Principles of Digital Media

Notes by Amanda Kern, akern@valenciacc.edu

Notes: August 25, 2006

Introductions

We filled out an index card with our name, what we want to be, email, phone, and competency level. On the back we created a rough draft of our personal web site and were advised to take into consideration the following content:

  1. Name
  2. Contact info
  3. Personal Interests
  4. Showcase of previous work
  5. resume
  6. class assignments
  7. Questions/ideas
  8. We will implement video into the site at some point.

Web Design Considerations (1:35pm)

We briefly discussed the following factors in web design:

Break (1:40-1:50)

Lecture/Presentation: Design as a Foundation of Digital Media

Why Design?

Design Effects Behavior

Consider First

Choosing media

How Designs are created

Design Trinity

Usability

Consider psychology and physiology

Psychology - Is the message understood? How long will people look at your work? Is the piece understood to be part of the brand?

Physiology - Is it legible? Will it stand out?

Aesthetics

What is beautifl? - Universal aesthetics - principles of design. Aesthetics of certain groups. If your design is not memorable. If someone is reluctant to read your text. If someone is bored by your commercial.

Functionality

What are you trying to accomplish? What is your goal? How do you know you succeeded? How does this design fit in a larger strategy? There are millions of designers, programmers, artists, writers, advertisers. Equal amount of bad design

Every design needs a purpose

Effective Advertising

Principles of design

Rhythm/repetition

The repetition or alternation among elements in a design, which can create a sense of movement. Rhythem can unify a composition. Breaking rhythm can create a a disruption that draws the eye where you want it.

Proportion/scale

The relationships among the sizes of the visual elements, which can help explain relations ships. Larger objects have more visual weight, and often appear to be in the foreground, while smaller objects appear behind

Dominance/emphasis

Creating a clear focus in a design, a hierarchy.

Unity/harmony

Cohesion of the visual elements, the idea that each has a relationship and comprise part of the whole design.

Gestalt Principles

Closure, continuance, similarity, proximity, symmetry. How the mind organizes lines in order to interpret an image. Illusions. We tend to see complete figures even when part of the information is missing. Continuance - People prefer to perceive continuous images. Similarity - distinct visual characters such as shape, size, color, seem to belong together. Proximity - close together will seem to belong together. Symmetry - Symmetrical shapes seem to belong together.

Marketing: How to connect with consumers

Branding - how people see your company. A company's personality. A company's image.

Branding benefits - distinguish products/services from one another. Create brand loyalty. Helps unify the message across media. Helps create a consistent messaeg. Helps convety each instance of a message more quickly. Helps clarify the message through repetition. Helps create a memorable impression.

Co-branding - A relationship between companies where one or both promote the other's brand. You see this a lot in movies and sports (ex. olympics, prosurfers, and proskateboarders).

Marketing aesthetics - skipped slide

The evolution of marketing - emphasis on products/services. This ideas started around middle ages or before. Sell a great product and the $ will follow

Emphasis on idea and branding - As products proliferated, there was little difference between one person's product and another. Brand/image helped the consumer recognize products in the new, expanded marketplace.

Emphasis on Experience- In the age of mega companies.... many companies remember based on their experience.

Experience Design

User experience: In a physical environmnet, the store atmosphere may be more important in selling a product than the product itself. Intangible feelings and emotions in experiencing the web site coincide with, and may even dominate, the tangible product purchase...Memories and positive feelings will outlast the product.

Evaluating media - critique.

Review Chapter 13.

Notes: Sept 1, 2006

Art & Design/Expression vs. Impact

Target audience, client, designer

Review week 1

Design evaluation

DESCRIBE

What do I see?

What is the subject matter?

What visual elements dominate the piece?

What colors dominate the piece?

Are there patterns?

ANALYZE

How is the design organized?

How is this design made?

Who, what, where, when, why?

INTERPRET

What is design trying to communicate?

What does the design mean to me?

-Sense, feel, think, act, relate

What symbols are included?

What do they mean?

What kind of audience would appreciate it?

Who might be offended?

Who might be confused

Art vs. Design - Is there a difference?

In Digital Media, we have the ability and tools to create both art and design. However, the production, operation and creative guidelines....

The purpose of art is personal expression. For example, many of M.C. escher's famous images were practice pieces refining his skills in symmetrical drawing, planes and perspectives as well as etching either onto wood or a lithograph.

The purpose of design is to impact behavior. Designs are created to affect people's behavior such as M.C. Escher's commercial art. His style was employed by another artist so that his presentation of subject matter will engage an audience member to behave in a certain manner.

When is there no difference in art & design?

Often, many art pieces become visual icons' over the years once value goes beyond the aesthetic impact. Cultural and social meaning provide impact.

What was the intended behavior?

What was the design intent of the sistine chapel ceiling in respect to affecting people's behavior?

How has it affected people's behavior over time.

What was the design intent of the M.C. Escher hypno geometry in respect to affecting people's behavior.

How has it affected people's behavior over time?

Form follows purpose

Subject matter is similar to "topic" or "content" when teaching art. "Content" may also include interpretations that go beyond the obvious subject matter used by the artist. Content generally includes "symbollic" and "thematic" meanings. Answer the question: Why should I care?

The use of design principles applied to the visual elements is like visual grammar. When children learn art, it is like learning to read and write the language of vision. When they develop a style of expressing visual ideas, it helps them become visual poets.

8 Basic visual elements

Wwe think of the visual elements as the basic visual material with which to make art. Is hard to imagine anything visual without the use of one or more of these elements:

RGB vs. CMYK

Typography: Text fonts/Display fonts. Can convey emotions. Type choices affects legibility. Sans-serif more common on the web and easier to read.

Serif fonts, sans serif, script, font family, weight, leading, italic, alignment

Notes: Sept 8, 2006

sulley.dm.ucf.edu/~dig3001

username=firstinitial + full last name
password=username

Mockup on powerpoint

Digital Media Defined, Computers Explained

Read preface/introduction

Design guidelines: Art is primarily expression, form follows functions, function follows purpose, the purpose of design is to influence behavior, design is primarily impact.

Digital Media: any combination of two or more media, represented in a digital form, sufficiently well integrated to be presented via a single interace, or manipulated by a single computer program. Disagreement - everyone seems to have their own definition.

Numbers (binary). Media = technology. Communication. But not all technology is media. Technology for communication. Technology becomes media when it becomes transparent. Media - type of technology.

Text, images, sound, moving pictures.

All media can be represented digitally as a structured collection of bits, generally termed data.

Combination of media is commonplace for traditional media (i.e. tv, news) and humans naturally perceive the world through all our senses at once.

Novelty of digital media and multimedia is that all media can be treated as data

Computer programs can manipulate data in response to user input....

What can be digital media:

Optical discs: cd-r, dvd, mini disc

Networks: broadband, cable, dsl

Computer: original definition: person or machine that solves equations

Moore's law - every 18 months you'll buy double the memory. By 2060 - that you can buy for 1000$ computation of all humanity.

1st commercial computer: ENIAC - electronic numerical integrator and computer

Developed by J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly

Not stored-program, only a calculator

Performed decimal operations

Acieved I/O thrugh punch cards

Basic cycle:

A. transfer instructions from storage to processor

B. Decode instruction

C. Execute instruction using data retrieved from storage in A, or data already present in system

D. Repeat

1957 first mini computer

1959 first computer to use direct memory

ASCII: American Standard Code for Information Interchange. Originally developed for use with teletypes.

1960's invention of IC's

1970 formation of intel, initially producing only RAM chips. 8bit cpy, 2mHz clock speed

1977 apple. graphic interface. 1979 spreadsheet. Dynamic change, organize data.

1981 IBM pc developed

1984 GUI (graphical user interface) - apple

1990 microsoft - operating system - windows

Data - distinct pieces of information. Usually formatted in a special way. Software is divided into data and programs.

Notes: Sept 15, 2006

Chapter 1: Ingredients that deal with most important aspects of digital media. Mediation: Control media. More forms of mediation in 21st century. Privacy preferences. Customization. User has more of a say/impact.

Convergence of media

dynamic delivery channels

interactive exchange

interface design

user experience

content control (censorship and branding)

CONVERGENCE
words, speech, sounds, visuals, animation, dimension, delivery systems, economic models, application domains

DELIVERY
Recording (replicate/duplicate), broadcast (accessibility), narrowcasting (specialization), broadcast interactive (customization), interactive (exchange), distributed simulation (presence).

INTERACTION
Levels of engagement: passive - absorb, compelling - think or feel, active - immersive, reactive - choose, interactive - contribute, experiential - live.

INTERFACE
Navigation: table of contents, GUI
Experience: linear, branching, non-linearity
Choices: GUI (graphical user interface), HUD (heads up display), Multimodal (icon, ear-con, tangible, bits, odor-rama)

MEDIATION
Convergence of Media, dynamic delivery channels, interactive exchange, interface design, user experience, content control

Telepresence: you feel like you are there (TV), Music (Radio), Cinema Language (Movies), Interactive Performance (Live Event), Hypertext (Internet), Geocentric Media (GPS/PDA/Bluetooth), Experience (simulation)

PALETTE OF INTERACTIVITY
Passive: broadcast, relevant: narrowcast, active: telepresence, reactive: html, interactive: relation database

User Experience
Flow chart, navigation, site map, mind map, branching, storyboard

September 22, 2006

Rules: specific, explicit. Following the rules/guidelines doesn't necessarily give you a good web site.

Guidelines: Recommendation

Structure: organization

Traditional to digital

Navigation

Usability

Content

Home page

Navigation Bar

Sequence: linear, branching, non-linear

Bread crumbs

Site map

Compatibility

Hypermedia conventions

Usability

HTML, CSS, markups, style sheets

Data organization

Content, style, fashion, expression, novelty, innovation, usefulness, value, meaning

Put the user first

Put the user in control

Don't provide too much choice

don't make assumptions about user behavior