inspiration – icon sets

I came across this icon set for iOS8 and thought it looked neat and clean. I like that the icons are flat and also that they seem to look like they have a sketch feel while not too playful. They have a little bit of a playful and fun feeling to them but are also neat and straight enough that I could easily see them being incorporated into some designs. I like that they are black and white, making it relatively easy to add in whatever colors one might have associated with their particular brand. I also like how most of the designs are vey simple and do not necessarily incorporate elements that might clutter the space or distract the audience from the meaning being put across via the design.

http://streamlineicons.com/free-icons.html

Identity Systems

I attempted to make this design very simple and minimalistic. I stayed away from adding any unnecessary items on the designs and also opted out of using color. I believe that black and white, when applied appropriately, can make a very powerful design similar to the one I encountered and presented in my inspiration post this week. The postcard was one of the more challenging designs during this assignment with one of the reasons being the seemingly heavy amount of text that needed to be accounted for as the faculty member’s bio. The flyer also seemed to suffer from the same issue with the wordy mission statement that needed to be incorporated.
I opted to incorporate both the ISRC logo and my designed wordmark (active concept) on each of the assets in an attempt to create some uniformity while also testing for scalability across the different elements.

Version 1
Business Card front and Business Card back
Letterhead
Flyer front and Flyer back
Post Card front and Post Card back 

After some feedback from other designers, I incorporated some changes into the identity system design that can be seen by following the links below.

Version 2
Business Card
Letterhead
Flyer front and Flyer back
Post Card front and Post Card back

Identity systems photo essay

The above identity system is an example of one I like for Limelight Digital, posted by Fred Nerby. It is a minimalist type of design that ensures that the focus is on the content and not necessarily on the design. The design has a high visual appeal that captures my attention but then fades into the background so that I can focus on the actual content being presented by the medium in front of me. It also scales well and ha a uniform and consistent presence, ensuring that I can easily recognize the identity regardless of the medium through which it is presented.

http://operadevil69.deviantart.com/art/superman-corporate-identity-104265645

The second identity above, while fun, is one that I do not particularly like. I think the color interactions not only serve to capture the attention of the audience but go even a step further to distract one from the actual content that might be present within a business card, letter, brochure or otherwise. The color interactions do not necessarily look very visually appealing to me as well. I also do not think that the cut-outs at the top of some of the documents and media to accommodate the logo add any value to he presentation. I do not think it helps in the brand’s bid to put forth a professional front. That being said, it might be perfectly fun and appropriate depending on the brand’s target audience.

inspiration – branding

This week, since learning about scale and identity systems, the design pictured above for “Creation Visual Merchandising” by Cindy Forster caught my eye. I really like the visual appeal that the design has and also the way it fits appropriately (scales) to each one of the different media on which it is printed/ illustrated. The pieces fit together well and can be grouped as having a similar design language by only applying a set of about 2-3 colors.

ISRC Icon Set

For this exercise, I took to brainstorming and timing my sessions for each of the concepts that I had selected to create an icon for. Some brainstorming session ended up lasting a bit longer than other simply because sometimes the time would run out before I was able to illustrate all the ideas I had on paper. I then took pictures of my illustrated hand-drawings (picking the icon I considered most representative of the concerned concept) and converted them into vector-based images within the Inkscape tool. I found myself having an easier time with illustrating some of the concepts for which I had already seen illustrations made by others (eg. haptics, search and health), while other concepts such as culture, tended to take a little bit more time to illustrate.
I captured some of what I did during my brainstorm sessions in the images below.

In creating version 1 of this design exercise, my main focus is particularly on whether someone can grasp concept I am trying to represent by the accompanying graphic, a first glance. In other words, is the resulting icon effective or not. I will then work on other aspects beyond that initial recognition task in later versions.

The resulting ISRC icon set can be viewed from the link below:
ISRC Icon Set

ISRC Icon Set – V2

ISRC icon critique

Based on the feedback above, I played around with the thickness of the stroke of the different icons in order to give them a more uniform feel. I also played around with adding color as suggested by some peers but decided to stay with black and white.
The resulting icon set for v2 can be seen at the link below:
ISRC Icon Set – v2

I ended up deciding on a new color scheme and illustrated some of that in the subsequent iterations of the icon set design. The results of that can be viewed via the link below:
ISRC Icon Set – v3

ISRC Icon Set (Interaction) – In-class activity

This in-class activity consisted of creating a 5 X 5 matrix of possible icons that could be used to illustrate the concept “interactive” within 10 minutes and then share what one came up with with the rest of the class. As is evident from the image below, my brainstorm session needed to be allotted a little bit more time in order to fulfill the requirement of a whole 5 X 5 matrix.
For this exercise it was difficult for me to distance myself from the notion that an “interaction” must involve a human aspect. I wondered whether my assumption matched what my classmates thought of when they thought of interaction. As can be seen below, most of my illustrations incorporate some human element.

inspiration

Optimizing UI icons for faster recognition
For this week’s inspiration, I point to an article written by “Alla Kholmatova” in 2013 talking about different factors to consider around “Optimizing UI icons for faster recognition”
She touches on semiotic theory and structure of signs, iconic vs symbolic signs and visual styles and speed of recognition. She also touches on other factors such as the consistency of applied language and concludes with some guidelines for ‘faster’ icons or icon sets.

ISRC – v2

wordmark
the illustrations for ISRC wordmark can be found here: active and grouping
Some of the comments I received on v1 of my designs that inspired the changes I express in v2 can be seen below:

Wordmark 1:

I like the stairway effect on this one. I kind of wish the bottom of the C was aligned with the bottom of the I, though. It kind of hangs oddly. I realize that this would change the formation of the “SRC,” but that may be remedied by changing their size.

I do like the way the SRC are connected and the fact that they don’t touch bottom gives it a feeling of action which is nice.  What would happen if instead of hanging off of the bottom of the serif of the “i” the S R C chain started with the S sitting on top of the I’s serif with the R and C dangling down from there?  Just something different to try.

I liked the idea of using S, R, C as steps. A minor change that I’d suggest would be to increase the font size of S, R, C so that C is aligned with the base of I.

Wordmark 2:

Clever use of the curve in the “S” and the “R”. The “I” stands out a bit from the rest of the design – doesn’t quite fit in with the “foot” of the S. You may want to try maneuvering it around to see if there’s a way to fit it in better.

The implications of the co-joined S and R are interesting.  Would it work better with a different font where the angles of the bowl’s matched better?

Didn’t really understand the concept as much. Would suggest you to change the design probably by changing the angles/font size/type face.

name
the illustrations for the ISRC name can be found here: active and grouping
Some of the comments I received on v1 of my designs that inspired the changes I express in v2 can be seen below:

Name 1:

I like the size differences between the first, capitalized letters of the words and the rest of the words. The connection between the “S” and “R” though is a little odd in this picture. They’re the only two big letters to connect, and the “y” in “Systems” dips oddly into the “R”. It seems intentional, but I’m missing the point. Is the foot of the “y” meant to create a face in the “R”?

It is nice how this design has a lot of movement.  There are a few details I might want to work on such as the “enter” in Center seems a little bit low to me. The capital letters S and R connect here, but the capitals I and C are not connected to the chain of capitals.  Would having the lower case words line up with the center line of the capitals instead of the baseline help the design?

You can move the word ‘Research’ a bit towards right. This would help in making uniform pattern.

Name 2:

Definitely my favorite design of the set. I thought that was a very clever use of the E’s in each word. You also aligned them very well, and the top and bottom aren’t imbalanced as far as I can tell. Really great job on this one.

This is way too cool.  Really good idea.  Just to play with it, what would it look like with the central e in a lighter font?

Smart use of letter ‘e’. Liked the design.

 

mission statement
the illustrations for the ISRC mission statement can be found here:active and grouping
Some of the comments I received on v1 of my designs that inspired the changes I express in v2 can be seen below:

Mission 1:

I like the format of this design. The “stairway” effect of the logo is carried over into the mission statement text not only in its placement (lower than the logo’s center point), but also in its stacking on the right. Good way to follow through. You may consider moving the text down a little to align with the bottom of the “I” in “ISRC,” but then you may need to break up the rest of the letters in the logo. Just something to think about.

I really like how the text in this one mirrors the shape of the logo. The placement of the initial “The” is wonderful. What happens if you put the logo on top of the text, left justifying everything making a larger staircase with a landing on top of the first line of text?  Another thing you could try is shrinking the logo so it is closer to the height of the block of text. But really, it works for me as it is.

Similar to Wordmark 1 idea. Liked it.

Mission 2:

You use the great logo design in the second name design, which is great. It definitely needs a “The” to start it off like the first Mission statement design. The rest of the mission statement looks a bit off center from the logo, you may want to move it. Right now it looks like it floats above the center-point.

The logo and the text don’t seem to be working together here. Adding the “the” will help.  What happens if you make the text take up less horizontal space and let it flow around the bottom of the logo?  What would happen if you used the same font (but not bold) for the mission statement as you used for the logo? or just another font other than the one you’ve currently chosen.

The mission statement is left aligned. I would suggest you to use justify alignment.

ISRC – v1

wordmark
the illustrations for ISRC wordmark can be found here: active and grouping
for this particular assignment, I take the letters “ISRC” and use them to visually illustrate a concept or two out of some of the ones I had illustrated in previous assignments.

name
the illustrations for the ISRC name can be found here: active and grouping
for the second part of this assignment, I take the words “Interactive Systems Research Center” and also use them to visually illustrate a concept.

mission statement
the illustrations for the ISRC mission statement can be found here: active and grouping
for this third part of the assignment, I take the Interactive Systems Research Center’s mission statement and once more, illustrate the concepts active and grouping. The ISRC’s mission statement given, states that:

“The ISRC acts as a bridge for faculty across the UMBC campus with expertise in designing, building, or studying uses of interactive computing systems. It facilitates the sharing of resources and experience in solving computing problems from a user-centered perspective grounded in user needs and not in simply applying previously designed solutions to new domains.”

creative type

creative type

this in-class assignment proved to be a lot more challenging than it initially seemed. I chose the letter ‘B’ in a bid to illustrate the concept of a ball. I started by illustrating uppercase letter B by drawing what is supposed to be two basketballs showing where the space/ holes in the letter would be. Next, I again drew an uppercase letter B but with the basketballs now covering where the stroke of the actual letter would cover. I then decided to move on to incorporating two different sets of balls (basketballs and a football) to still illustrate an uppercase letter B. Removing one of the basketballs from the illustration described in the previous sentence gave me what seemed like a lowercase b, something I noticed while trying to re-draw the previous illustration in a bid to make it neater. The rest of the designs were centered around re-drawing some of the previous design ideas in order to investigate whether the illustrations might better represent the concept/ letter with some tweaking. It will be interesting to see what others came up with here.