Month: April 2018

When thinking of an example of how culture affects design, the first thing that came to my mind was the SPARK building built here at WSU. The culture here at WSU is pretty much built into this building in every way. One example is that the Cougar Fight Song sound waves serve as wall art/design throughout the building. The fight song is something that brings Cougs together, no matter how long ago they graduated from WSU. It is a big part of our culture that they decided to incorporate into the building. Another thing that comes to mind is the Starbucks downstairs. College students run on caffeine, so it made complete sense for the culture of this to be built into the design of the building. One last thing about the SPARK building is the group study rooms that are in the building. A lot of the curriculum at WSU involves group projects,  so because of this there were many group study rooms put in this building. It gives students a chance to really utilize these spaces and make the most out of their group work!

An example that I thought of where design affects culture is cars, and the way that they are evolving. You could also say that culture affects design here, but I think you can look at it the other way as well. Automotive designers choose the most important parts of our culture to incorporate into cars, but how we use these things design choices affects our culture. One example that is up and coming are automated cars. This design decision could drastically change our culture. If cars were completely able to run on their own without any human instruction, our culture would be highly affected. We watched a CTP in class about having automated semi trucks which would be a big design hit to the culture of truck driving. Another thing would be the issue and culture regarding drinking and driving. Maybe people would be able to go out drinking with their friends and not worry about having to have a designated driver because cars could completely run themselves. All of these automotive car design choices could have major effects on our culture.

When I created this blog for my DTC 201 profile, I put a lot of thought and intent behind my design choices. Because of this, I didn’t make many changes because I’m really happy with the way it looks!

For contrast, I chose to make my font the same burgundy color as the background behind my artwork so it would stand out. I did this to make navigation easier. I wanted visitors on my blog to be able to find tabs easily and click on what they are looking for right away. I also made my projects appear very large because this is a visual portfolio of my artwork. I chose a white textured background for the side banner of my blog so that the headings would stand out. Again, my goal for this was to make navigation of my blog easier for my visitors.

As for repetition, I have a lot of it on the home page of my blog. On this page I have options to visit the page that tells the reader more about me, or a tab that takes them to my projects with an image of my first project underneath. I thought these were the two most important parts of my blog, so I highlighted them on my home page as well as including them on the side navigation tab.

For alignment, everything is pushed to the left side of the screen. The only things that are centered are my projects. None of this was intentional, I just went with the layout that was provided for me! When we were creating these blogs in class last semester, we learned that there were a lot of restrictions on what you can do to the design layouts provided to you by Crimson Pages. I think it would be fun to learn how to edit the web page myself and adjust the alignment.

Another thing I didn’t have a lot of control of on this layout is proximity. One of the only relevant things I can think of on my post when it comes to proximity is the captions that are underneath my projects. They are directly underneath so you don’t have to click on my projects to see them, you don’t have to dig and search for more information. One other thing that comes to mind is the proximity of my projects. I included them all on one page, so they are automatically grouped together. Again, I believe this makes navigation much easier which was the overall goal for my blog!

I have never used the C.R.A.P. technique to evaluate something of mine that is artistic, but I think it’s interesting to critique myself this way!