End of the year Synopsis

Advanced New Media Design has taught me a lot. Not just technical aspects, but life lessons that are applicable to design.

I’ll start though by saying that Camden and I got a lot further than we anticipated with this VC Graduate Database. We couldn’t have done it without the help of Kevin McGrath and Ashley Pigford. There were many struggles, but we were able to get to something that could potentially be a finished product.

Breakdown:
Organized the list of over 700 graduates into a new spreadsheet, that has only the essential information, First and Last Name, Email, Job, and Job state.

From here we followed a couple tutorials and found out how to load this XML into a Flash file using actionscript.

Following this, we went to the formatting stage and placed the text with in “virtual business card”

These cards would then be put into a grid that takes up the whole screen.

In order for the viewer to see all the cards, we had to find a way to make the screen scroll based on the tracking of the mouse position.

We were content with this exploration and eventually, put it into an interface, so that it didn’t seem so overwelming.

The next step from here will be to filter through the information so that only the information a viewer wants it shown. Using the data we have in the XML, and possibly a “concentration tagging” system, the database will be less confusing and more practical.

Spring Break, a time to think.

Half of my springbreak consisted of brainstorming non-stop for a better solution than the “ultimate homepage” idea. I came up with a few goods, but ultimately I don’t think any of them are nearly as interesting as the prospect of creating a VC Graduate Interactive Database that Camden chose to work on. I planned to work with him on in it in the future, but I figured if I was going to do that. Why not just be there from the beginning so we are both on the same page.
I’m always impressed with the different interactive projects that the NY Times comes up with.
New York Times Graphics
I was especially impressed with the Twitter timeline graphic during the Super Bowl, check it out.
Twitter Chatter During SuperBowl

That’s all for now.

Info Design video shown at AIGA Baltimore

Found this info design video about the state of the internet,

Programming Interaction

This next project will be big. The best part about it is it will be on the web and millions of people can interact with it.
The one problem I have is coming up with a plan for something that will be an interesting experience and appeal to many. One of the things I am most passionate about is soccer, but I’ve found that I include this in a lot of my work and it also doesn’t appeal to a general audience.

So my initial idea was to create an ultimate homepage that would consist of a random sample of the page that comes up when people open their browsers. I would collect this data by starting a twitter trend asking people what their homepage is. #myhomepageis. This may be a little strange to implement in flash, because it seems like it should be an html project.

After presenting my idea to the class I got some good suggestions to make this into a flash experience. Some of the suggestions were to make it personalized and have each “person” have a web of their top five websites, or create a graphical interface showing which sites are used the most. This interface will take on a little representation of a web and illustrate the the sites that are of most importance to it’s users.

The thing that intrigues me about homepages are that they are personalized defaults. Defaults are defined as the option to which a system begins with. Homepages are personalized based on what a person thinks is important and what they want to see when they open their browser. This new creation would be an aggregate of what many people think is important. There will surely be many sites that overlap and it would reveal what is important to the majority of people on the web.

The only thing I have left to do is think of a variable that can correlate with a persons homepage in order to create a more interesting set of data.

Things I’ve Learned at University of Delaware.

A/V Synch Narrative video

test progress

dress code, life in college, and the plan.

Yesterday a couple of my friends and I set out to Philadelphia University to hear a lecture by the young design group dress code, dress code website some of the coolest guys you’ll ever meet. On the way there we got lost. Well actually, we were always going the right way, but we second guessed ourselves and the directions and couldn’t find Gypsy Lane and therefore we showed up 50 minutes late to the lecture. Despite showing up late, we got some good information and got great insight from guys who are not far from where we are as designers, agewise. They do a lot of motion graphics and that is how it pertains to this class.

The idea of becoming a director didn’t hit me until I heard these guys use it in the context of motion graphics. I need to look at this project this way. I have been looking at it from the point of view of a student trying to explain his experiences at college to people. Instead I must view this as a story that will be ever-changing and be able to adjust things to create a narrative that appeals not only to incoming students, but my mom, the guy at the train station, or my 2nd grade teacher. It has to be able to be understood by many. Controlling many parts in this process, image, video, type, audio, and narrative is something new for me, and I have to embrace and not be afraid to have something horrible in the end. After the lecture yesterday it had me thinking, I can’t let the outcome be apart of the plan, but let the plan be the outcome. Sounds good right, ! Just another way of saying don’t think about what the product will be, let the process determine what happens with the project.

images

Video Killed the Radio Star.

We are continuing to work in the medium of video and I am continuing to enjoy it. For me, I find myself experimenting more in video than any other medium I’ve used. Surprisingly I didn’t experiment enough with my Audio Visual Synchronization. I enjoyed the aesthetic I had, because it was very unique and different from everyone else’s in the class. However, I didn’t vary the use of a certain element and because of that my video suffered slightly. As I said before though, I was satisfied with the outcome. If I had to do it again, I wouldn’t change that much.

With the skills I have learned in After Effects, the next project is to create a vodcast (video podcast) about life at Delaware. Videos are much more engaging than listening to someone talk about the University of Delaware,for an example see here: http://www.udel.edu/admissions/video/new/admissionswelcome.swf if we wanted to hear that all we would have to do is follow along one of the blue hen ambassador tours. This project will be more of a narrative and the aim is to, “identify a story that is worth telling”. A way to get around this is to tell the story that everyone knows about in a way that has never been seen before. The audience will be kids from all over the nation who don’t know about Delaware. My goal is to let them know what their life would be like if that went to the University of Delaware. I have a few ideas, but whether I can execute them before March 15th, will be something I have to think about.

Inspiration for this project:
Text overlaying video:

Title Sequence:

Crazzzzzzy.