Notes from Notchcode

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Quote of the Week:

All solitary dreamers know that they hear differently when they close their eyes.

-Gaston Bachelard

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Notes from Notchcode

2.29.2008

Out-of-this-world Photography: Developing film in space

Some of the highest resolution images of the moon still in use by our intrepid scientists were shot by five Lunar Orbiter Spacecrafts, launched by NASA in 1966 and 1967. Did they use some sort of really advanced digital imaging technology to make these images? Nope; that sort of tech was years--decades--away, at least if you wanted to put it into a satellite small enough to escape the earth's gravity well and get all the way to the moon. These orbiters used film to make their high-res images.

These spacecraft were the world's first extraterrestrial mobile foto-mats: they exposed, developed, and printed (by way of scanning the film line by line into a tv transmission beamed to earth) photographic images so fine that they are still in use today. The scanned images were beamed back to earth, reassembled on a kinescope, and then re-exposed to terrestrial-based film.

Whenever I am out on assignment for a client shooting a seemingly impossible subject, from a seemingly impossible angle, I am comforted by the fact that at least I'm not trying to expose, develop, and scan my photos 246,000 miles from earth.
Labels: photography

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2.25.2008

The 8 Types of Creative Directors

Tom Fishburne sends out pithy branding/advertising-related cartoons every weekend. This one, featuring the 8 types of Creative Directors, showed up in my mailbox this past Saturday. Check out the entire cartoon and see which one you identify with/aspire to be/loathe.
Labels: creativity, graphic design, humor

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2.21.2008

Apparently, it was just a bruise on that banana

Yesterday's post about not getting advance notice about the AIGA/CO Steven Sagmeister talk prompted a timely, lovely response from AIGA/Colorado's President. Read it here. If you didn't get a notice, it might have been a bug in the system that sends e-mail info from AIGA/National to AIGA/CO's folks. If you've had an issue, contact AIGA/CO to let them know, as it might help them track down what happened.
Labels: aiga, bug, colorado

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2.20.2008

Rotten Banana

Member of the Colorado chapter of the AIGA? Thought you'd have a chance to RSVP to attend designer Steven Sagmeister's talk this next month? Well, too bad. Looks like it sold out before the announcement that reservations were even available. Shame on you, AIGA: not even an e-mail announcing when RSVPs would be taken, much less waiting to take RSVPs until the printed invite/announcements went out.

Usually, events like this are preceded by a postcard announcing the topic/date/other relevant info, and there's usually an html e-mail blast that goes out to members. Not this time, apparently. AIGA/CO is generally pretty good about promoting their local events, but this gets a D- for timely execution. wassup with that?
Labels: aiga, colorado

posted at 1:34 PM Leave your comments here: 2 comments

2.16.2008

More great street art, and another well-designed (unauthorized) campaign poster

Steven Heller has a nice roundup of unauthorized campaign posters from past years (mostly the late '60s and early '70s) over at the New York Times this morning, in response to the Shepard Fairey "Obama" poster sensation. While he has some nice examples in the piece, he glosses over the phenomenon of Obama street art that has cropped up in the last few months. All sorts of folks, not just graphic designers and poster gods, have been designing campaign posters, graffiti, and other forms of what we in the business call "outdoor display advertising" for the populist candidate of the moment, Barack Obama. You can see some great examples of the genre over at GoTellMama.org.

Here's another example of a great campaign poster design, thoroughly unauthorized, executed very well. It's by Ray Noland. It speaks not only to the fact that Obama is the change agent, it speaks to him being eager to be in there, making it happen. It also shows off the fact that he is an unreconstructed street basketball player from way back. All of Noland's and others' work was on view at the GoTellMama! Show in Chicago this past week. You can see samples of work featured in the show here. A cryptic message on the site mentions that they may be taking the show on the road as well, so stay tuned.
Labels: branding, design, graphic design, politics

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2.15.2008

Like Jenny Holzer, only about Barack Obama

See what Barack has done for you lately.
Nice use of that old standby typeface, Helvetica (which seems to be seeing a resurgence thanks to the epynomous documentaty film and other, less savory efforts of mass-produced graphic design).

barackobamaisyournewbicycle.com via kotte.
Labels: art, politics, typography

posted at 11:19 AM Leave your comments here: 0 comments

2.14.2008

If we had ambitions to be a large ad firm,

We'd aspire to be Barkley. Largest employee-owned agency in the US. Not in NYC or LA. A great client list. And they've got a rocket ship--a thirty-five foot tall ROCKET SHIP--on top of their building.

Don't stop looking over your shoulder, Barkley. As soon as I can bill $467 million more a year than I do now, you're gonna have some competition.
Labels: agencies, branding, whitespace

posted at 11:03 PM Leave your comments here: 0 comments

Server go Boom!

While we were off graphic-designing, and branding, and marketing for clients this morning, the notchcode servers went boom. All is better now; sorry for the inconvenience of not reading this blog feed instantaneously this a.m..
Labels: hardware, mac

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2.12.2008

Hem makes me like country music again

I picked up their sophomore effort, Eveningland, at eMusic, and have been listening to it in nonstop rotation, with my other faves from this weekend, Of Montreal and Zeroleen.

Maybe I'm a little late to the Hem party, but this 8-piece group from Brooklyn (!) sounds straight out of Nashville or LA, circa 1974. Think of the Carpenters, or Linda Ronstadt, but slightly grittier and no sugary sweet ickyness that makes me throw up in my mouth a little when listening to the over-produced country of the mid-seventies. They would be a perfect match on a bill with My Morning Jacket and Wilco, actually.
Labels: music

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2.11.2008

Easier voting through graphic design

A nod in this run up to the November elections towards the importance of good graphic design in everyday things. Like ballots, for example. We all remember the hanging chad debacle of the 2000 general election, right? As Alice Rawsthorn writes in her article appearing in the International Herald Tribune,

One glance at the [Palm Beach County] punch card explains why they did so: the layout is hopelessly confusing, as is the blizzard of text. Those ballots are such a (booby) prize example of lousy information design that it's a mystery how anyone managed to vote correctly.

Indeed.

Even before the 2000 election, the AIGA had begun an effort to make voting easier for voters and provide more accurate results at the same time. The crux of the problem lies in how to present a large amount of content in the small space of a ballot--be it paper or on-screen. AIGA Design for Democracy advisor, former AIGA board member and AIGA Chicago president Marcia Lausen wrote a book, Design for Democracy: Ballot and Election Design which outlines best practices for accurate, meaningful, and understandable graphic design of ballots.

The AIGA also created, with the Election Assistance Commission (EAC), Ballot and Polling Place Guidelines which can be immediately implemented for state and federal elections. By making ballots more easily understandable, good design best practices can help the will of the people be accurately and clearly heard.
Labels: aiga, design, graphic design, politics, visual information

posted at 8:45 PM Leave your comments here: 0 comments

2.09.2008

Best. 404. EVAR.

A lot of other designers have talked about how kickass the Barack Obama branding is, especially regarding how their site pulls it all together. But in case you head on over there on a day where their servers aren't overwhelmed by donors and news-seekers, this is what their 404 page looks like:

"Thanks to your overwhelming support,
our servers are a bit overwhelmed right now...."

What's great about this is that for one thing, it's not just a generic 404 page (which any smart company will already have replaced with a custom one). For another, the language speaks to the essential brand identity of Obama, that is to say: "hey, we are the underdog candidate, right? We're happily surprised that our server is being hammered right now. Isn't it cool?"

That subtext, reinforced by the subtle silhouette of the masses of people above the text, makes this one of the best 404/error pages I've seen.
Labels: design, illustration, interface, web design

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2.08.2008

Anyone ever seen a hand-held calculator that can measure in points and picas?

Yeah, I have Art Director's Toolkit on my Mac...who doesn't? But sometimes I just like calculating old-school-style. Anyone who has ever heard of such a beast, tell me.
Labels: hardware, typography

posted at 4:34 PM Leave your comments here: 0 comments

Google Analytics part 2: tracking outbound links from within a Flash document using Google Analytics

>Geek-out alert<
Tracking intrasite links using GA is pretty easy: as long as you have the tracking code installed in the body of each page, Analytics is doing all the heavy lifting for you. The one exception would be if you have a Flash-based site, in which case you need to do the first half of the below bit. The second half applies to tracking outbound links, either embedded in a Flash file or in normal XHTML. Let's get to the Flash-embedded link-tracking first.

You can track any Flash or java-enabled event using Analytics. The trick is calling out to Analytics in each event (or action in Flash, say) using GA's JavaScript. Here's the note from Google. Specifically for Flash event, you just include an action that tells GA to create a link entry to a fake directory or page. Clicks on those actions in Flash are then recorded by GA as links to that directory/page, and you can then access stats for them in GA. Confused? Don't be, it's simple.

Say I have a map, like this one, and I want to know when people are clicking on, say, Boise. I would place this in the action for my Boise button:

on (release) {
// Track with no action
getURL("javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview('/city-clicks/boise');");
}
I'd then see an entry on my Analytics page for /city-clicks/boise and could measure how many times Boise was clicked. Remember, this works for _any_ action, not just clicks. Over, Hit, Release....lots of possibilities to measure how people interact with your Flash file here.

Now for part 2.

The map example above was developed for one of my clients, who needed a gateway page that their member public radio stations in different states could send people to when they wanted to donate money. They wanted one simple URL to announce on-air, to keep their branding and messaging consistent. Easy enough. As you can see on the example page, there's a list of stations below the map with clickable logos and text links to the member stations' giving/donation pages.

But we wanted something more compelling. Something that would make station location easy for geographically disprate listeners easy. The idea of a map came up, and we realized we could do something special with it in Flash: the user rolls their cursor over the map, landing on their city. The city's state is highlighted, and a balloon with the call letters and station logo appear, linked to the city location. Not too flashy, but it provides necessary information for the user (is this my station? If I click here am I giving to my station, or to someone else's?) and does it without making things too crowded (a list of stations and call signs or cities).

The problem was this: With all of this in Flash, Analytics has no way of tracking the links out to the member stations' donation pages. So all GA tells us is how many people visited the map page, not where they went afterwards. Not very useful when the client wants to be able to tell a particular station how many potential donors they sent them. Enter the JavaScript call mentioned above, but slightly modified.

Before we implemented this action, the action to send people from the Flash map to, say, Boise, looked like this:

on (release) {
getURL("http://radio.boisestate.edu/members.html");
}

...and they were sent on their way to KBSU in Boise. But they weren't being tracked.

So we added this:

on (release) {
getURL("javascript:urchinTracker('/outgoing/kbsu');");
getURL("http://radio.boisestate.edu/members.html");
}

and now Analytics reports each click for KBSU as a link to the fictional directory "/outgoing/kbsu", making it a breeze to track.

There are a few additional things to do, like placing your Analytics tracking code ABOVE the Flash element that contains your embedded tracking calls, but really it's pretty easy. I mean, it's not rocket science. So give it a try, and your Flash-based design clients will love you.

For more information on how to embed tracking code for outbound links, see these Google Analytics help documents:
How do I track Flash events?

How do I manually track clicks on outbound links?
Labels: analytics, flash, interface, seo, web design

posted at 7:30 AM Leave your comments here: 0 comments

Door as Power Plant: Looks like a famous work of art to me!

Found this neat idea for a revolving door at Fluxxlab (via Gizmodo) that generates power from the people pushing it this morning. Nice design concept, and the graphics to show off the concept and process are lovely. But it does look a bit like the structure in one of my favorite pieces by Marcel Duchamp, Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even. Have a look:

and here is a wonderful deconstruction of Duchamp's schema for his work, by Andrew Stafford:

(here's a detail of the bottom panel of the original Duchamp work too, which you must go see if you are anywhere near the Philadelphia Museum of Art:)

Labels: art, duchamp, illustration, information graphics

posted at 7:11 AM Leave your comments here: 0 comments

2.07.2008

Why Google Analytics matters. Part one: the overview

>Geek out alert<

Tracking links within your site is really easy using the Google Analytics tool. Oldsters may know it as Urchin, too. To use GA, you place a little bit of JavaScript code in the body of your XHTML which basically sends info to Google whenever that page is accessed. Or maybe little gnomes do it. I am not a programmer. In any case, Google gets the info and you can assess your access stats for any page with this code on it from within the increasingly-ever-more-useful Google Analytics tool.
But Alan, you say, I am just a designer. Who cares? Let the programmers take care of all this stuff. Well, wouldn't it be nice to be able to tell your clients "hey, we can measure how your page is accessed, where people go within your site, and what is so unpopular you might want to consider sending it out on the ice floe to die with dignity"? These sorts of metrics help the client (and you) to assess the value of:
their content (information)
their site's structure (information flow)
the usability of their site's navigation (flow control)

How would you like to be able to tell a client "hey, you should structure your site in a certain way so as to maximize your revenue"? I bet they would be willing to pay you more for such value. Eh? Eh? Never dismiss (more importantly, never let your clients dismiss) the value of measurability.

Getting started in Google Analytics is easy. Head on over to www.google.com/analytics/ and get going. Really. If you have a gmail account you are pretty much ready to go. I'll let the online tutorials and Q&A take it from there.

Once you have a site set up, there are lots of ways you can use GA to analyze data. Lots of books have been written on this, so I won't go over much more here. Let's just say that you can assuredly show your clients how awesomely their content is (or isn't) being received. You can then use these stats to retool the site structure and content to better reach your audience with the content you really want them to see. The web is iterative, iterative, iterative, itera----- you get the idea.
Next post: Solving the problem of tracking outbound links (or any links, really) that are embedded within a Flash document.
Labels: analytics, flash, interface, seo, web design

posted at 4:27 PM Leave your comments here: 0 comments

Songs for this Week

It was Bob Marley's birthday yesterday, so we had him in heavy rotation over here in the design shop, as did most Denver-area xacto-wielders (I would assume):

Watch The Birdie Barney Bigard
Superball Aimee Mann
Come Rain Or Come Shine Bill Evans Trio
Roots, Rock, Reggae Bob Marley
Waiting in Vain Bob Marley And The Wailers
Waiting in Vain (Remix) Bob Marley
Midnight Ravers (Remix) Bob Marley
Jamming Bob Marley And The Wailers
I Shot The Sheriff Bob Marley And The Wailers
Easy Skanking Bob Marley
Three Little Birds Bob Marley & The Wailers
One Love / People Get Ready Bob Marley And The Wailers
You Can't Blame the Youth. Bob Marley and the Wailers
Labels: music

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2.06.2008

memo to clients providing art for your campaign: 72dpi images DO NOT PRINT WELL.

That is all.
Labels: design, humor, printing

posted at 4:00 PM Leave your comments here: 0 comments

done, and done.

Here you go, mateys.
Via:
Be a Design Group
Form Fifty Five

and the Amazing Shape
But now what I really want to know is:

[cat photo from dark_mephi. Used under a Creative Commons attribution non-commercial license.]
Labels: design, humor, typography

posted at 12:12 PM Leave your comments here: 0 comments

2.04.2008

What Party are Creatives Supporting for President?

The Huffington Post has a fundraising exploration tool that uses Google's API to visually map donations to political candidates, and it provided me with a whole evening of fun (which explains why it's a good thing I'm married and not out trying to pick up a future mate). After virtually stalking my neighbors to see who was giving to Mitt Romney and who was giving to Barack Obama, I noticed that I could search donations by occupation. I entered in a few occupations in the creative field: "graphic designer", "creative director", "web developer", and so on. It was very illuminating. More importantly, this query provided me with a nice little dataset to make infographics out of. And now you can enjoy them too. (Click on any graphic to enlarge to about 1280 pixels wide)

The first chart takes the raw amounts of cash donated to Democrat and Republican candidates for president, grouped first by party donated to, and segmented within those groups by occupation. You can see that creatives are donating overwhelmingly to the Democratic candidates over the Republicans. In raw dollar amounts, it's about two to one. And look at those photographers! Man, they (meaning, in part, me) must be getting paid way too much to be giving all that dough out (actually, it's due to the larger number of photographers that donate, relative to other occupations).

So, now we know that creatives seem to support Dems over the GOP. But that brought me to a finer point: if you are, say, an art director, are you more likely to give to a Democrat or to a Republican? Remember, the first chart simply shows the total amount given. Within each party's breakdown, you get a feel for total amounts given by production artists versus ad execs, for example, but remember, there might be just one or two P.A.'s giving money, and a whole lot of ad-men donating, skewing the relative data. That's what brings me to the next set of graphics:

The second and third graphics show the relative amounts given by each occupation to Democrats and Republicans. The numbers are standardized to the largest pool of donors (those profligate photographers)at a 1:1 ratio between Dem-donating shooters and GOP-loving imagemakers. Now we can use the data to estimate if you are more likely to give to Clinton or to McCain, if you are an illustrator:

The third graphic overlays the data blobs for each occupation's Democrat and Republican donors, to help visually compare relative giving preferences. Which do you think works better?

One analysis suggests that art directors and photographers tend to be the most split groups, with nearly equal likelihood that you would give cash to either party. It also shows that we need to pay illustrators and production artists a hell of a lot more money before they give some of it away to candidates (or they are just really smart and spend the cash on more important things, like beer and espresso).

One thing this proportional representation doesn't factor in are the total number of donors for republicans versus democrats. Obviously, if there was just one Republican donor for each occupation (and they gave a lot of money), the relative charts above wouldn't work. But in general terms, I think it's a nice representation (this is why I am an information presenter and not a pure statistician...if you can give me figures adjusted for total number of donors, send it to me and I'll make new graphics!)

So, that's my two cents before Super Tuesday. Now: no matter who you support, go and make your voice heard and GO VOTE!
Labels: design, illustration, information graphics, politics, visual information, whitespace

posted at 5:12 PM Leave your comments here: 0 comments

Adobe to discontinue Stock Photo service

Macworld is reporting today that Adobe will stop selling stock images and illustrations via its Bridge interface as of April 1, 2008.

I had used Adobe Stock Photo off and on since purchasing my CS3 upgrade, and found it a bit slow. As in "slllllloooooooooowwwwww". Especially when you did a search for something returning more than about a dozen images. The server up at Adobe seemed to be going out and taking the photo, developing the film, cropping it, getting it licensed, and uploadingit to my computer each time I clicked the "search" button. I won't be particularly sorry to see it go.

The service relied on a host of other providers, such as Getty Images, or GettyOne, or whatever they have branded themselves as this year. If I bought a ton more stock each year, I might have found the trade-off of speed vs. an all-in-one-place solution acceptable, but for my needs, not so much. While my clients use a bit of stock photography, they also use a bit of assignment photography, especially location work, which I am happy to provide. And for those with tight budgets, the lure of shutterstock.com and istockphoto.com (even if they have relatively crappy images) is hard to resist.
Labels: adobe, photography

posted at 5:04 PM Leave your comments here: 0 comments

Is Obama a Mac and Clinton a PC?

That's exactly what Noam Cohen at the New York Times asks this morning. The article offers a nice analysis comparing the design/branding stylings of Hillary and Barack's websites. I (and probably a lot of other designers out there) prefer the Obama over the Clinton--at least as far as the branding goes.
Labels: branding

posted at 1:23 PM Leave your comments here: 0 comments