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These chapters were very helpful in trying to figure out what I want to do after I graduate. Shaughnessy says that, although boring and tedious, working as an in-house designer is great experience for really feeling out how you work and helpful for finding out what you really want to do. I feel like that would be the best option for me to start out in for a few years.
Although it would be nice to sometime be freelance and have the freedom to take the clients I want and make the art I want, I don't think I will be at that point in my life for a while. Same thing goes for setting up a studio.
The forward and introduction make this book seem like a very fun read and allows me to put my trust in Adrian Shaughnessy, and I like the fact that he says I don't have to agree with or practice everything in the book.
Trying to describe how you see a design in your head can be a really great way to visualize how you want it to look. I think if you can do that with lots of depth it can be a great guide in making your project come out the way you like. A lot of the times it seems like I have a very clear picture of how something will look and, before I can get the whole project laid out visually, I lose it. As a result I either get bored or frustrated with the project.
On page 27 he says "in a world with no principles, people often respect those who have some". It's funny because usually think of business people as really heartless capitalists and then artists are all in touch with their emotions, so emotion is represented through the company's promotions and branding, as is their values.
I'm not sure I really understand the whole persona idea, but it seems to me like it's a bunch of data collected on the target audience and then it's further segmented into individuals and then people would act as those individuals to see if they would generally like something or not. If this is right, I don't like it for a few reasons: it feels like an extra, pointless step, although it's based on real data, you aren't designing for fictional people so how will you get a genuine reaction to it unless you can really put your mind into their's.
Judging from the products mentioned in the reading, personas don't work that well. I mean, MSN Explorer? not even sure what that is if it's still around and we all know how Windows has been consistently going downhill with it's users.
In the end they explain that personas were helpful in the beginning, helping them think about the audience in a more quantitative way but it's very hard to tweak in order to get the right personas. So it seems to me that the setbacks outweigh the positives when it comes to personas, however if used correctly it could be helpful, especially with larger projects.
It's a little creepy to think about how some people are put into a community in order to "earn enough trust" in order to study the way it interacts, it just sounds so dishonest or sinister to me. Maybe it's because I remember that the purpose of anthropology was a tool of Imperialists in order to effectively conquer and enslave their enemies and this is just applied to companies in a way to help understand how to effectively sell to their consumer base.
But directed storytelling seems to be a good way to do ethnographic research without all the creepiness involved in earning the trust of the community and I can see how it would be useful in helping a designer understand the experience.
Over the summer I was listening to a lot of music and watching a lot of movies and noticed that they can give touch me emotionally much more than any design has ever done. I was going to do something with this for the term long project but I couldn't get my thoughts on it together on it in time. After reading the article by Sagmeister I'm still confused on how to do it, but it's good to feel accompanied by someone as big as Sagmeister in my confusion.
I think he's right with having to put sincere personal feelings and beliefs in it though. That, to me, is the biggest thing that needs to be in there. But, not only is that the most important thing, it's also the least obtainable quality for me. To me, if I sound sincere, I feel fake and if I have a belief, I feel unsure of everything.
However, when I experience something that touches me and makes me think, I know it.
I'm very happy with how my project turned out. The colors are consistent and bright, the drawings are much better than I expected and everything seems to fit together as a whole.
If I had to pick a favorite part, I'd say it's the map with the tea box as a close second. The map just has a great feel to it and the colors are enjoyable, I tend to like posters the most all the time though. The tea box is nice, but I feel like I could have thought out how to present it better.
The whole process was a little strange for me, having to draw everything out by hand. It took me a while, but by the end I was a lot more comfortable with drawing.
