Over the Christmas holiday I was able to hang out with two high school buddies who are now life-long friends. It was a great time to be nostalgic and relive the good ol’ days—before the introduction of moral compasses, responsibilities, and obligations. It is remarkable how quickly we fell into circa 1991 personalities, roles, and behaviors (minus the pinch-rolled pants, acid-washed jeans, fluorescent t-shirts, and episodes of Saved by the Bell). It is equally remarkable how those memories and experiences can mean so much to us while at the same time be so under appreciated by our spouses.

Two weeks ago I wrote about the community that revolves around IBD. In the post, Star Wars Stamps, the concept of contributing and participating in the community, which can lead to a heightened sense of belonging, was highlighted. Just like my friends who encouraged me to return to the tenth grade (for laughs and to re-take Algebra II), readers of IBD have encouraged Paul and me (again to the disdain of our spouses) to continue with our actions and behavior.

If we had elected or appointed positions in the nerd herd, Kelly Farrell would rank high due to her willingness to support and share, and for her participation on IBD, along with many other personal reasons. I actually would have nominated her for the IBD Parliamentarian position (though not the highest ranking position but carries nerd-like qualities that can be unmatched) but that spot has already been reserved by an unnamed professor. Just in case you were wondering, Court Jester has already been taken by Paul.

The following pictures of interesting signs and the following comments were provided by Kelly:

On a guided hike at Hobbs State Park-Conservation Area, Interpreter Steve Chyrchel welcomed the group to the historic Van Winkle Hollow area, not AN historic area, THE historic area, and besides, even if it weren’t THE area, it would just be A historic area. [Note from IBD Management: If the latter portion of that last comment makes no sense to you read this post on Paul’s Grammar Pet Peeves.]

So, at the trailhead is this marker, which Steve pointed out clearly communicates the following:

• go this way
• wheelchair accessible
• no bicycles
• no riding horses (and actually, no riding them backwards)
• no paper airplanes.

I saw this sign in Arkadelphia, Arkansas. I tend to be one of those purposefully far out parkers, one who doesn’t mind the extra walk. But, like most, I also enjoy the thrill of scoring a front parking space once from time to time.

However, I’ve never considered actually parking in the entrance. Designers have got to say what they mean and mean what they say.

Kelly, thank you for your participation, and thanks as well as the others who have provided support, encouragement and interpretive design fixes for us all. On our way home from visiting with my buddies, my wife counseled me on the reasons why it was good that I wasn’t that way all of the time or at all. Her key point was that she had worked too hard to change me. She may have removed my behavior from the early 90s, but she hasn’t removed the Right Said Fred from my iPod.

A decade of poor letterspacing is coming to an end!

For the last 10 years, the back-to-back zeroes in the years 2000–2009 have wreaked havoc on typographic design, their rounded forms making those numerals look too far apart unless consciously kerned by an attentive typographer. To celebrate the dawn of a new typographic decade, featuring a much more visually appealing “01″ character combination, it’s time for some graphic design resolutions!

Since I have already made my resolution for 2010 (I resolve to figure out what’s in that Tupperware container in the fridge at my office) and also because I am an insufferable jerk, I thought I’d propose some resolutions for graphic designers in general. Here we go:

1. I will not use eyeballs or globes in logo designs.
2. I will spell “a lot” as two words.
3. I will stop with the drop shadows already. (Guilty as charged.)
4. I will use a single space after periods, an em-dash (—) instead of two hyphens (–), and an ellipsis (…) instead of three periods (…).
5. I will not use quotes for emphasis (pictured).
6. I will throw away that clip art CD.
7. I will travel to Jupiter with John Lithgow to rendezvous with a giant, creepy baby and try to figure out what happened to HAL 9000. (Roy Scheider only.)
8. I will not put auto-play audio or video on my website.
9. I will not underline text on my website unless it’s a link.
10. I will stop being such a nerd. (I make this resolution every year. It hasn’t worked yet.)

To all of our readers who have made writing this blog so much fun this year, happy holidays, happy new year, and thank you. See you in 2010!

Cereal is quite possibly the perfect food. Some people consider themselves fine connoisseurs of wine and other fine foods. I consider myself a sommelier of compressed grain and sugar. My well-refined palate can tell the subtle differences between the best vintages of all the varieties of Cap’n Crunch.

One thing that I have learned since Paul and I started the endeavor known as IBD some eight years ago, is that the more that you thrust yourself into interpretive design, the less normal your life becomes. Much of that last statement has nothing to do with interpretive design and more to being directly related to being friends with Paul. The more you become aware of design, the more attention you pay to design elements.

Being just a normal visitor to an interpretive site, museum, or nature center can no longer easily take place. Instead on focusing on the experience, you find yourself wondering about the decisions behind that site’s use of type, image selection, how themes are conveyed, and overall media selection. When visiting interpretive sites, I find myself photographing interesting color combinations, unique textures, signage, and expressive typefaces, instead of taking pictures of my neglected children and annoyed wife.

This obsession has extended into my personal life and most recently has been obvious during the holiday party circuit, which has brought to my attention to use of Chex cereal. I really love cereal. Almost as ubiquitous as the use of Papyrus and/or Comic Sans in the design world is the appearance of Chex Party Mix at various holiday functions. I have discovered that nothing gets a party started like a festive holiday sweater vest and eating Chex Party Mix while discussing the direct relationship of the cereal to the grid. (For those of you that are new to IBD, the grid is one of the foundation pieces that we present as part of the decision-making process in interpretive design. A full explanation of establishing the grid is available in the book.)

Chex Party Mix is great for people who think that things belong in specific places, see beauty in squares, and enjoy pre-season baseball. Much like cereal and Chex Party Mix, I love the grid. If you ever find yourself in one of those awkward silence conversations at a holiday party, the grid is always a great conversation starter. Though, I often find myself alone eating Chex Party Mix, carefully aligning individual cereal pieces into a grid.

I’m content with who I am as a person; my annoyed wife is not.

What’s not to like about Chex and the grid? They are both square, simple, and good for you. They serve as an accompaniment and work well with other good choices. The grid is no different. The first goal of the grid is to create a framework that helps you make consistent decisions that will then make your end product more easily accessed by visitors. Once you have established a grid, based on the guidelines in the book, you have a system in place that establishes order out of chaos.

I’m a simple guy and cereal is about as simple as it gets.  Milk, cereal, and bowl are all you need. With the grid all you need are the basic design elements. When applying your other design decisions to the grid such as type, colors, and images the grid becomes the organizing factor for displaying the potential for all of the other good decisions that you have made. A good grid makes things simple, yet allows for flexibility and creativity.

I have always maintained that cereal should be first delicious, pretty, and then nutritious. The grid is more nutritious, then pretty, and very difficult to make delicious (some metaphors can only be pushed so far). If our goal is to create a product to be used by visitors, then designing a product that is good for them (or nutritious) is the most important. If it happens to be pretty, visually interesting, and unique, the better it will be. And believe it or not, it can happen within the grid. If you know how to make the grid delicious, please let me know. I’m thinking copious amounts of butter would help.

I like the choices that Chex provides. Corn, Wheat, Rice, Strawberry, Multi-Bran, Honey Nut, Frosted Mini, Chocolate, and Cinnamon Chex are all great choices filled with carbohydrate goodness. When it comes to choice, the grid is your friend as well. You control the grid; it doesn’t control you. There have been several incidents where the consumption of too much Chex Party Mix has taken control of my life. I’m not sure what that statement means, but I just had to put it out there. The grid can consume your way of thinking but it is in your best interest. Just remember, you establish the grid and based on the choices you make in its creation, the possibilities are endless. Besides making you feel carb-loaded, its establishment will provide order to what you are creating.

It is safe to assume that this is one of the worst analogies used in the the history of IBD, but what can you expect out of a Christmas Eve post. It is also safe to assume that several of the parties that I have been going to are pretty lame based on the amount of Chex Party Mix that I have consumed and the fact that I was there.

Merry Christmas!

I have a confession to make. I realize that a lot of you don’t like me already and are only reading this because you thought it was one of Shea’s posts, but this is going to make you like me even less.

I used to work in TV news.

I worked at WWBT Channel 12 in Richmond, Virginia, during my senior year of college and for another year thereafter. I edited video tape, monitored police scanners, and wrote scripts for the occasional news item when the producers let me. (“Flesh-eating bacteria in all of the food at one local grocery store? Tune in at 11 for details!”) Sometimes, when we did live interviews from the newsroom, I walked back and forth behind the interviewee looking busy just to get on television.

What can I say? I’m not proud, but I was young and I needed the money.

So you’ll forgive me if I was a little skeptical when my parents called me last Friday to tell me that the local news stations were calling for snow the next day. It started Friday morning with, “They’re calling for two five inches,” and I thought, “Yeah, they’re just trying to get you to watch.” Then it escalated to an all out nor’easter (East Coast-speak for “big storm”). Airports shut down, NFL games were delayed, and a new Facebook page called “Snowpocalypse” garnered thousands of new members in just a matter of hours. Before it was over, Friend of IBD Gerrard Jolly declared that he was thereafter to be known as “Snow-Torious.”

And yes, local news stations spanning the eastern seaboard busted out their graphic big guns. Animated snowflakes danced across blue backgrounds on televisions and web pages. Broadcasts featured video of 18-wheelers sliding off highways, interviews with grocery shoppers stocking up on more milk than they could drink in a month, and shivering weatherpeople standing just outside their studio doors to demonstrate that it was, in fact, snowing. (“As you can tell by the snow that’s accumulated on my perfectly coiffed hair in the 30 seconds that I’ve been out here, it’s snowing!”)

In Philadelphia, 6ABC Action News (or something), which is highly respected as local news stations go (which is kind of like being very tasty as arsenic goes), whimsically called for viewers to send in “snowtographs” of a storm that had killed three people, stranded travelers across the country, and paralyzed the most populous part of the country. Photos of newsworthy snow storms, by law, fall into three categories:

1. People shoveling driveways and sidewalks even though it’s still snowing and they’re just going to have to do it again in a few hours.
2. Adorable kids/pets playing in the snow.
3. Vehicles in ditches.

It’s the visual vernacular particular to this one medium: the dancing cartoon snowflakes, the gray video and photos, the smiling weatherperson telling you how bad things are. We know exactly what we’re going to see when we tune in, and yet we can’t help ourselves. (At least I can’t.)

Of course, the snow is still here, but the hysteria is gone,  grocery stores have restocked their milk supply, and TV news stations have moved on. It’s actually kind of quiet around here.

And now I wonder what the weather’s going to be like the next few days.

I try hard not to be a nerd, but sometimes I just can’t help it. With the Nerd Herd being a large part of the IBD community I am proud to say that not only am I a co-founder, I’m also a client. The value of community was confirmed to me in two recent incidents.

Incident #1 – A phone conversation between me and my wife

Shea: Hello.

Wife: (Laughing.) Hey, you won’t believe who I just got off the phone with. I have conclusive proof that you are the biggest geek in the world.

Shea: (Silence. Trying to think about who she could have talked to who would have sent some major geek news about me her way…oh, I got it…it had to be my first girlfriend from the 12^th grade. That’s right I didn’t date much in high school).

Wife: It was Robert from the post office.

Shea: The Postmaster? (Thinking. Why is the postmaster calling me at home? I mean, we are close and see each other almost every day, but this is strange. Did I violate some postal code by shipping something that was fragile, flammable and perishable? Perhaps it was Paul’s Christmas present.)

Wife: Uh, yeah. He called to tell you that the Star Wars stamp collection is being discontinued but he had a few sheets left over to sell before they had to be destroyed.

Shea: Destroyed?

Wife: Yeah, he has 100 sheets of the stamps left and since you were the only one who ever asked for and purchased them, he thought that he would offer them to you before they are returned and destroyed.

Shea: Destroyed? (Perplexed and still distraught by the thought of those beautifully designed stamps being shredded or possibly even incinerated. Could you imagine being a beautiful Star Wars stamp and going through your entire life without the opportunity to even stick to an envelope? I can’t.)

Wife: Yeah, destroyed. I hope you realize that if the Postmaster calls you at home to offer you a lifetime supply of Star Wars stamps because you are the only person he has ever known who has ever purchased them, then you are the biggest geek in the world.

Shea: Destroyed? (Focusing.) Okay, I’ll call him and buy a few sheets (Thinking…100 sheets of Star Wars stamps, with 15 stamps on each sheet, times $.41 per stamp, equals…I’m not very good with math…but like $32…right). You may call it being the biggest geek in the world, but I call it flattery. We need more federal employees thinking this way and going the extra mile to make their customers happy. (Nice cover, right?)

Wife: (Still laughing.) Well Robert said he was under a deadline to return these stamps, so if you want them he wants you to call him as soon as possible. Do you need his number?

Shea: No I’ve got it.

Wife: You’ve got it?

Shea: Don’t ask.

Wife: I don’t want to know.

(The End.)

Needless to say I immediately called Robert and purchased a lifetime supply of Star Wars stamps, even though to this day the wife thinks I only bought 50 sheets of stamps. For the record, 100 sheets of Star Wars stamps, times 15 stamps per sheet, times $.41 per stamp equals $615 (also known as an unexplainable charge on the debit card).

In this story Sebrena (wife) saw this as a direct representation of the geek in me, but I saw it as a representation of the service the community offered me, the geek. But when it comes down to it, somewhere through the years Robert and I had a “shared emotional connection”—a key element in the Sense of Community Theory proposed in 1986 according to McMillan & Chavis (wikipedia.org). A “shared history” is a large portion of this element and is key to a person finding or developing a sense of community. The history that Robert and I had together led to this connection that went beyond the normal postmaster/park ranger relationship. This relationship led to influence where Robert had some influence in my life as well as mine in his. I see this happening on IBD as well. I see the foundations of a community being formed with shared histories and influences shaping group dynamics.

We can apply this to the interpretive process as well. A shared history with visitors can lead to program or product success. In many parks and museums today you see opportunities for visitors to share their history or experiences. It can be as simple as a visitor registry where visitors can leave comments or a dry erase board where visitors can list the bird species that they saw that day. If we want to influence our visitors to action, we need to build relationships with them and allow them to build relationships with each other. As interpretive designers, we can provide that opportunity.

Incident #2 – Meeting a lurker (A person who reads discussions on a message board, newsgroup, chatroom, or file sharing or other interactive system, but rarely or never participates actively-Wikipedia.org) at the Southeastern State Parks Programs Seminar (SSPPS)

Lurker: So you are Shea Lewis? (Placing her hand out to be shaken by me.)

Shea: That’s right; did I do or say something to offend you? (I make a lot of apologies.)

Lurker: No, I read your blog and just wanted to meet you. You are insightful and really funny. (Okay, I made that part up; it’s my post.)

Shea:  Wow, that’s great, now there are three of us.

Lurker: Seriously, a few of us quote you and Paul around the office.

Shea: Paul who?

Lurker: We loved your posts from Chicago and love the way that you guys look at the world.

Shea: Yeah, our wives now only allow us (Paul and me) to have limited, supervised contact now and we have been officially removed from any future family vacation planning. Have you ever posted a comment?

Lurker: No, but it is great to find like-minded people who share similar interests.

Shea: Like baseball and sausage?

Lurker: No, like design and qwerks. Seriously, it’s like a community.

Shea: I agree, it is kind of like a community and kind of like therapy too.

(The End.)

As the Lurker walked away and I realized that I probably owe her an apology. Despite my problems with not being able to take a compliment very well, the Lurker provided us with some heartfelt comments.

There is value in community relationships. Even though the relationships founded under the banner of IBD are yet to be determined. Being connected to a community is a large part of success in any profession. Interpretive design is no different. If our goal as interpreters is to help our visitors reach the self-actualization stage of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs we should strive to reach that goal ourselves.

“Integration and fulfillment of needs” is another element of the McMillan & Chavis theory mentioned above. Our Lurker could achieve a higher sense of community through IBD by contributing or participating in discussions online but has gone on to reach her own level of community by communicating with co-workers about topics presented.

If there is a community revolving around IBD, it is our goal that it will help you develop your own attitudes, perceptions, and feelings that revolve around the profession. Hopefully you will find a sense of belonging as well as a shared attitude towards the use of Comic Sans and Papyrus.

If you are still reading this then you belong and membership is a key to the sense of community theory. The good news is we are looking for those who want to belong and membership is free. There is no way we could charge for this, so welcome.

Incident #3 – A conversation between me and my wife

Wife: Are you putting Star Wars Stamps on our Christmas cards?

Shea: You betcha, what else are we going to do with all of these stamps and nothing says Merry Christmas like…Yoda.

(The End.)

On the “Ask a Nerd!” hotline, Joan from Canada writes:

Help! A client doesn’t want me to use photos on interpretive signs because they “add clutter and don’t help achieve sign goals.” They suggest text only, or text with a map. Do you know of any good, recent research to help me convince them otherwise? —Joan

Because research is based on carefully reasoned thought and statistics, while I prefer to deal in wild speculation and unsubstantiated generalizations, I turned to Carolyn Ward, editor of the Journal of Interpretation Research for help. Carolyn turned me on to the 2006 masters thesis of Kari Anne Jensen of Humboldt State University. The thesis, titled “Effects of the Artistic Design of Interpretive Signage on Attracting Power, Holding Time, and Memory Recall,” seems to have been written specifically for Joan.

Having defended a masters thesis myself once upon a time, I know that Kari Anne spent the better part of at least three Mountain Dew-addled years struggling through seminars, slaving over projects, and kowtowing to the whims of professors and advisors to arrive at this answer to Joan’s question:

Yes.

To make a long thesis short, here is Ms. Jensen’s abstract:

The majority of visitors to interpretive sites receive information from non-personal interpretive media such as signs, exhibits and brochures. In this study, attracting power, holding time, and memory recall were measured to evaluate two versions of an educational interpretive panel on display at the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest (USFS). The original version featured artistic design elements common in traditional interpretive signage. The manipulated version was created using the best practices of artistic design, as defined by research in museums and interpretive settings and cognitive theory. Components of the sign that were manipulated in this study include layout, typography, color, graphics, contour, and the inclusion of a multi-sensory flip-panel. The text copy remained the same for both versions. The manipulated version of the sign resulted in a significantly greater attracting power and holding time. More subjects were able to recall the main message of the manipulated sign, however there was no difference between the two versions in subjects’ ability to recall specific details.

Kari Anne has graciously shared her thesis document and defense with us, so if you’re interested, you can download those documents here:

Thesis Document
Defense Document

Thanks to both Kari Anne Jensen and Carolyn Ward!