It is almost Halloween! Rejoice! Beware of small children!

AFR Graphics for early November

Last week I was assigned several graphics for AFR that are due November 3-5th (roughly 2 weeks from now.) These were definitely on the more complex side, although we found some ways to combat the challenges they brought.

Graphic #1

This one was the most straight-forward of the three. Essentially, we had to present a cultural cycle where certain values are taught to children, which they learn and replicate as adults, and then teach to their children in the future.

We represented this as a flow chart. The first draft looked like this:

We then combined the two separate graphs together and made the arrows smaller to fit within the style guide:

What I learned:

Keep arrows in the style guide, keep most graphics in the style guide unless there is a specific need not to. Make sure to include the spaces where different pieces will go (like text or the spot where the professor’s face shows up in the presentation) to help format things better.

Graphic #2:

The second graphic was much more complicated, due to the huge variety in metrics used for statistics:

The first statistic uses exact population, the second uses a proportion, and the third uses a percentage, as well as referring to age and not time period. In my attempt to get all three graphs in, my initial draft of this ended up being quite cluttered:

This would’ve been especially difficult to see, considering how small the actual slide looks when it’s being presented. We took another approach and came up with something like this:

This was a huge visual improvement, but was still too small for the professor to see. We’ve decided to have each graph on it’s own slide, like this:

This is about how it will look, although furthermore, the jail cells need to be a proportion with the hat, not an unequal sign. I will update the other graphs as well as graphics for the third slide when they’ve been done!

What I learned:

Text needs to be bigger, less is often more when it comes to reducing the visual load.

History of Design Training

Finally, I revisited the History of Design Training on my off time, and started an art nouveau illustration after I re-read through all the content. Here’s the draft so far, which I work on when I have down time from AFR:

`

Ignore how sketchy it is! It’ll be better with the line-art.

Week VIII

I’ll try to go in roughly chronological order…

HTML / CSS Training

Early in the week, between CoLA Refresh Tasks, I finished the HTML/CSS training in JSFiddle. The training went over the basics of text styling and headers, and asked me to create a themed site.

The training took much less time than I expected, but it was still very useful.

Photo Sourcing and Color Grading Training

Later in the week, I ran into a Refresh task (more on that later) that required photo sourcing, so Ingrid directed me to this training. As with previous photo editing trainings, I found the light touch (color matching) more difficult than dramatic, stylized edits (color grading).  Also, I may or may not have less red cones in my eye than Abriella, according to a color sensitivity test she made me take.

CoLA Refresh Project

Besides a million little sidetasks, one of the earliest things I did this week for the Refresh project was cross-check a list of minors and certificates which was different on the CoLA and Catalog websites. For this I made a word document. The formatting was a little difficult.

It worked well enough, but I learned my lesson and made a proper spreadsheet for my next big cross-checking task I picked up: fixing the banner images for every language page. These had assorted issues ranging from low-resolution backgrounds to mistranslations. This is still a work in progress as of writing, but it’s going pretty well.

Along with numerous spreadsheet functions, I also learned how to make a simple animated GIF in Photoshop for this comparison of different fonts.

Ending this week feeling… professional! Look at me, I made a whole spreadsheet! I’m gonna have to start wearing a suit and tie to work…

 

58 more exhibitions to go.

This week I found many problems with the old Blanton site. And not just the missing images. There are also many broken links, outdated text, and exhibitions categorized in the wrong year / in the wrong order.

The date is wrong here. The open date should be November 03, 2007. And there are a few more like this.

To find missing images, I had to copy the caption and google for the image.

Later in the week, I found a better way. I found the archived site and used the images from there. Most of the time, I had to use those images to do a reverse image search to find a better quality image.

The links on the older exhibition pages were never updated. The website was updated once or twice before and the links weren’t updated to reflect those changes, so a lot of them are broken.

The directory structure changed from version to version of the website, but the links were never updated.

PSY Muna And Blanton

This week I have been working on a graphic for the PSY-MUNA lab homepage; this requested graphic outlines the lab’s research tools. I have also been working with Marianne and others to transfer “art primer” pages for Blanton. Please take a moment to appreciate these pages 🙂 I have included a “virtual tour” from the art primer “Race and Social Justice in Art” for anyone to explore.

 

PSY MUNA Research Tools

Blanton Art Primers