Traveling Words

Well it's Thursday, right?  Ok, I had to check.  My mind was a blur this week as I balanced my waking moments with intermittent sleep.  Replenished, I'd like to dive into how I grew acquainted with design.

Design to me was always something I was critical of.  Even if I didn't know how I was making those decisions.  I probably still have a copy of my old resume fresh out of college somewhere laying around.  I was applying to a Mexican restaurant in Brooklyn for a bar-back job and I think I used every color and gradient I could find under RGB.  Well I didn't get the job because I didn't live nearby and then kinda said I lived in Staten Island, which was still far.  In actuality, I was still living in Jersey with my parents and was staying at my girlfriend's grandmas house...in Staten Island.  However, the resume did stick out to them and they loved it, as ostentatious as it was.

I worked many odd jobs since graduating, but the one worth mentioning here is my time I spent at the David Zwirner Art Gallery as an intern.  It was a lot of coffee runs, artist requests, and some light art handling.  Besides being an overworked intern, I was still surrounded by beauty.  And it wasn't necessarily the art pieces themselves.  It was the layouts they constructed from temporary walls, essentially transforming the space into something completely different depending on the exhibit.  I was trusted to build tiny models of the layouts, with smaller replicas of the art to be displayed.  I loved it, the aesthetic and even down to the paper that was used.

Fast forwarding a bit, I got a job at Viacom doing digital production work.  It would be my home for many years, and still is even now as I work early mornings there to pay for my studies.  We were given the the design tasks when the design team was too overwhelmed or not available.  Whether it was a massive promo at the top of the site for the most recently aired episode or a "macro" –they were just memes, really,  I got a sense of digital design by looking at the templates and fonts used.

Now, here, this Visual Language course is tapping into the light brushes I had with design in my life.  It's nice to give definitions and context to things I've been seeing in my head all these years.  Occasionally I'll listen to 99% Invisible and Roman Mars nerd out about designs of all shapes and forms.

Anyway, on to travel.  Planes, airports and the entire experience involved.  I wrote an anecdote in one of my letters asking the school for more money (and if you are reading this, please help me more NYU)  about how I'd like to change the experience of flying.  Something so beautifully advanced as traveling around the world in under a day above the clouds should not be associated with the stress of long queues and the florescent glow reflecting off peoples disgruntled, anxious, or emotionless faces.

The tradition that permeates at every airport around the world since their first conception.  The Boarding Pass, your ticket to the sky.  You'd think it'd be like something out of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, a golden ticket to something humans have always dreamed of.  And maybe if you asked me to do this redesign a 6 years ago I would do something of that nature.  But now I have more practical things to consider.  What is the most important information that you need to get to your destination.  How can you can you create a system that is universal whether you look at your pass, your phone, the screens hanging from the ceiling, the words being called over the loudspeaker, the signs, the maps, the security checkpoints...all of it.

I decided to group information sources together by section.  On the left hand side it goes down by what I felt was the most important information first.  In many cases things change at the airport.  Your flight number is important because that is what is being called on the loudspeakers and on the monitors. Gates change all the time, and having that the main focus can be confusing.  It's important but I wouldn't but it on the #1 spot because well, what if it changes and you are in a rush and just quickly glance at your boarding pass and go to the wrong end of the airport?  I kept "subject to change" because I feel it's vital information.  Seeing a plane takeoff without you is sad.  I've flown standby and had this happen to me at Vegas, where I drank a double Gin and lost $20 to a slot machine before they found another seat for me on a plane to go back home.  Let's just say the interaction with man at the desk was similar to winning the lottery.

Board time is also important, because once you arrive at your gate, you should know how much time you have before you need to get on the plane.  You can browse the shops, go to the bathroom, whatever you need to do, because you have your eye on the time.  Departing and Arrival times are more for planning,  you shouldn't go by departing time because again, you might miscalculate and end up begging people in the security checkpoint if you can cut them.  The destinations are also listed everywhere so anytime there is information being recycled in other forms I think it sticks in the head of the user more.

Now comes the second column.  What the hell are those numbers?  Do you need them?  Probably not for normal travel.  This is the information that an employee there would find useful.  It's not just about making your end of the transaction easier, but helping their job will make the whole interaction better.  Lost a bag?  I'm assuming that's your baggage number.  Security checkpoint?  All they gotta do is look at that section to get the info they need to help you.

The right side always confused me.  It made your boarding pass larger than your passport, which I see many people (including myself) use as a bookmark so when they go through security everything they need is on one page.  But back to the length, it gets torn and messed up in your pocket or bag and just looks a little tattered after a while.  That's not classy.  Ever hand in your homework to a teacher all crumpled up, or a resume?  No, so why do that here?

But since we are working with the template, let's have a hypothetical situation.  If your main boarding pass gets separated from this appendage on the right side, I put in the basic information you need to still figure out how to get around.  A more simplified version of the left side will still help you.  Maybe you actually want to use that perforated line and tear it off to keep the tab in your wallet.  Well, that decision is up to you!

Here is a little peak on what went behind my design process:

Ta da!

Oh, and here are my expressive words!  Not much to say about them except animation would make it pretty cool.

Observations of People and Technology

I was stuck in traffic this morning as I rode in a cab.  My driver was getting agitated, honking the horn every time the light was green but there was no movement.  I've been living in New York for about 4 years now and this has always been a prevalent issue, was traffic.  The unpredictability of people's decisions while driving coupled with too many cars in a congested artery gives people road rage and deep sighs.

This took me back to a time when I was talking to a friend about traffic lights.  In the suburbs where I grew up sometimes you'd be waiting at an intersection for minutes at the middle of the night.  You'd be the only car, but it was just busy enough of a road that if a cop saw you run it, it'd be more trouble than it's worth.  They said that some lights have light sensors to detect the cars headlamps at night when the traffic was sparse.  We would try flickering the hi-beams on and off in attempt to agitate the sensor and give us the green light.  I've also heard in other places that there were pressure sensors on the road to influence when the traffic signals change.

Like any city or town, there is a type of infrastructure, and in this modern day technology is integrated but in a very arbitrary way.  And this would boil down more to politics and money.  Which is sadly controlling a lot of creative advancements.

Is traffic a problem that cannot be fixed?  I thought as my driver raced onto the oncoming lane and veered off the the side street on the left, probably saving us both a good couple minutes of ambient honking.

Honking gives your car a voice, but it really doesn't communicate well when it is impossible to move further.  All it says is I'm angry and I want to get out of this hell hole of carbon monoxide clouds.

Perhaps this is more broad of an observation, but if I can pick something out more specifically,  it's hard.  Do I complain about the length it takes the elevators to arrive on the first floor of the Tisch building?  Or how my ID still doesn't work on the stairwell so I have to use the elevator to get onto the floor?

I'm not sure...

Maybe the technology is there, but people are not taught the right way to use them.  The most advanced car on the market will still have the same issues as a '69 Camero when placed in the grids of NY during rush hour. 

Maybe I'm answering my own question I had earlier this week.  How can I create something new in Physical Computing?  Maybe the question I should be asking is, how can this appear new to another person so they give it new perspective?  Because to me, I see the same servos and wires I've surrounded myself with since young.  Lighting something up, making something move, are all actions created from sensors feeding bits of information and a mini computer saying yes or no a few thousand times to speak to them, well, depending on how complex it really is.  To put it broadly, I think people have a hard time integrating with technology.  Why isn't it all more, human?

Coding is Better with Friends

It's dark and rainy, but spirits are high!  After a weekend spent with an infected piercing drooling out puss and my newly renovated closet that looks like a Muji ad I feel refreshed and renewed (minus Saturday morning where I thought my lip would fall off my face).

I hung out at the floor Monday afternoon after work and decided to wait until my partner arrived to work on ICM.  I watched a little of the movie "Black Panther" while picking at a microwaved bento box.

When Mary Ann arrived, she articulated how she was a little behind and how we shouldn't bother on her code.  I was like, nonsense, that's more code than I have.  Let's work on that!  Her goal was to get the background to shift from these different sea greens and have seaweed wave in the foreground.  I found it relaxing and we dove into figuring out how to make the color shift.

Using the knowledge we learned from IF statements I thought we could make a set to cover the color changing background:

We started to make variables for each background, and found that it might have been too much information for the variable, or we just using it the wrong way.

So back to her basic background colors, she wanted to cycle through 3 colors, so we backtracked just trying to make each background appear once.

Once we figured out the backgrounds, now was the IF statement.  What could we use as IF? That was the mind numbing question.  We dug through the internet and asked a few peers but none of the answers seemed to ingest.

I thought about the draw function, and how that is a loop.  So if we can have something to count each time it loops, we will have something to use for our IF statement.  I decided to use the good old X++ variable type.  Each time draw was utilized, X would increase by one.  And depending on the frame rate, we could control how often X increases by 1.  I was reluctant to use something based on frame rate because that might hinder the code if it gets more vast.  But then I was like I'm overthinking this, I'm not writing code for an OS.

So we adjusted the frame rate and wrote IF and Else statements.  If x was between these values then it the background color is this, so on.  Until we get to the end of the IF statement, we reset X back to the 1 so it starts the whole IF statement over again.  SO WE GOT A LOOP.

The excitement was real when I threw my hands up after 2 hours of looking at complex functions and code to do what seemed a simple task.

The next step is how do we shift the colors subtly like a gradient.  This seemed easier as we just had to give the background some variables that shift every time the Draw loop is initiated.

Once Mary Ann left for work, I found myself lost in a hole trying to get a very simplified goldfish to turn around once it reaches the edge of the frame.

I got it to turn around in many ways, all were quite entertaining but not my image of turn this 2d object around slowly along it's Y axis so it looks 3D.

After becoming brain dead from this 2D ellipse I decided to time the gradient changes to some nice deep breathes.  If all else fails this will be a nice meditative color-shift with, perhaps, a sporadic fish of sorts.

 
Just kidding, I added more and I kept crashing my computer with my sound loop.

Give me The Green Light

P com P com Pcom

I finally got my arduino kit in the mail, 2 day shipping to 4 days but I digress.
Upon opening the kit I found plenty of goodies and dove right into making things light up.
Because what isn't more satisfying than providing input and there is output that you can see?

 Late at night,
two switches,
one light,
one man.

 Look I'm reading!
But mostly looking
at pictures.  BTW
the resistor depicted
and the one provided
are different color codes
(although same spec).
 Got me real
confused there.

 I like the look of hardware,
even when it's laying dormant.

We get two switches
in a parallel, because why not?
Took me a few attempts
to align the circuits on
the breadboard.
I'm used to soldering,
then soldering again,
because I find
the smell relaxing.

It lights up! In two different ways.  The enthusiasm at 10 pm is real!

And from the junk shelf, a magnet and two washers.  The magnet pulls down a brass contact to
complete the circuit, you lift it up and it breaks it.  And then I went to bed satisfied.

I haven't seen the video till now, the quality was only affected a little by my tired perception =]

'Till next time!

VL signage

What defines a good sign?  To me, it has to look nice. But it's easier to say that to myself than to other people.

The good 'ole P sign.  I see this symbol everywhere in New York.  It's simple and sticks out.  It doesn't need explanations because of the context of where it is put.  You put it on a parking machine, and it makes sense.  The color scheme though?  Maybe too much like the handicap sign.  Also, I'd encourage them to use it in all parking signs,  as you see below:

This is an another example of a sign we looked at class.  I find that it's hard to critique in this way because it's intended for drivers –hence the angle of the sign in relation to the sidewalk is slanted.  Looking at it from a pedestrians point of view would be the wrong intention.  It's hard to make a parallel orientated sign for a driver because they would only see it as they were passing by it.  In essence, taking the driver's eyes off the road longer than they should be.  I think they did the best with what they got, New York has so many parking rules it's crazy.  I had a car here for a short bit and every time I parked I was filled with doubt and imagined getting my car towed or booted.  That logo on the truck behind the sign is nice though.  Moving company with an arrow. Simple, bold sans serif font.  Crisp color.  And I like green.

A temporary construction sign.  They didn't angle this one and just made it perpendicular to the road.  Kind of funny.  I like the symbols on the sign above it.  It's direct and uses just enough text to tell you what it means.  But also, why is the car orientated a different way from the bicycle?  It lacks consistency for sure.

Again, I'm a sucker for symbols.  The dog is cure, but also since living here, it took me a long time to figure out what on earth does it mean to curb your dog?  It may be a little obscene to depict it going to the bathroom.  Or maybe it is in this sign cause it is squatting?  Either way it's a little too ambiguous.

Some people in class brought up the confusion of the bus sign.  I agree that top bus symbol could be altered a bit but the symbol for bus is pretty recognizable.  The color codes apply to routes, but it would be better if the buses themselves carried those color codes.  It's halfway there I'd say.

I just liked this a lot.  A simple tap with a water droplet to demonstrate water flows out of here.  The company has to put it's branding somewhere and the textured face looks like part of the brick wall instead of drainpipe intruding on the look of brick.  Brass material gives a feeling of class and it ages as it weathers to match the wall.


It's hard for signs to be perfect in an a city that has an imperfect infrastructure.  And that really all boils down to cost and politics.  Should our tax dollars go into updating all the signs because it would be a more pleasant experience for the few seconds you stare at it to get the meaning?  To a designer, yes.  To a designer on a budget, might be a different story. 

ICM week two

You know, it's easy to burn yourself out.  I found that out pretty quickly when I went to the floor to work on my assignment right after class.  "I'm going to be the model student", I thought.

I stared at my monitor and the code.  I know what it meant, and I understood it, but my brain refused to take action.  A wall so imaginary I couldn't even picture it, but my body felt it.

Behind this wall I sat, thinking of what I could do?  What I wanted to do with the lines of text in front of me?  I shut my laptop and had a cigarette.  Another drink of water.  Used the restroom.  Another cigarette.  I was still stuck.

That is when I decided to roam the room and check in with other people.  Many of them were faced down in their assignments working hard to make their image a reality.  I asked them what they're doing, and what they wanted to accomplish.  They were so interesting, and enthused, I'd offer my perspective to break the driving focus they had and look up and around.  An electronic glove, a puzzle crafted of wood, a sound journey, an animation cut from paper.

All of them filled me with inspiration, fuel that I realized I lost when I dove into my work head first without getting up to breathe some air.  I walked home and decided I needed a break too.

Fill in Friday–Sunday with good friends and slight irresponsibility.

When I came in on Monday I rushed to the ICM help session after work.  It was there too I realized that most the questions came from people who already started their projects.  I got a feel for the if function though.

I decided to scrap thinking of something new and picked up with a project I was messing around with in class.

This was built just to use the mouseY and mouseX to dictate the green and blue colors of the shapes.  In effect, it was reactive to the user input.

Here is me trying to figure out an "and" statement for the first time.  I wanted make a less than or equal to 400 but p5js didn't seem to like both symbols next to each other like that.  And i tried multiple versions of && but could not get it right.

Here is me trying if statements and not getting the expected result.  You can also see I switched to dark mode, because you know...my eyeballs.

Back to more fun things I just made more shapes to satisfy me.

Trying to make an if statement but it wasn't responding how I wanted it to.

 Andddd this is where I found the Z axis and rotating function most pleasing.  Put everything at random and let the computer do the fun calculations for you.

Mesmerizing



End!

Visual Lang – Design Analysis

I chose a band poster from the Voidz to analyze.  What first gravitated me towards this image was the color scheme.  It had a character that reminded me of their music, which is noise, dirt, and nyc grit combined with melodic tones.  The image of the person in the bottom right with only half a face and the yellow seemed to balance the heavy use of black on the left.  Also if looked closely there is fragments of this same yellow in the black making it more uniform.

The use of vertical text drew my eye to the rest of the poster.  My eyes had lines and shapes to follow so it wasn't jumping around the poster.  It was a grounding feeling.

Some more visual breakdowns can be seen in this google slideshow:

Computation and Brain Farts

Computation to me always seemed like an unreachable part of my brain hidden behind many doors and locks.  Much like if you eat too much of the wrong type of burrito it churns me around and spits me out to a place with no sense of gravity.  The challenge of navigating this way of thinking is what entices me.  While growing up I had a fascination with hardware and took things apart, because that was easy.  The software tweaks I explored that helped me fry six computers and countless hard drives became a result of my endless putzing in an unfamiliar zone.  Efficient, no?

Anyway, after settling into the daily grind of corporate work and being more immersed with software to this day, I wanted to know how to utilize hardware in a way that doesn't turn it into a glorified paperweight. Bridging my worlds of hands on creativity with a thought process to compliment it was a goal I've always had, but never committed to.  (Except myspace, cause that was my jam). RIP to my angsty teenage phase and clothes that never fit me right.  I also thought hacking was cool, and still do.

So my goal is to code a supplement to my expression.  I want to bring my interests in music, dance, performance, paint, language and cultures together.  How can I evoke emotions through functions written on a computer?  The stress of learning to write codes and programs is something I want to endure to help me out in the long run.  It's all so broad now but the more I learn I know I'll fall into the path I was looking for the entire time.

___

Starting this assignment, I recognized some patterns I've learned from *light* coding over the years.  So a sigh to relief as I wasn't starting from 0, more like a 1.  I'm still far from attaining a perception that will allow me to know what the code does before I have to run it, and run it again, and again.  Until I'm like, what happens if I add another value here?  Or more zeros there?  And then everything crashes because I didn't know 1000000 was too big of a number for that function.

And here it is, my "what started out as a portrait" turned into something else!

Sort of a face...

Playing around with different sizes, trying to figure out how to put objects in front of each other.  Started to define areas with // because it got confusing the more code I put in.

Tried to make a color palette to use instead of typing in the values each time...maybe define another variable besides C?

I highlighted this, probably because I still had to put a value in, just any number really and it worked?

This looks like something.  I had to put a triangle, so I did.

I kind of know what this function does, but, also I do not.  It looks cool and I had fun messing around with the variables.

Started messing around with it more, and oh... it crashed the page. 1 million is too much after all.

Annnnnd, I started over again from just the eyes (auto save wasn't working) and got this.  I'm especially proud of the eyebrows.

Overall, I found the p5js editor to be easier to use.  With a tiny background in coding I was able to pick up things fast.  The biggest hardship I faced was finding where to define my coordinates for shapes and lines.  I trialed and error many number combinations until I got to the place I wanted, or the shape I wanted.  While successful, it seemed a bit inefficient.  My brain was staring at a blank square and had to imagine a grid system overlaying it all.

I'd like to explore the full capabilities of this software, and even just seeing lesson 2's videos I believe we will be doing some pretty cool things soon!

–till next time
JB