Graffiti: More than a Crime?
Posted on: April 21, 2011 by Kevin Elko in Culture
Tags: graffiti
Walk through just about any city in the world and you are bound to find some form of graffiti. In many areas of many cities, it has overrun the landscape. From simple personal tags to gang tags, stencils, murals, and street art, graffiti is everywhere. Graffiti has grown from very humble roots, but has permeated through our culture and has become an international art form. Graffiti, in the purest sense, has existed throughout history. There are examples of graffiti etched into the walls of Ancient Rome and Greece. Graffiti as we know it developed sometime in the early 1900s. Many ...
Affordances in Web Design
Posted on: April 12, 2011 by Kevin Elko in Design Technology
Tags: Interface, usability
I was paging through my copy of The Design of Everyday Things by Donald A. Norman the other day when I came across the fascinating section on affordances. In the book, Norman describes an affordance "as perceived and actual properties of [a] thing, primarily those fundamental properties that determine just how the thing could possibly be used." It started me thinking about how important affordances are in web design, as well as how much we take them for granted. To Click or Not to Click There are a number of design conventions that are employed on the web to let users know what is cli...
Typography
Posted on: April 3, 2011 by Kevin Elko in Typography
Tags: fonts, type, typography
Typography is at the heart of graphic design. It serves as both a vehicle of information and a visual element, and has the power to make or break a design. While there is no perfect set of typographic rules, there are some general guidelines that should be observed to better foster successful typography. The Anatomy of a Character The smallest element of typography is the letter, but what makes up a letter? Letters in different font-faces look different, but there are a number of structural elements that unify the form of one letter in a typeface to the same letter in a different t...
UI Design for Mobile Touch Screens
Posted on: March 28, 2011 by Kevin Elko in Technology
Tags: development, usability, WWW
Just the other day, I was introduced to yet another addicting Internet game. I have no idea – and quite frankly don’t want to know– how many hours I spent playing this incredibly simple game. I found myself craving this game at all hours of the day – and unfortunately I don’t bring my computer everywhere I go. I can browse the web on my phone, which is always in my pocket, but as we are all aware by now, mobile phones don’t support flash. In an effort to get my fix, I set out to build a phone-friendly version of the game in JavaScript. In the process of developing my v...
Everyday Design
Posted on: by jthibault in Design
It's always a nice surprise to be face to face with some great design right when you least expect it. I spent a lot of time in thrift stores over my spring break in Port Charlotte, FL - a nice little retirement corner with tons of thrift stores to occupy yourself when you've seen a bit too much sun. In the back of this one little store I found a rack of old golf clubs and fell in love with all the mixed up old type designs. So the moral: good design is not necessarily found on a computer screen, sometimes, it's in the stinky back room of a Florida thrift store! ...
The Logo Experience
Posted on: March 21, 2011 by Kevin Elko in Design
Tags: Google, logo
In branding a company, it is generally thought that a logo should remain consistent, but in today’s ever-changing world can a brand be built on an evolving logo? First Things First Photo courtesy of Fast Co. Design. The recent release of the new MIT Media Lab logo was what prompted my thoughts on this topic. If you haven’t yet seen the video, I strongly recommend checking it out. The logo is based on an algorithm that randomly generates one of some 40,000 unique designs. That is enough to supply each of the Media Lab members a personalized logo for the next 25 years. While t...
Posters: Past and Present
Posted on: March 14, 2011 by Kevin Elko in Design
Tags: history, posters
A poster is technically defined as a large printed picture, notice, or advertisement, displayed in a public place. Posters have been in use throughout the history of civilization, but did not come into their own until the late 1800’s when the printing industry developed and perfected the practice of color lithography, which made mass production and distribution possible. In the century or so following the development of color lithography, posters have become an essential form of art and one of – if not the most – popular tools of the advertising and commercial industries. Poster des...
GUIs and Accessibility
Posted on: February 19, 2011 by Kevin Elko in Technology
Tags: development, usability, WWW
Web design is fundamentally different than just about every other branch of graphic design. Print design is static – when a designer prints out a finalized design, it will not change. The printed design will look the same to everyone that sees it. Web design does not have this luxury. Web pages are GUIs When we think of computers we often think of Windows, Mac OS, icons, start bars, menus, desktops and mice. These are all components of the graphical user interface (GUI). It can be difficult for people who have become accustomed to working with GUIs to imagine interacting with...
How the Web Works
Posted on: February 11, 2011 by Kevin Elko in Technology
Tags: development, WWW
The World Wide Web is revolutionizing the way we live our lives. It is a tool that most of us use multiple times everyday. It has become the first step for shopping, answering questions, getting directions, socializing, and even dating. Like many of the things we use daily (like your car or your television) the web is often taken for granted. People tend to overlook the time and effort that designers and developers put into shaping the digital world. Before we can really begin to explore the web as a medium, it is important to understand the technology that powers it. When yo...
The History of Typographical Symbols
Posted on: February 6, 2011 by Kevin Elko in Typography
Tags: glyphs, history, typography
Typography is a vast, deep subject. It spans nearly the entire history of mankind and is continually evolving. Written languages are constantly being mutated by shorthand, new technology, etc. and spawn a huge number of ligatures, logograms, symbols, and other glyphs. Below is just a brief look into the history of some of the more popular symbols. The ampersand The ampersand was originally a ligature of the Latin word et, meaning and. The ligature can be traced back to the first century, but the Roman ampersand we see most often today evolved sometime around the 9th century during th...