't worry. It's not text.

Thoughtful Question - Better late than never

In response to a reading about information design, I thought I would post a question for the public to consider.

Does the "modern", sparse design of today alienate viewers who look for the human aspect of data? What I mean is, do some designers, in their quest for that ultimate simplicity of design, forget to tell viewers how this data relates to them?

Stories

Who wants a load of statistical data, and how does that get anyone to vote? The answers are - nobody (except, perhaps, accountants and actuaries) and it doesn't. So, instead of presenting potential voters with a bunch of statistics telling them to vote, why not a little story?

Here is one option for a story on why Americans should vote (thanks to Rachel Meyers):

While the United States is considered to be the greatest power in the world and a leader in democracy, voter turnout does not reflect this statement. In the 2004 election, 60 percent of eligible voters turned out at the poles, in comparison to 8 percent of the eligible population of New Zealand, 76 percent of spain, 86 percent of Sweden, 79 percent of France, 82 percent of Italians, 78 percent of Germany and 100 percent of Russia. Of the world's 20 largest democratic nations, only Japan and Switzerland ranked lower in voter turnouts.

To visually tell this story, I would like to use a cartogram showing the geographical size of each country, then display the size of the voting population (in a big circle, probably). Finally, within the population circle, I will show the size of the voting population. At the end, I will show the other countries' voting populations in comparison to the US voting population. The US voters may be eaten pac man style by Russia's. We'll just have to wait and see.

Associative Word List

pac man, size, circle, cartogram, cheerio, doughnut, percentage, pie graph, international, globe, voting, poll, inequality, target, scale, comparison, simple, arcade game, map, latitude, longitude, portion, turnout, weight, nationalism, patriotism, pride, embarrassment, shame, outperform, exceed, internationalism, doctrine, count, counting, enumeration, tally, analyze, dissect, take apart, part, portion, division.

OK, I think that's it for now with the word list. I am always open to more suggestions. Now for the KEY WORDS:

Pac Man: video game originally developed in Japan. Immensely popular in the US. Centers around a circular yellow man (or woman, as in Ms. Pac Man) who has to eat all of the little white circles to advance to the next level.

Latitude: angular distance North or South of a point on the earth's surface. Measured by meridians. The horizontal lines.

Longitude: angular distance East or West of a point on the earth's surface. Based on the prime meridian. The vertical lines.

That's it for now. Tomorrow: expect a slight chance of more definitions with a certainty of a thoughtful question about Reading 2.

Name that Designer!!

Richard Saul Wurman: life goal-make information understandable.
created TED conferences. I love his concepts, but his personal Web site is a little too squishy for me. Click the link and see what I mean. It seems as though he likes black, red and white just as much as any minimalist designer. His strong points are statistical issues such as urbanization and politics. However, this industrial illustration is both beautiful and informative. These two qualities are hard to come by in the world of information graphics. The key word I would use to describe his work is graceful

Nigel Holmes: we know Nigel from those cute videos about national debt and the lovely British accent. However, his "wordless diagrams" are particularly interesting. Imagining complex steps without words is quite fun with these. Key word, simplicity.

Edward Tufte: a scientist with a graphic background, Tufte studied statistics more than ANY visual person I know. Non-informative display is his worst enemy. He believes that anything that is non-objective, such as decoration, could bias the results and remove the pure aspect of the data.  He developed the concept of a sparkline. 

We don't think of this as anything revolutionary today because this idea is so commonly-used in our media and so relevant to simple information design. Key word: datum.

Side note: Tufte has a lot to say about scale models that architecture students may find interesting.

Blue and Red

I always found it so funny how our two major parties decided to choose to be a donkey and an elephant.  This site gives official story. If you don't know where they came from, you might as well read up on it. As usual, it came from an illustrator.

Here is a fun article about McCain's use of Optima in his logo. Love him or hate him, EVERYTHING about McCain relates back to military experience, including his brand image.

Obama's logo, however, seems to be more talked about in the blogging world. This blog features a cartoon satirizing the logo. Better yet, Logobama is a site where you can insert yourself into the O and use it as a profile picture. Have fun with that one.

It is oh so much fun to compare each candidate's party and personal imagery, but what about the issues?!?! Shouldn't we as designers be considering what the economic crisis looks like on a computer screen (and look outside the falling line graph)? Can you tell me what universal healthcare looks like? How about that 700-mile fence between the US and Mexico? Pro-choice or pro-life, I don't really want to know what that looks like.

The point is, we should stop promoting each candidate like a corporate entity. Instead of relying on a catchy name or slogan, our presidential hopefuls should be relying on their issues. We, on the other hand, can focus our time on showing the general public what each issue looks like. 

Roughstockstudios.com is a great resource for ideas on political info graphics. This site also features a great booklet called Visual Representation for Advocacy. I highly recommend it.

One big reason to VOTE

I just got done reading an infuriating blog about why women should not vote. While the blogger was trying to be satirical, he ended up being merely infuriating. Another infuriating discovery is that a former female senator from Olathe, Kansas believes that women should not have to vote. She said that the 19th amendment, the one that allowed HER to vote, marked the beginning of deteriorating family values.

Humph!

So, the traditionalist idea of men as the only provider and the women as the unthinking homemaker continues. That is, unless I can come up with such an amazing poster that women will be flocking to the voting booths like there's no tomorrow.

In the meantime, wish me luck. And, for God's sake, register to vote.

Get out the Vote

As we begin a new school year, it is time for me to re-appropriate my blog. It is now the Graphic Design and Typography blog.

Our current project is entitled “Get Out the Vote.” For graphics, we will be doing a motion info-graphic describing information intended to encourage people to vote. Here are the objectives for the project:

The purpose of this assignment is to understand design in 4D. This includes considering time, narrative, motion, sound and software constraints as well as other variables in combination to create an informative motion graphic that is simple, effective and aesthetically appealing.

Stay tuned for more on “Get out the Vote.”