Unusual Maps

(http://www.allmaps.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2007/11/london-map.jpg)

http://www.forward.com/workspace/assets/images/articles/DistanceBetweenMonuments-11.jpg

(http://www.dxhiker.com/images/incaMAP.jpg)

(http://www.mullewa.wa.gov.au/Images/MullewaTrails/Bushlands-Trail-Map.gif)

http://wordpress.imiant.org.uk/maria/files/2009/01/sant_fig5.jpg

(http://makingmaps.files.wordpress.com/2008/01/wood_boylanatlas_signs.png)

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Eye Magazine Layout

Cadek Conservatory Calendar and Poster

After many grueling hours I have come to a stopping point with the Cadek Calendar.

Here is an image of how it looked before.

Now here is my revamped version.

What bothered me most about the original calendar was its lack of organization. Dates were just thrown on the page, and order was non existent. For a parent dealing with work, school, and also their children’s music lessons, there is a need for an organized calendar. Imagine trying to find what days are Mondays in the month of February for Child A on the original calendar! Now it is set up like a grid with the months broken out. All the parent has to do is find the month they need, then decide what day of the week, and then they know every numerical day Cadek is in session.

I also wanted to leave plenty of white space on this new calendar. School and children equal notes. What parent hasn’t received a publication from the school and then tried to cram notes in on a small bit of white space within the page? Now they can write clearly next to each term on the left. The scholarship and holiday info are also placed right under the institutions name for quick reference.

Next is a poster for Cadek incorporating an image and the existing calendar. For this I chose an outline image of a violin. Cadek teaches many forms of instruments but to me the violin was the most beautiful and recognizable as a wire frame. I decided to use brown, blue, orange and cream for my color scheme. Brown being taken from violins and the blue and orange from UTC’s school colors. Cream was chosen for the remaining text instead of white because white would have been too bold against the brown background. I wanted to create a minimalist poster that also reflected the elegant nature of music being taught at Cadek Conservatory.

Posters

After sorting through the tattered remains of Cadek’s academic calendar now the task at hand is to include the calendar with an image (and it can poster size! yay!) But what would go naturally with this new and improved calendar without being too obvious? Music notes? bah. Instruments? ehhh… its something to think about.

[http://www.bensjohnson.com/images/print/poster_Tishamingo2.jp]

This one includes an obvious picture but has added a latitude and longitude type lineart over the image which gives it more impact and is not as predictible. Why is the moon graphed out? My guess is the release of the band’s cd “The Point.” I am really interested in designs that are beautiful but don’t quite make sense at first until you read the copy of text. Then “eureka!” it all makes sense.

[http://www.aycyas.com/Georges-Melies_Impossible-Voyager_poster_webb.jpg]

Ironically the next one that caught my attention also had a moon in it. The image of the moon with debris matches perfectly with the header and also with the theme of remaining copy.

[http://mackleydesign.com/posters_files/page7_1.gif]

Part of me likes minimal design, it has a quiet beauty about it. This poster feels like it would be part of Cadek in some way. Perhaps not for instruction though… a lone chair might do well for a recital but not for music instruction – that should have a little bit more energy.

[http://suosdeypennfreelance.com/images/design/design_poster_3.jpg]

This one obviously utilized vectors, the images are simple but there is a sense of energy and movement. I think I’m going to take some inspiration from this poster the most since it has a flow and I am intrigued by the use of color.

The Visual Neutrality

The first project for Type 2 is at hand – redesigning the Cadek Conservatory’s music instruction calendar.

After reading Robin Kinross’s The Rhetoric of Neutrality I seem to have a little more insight into which direction I want to go with this project.

The current layout for Cadek’s calendar is … disasterous. Sure you can argue that it presents all the information on one single sheet. It is a printed communication of dates. It’s meant to help parents plan their child’s weekly music lessons.

Kinross stated in her introduction: ” [Information Design] has been concered with the needs of the users rather than with the expressive possibilities present in design tasks.” In this case it couldn’t be more true. Yes all the improtant info is there, but visually its confusing and frusterating.

This image taken from the Australia Research Society has a mass amount of info needing to be displayed on one page (image from:http://www.aumrs.com.au/ICEM-08/Program/Schedule/ICEM08_program_schedule.jpg). While color is not an option for this project this schedule I noticed how the information was broken up and sorted in a grid style. A major flaw in this schedule however is the lack of coding to alert the viewer to what all the single placed letters (such as “C” “D”) mean.

Mentally I am preparing a note to myself – streamline and possibly sort the information but do not boil it down too much as overly streamlined information might lose its informative impact.

There were many examples in Kinross’s article concerning the balance between something being informative vs being strictly visual. Earlier train schedules done by the London train transit in the 1933s were strictly informative. And slowly over time they began to incorporate more visual elements which helped their effectiveness.

But you cannot just throw the infomative bit to the wind and concentrate soley on the visual aspect. There has to be a balance between the two. The information needs to remain untainted and uncomprimised while also being visually appealing.

I came across this timetable from the Alaska Railroad. (image:http://www.akrr.com/contentimages/2009-AWT-Schedule.gif) While I am not sure of its effectiveness in delivering critical information the use of arrows for reading one column up and one column down did keep my interest and even now since it was so different I remembered it even after not looking at it for a few hours. Which shows how their visual use of arrows and text to direct how to read the graph not only conveyed its content but was so different from regular train schedules that the next time seeing it one might have a higher chance of remembering it.

This swimming lesson schedule has another element that I might like to incorporate (image:http://www.ymcalakecounty.org/Portals/3/images/CLSummer09PoolLessonSchedule.jpg). It sorts the days of the week in one column and the swimmer level on the left. In the Cadek schedule this could be tweaked to have the month only listed in one column rather than it is now.

There is a great deal of data on this schedule that will need to be adjusted and fitted. It will be hard to find a visual neutrality where the schedule is strong in both terms of being informative while also being visually pleasing to enhance the absorption of information.