Spring semester has begun! I'm taking Intro to Graphic Design and Drawing. Intro to Graphic design is going to be the course that will definitely push the limits that I'v been yearning the past 2 years. The drawing class is a pretty heavy workload also.
In my Intro to GD class, we have a semester long project where I have to come up with graphic solutions to a topic of our choice. My choice is Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). Talk about thinking "inside" the box. I want to focus on User Interfaces, and it requires research and brainstorming.....graphically. It's going to be fun coming up with ideas due to the topic.
Drawing....hahahaha. Yes, i laugh at myself when I'm drawing, because I can't get over how bad it is. It's going to change the way I look and perceive things tho. Shading with 2h, hb, 2b, 4b, and 6b pencils is a technique that results in some really amazing portraits. I'm most likely going to end up surprising myself with the outcome.
Sunday, February 12, 2012
Monday, December 12, 2011
No Winter break for me
As the fall semester comes to an end, I'v chosen a book to read in between semesters. Interaction Design: Beyond Human-Computer Interaction, you can check it out if interested here. Since I'll be talking about user interfaces more often, I want to educate myself on the theory behind it all. I made sure to pick a book that is fairly recent and includes technology and practices used today. I work in a highly fast paced industry, and I figure, I should know the latest and greatest in all aspects of the Human-Computer Interfaces. This should be fun for me and beneficial to the readers (Hello!!? Are you out there?)
Some bullet points about the book:
- Boasts completely updated content on interaction design, human-computer interaction, information design, web design, and more
- Includes coverage on the latest technologies and devices such as social networking, Web 2.0, and mobile devices
- Develops and updates all featured case studies, examples, and questions to illustrate technical, social, and ethical issues you may face
- Explains the various principles of interaction design and how to apply them
- Places special emphasis on how to design interactive products that enhance and extend the way people communicate, interact, and work
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
Crystallographic "Drrrooooiiiiddd"
A while back I mentioned I felt brainwashed due to the subject of my symmetry art project. The infamous droid eye. I decided to go with the crystallographic approach of symmetry with the project. I remember my teacher checking out my progress and not knowing what the "Droid" eye was about. The minute I mentioned smartphone he laughed and pulled out his flip phone stating, "It's all I need". Regardless, he liked the focus I used with complimentary colors, and using colored pencils for the whole thing. I just have a few other things to do and it'll be done. I'v held off on it while I work on my repetition project and box art. The box art project will be fun, I'm either doing a scene from 5th Element or The Nightmare Before Christmas.
Sunday, December 4, 2011
Interfaces: Dear R.I.M.
RIM, or Research in Motion is the company that makes your blackberry. Some people don't even know that, but that's due to marketing and brand identity. RIM is king when it comes to email and corporate security. RIM piggybacks off of the cellular carriers, and maintain their own network. Which is why we have seen a couple official announcements from the CEO in the past year or so due to major outages. With the introduction of the Pearl on T-Mobile, they were able to grasp the "consumer" side of the market. Which means there are going to be a lot more users that are going to use them for more than just their corporate email and making calls. Smartphones are difficult to get use to and learn to use, trust me, I know. So I have a couple suggestions real quick.
1. Trackballs. You have moved away from them, but this is just a quick note to never use them again. This isn't just for blackberries, but for any cellphone or mobile devices. Verizon Wireless had to implement replacement trackballs in their stores because they were replacing blackberries so many times due to the trackball not working. People's grimy, oily, dirty hands cause debris to get underneath and just makes it a burden to use sometimes. RIM has implemented trackpads and touch screens going forward it seems. My opinion is to implement touch screen as often as possible as the primary navigation method. The biggest complaint when moving to touch screen, or choosing the Blackberry Storm was that people weren't able to text and drive as easily. Just sayin...
2. Emil setup. Yes, you do have it as part of the setup screen when you 1st activate the phone, but don't let user choose to cancel it. When they do, you have them go into "setup" and then "email settings". If you want to keep email as your advantage and keep the title of top dog, get email settings back to the main screen of icons. Common sense is not so common when someone is learning how to use a new phone. Also, your competitors don't require their users to sign into their blackberry accounts to manage them. Sooooo many people forget their username and password, or think that it's asking for their email and password they are trying to add or re-validate.
Design and interfaces need to be simple, regardless of how advanced the device is your using.
1. Trackballs. You have moved away from them, but this is just a quick note to never use them again. This isn't just for blackberries, but for any cellphone or mobile devices. Verizon Wireless had to implement replacement trackballs in their stores because they were replacing blackberries so many times due to the trackball not working. People's grimy, oily, dirty hands cause debris to get underneath and just makes it a burden to use sometimes. RIM has implemented trackpads and touch screens going forward it seems. My opinion is to implement touch screen as often as possible as the primary navigation method. The biggest complaint when moving to touch screen, or choosing the Blackberry Storm was that people weren't able to text and drive as easily. Just sayin...
2. Emil setup. Yes, you do have it as part of the setup screen when you 1st activate the phone, but don't let user choose to cancel it. When they do, you have them go into "setup" and then "email settings". If you want to keep email as your advantage and keep the title of top dog, get email settings back to the main screen of icons. Common sense is not so common when someone is learning how to use a new phone. Also, your competitors don't require their users to sign into their blackberry accounts to manage them. Sooooo many people forget their username and password, or think that it's asking for their email and password they are trying to add or re-validate.
Design and interfaces need to be simple, regardless of how advanced the device is your using.
Friday, December 2, 2011
Interfaces: Identify Me...
I wanna introduce something I'd like to review and possibly discuss as a common topic on my blog. User Interfaces! Ya' know, the translator for EVERYTHING you do that requires you to communicate with a computer system. It may seem out of context at first using the word translator to describe how we interact with computer systems. But, we do tell them what to do....and they do talk back to us, even when we hit the "cancel" button a zillion times. Your display acts like the window, you type in fields, click on icons to open/close programs, talk in the microphone, swipe the touch pad...All easy stuff to you and I, the users.
But,
Not so much for web developers, software programmers and engineers, game developers and anyone else that looks at codes all day long.
Like this picture here...
I would not want upload a picture to facebook if I had to look through a bunch of THIS....just to add it.
That's maybe the 1st 40 or so lines of code used to display the news feed page on Facebook
and it's even going renegade by going off the screen...
Thank God for that "upload pictures" button! So I personally thank developers and programmers for everything they do everyday, it makes me want to do it!!
User Interface is a broad topic. I'll be focusing on Mobile User Interfaces and Applications. Guess why!?Right now, I work for the largest cellphone company in the USA, Verizon Wireless. I do Technical Support on cellphones, pda's, crackberries, tablets, modems.....oh yeah....voice calling service too. I spend 40hrs a week helping people use their mobile devices. Setting up emails, refreshing a data connections, performing master resets, educating on the use of the product, sneaking in the tricks and tweaks of a phone to make the experience easier. It's also allowed me to gain a great deal of knowledge on how people use their mobile devices in their daily lives. What they hate, what they love, what's important to them, and what's not important to them (coughcoughpreinstalledappscoughcough).
I am all about customizing your phone or mobile device the way you want it to be. I'm no control freak, but if I want to see a little android guy pissing on the Apple logo as my bootup animation....let me freakin do it. My first dive into customizing the look or theme of my phone started with the Samsung Omnia, a windows mobile phone. I had fun messing around in the registry and changing .cab files. Then Android OS came along and that blew everything out of proportion for me. I started designing themes, layouts, icons, changing my font, and lots of other things I'm sure i'll discuss. It's all led me on this path to want to design mobile user interfaces, hence why I'm back in school for graphic design. I can get very technical with people, especially when it comes to cellphones, there is alot involved with mobile devices. I want to help make the technical and "behind the scenes" prowess of a mobile devices easy for people to use and make it look %$#&'ing good. I want to learn, share and possibly give pointers about the good, the bad, and yes....the ugly on mobile user interface.
Here's an example of future posts...
So of course I'm going to talk about Verizon's mobile website first. I'm not going to review the whole site or interface. I'm just going to exploit a really cool feature I found the other day that I think is perfect for a cellphone company to implement
That's right. When I went to Verizon's mobile site on my android phone looking for a case, it knew exactly what phone I had. I didn't have to keep looking through drop down lists to select my model, or heaven forbid even type it in.....while parked....of course ;). To be fair, I did check out AT&T's website...
+1 Big Red
-1 Others
I want my cellphone and a website to interact with each other seamlessly to make it easier to do what I'm doing on that website. The same goes for apps,honestly in my opinion, web apps and HTML5 is the way to go....start shredding the binds of the OS.
But,
Not so much for web developers, software programmers and engineers, game developers and anyone else that looks at codes all day long.
Like this picture here... I would not want upload a picture to facebook if I had to look through a bunch of THIS....just to add it.
| <!DOCTYPE html> | |
| <html lang="en" id="facebook" class="no_js"> | |
| <head><meta charset="utf-8" /><script>window.Env = window.Env || {};(function(v) { for (var k in v) { window.Env[k] = v[k]; } })({"user":"1379750098","locale":"en_US","method":"GET","ps_limit":5,"ps_ratio":4,"svn_rev":479734,"vip":"66.220.146.75","static_base":"http:\/\/static.ak.fbcdn.net\/","www_base":"http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/","rep_lag":2,"post_form_id":"8faa4eca8b34dbf5154fc215548fec54","fb_dtsg":"AQDlRF2T","ajaxpipe_token":"AXhBb_bQa6hTgGbl","lhsh":"aAQGmmupC","tracking_domain":"http:\/\/pixel.facebook.com","retry_ajax_on_network_error":"1","ajaxpipe_enabled":"1"});</script><script>CavalryLogger=false;window._incorporate_fragment = true;window._script_path = "\/home.php";window._EagleEyeSeed="xUzq";</script><noscript> <meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0; URL=/?_fb_noscript=1" /> </noscript> | |
| <meta name="robots" content="noodp, noydir" /><meta name="description" content=" Facebook is a social utility that connects people with friends and others who work, study and live around them. People use Facebook to keep up with friends, upload an unlimited number of photos, post links and videos, and learn more about the people they meet." /><link rel="alternate" media="handheld" href="http://www.facebook.com/" /> | |
| <link type="text/css" rel="stylesheet" href="http://static.ak.fbcdn.net/rsrc.php/v1/yt/r/XUz__kpqMvH.css" /> | |
| <link type="text/css" rel="stylesheet" href="http://static.ak.fbcdn.net/rsrc.php/v1/yx/r/ejJoiNmHkkP.css" /> | |
| <link type="text/css" rel="stylesheet" href="http://static.ak.fbcdn.net/rsrc.php/v1/yi/r/5PJKEUNv9AO.css" /> | |
| <script type="text/javascript" src="http://static.ak.fbcdn.net/rsrc.php/v1/yX/r/HN0ehA1zox_.js"></script> | |
| <script>window.Bootloader && Bootloader.done(["M4\/yw"]);</script><title>Facebook</title><link rel="shortcut icon" href="http://static.ak.fbcdn.net/rsrc.php/yi/r/q9U99v3_saj.ico" /><noscript><meta http-equiv="X-Frame-Options" content="deny" /></noscript><style>.sidebarMode #chatFriendsOnline,.sidebarMode #fbDockChatBuddylistNub.fbNub,.sidebarMode #fbChatErrorNub{display:none} | |
| .sidebarMode #pageHead,.sidebarMode #globalContainer{left:-90px;position:relative} | |
| .sidebarMode .liquid #globalContainer{margin:0 90px} | |
| .sidebarMode .fbDockWrapper{right:175px} | |
| .sidebarMode body.safari4 .fixedScrolling,.sidebarMode .safari4.fixedBody #leftCol,.sidebarMode .safari4.fixedBody .MessagingReadHeader,.sidebarMode .safari4.fixedBody .MessagingContentHeaderWrapper,.sidebarMode .safari4.fixedBody .fbProfilePlacesHeader{margin-left:-90px} | |
| .sidebarMode body.canvas_fixed.safari4 .fixedAux{margin-left:-91px} | |
| .sidebarMode .safari4.fixedBody .fbStreamStickyHeader{margin-left:-110px} | |
| .sidebarMode .timelineLayout .fbTimelineSideColumn{margin-right:-400px} | |
| .sidebarMode .fbTimelineSideAds,.sidebarMode .fbTimelineScrubber{margin-right:-400px} | |
| .sidebarMode .fbTimelineStickyHeader{right:310px} | |
| .sidebarMode #fbPhotoTheater .container{margin-left:-570px} | |
| </style><script>!function(a){if(a.clientWidth>1225)a.className=a.className+' sidebarMode ticker';}(document.documentElement); | |
| !function(){var a,b=function(){a=a||document.getElementById('blueBarHolder');if(a&&'getBoundingClientRect' in a){var c=a.getBoundingClientRect(),d=Math.round(c.top)- |
That's maybe the 1st 40 or so lines of code used to display the news feed page on Facebook
and it's even going renegade by going off the screen...
Thank God for that "upload pictures" button! So I personally thank developers and programmers for everything they do everyday, it makes me want to do it!!
User Interface is a broad topic. I'll be focusing on Mobile User Interfaces and Applications. Guess why!?Right now, I work for the largest cellphone company in the USA, Verizon Wireless. I do Technical Support on cellphones, pda's, crackberries, tablets, modems.....oh yeah....voice calling service too. I spend 40hrs a week helping people use their mobile devices. Setting up emails, refreshing a data connections, performing master resets, educating on the use of the product, sneaking in the tricks and tweaks of a phone to make the experience easier. It's also allowed me to gain a great deal of knowledge on how people use their mobile devices in their daily lives. What they hate, what they love, what's important to them, and what's not important to them (coughcoughpreinstalledappscoughcough).
I am all about customizing your phone or mobile device the way you want it to be. I'm no control freak, but if I want to see a little android guy pissing on the Apple logo as my bootup animation....let me freakin do it. My first dive into customizing the look or theme of my phone started with the Samsung Omnia, a windows mobile phone. I had fun messing around in the registry and changing .cab files. Then Android OS came along and that blew everything out of proportion for me. I started designing themes, layouts, icons, changing my font, and lots of other things I'm sure i'll discuss. It's all led me on this path to want to design mobile user interfaces, hence why I'm back in school for graphic design. I can get very technical with people, especially when it comes to cellphones, there is alot involved with mobile devices. I want to help make the technical and "behind the scenes" prowess of a mobile devices easy for people to use and make it look %$#&'ing good. I want to learn, share and possibly give pointers about the good, the bad, and yes....the ugly on mobile user interface.
Here's an example of future posts...
So of course I'm going to talk about Verizon's mobile website first. I'm not going to review the whole site or interface. I'm just going to exploit a really cool feature I found the other day that I think is perfect for a cellphone company to implement
That's right. When I went to Verizon's mobile site on my android phone looking for a case, it knew exactly what phone I had. I didn't have to keep looking through drop down lists to select my model, or heaven forbid even type it in.....while parked....of course ;). To be fair, I did check out AT&T's website...
+1 Big Red
-1 Others
I want my cellphone and a website to interact with each other seamlessly to make it easier to do what I'm doing on that website. The same goes for apps,honestly in my opinion, web apps and HTML5 is the way to go....start shredding the binds of the OS.
Monday, November 28, 2011
SteamPunk'd
 |
Iv always been a fan of steampunk. Recent movies, like "Stardust", "Suckerpunch", and even brand new "Hugo" depict great examples of the genre.
Tonight I'll be working on my art project where the focus is repetition. Im all about the steampunk genre now, so im using pix like this to inspire me. Im going for a clockwork feel...but gonna try to add something new and different. I'll post on going progress
Sunday, November 20, 2011
Couldn't help it....
Click on pic for bigger pic...this is just an update to this random project I was asked to do at work for Verizon. I'm pretty impressed with this doing it my 1st time, and it's not even done yet!! Donna is gonna kill me for using her pic *evil grin*
*Updated*
This is the final version
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