Rick Morris – Inspiration

The biggest takeaway I had from watching Rick Morris’ “Creative Inspiration” is that he is an absolute gold mine of fantastic inspirational quotes. The one thing that is obvious is that his passion for life and his passion for design are one in the same and perhaps this is where his success stems from. He said it himself that he doesn’t see there being a separation between the personal and professional life. Here are some of my takeaways:

“If I surround myself with art its because thats what I’m keen on, thats what I’m curious about, thats what I’m forever interested in and its the same way a singer would surround themselves with music I suppose.”

“Its my personal diary of life.” (speaking of his personal drawings that he continues even past is professional work)

“You need some point of origin to anchor onto and from there you just kind of like spread out.”

“When motion blew up on the scene it was so liberating.” (speaking to how it was always implied in print, but hard to actually show)

And my personal favorite:

“Its like a perpetual style treadmill…a dog chasing its tail…I try to stay outside of that. I think my one source that I go back to, the center of it all, is that you need to have a passion and I think you need to have at least one true love, whether its in your relationship or the things you pursue or how you feel about life and you know the people you are involved with.”

The last takeaway I have from Morris piece is not necessarily related to his words, but to the space that he surrounds himself in. The piece is done in his home and it is clear that in every nook and cranny he is surrounded by art, in all forms and fashions. There is such varient in the texture, colors, and mediums seem to provide him constant inspiration. He says himself that “every fundamental of design is somewhere.” I don’t consider myself quite the artists that he is, but I do see value in surrounding yourself with inspiration that you are drawn to and I think it is important moving forward in my professional and personal life. Overall, I think Morris is inspirational himself because of his passion for life, which to him is design.

Cool sports implementation of flash

A friend of mine actually developed this interactive breakdown of the Tim Tebow Denver Bronco offense. He posted it on Facebook and when I clicked I’m not sure exactly what I expected, but what I found was a fairly simple implementation of flash interactivity telling the visual story of sports stats. I had never really considered flash as a tool to do this, but seeing it I really think it is successful in not being to over the top with animation, but still providing the visual story that often is hard to tell with numbers. Its basically a hidden form of an interactive infographic. Definitely a piece I learned from while perusing the interwebs. Also, great job Marty (co-creator)!

Research Paper Interactive Presentation

To present our research papers we were asked to make an interactive way to display what we researched and found. I choose to create a website that contains links to the paper in full and infographics that sum up the impact of the Pepsi Refresh Project. You can find the site here: www.emilykamischke.com/PepsiRefresh.

Our Future

This week we read two perspectives on how the tech revolution has influenced the way we think. It seems like a bit of a way out of the conversation, but I think I agree with both of them. I can recognize the value in the anecdotes presented by Carr and can see the connections he is making between the ease of research and information access via the web that ultimately makes us distracted and negatively affecting our ability to “deep think”. In the same sense Shirkey I agree with Shirkey that this perspective offers the worse case, gloom and doom, Luddite perspective without offering suggestions and solutions or even thinking of alternative forms of deep thinking (Carr seems to suggest this only occurs with focused reading). The end of our classroom discussion seemed to be going in a good direction of acknowledging that the web and the use of computers have made is think differently (as have many technologies in the past) and thinking about ways we still deep think, how the web has been a positive influence, and what can be done to not let the pendulum swing all the way to one side (as it seems to inevitably/scientifically). I hate to sound like a politician, but I do believe it all comes down to education. I am by no means an expert on educations, but perhaps those that are should help drive the way we continue to teach in primary education to both retain deep thinking value and skills and integrate technology education that is so necessary in today’s world (which we have also learned, may positively influence the education system itself).

Physical Innovation for the Interactive Tool

I came across this pretty cool innovation the other day and wanted to share it. Its a new physical keyboard for tablets. Its called the Touchfire and is currently looking for funding on Kickstarter.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/740785012/touchfire-the-screen-top-keyboard-for-ipad/widget/video.html

I think what caught my eye about it is that it is solving a real problem that you don’t often think about. Everyone is also looking to be on the cutting or brand new edge, looking for the next big idea and often when I think about this I think of it in terms of the next big thing in interactive design, not necessarily physical design. This product really made me realize that the degree I’m pursuing is solely about online and virtual innovation, but can also be about real physical design that acts as a tool for the virtual and online. Surely something to think about.

Motion Typography – Reagan’s “Tear Down This Wall”

Due this week, we had to create a motion typography piece using the audio of our choice. I took on Reagan’s “Tear Down This Wall”. Below you can see my concept story boarding and then the final product.

Looking ahead – Week 14

What are the overall implications of the Web 2.0 revolution? What and how will it continue to affect us (humans), industry, and economies? And how will it continue to evolve and affect over the next 50 years, 100 years, and so on?

Augmented Reality

For Theory and Audience Analysis this week we explored augmented realities, their possible applications, and their likelihood of success. Our assignment was to attempt to create our own based on a tutorial. Here’s a screen shot of the tutorial itself working. 

From here we were given the task of changing the 3D model. After tinkering with adding the Golden Gate Bridge unsuccessfully a classmate and myself found another tutorial online. Through a process of trial and error we realized we could easily change the image placed on a 3D sphere to alter it in the rendering. I choose to make a rotating moon by finding a flat texture map of the moon. Below is the video of the AR working, the challenge that I am still having is uploading the flash file to the internet to allow others to use it.

Interactive Game

For our second project in Producing Interactive Media we had to create an interactive game using what we have learned so far in the semester. I started with the idea of recreating the classic Snake, but met a lot of challenges in the coding for the game. So I decided that  I should instead focus on something I could execute successfully with good, clean design. I settled on the idea of an iSpy game. Currently the game only has two levels, which use the same background image. Ideally with more time and objects I could add a seemingly unlimited amount of levels using multiple images. The other thing I think I should employ was a classmates critique, that there are no instructions so there isn’t a real way to get across to the user that their are “lives” with the guesses. I think by adding that visually it would help with the gameplay. Also adding instructions might help significantly. So for now you can see the final (well not so much) product here.

Framing – Citizen Journalism

Has citizen journalism killed the journalistic profession or has citizen journalism ruined the professionalism of journalism?