union station interactive timeline basic concepts

going through the back catalog of process sketches, here...

starting at the very beginning, erika and i were thinking about doing something bigger and more interactive than a basic single-user touchscreen. we've gone back and forth and wireframed lots of different possibilities, but some of our first instincts are here:

we were thinking about using a tabletop display so that more than one person could be interacting with the information at a time, and the fact that our information is coming largely from newspaper articles and editorials lends itself pretty tidily to little bits of information floating around.

this is a quick walkthrough of how interactions might work with this first design idea. in it, the table is covered in "newspaper clippings." these digital clippings would expand when you interact with them, and surrounding dates would swim over to the active clipping for further reading.  

this was another try wherein rather than clippings there were entire digital newspapers that could be organized or strewn about. 

these frames represent what a digital newspaper experience might look like, whether in the context of the multi-user tabletop display, or even in a static single-user screen.

this is another messy sketch of two userpaths. the first line is following a path through the tabletop display, given that the floating pieces are actually decade pieces that continue spawning new information rather than simply clippings. the second line is a walkthrough of the interactions possible with the static newspaper screens.

thank you, steve jobs

as of, what, not quite an hour ago, steve jobs is no longer with us.

this makes me so sad, but i have never even been in the same city as him. i think it just says something about how much of himself is in everything he's worked for. steve jobs has been responsible for a massive part of my communication, my livelihood, and even my life, ever since my mother stayed home and did freelance design when i was a baby. 

i've got this half-baked philosophy of the computer as a soul, that my macbooks know me in each moment as well or better than anybody, and that all my thoughts and energy and work don't bounce off a shiny screen but filter in and dwell in the machine, making something alive and holy. apple computers have been a part of my life since i can remember, and as crazy as it may sound, i think that feels like family. 

i think steve jobs walked at the forefront of something incredible, straight into the incomprehensible, solving problems nobody had ever asked and making things that are not just enriching, or even necessary, but, when used to their fullest potential, literally extensions of ourselves. just as i have an external hard drive for when i need to drain some of the chaos from the top of my macbook, my macbook is there to back up my hopes and dreams and passions and all the rest. it's like an external hard drive for your soul.

insane, right? but it makes a little bit of sense, to people who live like me, not tied to but sometimes cradled in a computer. somebody made that. somebody made that possible. made it possible to carry your soundtrack, the soundtrack for your whole life, with months straight of your favourite music, in your pocket. made it possible to see and hear and touch and interact with things we might never get close to otherwise. things that might never have even had a visual form otherwise! things that might never even have existed otherwise.

steve jobs didn't change the world for people my age. we have no frame of reference. he was instrumental in making our world what it is. i'm so grateful for everything he's made possible. i think we all are. i just hope he knew that, how so many people owe him so much about themselves, who they are, what they do, where, how, and why. everything will keep moving forward, apple included. but steve jobs is going down in history as a man with his hands shaping the right now.


“almost everything–all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure–these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. remembering that you are going to die is the best way i know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. you are already naked. there is no reason not to follow your heart.” steve jobs

union station!

despite my devout love for union station, i just realized i have yet to blog about this project.
next on the narrative in sound and motion dockett is an interactive timeline, using both linear and nonlinear (user-controlled) elements, about the history of union station for their 100 year anniversary. my partner for this project is erika g and we've done a lot of thinking and sketching but i haven't scanned any of it in, yet. we also recently got to visit union station itself and speak with the c.e.o. which was really exciting. we received a compelling oral history of the building, and if he had been selling it, we would have bought it. (that's how good a speaker he was!)

the way this project is arranged is such that each partnergroup has a different decade, and put together, all ten groups make up the whole century of union station. everybody from the forties onward feels slighted due to lessening rail travel, but our decade is a little unique: we have the 1990s, wherein union station was actually literally closed down until 1999. this means we've had to take a slightly different route with our concept, and our timeline is less about the things happening in union station the building and more about the politics and shifting social climate outside. there were many arguments, activism, and steps to be taken before union station finally reopened, so we're focusing journalistically on that angle of history rather than the literal whats and the whens. more about the hows and the whos!

i think we're both pretty excited about this project, so i know it'll turn out well. and i love partnerwork. i feel so much better about design when i can go in with a buddy. it's just like spelunking! much less dark and empty and terrifying when you aren't alone.

koenig, the first baby steps

our next project in type three is a redesign of a book about pierre koenig, architect. we have raw text and a big folder full of .tifs, and now we're off, trying to make a book that, in a few weeks, we can get printed off of blurb.com to have for our very own. today's first tiny step was to bring in text-dominant spreads to look at some basic typographic systems. things to consider were: using a grid!, how do the fonts for the body copy, title, subtitle, captions, pull quotes, and folios all relate to one another? contrasting faces necessito, but gracefully, not clunkily. i learned today that apparently none of my typefaces contain small-caps, which may make things rather more difficult for me in terms of (at the least) my numbers. all of these have faarrr to go, but here's where i've started:

package design inspiration

here's some package design inspiration i've collected before and during the thumbnail sketch stage of the package redesign project. i've been trawling design blogs, and this is some of my favourite stuff for a variety of reasons including the overall design, the typography, the concept, the color palette, and rendering style, and the copy itself.