Noted friend of Interpretation By Design, Jay Schneider, sent us this photo. I’m pretty sure that I bought a “new” “second hand”  New York Yankees hat from these folks in New Mexico on eBay.  They didn’t charge extra for the sweat rings.

Over the last few years and many presentations our collection of funny signs and interesting approaches to design continues to grow.  If you have a funny sign photo send it our way and we can put it up on IBD for all to see.

Thoughts are welcome.

In late April, I presented a one-day Interpretation By Design workshop in Helena, Montana, during a training event sponsored by Montana Fish, Wildlife, and Parks, the Montana Historical Society, and NAI Region 7. Sam Ham, keynote speaker at the upcoming NAI National Workshop and author of Environmental Interpretation: A Practical Guide for People with Big Ideas and Small Budgets, delivered a plenary session the day before I presented, so I had the distinct disadvantage of having to follow his act.

On the other hand, the event afforded me the opportunity to have dinner with Sam. We mostly talked baseball and compared notes on how we spent the most recent royalty checks from our respective books (Sam bought a small island; I bought a six-pack of Fat Tire beer).

The conversation briefly veered to the subject of interpretation. Sam offered a unique take on the notion of hierarchy in interpretive design that I feel compelled to share.

We talk in Interpretation By Design about three levels of visual hierarchy, including primary (the attention grabber, the element viewers notice at first glance), secondary (supporting information for those who are intrigued by the primary information), and tertiary (the real nuts and bolts for those interested in pursuing the subject further).

The idea that our primary audience is often a very brief one is well established. In their book, Signs, Trails, and Wayside Exhibits, Michael Gross, Ron Zimmerman, and Jim Buchholz present the 3-30-3 rule to describe the amount of time visitors might spend on a composition at each level of hierarchy (3 seconds, 30 seconds, and 3 minutes, respectively).

Sam, in his unique and energetic fashion, talked about how visitors can be described as “streakers,” “browsers,” or “students.” “There is no ‘average’ visitor,” he said.

In our interpretive media, Sam said, we want to make sure that even the streakers (whom I envision as shifty looking visitors in sunglasses and overcoats) come away with an understanding of our themes as they breeze on by. This can be accomplished through engaging but simple image-word pairings. For example, Sam suggested an exhibit with an image of a grey wolf paired with the word “Endangered.” Obviously, additional information should be included for those who stop to learn more, but even those who don’t will come away with an understanding of the basic premise of the composition.

This forces us away from topic-based titles to titles that convey the essence of our themes. The topic-title “Grey Wolf” with an image of a grey wolf accomplishes very little for a brief audience. When we sit down to write a theme or headline or design an exhibit, it’s useful to think of Sam’s streakers. What will that visitor who barely even slows down to review your communication come away with? It forces us to be creative. (“When I wrote the book,” Sam said, “I never imagined that people would write boring themes.”)

Trying to steer the conversation back to baseball, I suggested pairing an image of the Philadelphia Phillies with the title, “World Champions.” Sam, a Seattle Mariners fan, was not familiar with the term.

There has been a fair amount of discussion about type and typography on IBD. Based on our obsessive natures, it is time for another. Remember, one of the goals of IBD is to help make the world a better place even if it is one typeface at a time. We have taken on Comic Sans on several occasions, and I think it is safe to say that you now know our take on Comic Sans. We have introduced you to several typefaces through the “Get to Know a Typeface” series.

IBD is now the eHarmony of human/type relationships. No confirmed long-term relationships have been connected between IBD and the Nerd Herd but it is rumored that Paul and an unnamed sans serif have made a connection. Typography is an important and interesting topic, since type has a constant impact on our lives. But how much of our lives or our personalities have impact on our designs and even our handwriting?

It is no secret that our personalities come through in our designs. We use the term “design style” to represent that element of our work. The design decisions we make often stem from our personalities, what we feel comfortable with or can relate to. I wear my “design style” or compulsive disorder on my sleeve. My spouse, friends and co-workers constantly remind me of my tendencies that are not necessarily commonly appreciated. I find myself using similar color palettes, type styles, and even organizing content often in the same way. I tend to like order, structure, balance, and compartmentalizing. I am also a recovering “over centerer.” It takes me recognizing my tendencies in order to avoid them in designs.

The creation of our own handwriting is where we made some of our first design decisions. I have always been fascinated with people’s handwriting (I know I’m not normal) and have gone great lengths to make conscious changes to my own handwriting to improve legibility and style (again, I know I’m not normal). Our personalities can be seen in our handwriting. I recently came across an article on handwriting analysis that had me thinking about what is revealed about designer’s personalities through designs.

You can read the article at http://www.divinecaroline.com/article/22323/73133-personality-written-handwriting. I know some of you are thinking this is like a carnival trick but look this process as picking up on patterns in the fabric of our designs. There are patterns in everything we do. As soon as we know what our pattern is (blue seersucker for me, blue and orange madras plaid for Paul) we can make better design decisions. Take some time to apply this analysis to some of your previous work and see if there are any common threads.

I typically am fiercely, sometimes irrationally, loyal to brands that have served me well. I am a Mac user, Subaru driver, Whole Foods shopper, and Phillies fan. All of these characteristics essentially boil down to brand loyalty. This is why the decision to switch from QuarkXPress to Adobe InDesign was difficult for me.

I started using QuarkXPress in college in the early 1990s as part of my responsibilities on the school newspaper staff. I have used Quark either recreationally or professionally since then, mostly with satisfaction. Sure, I was frustrated every time I tried to install the software on a new computer (seems they wanted a kidney, first-born, or letter from the family priest to ensure you weren’t pirating their software) or when I had to find plug-ins to do what I thought the software should do in the first place. But Quark is powerful, and more importantly, it’s practically second nature to me after working with it for so long.

So it makes sense that I didn’t notice when Adobe InDesign, which got off to a shaky start in the early 2000s, suddenly zoomed past Quark in terms of elegance and available features, not to mention its ability to integrate with other Adobe products like Illustrator and Photoshop.

The consensus in the design world these days seems to be that Quark has started reacting to innovations that Adobe has already implemented in InDesign, and I have to agree. (One small but important example is that the most recent version of InDesign features tools related to spacing and aligning content that are far more advanced than Quark’s.) Quark seems stuck in eternal catch-up mode. The more I learn about InDesign, I realize the decision to switch was a good one.

NAI members may notice some changes in the May/June issue of Legacy magazine, which is the first laid out in Adobe InDesign. (See last week’s post for more on that.)

I’ll never stop rooting for the Phillies, though.

I have fallen in love with an image website and the best thing about it is that it is totally free.  If you haven’t been to Stock Xchng (http://www.sxc.hu)  visit it now, or at least after you’ve read this post.  I’ve been using it now for over a year and I am constantly amazed at what it has to offer at no cost.  The search engine that drives the site works overtime to find you the image you need.  You can search for anything and get ready to use images.  Occasionally I visit the site and search for random images, topics, and emotions for fun.  If that sounds like fun to you, welcome to the nerd herd.  If it doesn’t sound like fun perhaps there’s another blog out there for you (try http://www.iheartpapyrus.com). When searching for “nerd” on Stock Xchng, I found this image.

I’m glad someone loves us.

Back to Stock Xchng.  I have drawn from their community of images for PowerPoint programs and web pages.  With over 400,000 images to draw from I am constantly impressed with image choices. You can also join and post your own images to share.  It is also fun to see how many downloads your image gets.  Okay, so I’m lacking in the fun department, just check out the website.  I’m going to find a new hobby.  

If you are a member of NAI, you may have already received the May/June issue of Legacy magazine. If you are not a member of NAI, what are you, some sort of freeloader? Visit the NAI website and join right now.

Legacy readers may notice that there have been some design changes. I explain in the magazine’s editorial that the content itself has changed (visit Online Legacy for more on that), which made it seem an appropriate time to change the actual look of the magazine.

The most obvious change is in the magazine’s flag, which is now set in our modernist friend, Helvetica, instead of the pseudo-serif Baker Signet, which is what I inherited when I started with NAI in 2002.

The advantage of the Helvetica typeface is that it offers the flexibility of using its many fonts (bold, oblique, light, and even narrow, though I usually avoid the latter). This means that I can use Helvetica throughout the magazine in various capacities, which was more difficult with Baker Signet. Helvetica is now the only sans serif typeface used in the magazine (excepting advertisements, of course), replacing Avenir.  (Check out Shea’s post on Helvetica from a few weeks ago.)

I recently switched from QuarkXPress 6.5 to Adobe InDesign CS3—not a fair competition, I admit, since Quark 6.5 is so much older than InDesign CS3. (Check back a week from this post for more on why I switched to InDesign.) That said, I am finally confident in the technology for professional printers to use transparencies in page layout software, so I use them for the first time in this issue. You’ll notice in the cover image here that the fields of color behind the flag at the top and the contents at the bottom are partially transparent (set at 60%, if you’re scoring at home).

In the interior of the magazine I’ve tried to reinforce the grid I use in all NAI publications (again a challenge because of advertising) and increase the contrast between the serif and sans serif typefaces.

Magazine frequently make a big deal out of updating their layout and design (just last month, an issue of Sports Illustrated included an editorial announcing minor layout changes). I imagine this feels like a bigger deal to the folks whose livelihoods depend on the magazine than it does to the casual reader who may spend an hour a week reading a publication, but I always like to know what designers are thinking when they make changes to formats that haven’t changed for years.