final project

These are my 18 compositions so far, The bottom set are the hand generated versions, and the top are prints of the photographs that that have the type added to them, in the next step I will be exploring/implementing negative space, and will explore different type arrangements and sizes, and hand lettered versus computer generated.

These are my visual explorations of the themes that I developed in the last portion. I explored acetone transfers, stamps, degradation through printing and photographing, and projection. The degradations that happened across multiple steps were unsuccessful because the images were to complex to be as illegible as they were. I think I will continue to explore acetone, stamps of my icons since the form of them lends themselves to becoming stamps, and projection/photography.


This is my brain's storming of ideas onto the page. I came across many possible solutions, but the three I am most attracted to are the comparison of religion and science. The juxtaposition of my icons with objects that it would be impossible for the objects to manipulate, as a means of commenting on the limits of science. The third idea that I thought was worth something, but I don't think I like as much was the idea of showing the icons, "good guy equipment" with the bad guy equivalent. I think that I don't like this one because I want to stay away from the crime business.

thinking

The purpose of thinking is to find a solution. Find an answer. Blindly thinking does not lead to answers. So, what leads to answers if not sitting back and hoping they pop into your mind?
What I just did is what leads to answers. Asking Questions. Even if the questions seem irrelevant or obtuse. Just continually ask questions and answer them to the best of your ability. The brain cannot conjure answers without a prompt. You have to work for it. It is the people who do all the work all the time who eventually catch onto things.

Statement

This project was a challenge all around. From the very beginning I had trouble with every aspect of this assignment. Clearly organizing my information, creating a consistent magazine layout, choosing the typefaces, etc. I tried to make my system of infographic information multileveled and complex, just as a crime scene investigation would be. If anything it was good copy writing practice. I learned more than any other project the importance of evaluating a hard copy. Working with the magazine spreads in indesign seemed extremely different from the hard copy. The scale change really had an impact on the composition.
Color was a challenge simply for technological reasons, working from photoshop, to illustrator, to indesign presented me with a most horrendous time in color correction.
Legibility was something else I grappled with. This is a relatively small space for the amount of information my article contained.
The application of my icons in this project led me to a pair of discoveries, one being that I enjoy working photographically, due to the richness that if offers a project, and the other is that I hate artificial light due to the orange quality it gives everything I photograph.
While working I was trying to decide what it was that made an information graphic easier to grapple with than a block of text. I decided that it's ability to engage the viewer is what makes it a more useful too. I tried to use this to my advantage, by giving the viewer something to engage with. The lines leading to things are supposed to be a sort of connect the dots that require viewer participation in order for the graph to make sense. While also being conceptually consistent.

Final Shmagazine

This is my final magazine, From the last version the major change I made was to unify my color palette across the spreads to make them less... gross, for lack of a better word. I also fixed my side bars so that they would be even with the gutter width. I also thinned out the background design even more so that it would only be a subtle accent.

Shmagazine

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∆ Click this guy and it'll do the electric slide show.

Shminfo Shmaph Binfo Baph

Since last critique I have:
physically created, photographed, and photoshoped (ugh) my graph materials.
trying to get that stuff to line up properly was a very large pain in my relatively small body; however, I think that it worked out for the better. The depth that the photograph adds to the graph, I think adds a lot more interest.
added some colored bars to clarify which items are in which row. I also think they add a level of visual appeal.
went with a color change instead of scale to indicate the first appearance of each object. I decided not to add a key because I thought that it would add more clutter to the graph, and I thought the the idea would become self evident to the viewer, and is not an important enough aspect of the graphs structure to warrant explanation.
wrote the editorial, on the post war population increase causing economic growth, crime growth, technological growth. Which gives three reason why the united states would be the country making these improvements and discoveries.
fixed my spelling errors
changed how the names of the countries interact with the country.
extended portions of my time-line to accommodate the space the icons require
added the pictures of several well known serial killers to accent the graph.

I'm not to sure about them. I thought about photographically those also but that would give them too much importance on the graph, when the are there to serve as an accent to the underlying theme. The problem I have with them now is placement. I think the placement makes them look like they should have significance to the icon, but they don't. I wanted to do that, like have a serial killer who was put away as a result of the different tools, but then they would all be on the right side of the graph, cramping it even more since photographs of earlier criminals don't exist for obvious reasons. Well I guess we'll see.

Peer Editing

Make Your Mistakes Quickly

In the initial brainstorming phase of this project, I was just organizing my informtion in order to determine what form the graph should take.

After that I moved into my first idea, which was to place all the icons on the map of the earth in the places they were invented and modified. This failed the quickest, because I realized that most of the invention/modification happened in just a couple places.

Now that I knew I had to deal with a few places of origin I tried again with a map of just the places they had been invented, but It didn't work because most of the objects were invented or modified in a single location, but a few then would skip out to spots on the map that are geographically distant, also it didn't give the sense of time through space and scale the way I wanted it to.

My next step was the one on the previous blog post, then I started this version based on the input described for that one. I changed my y-axis to place of invention, and my x-axis was still time. The problem I attempted to solve at the bottom of this graph with all the scribbles and numbers, was how to evenly and logically destribute the time.

This version maintains the x-and y-axis of the previous, and utilizes the separation worked out on the last time line. I segmented the time into five places, each one moving at different intervals in an attempt to create a more even spacing along the graph.

Friday's Critique

Click for pre and post critique photos
The critique with Ramzy and Cassie today was very helpful, while Cassie was able to figure out what my graph was depicting we decided that it was far too confusing, and that the ascension of the icons along the vertical was arbitrary. It was suggested that the vertical axis be the countries of origin instead of having them extend below the time line. It was also decided that the lines leading to the text will become entirely too confusing. Finally the "EKG-ish" element will not have as much prominence, it just looks dominant because in my rough version the hand lettering has such thin strokes, but I think when I'm finished it should be balanced enough. The reason it is there is because that zig-zag is a mathematical element used when graphing to show truncation. I think I need it, because otherwise there would be 2500 years of empty space. So it was an effort to make the graph more even. If you think it should go I can remove it, but I kinda like it. I'll just subdue it. Maybe I can use my own method of truncation instead. I'll think about that.

Research

Time
-Evolution of Object

Microscope
-”Flea Glasses”
-toward the end of the thirteenth century when spectacles gained popularity these were invented to look at bugs
-Light microscope 1590 Zaccharias Janssen and son Hans
-Galileo 1609 added a focusing device
-Anton van Leeuwenhoek approx. 1650 developed his own finely ground microscope
-he was the first to see bacteria and yeast plants
-The electron microscope followed 1931 invented by Ernst Ruska
-Then the scanning probe microscope
http://inventors.about.com/od/mstartinventions/a/microscope_2.htm

Cotton Swab
-cotton on a toothpick
-if a miss cleaning a sharp poke to the inner ear could result
-Leo Gerstenzang invented the q-tip in 1923 under the name Baby Gays
-first wooden qtip
-later paper stemmed qtip
-last plastic qtip
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotton_swab

Latex Glove
-The glove goes back to as early as 440 BC
-First latex glove was produced in 1964 by Ansell Limited in Melbourne
-Nitile is replacing latex and was first developed in 1844 by Hermann Fehling
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrile
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glove
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_gloves

Magnifying Glass
-Aristophanes wrote about magnification qalities of glass as early as 380 B.C.
-1065 “reading stones” were used by monks
-Roger Bacon invented the magnifying glass in 1268
-Magical Glass is a computer screen magnification program that was developed on dec. 9, 2007
http://freestone-group.com/magg.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnifying_glass

Camera
-Camera obscura was written about by chinese philosopher Mozi as early as 390 B.C.
-First Permanent photo was taken by Joseph Nicephone Niepce
in 1862
-First digital camera was released in 1973
-it recorded onto a cassette tape
-had a res. of .01
-weighed 8 lbs.
-took 23 sec. to record
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_camera
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camera

Tweezers
-First used in approx. 3000 B.C. by Mesopotamians and Indians
-They were more tong like and used for moving things onto and off of fires.
-1990’s Carlos Bustamante developed Optical tweezers us a laser to create an attractive and repulsive force.
-Phillip Kim and Charles Lieber developed nano tweezers in 1999
-they are made of 100 nanometer micropippette
https://mailman.rice.edu/pipermail/rsi/2000-October/000021.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_tweezers
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tweezers

Plastic Bag (ziplock)
-Developed by dow chemical in 1968
made of polyethelene
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ziploc

Flashlight
-Joshua Cowen 1896 invented the first flashlight
-it was originally meant to light potted plants
-First LED flashlight in 1999-2001
-HID flashlights produce more light by running electricity through ionized gas
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flashlight

Statement: Project 2

This project was an exploration of form and simplicity for me.
In the initial phases of this project I wanted to draw from objects that while visually more interesting, were not straightforward enough to be recognizable. I altered my outlook and simplified both form and concept, until I arrived and this singular line solution.
Questions I asked myself in the refinement stages of this exploration were, how much? how big? how small? how think?
During the color application I was presented with more questions;
how can two colors be integrated into a single line? what color? why? how will this affect scaling?
Considering each questions and their answers furthered my understanding of the precision with which we must create in order to effectively deliver a message.

Final Icons

Final adjustments include the alteration of the bag to look more bag-like. It was suggested that maybe it could be mistake for a jar, so I simplified the bottom element of the bag, and bowed the sides inward so it would look less perfect, and more handled. In terms of color I finalized my color choices, which are meant to reflect ideas of hospital-like sterility, (the cool blue and light tan) which I believe carry over to the field of forensics, in that they are similar atmospheres. The Darker background color is supposed to give the idea of dark detective story. Both the forensics and detective aspect were important to keep, since they were present in the narrative that drove my semiotic scrapbook. The final revision of the title "Entry-Level Operative" was chosen as a variant of "Elementary Detective" which people seemed to respond to. The concept behind the title is that the icons have a sort of fun child-like quality (which relates back to the narrative) while being about something serious.

More Names

The name from the last set that people seemed to respond to was Elementary Detective. So, now I tried to think of different ways I could say that.

Detective:
investigator
gum shoe
shamus
operative
private dick

Elementary:
preparatory
introductory
initiatory
entry-level
simple
straightforward
uncomplicated
undemanding
painless
child's play
kids' stuff

New Names:
simple shamus
straightforward shamus
entry-level operative
initiatory investigator
painless gum shoe
initiatory operative

Iconoclasm

Some slight changes, and color correction. I made some alterations to the spaces between the breaks in the line that makes up each object, and reworked the flashlight to make the line break seem more reasonable, without compromising the flashlights original structure.

A list of words to work with:
forensics
legal
courts
forum
archimedes
alchemy
arsenic
evidence
criminalistics
ballistics
digital forensics
anthropology
skeletonized
archeology
entomology
geology
meteorology
odontology
pathology
toxicology
Sherlock Holmes
Detective
Dick Tracy

Possible Names:
Archimedes' Evidence
Skeletonized Forensics
Legal Alchemy
Digital Alchemy
Elementary Detective
They Won't Find You
You Got Away Clean
They'll Find It
Sherlock's Bag of Tricks
It was Arsenic

New Bag Options

I think maybe one of these options my work better. I think the jar quality in my bags may come from the rigidity and the indistinct object at the bottom may serve better as a wrinkle. So the top bag is an attempt to wrinkle the object, the middle is an attempt at form adjustment so the outer edge of the bag isn't rigid (much the way a bag would be if it had something in it, The third option is a little of column "A" and a little of column "B".