Dawning Light Design

By Amy Standen

This book was an amazing serendipity. While attending a Photoshop workshop at Adobe a friend and his friend left early and gave me two extra raffle tickets. I won! This book was my gift and so ‘right on’ with my interests. Maggie Taylor’s work leans toward surrealistic, though she prefers not to think of it that way. Starting off as a photographer, she moved into a more experimental realm with the advent of technology. Taylor uses compositing in Photoshop with her own unique twists.

Taylor’s work often has glimpses of childhood memories. Always having been prone to nightmares, she would remember them vividly and write them down. The dark edges around most of her images suggest something unseen lurking about. Portraits within her work are often somber and frequently with incongruent body parts, sometimes animal heads, wings, rabbit ears, bee dress, seashell ears, Elite lady carrying a  large fish, clothing made from odd objects, etc. The objects surrounding the main subject bring many questions to mind.  Most depict times in late nineteenth or early twentieth century and though they may begin as photographs, rarely have any photographic quality in the finished product. She is a subtle artist who uses objects as “clues we are invited to pursue.” When interviewed about the stories behind her work Taylor said “I like to think that people who look at my images will come up with their own stories.”

As a child, Taylor spent much time in front of the TV, then was delighted to be sent off to boarding school at the age of 14, enjoying being on her own. As a sophomore at Yale, she became interested in photography, something she could do alone. She spent much of her time in a dark room improvising and experimenting. At that time there were no computers. “[Experimentation] was encouraged, as long as it was within the narrow parameters of what they considered photography,” Taylor says.

She met Jerry Ulesman, professor of Photography at the University of Florida where she worked as a teaching assistant in Art History. In the 60’s and 70’s he was moving into black and white “surrealist, metaphoric and humorous” photography. As a couple their style of working independently, yet visiting each other’s studio to observe, influenced their avid interest in the strange objects and circumstances pulled into their work. Her Yale mentor’s were dismayed by the work that brought her praise from Florida faculty. One Yale mentor wrote, “It’s interesting, and I can see that you’re using your sense of humor, but it’s not photography.”

“Taylor was one of the many photographers in the 1980’s exploring the photographic potential of fabricated worlds,” the author says. In 1995, a representative of Adobe asked Ulesmann to do a poster for the company using Photoshop. They gave him money for a state-of-the-art Macintosh and sent someone to teach him to use Photoshop. Taylor helped him learn the software and became intrigued with it. By 1998, she had switched from camera to scanner. She became obsessed with collecting objects, letters and old photographs to scan. Learning to combine and manipulate them in Photoshop occupied her creative curiosity.

Objects, pieces of objects, the more used, the better the mystery behind the item and its users. Trips became an adventure in finding the unique and the simple junk, dirty, peeling paint, mysterious. Photographs were taken with being distorted into subtle backgrounds in mind. Ebay became a treasure hunt for old tintypes. What better source for the somber faces which show up in her work?

It is interesting to note that Taylor’s work was mostly about women for years. A chance use of a child’s photo in one of her creations sparked an interest in more children being used. Gradually men were added.

What personally interested me most was her style. Taylor goes into detail about how Photoshop most uniquely unleashed her creative and intuitive talents. Layering helps her truly create the piece that speaks the story. As I looked at the visuals of several creations I was moved to see that yes, I agree with her choices. Each of several works of art were shown at their many stages, try this object, not that one, change the color, change the size, put it here, put it there, multiply it, change the subtlety or the vividness. The process is long and her results are stunning. Taylor’s work is meant to ‘trigger the subconscious, to free viewers from the constraints of the rational world so that’ Taylor says they can experience “a convergence of factual memory and fictional daydream.”

Taylor “watches her images grow in directions she couldn’t have predicted. Accidents give birth to new ideas; one added element suggests another…digital free association.”

The author says Taylor’s “work rarely, if ever, seem to reflect on the tools used to make it…” In the future Taylor might like to explore film making. This is what I’d like to explore, the subtlety and mystery of Taylor’s style in conjunction with motion graphics.

http://www.visitcenter.org/programs.cfm?p=ProjectTaylor

I don’t really feel like the two articles were talking about entirely different approaches. The second article even mentions David Kelley founder of IDEO as having both an Electrical Engineering degree and Master’s degree in Design. Tom Brown, the writer of the Design Thinking article is president of IDEO. What both articles talked about was finding that previous concepts of design no longer meant an advertisement to sell an item or service.
Now designers have to be aware of the whole package. For Tom Brown it was realizing that companies wanted them to re-design the service itself, and how well it served the consumer. As he said of  “a parade of bold innovators who shaped the world … they didn’t just do design; they lived design.” “They were creative innovators who bridged the chasm between thinking and doing because they were passionately committed to the goal of a better life and a better world.”
For Dev Patnaik, the importance was realizing that the hybrid of combining other skills outside of design into the design process builds a solid, well-balanced product or service. The designers who allowed all their skills to come into the workflow had a tendency toward a development of thinking in the design that more broadly took in more far reaching aspects of the needs for developing a successful product or service.

Motorola Cell Phone
Product Review with 10 Heuristics
Yes, I still use an old fashioned flip open cell phone. Mine is a Motorola from Verizon. For the “Visibility of system status”

Visibility of system status
The phone is generally pretty clear. Time, date, battery status and service level are very clear. Pushing any of the side buttons lights up the front window with that information any time.

Match between system and the real world
Learning initial use was okay as long as I stuck with the basics. My service downloaded my contact information and transferred it to the new phone, so I was very grateful I did not have to sit for days re-entering the information. The words that show of the left button, center (ok) and right button give fairly clear messages in order to find what I am looking for in relation to the present mode.

User control and freedom
I have been utterly frustrated with new ringtones. I do not have web service on mine, but can download tones without service. However, the two tones that showed up on my phone are in ‘sounds,’ not ringtones and there is nothing in options to tell me how to make the sound become a ringtone.

Consistency and standards
Most operations are consistent with previous phones.

Error prevention
The CLR button is a life saver. I am forever getting into a menu I don’t understand or hitting something that says it is logging me on to the web. No, I am not paying for more, for extras.

Recognition rather than recall
On the keyboard recognition is clear. Green swirly means go or send. Red means stop or end call. CLR works as a back space button to stop fearful looking processes or wipe out typos in texting.

Flexibility and efficiency of use
As long as I stay with the basics the phone is efficient. When I go deeper into the menu it is a maze.

Aesthetic and minimalist design
I enjoy the purple design and that it fits easily in my hand or pocket. The curvature and overall design are very pleasing to me.

Help users recognize, diagnose, and recover from errors
No, this Motorola does not help me recognize or explain much of why I am having a problem understanding what next. It does not explain what to do when I have not figured it out correctly. Recovery is always push CLR button.

Help and documentation
For instance when I go into settings many of the words and terms are Greek to me. I know there is a #number to update the software, but can’t remember it. The menu shows many versions which mean nothing to me. Pressing the update option whirls and ends saying no service. I can’t access tones I downloaded to be ringtones in the ringtones menu. The book for instructions is VERY THICK and annoying to go through…does not clarify the problem with downloaded tones.
Overall I like my phone and enjoy the services I use on it. I don’t much like exploring other options because they will likely cost me more, like paying for web service.

Purple Lifeline

My first surprise in this article was that it was not the kind of Motion Graphics I was looking for. Yet I found it a fascinating deviation from the latest concept of motion graphics. Jennifer Steinkemp uses “Light, Space, Sound and Motion” in a whole different way. The genre here is called Installation Art, but it fits many different genres. Media Art is also an appropriate slot for her work. It has been included in a variety of exhibition types.
Her greatest challenge is to dematerialize the space her work is displayed in, often an entire room of her own. Several projectors may be used to create illusions in different portions of the room. Use of water projections can become so real viewers no longer see the wall and floor where they are displayed and may become seasick. Interactivity, through sensors and placement of projectors, is deliberately built in to the display. A viewer walks into the room and becomes part of the display. Their shadow interacts with the work. Music may start or change according to where they stand and what their actions are. Children understand that this is their cue to play with the shadows, sounds, music and light of the space they have entered. They get to create their experience of the art. Musicians work with her to create specific impressions, such as sounds that causes a square room to seem round.
My impression of this was two different reactions. One, I totally appreciated the effort to involve her viewers. Then I was impressed with what it takes for an artist to be recognized in such a way to be included in museum exhibits. Initially, the article described a work she did that was displayed in a home on one end of town and viewers had to then drive across town to see another portion of the work. It seemed extravagant and conceited. I found my own experience of survival actions taking high priority, making a living, interfering with my admiration for the innovation. My mind questioned who has the time and money to put into such a project? The answer, maybe she has financial resources she was born with; maybe she is a poor starving artist. I did not research into her personal life. Does it matter? She is recognized and invited to exhibitions in museums. She is successful because she did put the time and effort into what she does. Musicians team with her in her creations. She seems to have found challenging and rewarding work.
This journal is published by MIT Press.
Steinkamp, J. (2001). My Only Sunshine: Installation Art Experiments with Light, Space, Sound and Motion. Leonardo, Vol. 34, (No. 2), 109-112.

While I watched both videos I found the John Maeda video interesting in that he chose to step out of the box with some very odd choices. It struck me as not terribly artistic, or maybe I should say ‘terribly’ artistic. Some of his work seemed so experimental, like the learning pieces of a child finding his creative way with whatever was laying around. Not what one would show as an accomplished artist. It was interesting to note that he found design classrooms with bland settings.

With Jacek Utko I was more interested. The subject felt relevant to what is happening now in our design world. I met a man last winter in a Sears store. He was a salesman who spent a lot of time visiting with customers. I had occasion to get to know him better over time. He had found it necessary, after years in the slick magazine field, to find a side job to make ends meet. As part of a team in a Seattle company with a number of well-known magazines, he had sold ads for many years for those magazines. He said with everything going to online, the magazine sales were down, ads were seen less and harder to sell companies on purchasing ad space.
We have seen the trend in our own Seattle Newspapers. What he did with the European newspapers was fascinating. I enjoyed the innovation of the designs, the use of color, type and illustration. His use of space broke out of the mold of headline banner and photos and stories all in precise columns. The design grabbed the attention of the consumer. The content retained the consumer interest.
His reference to treating the whole newspaper as one piece – as music – truly pulls together the realization that layout as a whole is a structure of art. Inspiration, vision and determination in action.