Category Archives: Resources

Research…blah, blah, blah!

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Friend of IBD Steve Dimse sent us a simple email titled “Score one for Comic Sans!” The only content of the message was a hyperlink. The exclamation point made me suspicious, but I love spam (junk email and canned meat) so I clicked on the link. Steve let the link do the talking.

Let’s face it: Paul and I are hacks who have lured you to this website with false promises of providing insight into interpretive design. But if there is one thing that you can count on with IBD, it is Paul’s position on Comic Sans and my position on Papyrus (that and the fact that Lisa Brochu positions herself a far away from us as possible). That’s where comments about us being hacks, one-trick ponies, and broken records come from our wives.

Steve’s email echoes that sentiment with his exclamation point (maybe I’m just being overly sensitive) and the use of research (which should be saved for serious blogs). Since Steve didn’t explain the link, I was forced to read it instead of just looking at the pictures. The post from Jonah Lehrer is on the Frontal Cortex on Wired magazine’s website. Titled “The Educational Benefit of Ugly Fonts,” it had me at The.

The first concept that Lehrer presents is that research has proven that the more effort that someone has to put into learning, the more likely they are to remember it. In fact if you add rather than remove obstacles to learning, more is learned for a longer time. There’s new research in cognition from a collection of Princeton psychologists, Connor Diemand-Yauman, Daniel M. Oppenheimer, and Erikka B. Vaughan, who write about disfluency, which is defined by the authors as making the educational material harder to learn. Here’s what they said:

There is strong theoretical justification to believe that disfluency could lead to improved retention and classroom performance. Disfluency has been shown to lead people to process information more deeply, more abstractly, more carefully, and yield better comprehension, all of which are critical to effective learning.

Perhaps Paul and I owe you an apology for what we have been writing for years (and for that embarrassing incident in Las Vegas) but removing as many obstacles as possible in order to improve communication of interpretive messages is our story and we are sticking to it.

Here’s the interesting part (I know you have been waiting for this moment over the last two years): In the second portion of the study the researchers took standard instructional pieces (worksheets, handouts, PowerPoint presentations) and presented them to students in two formats. One was presented in Helvetica and Arial (IBD approved) and the second format was presented in Monotype Corsiva, Comic Sans Italicized, and Haettenshweiler (as is Comic Sans was not enough, but italicized, really). Okay, now here’s the interesting part, those students that used the materials in the second group (with Comic Sans Italicized) scored significantly higher.

This study demonstrated that student retention of material across a wide range of subjects (science and humanities classes) and difficulty levels (regular, Honors and Advanced Placement) can be significantly improved in naturalistic settings by presenting reading material in a format that is slightly harder to read. The potential for improving educational practices through cognitive interventions is immense. If a simple change of font can significantly increase student performance, one can only imagine the number of beneficial cognitive interventions waiting to be discovered. Fluency demonstrates how we have the potential to make big improvements in the performance of our students and education system as a whole.

How does can this be applied to interpretation? Don’t go all Haettenshweiler on you new exhibit project. We want our visitors to read and retain our themes but they have to be appealing to read in the first place. We also have to remember their motivations and their non-captive status, unlike the captive students. We are expected to know our audiences and adapt to meet their needs while still getting our messages across to them. Keeping the message clean, clear, and concise will improve your change of success.

And is it just me or does it seem strange that Wired magazine is still printed?

Avoid New Verbs

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On February 18, 2010 I wrote a post titled Unicorn Punching? where I highlighted new popular slang in an effort to seem relevant and in an attempt to be current. In that moment I was the hippest guy in the planet. Since I just typed the word “hippest” you can see how I have fallen. For the reader who implemented the use of the new nomenclature into their daily vocabulary, this post is for you (as well as your family who has been embarrassed by you trying to be cool). I’m trying to be subtle but that’s not always the best approach. What I’m trying to say is, Paul this post is for you.

In my daily search for news of the obscure online, I came across the latest list of words that are recommended for banishment from Lake Superior State Universityin Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan. This was the 36th year the university has provided the masses with such a list.

According to their website,

“LSSU’s popular list began on Jan. 1, 1976, when former LSSU Public Relations Director Bill Rabe and a group of friends each contributed a few expressions that they disliked to form the first list. After that, the nominations stacked up for future lists and Rabe’s group, known then as The Unicorn Hunters, didn’t have to make up its own list again. LSSU receives well over 1,000 nominations annually through its website, lssu.edu/banished.”

Perhaps the IBD co-founders should consider a group name because the Unicorn Hunters is really cool name.  Maybe we could go as Captain Colon and the Funky Bunch or Brochu’s Coattails. We are open to suggestions. 

Anyway, I digress. Now back to why I wrote this post. In the Unicorn Punching? post several of the words that I recommended as being trendy or gaining steam in popular culture made the list. “Epic” and “Fail” are listed individually which makes their use together a true epic fail.  Dang it, I just can’t be cool. Here’s a few of the other words that went “Viral” in 2010. Again, I’m hopeless.

“Wow Factor” and “A-HA Moment” are listed as well and shouldn’t be used unless you were describing the wow factor that you had the moment you saw Morten Harket’s hair an a-ha concert in 1985.

For political reasons I will avoid making a comments about “Mama Grizzlies” and “Refudiate,” “I’m Just Sayin’.”

I have a few rules in life: 1.) When you don’t know what to do, walk fast and look worried. Carrying a clipboard helps. 2.) When confronted by a difficult problem, you can solve it more easily by reducing it to the question, “How would the A-Team Respond to this?” and 3.) Avoid new verbs. That’s why “Facebooking” and “Googling” (or is it “Googleing”) made the list.

The list reminds us that our interpretive texts should be written with time tested words and on a level that will appeal to our audiences. There are plenty of other elements that will make your exhibits dated. Writing in a way that can be viewed as timeless is no easy task but with careful thought and effort the words of non-personal media will long outlive the compressed laminate. 

LSSU’s list of banished words has a Facebook page (with 977 people who like their page at the time I wrote this post), where the conversations around the words makes the threads on IBD’s Facebook page (with 607 people who like their page at the time I wrote this post and great potential if Flipping the Pillow Over to Get to the Cold Side can get 4,568,563 followers) seem downright normal.

Play to Your Strengths (and Take Advantage of Your Friends)

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On a recent trip the east coast, I was reminded why I don’t go to Italian restaurants in my hometown of Fort Collins, Colorado. It’s not that the Italian restaurants in Fort Collins are bad; it’s just that the Italian restaurants on the east coast are so much better.

I take food seriously, so when I go somewhere, I want to experience that place’s strength. In Fort Collins, we have great microbreweries and brewpubs. On a visit to Texas earlier this year, I sought out Mexican food and barbecue. (You know any Texas barbecue place with a hand-painted sign is going to be great.) In Los Angeles this summer, Shea and I enjoyed seafood and, of course, Roscoe’s Chicken ‘N’ Waffles. A couple years ago, my wife and I had sushi for breakfast in Japan at the famous Tsukiji fish market in Tokyo because we knew it would be the best sushi we would ever eat. (We were right.)

Each of these places excels in at least one area of cuisine, and my goal as a consumer of food is to take advantage of the best options available.

It’s the same in the world of design.

When I was in graduate school, I was told by one professor that I should work to improve my “level of craft.” By this, he meant that, in the course of constructing three-dimensional projects like models or packaging samples, I should try to avoid accidentally gluing my hands to the table or impaling myself with an X-Acto blade. Other students in the program would construct elaborate scale models of the Parthenon out of corrugated cardboard in the time that it took me to get the dried glue unclogged from the bottle of Elmer’s.

From this I took it that perhaps my strengths as a designer lay elsewhere. I developed a particularly strong interest in typography, because no matter how tightly you kern, it’s pretty hard to injure yourself with a keyboard and mouse.

One of my responsibilities as a designer is to know what resources are available to me—not just where to get good photos and fonts, but utilizing the knowledge and expertise of fellow designers. Not every designer is going to be great at every aspect of design. Just as certain locales will specialize in a particular type of cuisine, certain designers will excel in a particular area, like color, composition, type, animation, and photography, to name a few. There’s real value to understanding the strengths of designers you know and getting feedback from them. (Just make sure you go to the right person for specific feedback, or else it’s like eating sushi for breakfast in Texas and Mexican food in Japan.)

I’ve found, as I’m sure it is with any profession, that being a designer is most rewarding when you can set aside ego and competition and open yourself up to ideas and inspiration from fellow professionals. (I probably don’t even have to say that to IBD readers. I’ve always admired the way interpreters inspire and support one another, rather than tear each other down.)

I would encourage designers—those new to design in particular—to add one more resolution for 2011: Keep an eye out for work that you like and talk to the people responsible for it. One particularly great place to do this is at an NAI event like the International Conference or National Workshop, but even if you can’t make it to an event, pick up the phone or fire off an email to someone whose work impresses you. I can guarantee the conversation will be worthwhile.

And now if I could just get a few restaurant owners here in Fort Collins to pick up a phone and call my people in Philadelphia, maybe we could get a decent marinara out here.

Happy 2011!

Caffeine Induced Creativity

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There comes a point in your life when you have to admit you are addicted to various things. For me it is SportsCenter, Facebook, caffeine, and long walks in the park. There is something comforting about SportsCenter and the fact that at any point during the night if I find myself awake with sore legs from the long walk in the park (or from all the caffeine that I ingested that day), SportsCenter is on ready to fill my mind with re-caps. Facebook works much the same way but for some reason I find it unsettling seeing how many of my friends are also up and lurking.

My addiction to caffeine (primarily consumed through 750 calorie, coffee-type beverages) is the one that I have had to curtail to control my other addictions. It’s a vicious cycle.  When I came across a new resource, Caffeine for the Creative Mind, a new book by Stefan Mumaw and Wendy Lee Oldfield, I had to have it (which may have been a caffeine-induced impulse purchase based on the non blended iced venti with 2 1/2 pumps sugar-free cinnamon dolce, nonfat milk, 2 Splenda packets, whip cream, with cinnamon dolce and nutmeg sprinkles that I was consuming at the time of purchase). The book’s subtitle states that it offers 250 exercises to wake up your brain (which according to my calculations is the equivalent of 12-14 expresso shots).

Each day as interpreters or interpretive designers we are challenged to come up with new or creative ideas that are better than our last. I ran out of new ideas a long time ago. For several years Paul and I have used an image of the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, in our Interpretation By Design Workshops (which you could attend in Las Vegas at the NAI National Workshop if you were so inclined, or you could simply enjoy the weather, birding in the canyon, gambling, or buffets).

The Guggenheim was designed by Frank Gehry and has a unique quality that makes it stand out from any other piece of architecture around. The building is beautiful. Several weeks ago Paul and I were in Los Angeles, California, and we saw the Walt Disney Concert Hall. Our immediate reaction was that it was a duplicate or rip-off of the Guggenheim when in actuality it was another Gehry design that is different while basically using the same style.

Since that time I have seen other buildings designed by Gehry that have that same look and style that is notably his. Don’t get me wrong, they are awesomely unique but also strangely similar.  As interpreters and designers we can’t become a “one trick pony” turning out the same product over and over for our visitors or clients. Of course I’m no Frank Gehry either, I’m just a park ranger who has a blog and no tricks (unless you consider my skill as a juggler and balloon animal artist).

Caffeine for the Creative Mind provides you with stimulation to help break the mold of how you think. The activities range from “Prehistoric Voicemail?” to “You Got a D in Font Selection.” Some of the activities I see myself doing or have done since reading it and some borderline on public embarrassment in application (even though this is an area that I am well experienced in, I choose to avoid at this point in time). For those interpretive trainers out there many of these activities could easily be used in teaching interpretive techniques. I can’t wait to use some of these with interpreters and then run with their ideas. These activities could also be adapted to staff development, team building, strategic planning, and problem solving. I’m considering using some at our annual holiday party. At the very least just reading the exercises alone with get you thinking. Just remember because you buy, watch, and enjoy the P90X videos doesn’t mean you are going to develop abs of steel. It took Paul and me years of hot wings to develop ours.

The book is great. I just wish I could read it but my shaking hands (from caffeine overload or withdrawal, I can’t really tell the difference) and my urge to take long walks in the park make it difficult.

Wordle Word Clouds: So This Is Fun

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Last week, NAI Executive Director Tim Merriman came into my office and said, “Paul, come here.” In my mind, this conversation almost always ends with, “You’ve screwed up one too many times and now you’re fired.” In reality, Tim hardly ever fires me. In this particular instance, he wanted to show me a website he had learned about called Wordle.

Wordle generates word clouds based on text that the user enters. Tim was impressed with the potential use this tool has for social marketing or qualitative research, whereas my thought was, “Neat!” (Note added October 15, 2010: Tim wrote a serious, grown-up post about word clouds on the NAI Blog.)

After learning about the site from Tim, I went to Wordle and entered all of the text from my September 21, 2009, post about the Phillies typeface, Scriptwurst. The reason I chose this post is that roughly 98 percent of the hits we get on this site are from people looking to download the Phillies font Scriptwurst, which they cannot do because it’s custom designed and proprietary. But every time I write “Phillies font” or “download Scriptwurst,” we’re likely to get a few more hits, and we’re obsessed with numbers so I’ll try to do that a few more times.

Wordle allows users to select from a handful of fonts (most of which I had never heard of) and control settings related to orientation, composition, and color. The example above uses the typeface Powell Antique, a color palette called Heat, and a typographic orientation of mixed horizontal and vertical. You’ll notice that the largest words are those repeated most often in the post, namely “Phillies typeface.” (Hello Google searchers!)

This composition is set in the typeface Loved By the King in a color palette called Milk Paints. The composition mode is set to “Any Which Way.” Given my aversion to handwriting fonts and my affection for the grid, it was difficult for me, emotionally, to include the above in this post. But notice the way the words “Phillies Typeface Scriptwurst” jump out. (Cha-ching!)

This one is set entirely horizontally in the typeface Vigo and the color palette Kindled.

And finally, this one is set in the typeface ChunkFive with a color palette called Organic Carrot. I notice as I write this that naming typefaces and color palettes can be a little like naming indie bands—the weirder the better.

There are limitations to Wordle. For instance, you cannot tweak the word list once you’ve created a cloud that you like, nor can you force the word cloud to fill a specific shape. However, you can create custom color palettes, and most importantly, you can create a vector-based pdf of your word cloud, which can be edited in a program like Adobe Illustrator. (To do this, click the print button, then print to a pdf.) The advantage to this is not only that you can use the pdf for high-end printing purposes, but you can also edit it or use it as part of a larger composition. You could even tweak your word cloud to include multiple typefaces—like the Philles typeface Scriptwurst, if you can find a place to download it.

Also, the site states explicitly that any composition you create is yours and can be used for any purpose, so if you’re creating T-shirts or posters or other sales items, there’s no need to worry about copyright issues.

I recently became aware that a post I wrote last November about an online color scheme designer led to many wasted hours that could have otherwise been used productively. One reader spent three days spinning the color wheel round and round on her computer screen nonstop until she passed out from exhaustion and was hospitalized with dehydration. I can only hope that this Wordle post will have the same effect.

I hope you’ll check out Wordle and create compositions meaningful to your own organization. And don’t worry about those financial reports your boss has been waiting for since last week. You have word clouds to create.

Notions About Preconceived Notions

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There are many of you who came to IBD today expecting a post about the baseball playoffs beginning yesterday (and by many, I mean one). You know that Paul and I love baseball and this is the best and worst time of year for us. For the majority, the sport of baseball is considered antiquated and out of touch with its fan base. Some say it has too long of a season, is too slow, and is generally boring. This is also a perfect description of the relationship that Paul and I have with our IBD fan base (and by fan base I mean our combined five children). There is something special about the game, being at the ball park, eating copious amounts of cased meat, and simply watching a pure game.

This is not a post about baseball, I promise, but Paul and I have the goal of seeing all of the major league stadiums. I love seeing new ballparks and picking up on the subtleties of each park and the culture around the collection of fans. This seriously is not a post about baseball, but in the event you didn’t know Paul’s team, the Philadelphia Phillies, and my team, the 27-time and current reigning World Champion New York Yankees (who just happen to beat the Phillies in last year’s World Series) are on a crash course to possibly meet again World Series. (That was the most carefully calculated sentence written in IBD history as not to jinx either team.) For now I will not write about baseball.

Okay, I can’t help it. Visiting a new ballpark is not much different from visiting a new museum. You come into the setting with preconceived notions. I have never been to Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia but I would expect to see lots of people working on their own unique team color palettes with cheese wiz on their red Phillies shirts or better yet wiz on their green Eagle’s gear.

Again not about baseball, the exterior of the museum from the parking lot to the entrance all add to or take away from your expectations. The prior knowledge you have or the research about your visit all add into your overall experience. But what if you don’t know what to expect or are unsure of the experience before you? What if you just stumbled on to something that sounded interesting but you had no clue what it actually was? Which just happens to be the equivalent of Paul and me going to a WNBA game. For now I will not write about the WNBA.

Yesterday the Adobe Museum of Digital Media (AMDM) opened to the public. I have been receiving updates for several weeks about the opening of this new museum. I was intrigued from the beginning for the simple fact that I didn’t know what to expect. The descriptions have been well written to be ambiguous. So well that I have saved several passages of text to use when communicating with my boss.

The landing page (https://www.adobe.com/adobemuseum/) says that “The Adobe Museum of Digital Media (AMDM) is a unique virtual space designed to showcase and preserve groundbreaking digital work and to present expert commentary on how digital media influences culture and society.” Needless to say the descriptions left me confused and in need of a dictionary. So what is going to be in the collection of an online museum of digital media? Is it worthy of getting my email address? (BTW, Paul, if you have joined, let me know how that works for you.) Should I come back once the novelty has worn off? Where can you even see a WNBA game?

I’ve been waiting for the opening just to experience this possibly online interpretive experience. The best part is that I didn’t have to dress up for the grand opening. The tuxedo t-shirt I was wearing at home was perfectly appropriate.

After spending some quality time getting to know the museum I was impressed and confused, and now I understand why interpretive sites are valuable in and of themselves. There are some pros to an online museum. “The AMDM is a space unlike any created before. Because it is entirely digital, it is an ideal gallery for displaying and viewing digital media, as well as revealing the innovation and artistry within the work. It is open to the public 365 days a year and is accessible from anywhere in the world.” This is true but be prepared to test your bandwidth and not do anything else on your computer while visiting the museum. Make sure your Flash and Java updates are complete too. The use of images and digital art are impressive.

I am most impressed with the effort to create an online structure that will display the media. An extraordinary amount of time and thought went into the structure.  “The building itself was designed by Italian architect Filippo Innocenti, a master of fluid urban designs for large, public installations. Innocenti collaborated closely with award-winning designer Piero Frescobaldi, who served as the ‘building contractor’ for construction of the virtual space.” The format, layout, site map, and menu are well designed and easier to get around than many actual museums that I have been too. We can learn from Adobe here.

As with most modern art, I found myself confused. But one benefit of this online museum is that it provides opportunities for you to interact with artists and gain an understanding of their perspectives. As stated by Adobe, the current exhibit Valley, which offers the latest work by the renowned American artist Tony Oursler was developed to explore our “relationship to the Internet, underscored by Oursler’s often raucous, disarming humor.” The exhibit is interesting and may not be viewed on some government computers.

I love life online but sometime you just need to go to the ballpark—uh, I mean museum. There is something special about seeing the thing itself and hot dogs never taste as good at home. My wife also frowns on my throwing of peanut shells on the carpet, though my three year old son thinks it is perfectly okay. The online museum creates a new way of looking at things but in the big picture the experience has some shortcomings.

Interpretation is an element of the exhibit but I don’t see an opportunity to build that emotional connection to the resource. Could the format be used to preview the thing itself at your site? Sure. Could it be used for post-visit activities? You betcha. Is it as good as watching a game in high definition television from the comfort of your on sofa with instant replay? Sure. But is the experience the same as being there? Not really.

Go Yankees!