The typical creative process as described in Unit 6 of GRDS 701 Methodologies: Seminar looks like this:

1- Research
2- Brainstorming
3- Thumbnails
4- Sketches
5- Refined Comps
6- Execution

My process is not typical. I remember during my undergrad when I got professors who were sticklers for thumbnails and sketches. It was torture to me. My hand does not have a brain of its own and refuses to sketch out ideas. It would rather wait for something more substantial to come out of the brain: Ideas really emerge when I set out to ‘do’ or ‘write’, not ‘ideate’. My process looks like this:

1- Research
2- Brainstorming (speaking out my thoughts help, concept maps: not so much)
2b- Brainstorming while driving (works great for me)
3- Execution/ Refined Comps (the relationship between comps and execution is weird and non-linear for me)
4- Sleep (This is where my subconscious kicks into overdrive)
5- Back to Refined Comps/ Execution that starts to look finished

Repeat Steps 2b, 4 and 5 as needed.

What works:
• The process is fast (Minimal amount of actual design hours which makes me competitive).
• Lots of subconscious stuff.

What doesn’t work:
• A big chunk of the ‘divergent phase’ ideas never make it to comps. They remain in my head for to draw on for future projects only till I forget…
• My ideas stay (relatively) superficial. I’m not sure though. I think thumbnailing tends to bring out a whole sleuth of shallow concepts that I would otherwise dismiss in a second.
• I feel it’s harder to break out of my heuristic biases.

What I would like:
I would really like to be able to write outlines or draw sketches without feeling like they get in the way and confuse my process. I love working with anyone really, as the process of explaining what goes in my head either out loud or on paper speeds up the process even more and helps me flesh out ideas.
I would love working with a person who would challenge me to create idyllic work when I’m overly pragmatic.
I would love working with a person who’s an expert in his/her field.

These are my disjointed thoughts for now.
Thanks for reading.

rachidMrad_ProjectApart2

Wow Self, you did a decent job. Horrendous accent still after 12 years in the United States, but the crazy ‘stache photo makes up for it.

Introduction: EXCELLENT
I did a good job introducing the subject in an entertaining way and tying it in to my personal life.

Tone: EXCELLENT
I sound like I ‘got this’. I had to imagine I was addressing class to keep from sounding completely retarded.

Vocabulary: EXCELLENT

Visuals: AVERAGE
Meh… Remember that post about my ‘crocodile metabolism’ (702 Unit 5)?

Flow: EXCELLENT
nuf said

Timing: POOR – AVERAGE
I went over the time limit.

Very enjoyable presentation, even if I say so meself!

In this revisit to the definition, I’d say that very little has changed in my perception of what Graphic Design is. Well I did get a solid A in GRDS 504!

Graphic Design still encompasses the craft of visual communication, tedious and unfulfilling design execution, and the grandiose, fun, not-in-demand-in-my-world Design Thinking.

I just finished a meeting with a client (an ongoing freelance project) where we discussed window decals, back-lit signage, and wine selection. The client really got my lecture on layouts and visual weight and my design partner is going to be thrilled with the clear make-sense direction the execution is taking from here. That’s Graphic Design.

Yesterday, I made a hundred little aesthetic decisions on how to implement the static Photoshop mockup into an animated responsive webpage. That was Graphic Design.

In a few minutes, I’ll start over on a grand website project for 701 where my self-stated target audience and goal is to reach teenagers with an interactive and yet informative (on drug-abuse) online puzzle. Grand Graphic Design.

Heck, a couple of months ago I laid out a page design for my wife’s book-club meeting which she was hosting at our pace. That was Graphic Design too.

From Unit 1 – Blog 1: “Graphic Design, like Art, is now whatever a designer and his client(s) agree is Graphic Design.”

Thanks for reading.

Exploration A has been interesting. If you don’t know what exploration A is, jump to www.rachidmrad.com and behold the mess.

Before I elaborate any further, let me remind you that I am the ultimate pragmatist. I also have a crocodile’s metabolism, meaning: My natural state of existence is one of minimal effort interspersed with bursts of incredible energy and creativity.

I am a sprinter, not a marathoner. A Ferrari, not a Toyota.

It’s hard for me to sustain a continuous high RPM of 16 hour days (between work and school). So I go into a highly efficient mode to survive.

What I hate about such situations is the ensuing lack of sleep  – of course, Ferraris need a lot of maintenance -, and the necessity to compromise on the quality of the work I produce so I start resenting any and all that make demands on my time.

Back to exploration A; it’s one of those school projects (sorry about the dirty words… It’s true though, it IS a school project) that produces an idea with enough weight to survive beyond the scope of the classroom. I’m at a point where regardless of the grade this ‘thing’ earns and whether I will use it in my half-point review, reworking the prototype into some kind of polished version is on my to do list.

The process was interesting but not new to me. It’s a process that I learned in undergrad but seldom got a chance to use (I was never able to command the kind of compensation something like that warrants. So screw it).

It was a combination of collaboration and of finding patterns and making unusual associations. The concept map was a nice touch. These were the succsessful parts of the process.

The major shortcoming was what I would call ‘design quicksand’. I love working in a messy, non-linear method but I hate the housekeeping that comes with it: Organizing ideas, files, graphics, the need to flippin document everything, the constant going back on my steps and the resulting tedious grunt work. I just wish I had an assistant to do the menial stuff so that I could focus on the ‘meaningful’ parts.

The time spent on the Exploration is one third productive result-oriented work, two thirds clerical paraphernalia.

That sums up the process.

The actual website succeeds on a core level (my opinion). Testers who got passed the first puzzles (or who were shown how to) had a genuine ‘coool’ reaction to what was happening onscreen. Testers also showed a tendency to peruse the content looking for clues and to share the concept with friends/family.

The website also fails in so many ways. The design is underwhelming, the content is incomplete, the ‘grab’ factor is still low losing a huge number of potential users.

Time to go back to the “drawing board”…

Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

Art by: Paolo Ceric

Yup. It’s pretty cool isn’t it. And it’s not Flash, it’s GIF (Graphic Interchange Format).

GIFs are used in a couple of ways. Some static web images are saved as GIF because the format renders flat areas in an optimal way (compared to PNGs and JPGs, the other web formats). In other words, the same flat-color illustration will be a smaller file size (and therefore more optimized)  if saved in GIF format. GIF also renders simple transparencies, which JPGs cannot do (however complex transparencies like drop shadows require PNG format).

Animated GIFs have become synonymous with horrid animation on bad websites (examples abound. Here’s one http://www.galaxion.com/) but this Serbian 22-year-old student has taken GIFs from the gutters of animation to new heights.

This is another example of work where the boundary between Art and Technology is seamless.

For more on Paolo Ceric and his animated GIF Art, go to the original article on the Huffington post.

My thanks to Curtis for sharing this with me, and my thanks to you for reading.

There’s a thousand Design Thinking Methods in Stanford’s Boot Camp Boot Leg. Well, maybe not a thousand. More like 40ish. Close enough anyhow.

The document read like an organized list heavily inspired by Tim Brown’s Change by Design, not that that’ a bad thing, but I found my eyes glazing over some parts of it and my mind going blank to the point where I had to read and reread some sentences (I still didn’t get those parts. Boy, when my minds wants to stop working…) However, some parts had me sit up straight and take notice.

The first method, Assume A Beginner’s Mindset is one that constantly gets me. It’s a universal concept not unique to Design Thinking, and it addresses one of the most basic traits of our humanness, our tendency to see patterns and use them to make snap judgements. This trait is really handy in survival modes where one’s instinct can help one find dinner (or save one from becoming dinner), but it can be a hindrance in helping one navigate today’s daily challenges (don’t punch the angry customer in the face, for example). I really think my genetic mark-up holds some horribly crippling genes that survived thousands of years in accordance with Darwinian principles. These served my ancestors well but are useless for me in my 9 to 5 job and rush hour commutes. My genes want to hunt through dark forests, feast around a fire at night till I explode, and sleep many, many hours to have the ability to perform high intensity bouts of physical action or the occasional multi-day marathon hunt. This kind of stuff is useless in the office.

I’ve had to overcome a lot of bad personal choices, eating habits, broken relationships, etc… The best tool I’ve had by far is the ability to reset, or assume a beginner’s mindset. I’ve had to put on hold judging, including my self. I’ve had to question everything, including some deep set beliefs on religion, relationships and self-image. I’ve had to find patterns of what was chronically broken or consistently ‘good’ to be able to effect meaningful transformation in my life. I had to learn how to listen (mainly to myself and to others of course).

I said it was a broad concept, and one that I personally feel is so important

Back to Graphic Design and Design Thinking, I think the ability to assume a beginner’s mindset is the starting point that allows for all the other methods on the list to be learned and implemented.

I would discuss all other methods that peaked my interest by I do have to get back to real life at some point (it’s Superbowl Sunday), so I’ll discuss the ‘Stoke’ method.

Stoking is a way to break the ice and get the creativity juices flowing. I made a special note of that method because of my teaching experience: I love to foster a brainstorming environment for my critique or creativity lab sessions but sometimes instead of me infecting my students with energy and excitement I’ve had classes bring me down with there complete lack of enthusiasm and interest. These were the worst experiences in my teaching career. I hope I can now approach these sessions with a couple of aces up my sleeve (category, category, die?).

Thanks for reading.

So… Exploring my three words (Spoon, Intestines, Wean) led me to a website concept about drugs where users would have to explore each page thoroughly to advance to the next page. The puzzles and information would be closely intertwined so that a user ‘playing’ the scavenger hunt would have to assimilate the information presented on each page.

Inspiration for the puzzles came ‘fleetingly’ last Sunday when I was running outside. I was so excited I couldn’t get to work early enough. We were having people over for lunch, so I had to wait until Monday.

After work on Monday, I sat down and started coding/ designing my project through the night. I was so excited with the concept and the emerging prototype, and I had high hopes for my vision. The concept was supposed to be mysterious and hard to solve, and those qualities were supposed to create a buzz, a word of mouth pyramid scheme of marketing that would disseminate information about the concept and the puzzles. So I sent out a link to the live prototype to about 20 close friends and family, and I posted the link on the discussion board with no further explanation (on purpose of course, after all the mystique was an integral part of the concept).

Two days later, I have one tester email me back very excited about the concept. That’s it. A few people emailed me back mentioning apologetically that the link I sent them was broken and the discussion thread was mostly silent except for the professor who sort of chewed me up on a broken concept and cliche typography.

Talk about humbling.

I really had to remind myself of what I wrote in another discussion thread about going on after a spectacular failure, i.e one has to show up and do the work, plod on, or just give up.

I explained the concept to some of those testers who thought the link was broken, walking them trough the puzzles. I recorded a video of me navigating the site (the shock when I hear my recorded voice…) and posted it to the forums. I emailed Sharokin defending my concept (a parenthetical big thank you to Sharokin, who was open to my plea and willing to reconsider her verdict. As it stands now, the project ‘has potential’ which is a huge step in the right direction for me. I might avert that nervous breakdown after all).

The whole painful experience snapped me back into reality. I have adjusted my expectations, both of my target audience and of how much ‘kitsch’ in design i can get away with.

The work in progress will be live on www.rachidmrad.com by midnight Superbowl Sunday.

Thank you for reading

Yup… Reshonda can tell you: I’m still biased and my process is still beset with heuristic biases. First phone conference, I slipped into my usual analytic/ linear thinking and examined the lists of words trying to find patterns and clues. I am still having a hard time changing my way of thinking from linear to, well, multidimensional… And it’s hard to steer away from those well grooved tracks that are heuristic biases.

However…

Second phone conference, I put Reshonda under the spotlight. Her insightful remarks led me to finally associate ‘Spoon’ with ‘Intestines’ and ‘Wean’, and had me visualize a synergy between form and content. Also, writing down notes on the  ongoing conversation, I realized just how I wanted to redesign my concept map for improved visual clarity especially that I was now going to look for connections between a hundred different concepts.

A couple of ‘thinking wrong’ victories: holding back my opinions and restarting instead of adapting an existing project to fit into a changing thought process.

I’ve shared some of the writings on Responsive Design already.

Here’s an attempt to clarify some of the concepts.

Some Basic definitions:

HTML: Markup. Defining content as titles, paragraphs, images, links, etc…
CSS: Cascading Style Sheets. Works with the HTML Markup. Tells the HTNL how to look. Color, font family, font size, backgrounds, element layout on the page, etc…

I digress… If you don’t know these basics then you are probably not reading this are you? And who the heck and I talking to? Notice the use of word ‘heck’. First time in my life

Responsive and Adaptive designs are being used interchangeably these days. However, if you want to get ‘Technical’, Adaptive methods are methods that use a CSS @media query (or Javascript equivalent) to call a different stylesheet based on the resolution the HTML is being viewed on. On the other hand, Responsive layouts are CSS styles that are liquid and allow for gracious reordering of the HTML elements on window re-size, regardless of the device the site is being served on, in other words, this is device-agnostic design.

Personal experience: Responsive design breaks out of the Mock-up -> Coding model of building websites, because a lot of the design and coding are happening at the same time. Coding responsive layouts can be so complex that there is no point in trying to approach it with a linear methodology. Rather, the designer/front-end developer may start form a general idea or a rough mock-up, and work in a non-linear and fluid way in both coding and design when determining how elements, sizes and margins flow.