AIGA Into the Woods 2012

AIGA Seattle Into the Woods was held at Suncadia Resort in Cle Elum, WA. The resort area is in a beautiful, natural setting at the "heart of the Cascades." It ran from Friday, Sept. 28 until Sunday, Sept. 30. Workshops I attended included: "Bears Attack, "Info Visualization," and "Design Hike" - all quite relevant to my current education at The Art Institute program, Web Design & Interactive Media. There were some awesome, inspirational speakers: Scott Boylston, Thriving Through Sustainable Design; Karen Kurycki and Seth Johnson, Building and Running an Independent Creative Studio; David Sherwin, Design is Hacking How We Learn; Jeanette Abbink, From the Mind to the Eye to the Page; and, Howard Lichter from Nike, How Balance Nurtures Creativity. Below are my favorites photos from the event:

Linotype: The Film

I attended Lintotype: The Film in March 2012. The director did an outstanding job - first by explaining what linotype is and then introducing people who've worked on linotypes. I enjoyed hearing the word "typesetter" used, not only in the film, but among the people who attended. I started out as a typesetter doing Piggly Wiggly ads, Jacques Coustea booklets and much more.

The following Saturday I attended an open house that was mentioned at the filming. A fellow in Seattle has a Linotype in his garage and allowed us to view this marvelous machine in action. Such a delight! I did some typing on it, of course, and now have a line-of-lead type. Below are photos from the open house.

Slug of lead being melted.

Environmental Design

Arrows & Icons Magazine: Environmental Design is a field without borders, and is therefore commonly misunderstood. As a multidisciplinary profession merging so many different fields, it's easy to understand how anyone not directly involved would get confused. Environmental Graphic Design embraces many design disciplines including graphic, architectural, interior, landscape, and industrial design, all concerned with the visual aspects of way-finding, communicating identity and information and shaping the idea of place.


Society for Environmental Graphic Design

3M at Work (Sydney) Australian

The global community of people working at the intersection of communication design and the built environment. Building on 3M's collaborative work ethos, its technology innovations, and its leading scientists, THERE (Sydney) created an extensive environmental graphics program at the company's 8,000-sq.-meter Australian headquarters.


Microsoft CES Video Wall. Bryan Schaeffer, motion graphics instructor at AIS, was part of the design team of creating a marvelous interactive wall that people could walk through. In addition, multiple screens were built on a platform as a backdrop to Keynote speakers. The screens would display graphics related to the current discussion.


Microsoft CES Video Wall and Keynote in 43 seconds

Mural project for a garage at a private residence in Sydney, Australia. Design by Craig & Karl. Craig Redman and Karl Maier live on opposite sides of the world but collaborate daily to create bold work that is filled with simple messages executed in a thoughtful and often humorous way. They specialize in illustration and installation.

Infographic Hotlinks

Graphic Design Software and Skills:- beautiful Info-graphic, 2 thumbs up

Good Info-graphics: website dedicated to info-graphics. What works, what is sustainable, prosperous, productive, creative, and just. 

Data Driven Documents:  free JavaScript library for manipulating documents based on data.

Datavisualization.ch: showcases data visualization and is published by Interactive Things, a design and technology studio based in Zürich, Switzerland.

Four Ways to Slice Obama 2013 Budget Proposal: interactive info-graphic, published by the New York Times.

My preferred infographic software tools...
Stat Silk: free version available. Creates a Flash map but doesn't give access to Flash document, just swf file.
Tableau Public: Windows-only, worth taking a look at
Gapminder: interactive, motion chart. Free download, but must use their data sets.

Interactive Infographic Project Statement

Subject

The global decline of amphibians in relation to the world’s ecological footprint over the course of a specific time frame. The challenges confronting our global environment and the needs of the world’s human populations have never been greater; the future, quite literally, is in the balance. Every person on Earth deserves a healthy environment and the fundamental benefits that nature provides. But our planet is experiencing an unprecedented drawdown of these resources, and it is only by protecting nature and its gifts – a stable climate, fresh water, healthy oceans and reliable food – that we can ensure a better life for everyone, everywhere.

Objective: Activist

To relate to the public the impact of their lifestyle on a specific species. Your actions cause this to happen, make a change.

Client

Conservation International

Scope

Ecological Footprint encompasses carbon emissions as well as the consumption of food, fuel, wood, and fiber. It’s a measure of the area needed to support a population’s lifestyle. Land use for developments, crops, cattle grazing all create a loss of habitat as well as pollutants and carbon emissions. With our industrial evolution we’ve impacted the climate on other species. As earth stewards we must become activists to allow all species to cohabit the earth.

Content

Two graphs - ecological footprint and amphibian decline - are displayed interactively to show how the ecological footprint has impacted a specific species.

Destination and Format

Web/online; interactive piece (html or .swf)

Interactive Infographic Competitive Analysis

Visualizing.org had two examples that corresponds to the project I have in mind:
Our Planet in Ecological Debt by ChartsBin.com
Value of Nature - Ecological Footprint and Biocapacity by Jacob Houtman

Data Visualization Hotlinks

How to Make Information Graphics and Data Visualizations: this is a really good site detailing the difference between information graphics and data visualization.How to create a visualizationData Visualization for non-programmers: Shows how to use Google docs spreadsheet to create a data-set and is a tutorial with downloadable files to follow along.Creating graphs in Illustrator: how to use the graph tool in Illustrator to create beautiful graphsCreate cool info-graphics: Digital Arts article by Wendy Ding, a freelance graphic designer. She details how she uses Illustrator to create an info-graphic.FlowingData: Visualization, Statistics, Design and Tutorials - three thumbs up!How to Create Outstanding Modern Info-graphics: - vector tuts +, a step-by-step tutorial using IllustratorInfo-graphic Designs: has some beautiful examples10 Examples of Info-graphicsMetroBoston DataCommon: an example of government making use of data visualizationsVisualize This!: a book on data visualizationInformation is Beautiful: a site dedicated to data visualization