https://work.mleland.com MJ Thu, 24 Dec 2020 20:48:33 +0000 https://work.mleland.com en https://work.mleland.com/White-House-Correspondents-Association-brand-counterpropaganda-in-age Thu, 14 Jun 2018 19:55:43 +0000 MJ https://work.mleland.com/White-House-Correspondents-Association-brand-counterpropaganda-in-age $(document).ready(function(){ // Selected states + scroll // Cache selectors var lastId, topMenu = $("#mainNav,#mainNav-white"), topMenuHeight = topMenu.outerHeight()+1, // All list items menuItems = topMenu.find("a"), // Anchors corresponding to menu items scrollItems = menuItems.map(function(){ var item = $($(this).attr("href")); if (item.length) { return item; } }); // Bind click handler to menu items // so we can get a fancy scroll animation menuItems.click(function(e){ var href = $(this).attr("href"), offsetTop = href === "#" ? 0 : $(href).offset().top-topMenuHeight+1; $('html, body').stop().animate({ scrollTop: offsetTop }, 850); e.preventDefault(); }); // Bind to scroll $(window).scroll(function(){ // Get container scroll position var fromTop = $(this).scrollTop()+topMenuHeight; // Get id of current scroll item var cur = scrollItems.map(function(){ if ($(this).offset().top < fromTop) return this; }); // Get the id of the current element cur = cur[cur.length-1]; var id = cur && cur.length ? cur[0].id : ""; if (lastId !== id) { lastId = id; // Set/remove active class menuItems .parent().removeClass("active") .end().filter("[href=#"+id+"]").parent().addClass("active"); } }); $("button, button1").click(function(){ $(".row-2").slideToggle(200,"swing"); }); }); ︎ ↔ visual system grid &amp; elision background the president v. the people narrative framework inspiration and origins White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA)rebrand: Research, notes, and designs for integrative counter-propaganda. Digital + print. Strategy, concept, design, copy. Preferred execution, not selected. Made at Happy Cog, late 2017 through early 2018. <img width="2204" height="1296" width_o="2204" height_o="1296" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/f1adfe26f6275513671f7c097372f1c02ea162e06d4beaa6da0be27ffbeb9794/whcd2-b.jpg" data-mid="36482382" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/f1adfe26f6275513671f7c097372f1c02ea162e06d4beaa6da0be27ffbeb9794/whcd2-b.jpg" /> <img width="1728" height="1296" width_o="1728" height_o="1296" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/17d83ab2c6709c4ab847036e52153f7a21080a20fe7ef56ca0e194b3155177b9/whca-hand.jpg" data-mid="36552381" border="0" data-scale="100" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/17d83ab2c6709c4ab847036e52153f7a21080a20fe7ef56ca0e194b3155177b9/whca-hand.jpg" /> <img width="1728" height="1296" width_o="1728" height_o="1296" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/02d24732341a1907dbe856fa223914e7b18312150263bfe00d6f3825e70e4828/whca-logo-2.jpg" data-mid="36552429" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/02d24732341a1907dbe856fa223914e7b18312150263bfe00d6f3825e70e4828/whca-logo-2.jpg" /> Above: White House correspondent April Ryan’s hand. © 2017 AP/Alex Brandon (for POC only).&nbsp; <img width="3431" height="1980" width_o="3431" height_o="1980" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/c614546f6b5caee0eac60454effb7ee207de8805877740f18c113c4867e19871/whca-laptop-home.png" data-mid="35993751" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/c614546f6b5caee0eac60454effb7ee207de8805877740f18c113c4867e19871/whca-laptop-home.png" /> Different strokes Appeals during any presidency will generally have to be made to their supporters, who are the most likely to forgive certain trespasses. The Obama billboard was a backwards-looking take on how to use the system to address his abuse of the Espionage Act to prosecute whistleblowers. Reagan’s willingness to play along, so to speak, throws shade at Trump, undermining the ‘great-man’ comparisons. The words are his own assessment of himself, from his final WHCD address.&nbsp; <img width="1400" height="980" width_o="1400" height_o="980" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/dfadf649b8727e105de231f0f303b6875c56a141977861cb70e1b6d0bdf6be3a/obama-bb.jpg" data-mid="22938477" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/dfadf649b8727e105de231f0f303b6875c56a141977861cb70e1b6d0bdf6be3a/obama-bb.jpg" /> <img width="1600" height="794" width_o="1600" height_o="794" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/b05684dee884390051a154975c6bda0f3ef0d2f4eecb78e5ab4908953f6e7690/reaganbb.jpg" data-mid="36357715" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/b05684dee884390051a154975c6bda0f3ef0d2f4eecb78e5ab4908953f6e7690/reaganbb.jpg" /> <img width="2500" height="1443" width_o="2500" height_o="1443" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/cdc0cfb9dc0738f6ef164f234cfdc7b298f39c1f21c9154797ffbf032d0dbe9e/whca-laptop-news.png" data-mid="36354282" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/cdc0cfb9dc0738f6ef164f234cfdc7b298f39c1f21c9154797ffbf032d0dbe9e/whca-laptop-news.png" /> <img width="992" height="688" width_o="992" height_o="688" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/7dbdc0936d2a927985b80b517ce45807da2b4321b8c006453cc376295bb997a1/logoflex.png" data-mid="19220930" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/992/i/7dbdc0936d2a927985b80b517ce45807da2b4321b8c006453cc376295bb997a1/logoflex.png" />Grid as distance Physical distance became an essential metaphor for the structural design of the rebrand. &nbsp; <img width="375" height="498" width_o="375" height_o="498" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/8c550784c9edfa06246da057d2f64c45e411ea4b9662f84e2d83e8f76d79c230/grid1.png" data-mid="19228677" border="0" data-scale="100" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/375/i/8c550784c9edfa06246da057d2f64c45e411ea4b9662f84e2d83e8f76d79c230/grid1.png" /> Grid as elisionPosters and ads reference the gaps created by censors’ pens without resorting to cliche blackout marks. On the right, Jefferson’s obverse is an obscure reference to the use of curreny as propaganda, but more importantly can be read doubly as a remark on the only way to get Trump to take notice: money. &nbsp; <img width="1296" height="1728" width_o="1296" height_o="1728" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/753d60250c9b9a84701fda70f30fb04b5af8fcf78a96ee4d48b124e29a48438f/white-house.jpg" data-mid="37319848" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/753d60250c9b9a84701fda70f30fb04b5af8fcf78a96ee4d48b124e29a48438f/white-house.jpg" /><img width="1250" height="1655" width_o="1250" height_o="1655" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/300a1deab03a3d3bdde49c24a2bc4395d34c9a6bb99628d21d659dd87820bbc8/jefferson-coin.jpg" data-mid="35755143" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/300a1deab03a3d3bdde49c24a2bc4395d34c9a6bb99628d21d659dd87820bbc8/jefferson-coin.jpg" /> Background The WHCA story begins with three formative events. The first came in 1913, when Woodrow Wilson threatened to terminate his press conferences with the informally associated White House press after off-the-record comments found their way into the evening papers. The second, six months later, has it that either the WHCA formed in contrition (account 1: Wilson found the reporters’ questions beneath his intellect and office) or protest (account 2: a rumor leaked that Wilson was cherry picking a more sympathetic press pool). The particulars ultimately matter little, though, as three, these efforts would prove in vain at the sinking of the Lusitania, the event which ostensibly drew us into the war and gave Wilson the pretext to suspend press conferences for good. The more things change. Today the WHCA is known mainly for its annual fundraising dinner, which since 1983 has featured—I probably don’t need to tell you—a roast of the president by a popular comedian. (Say what you will, but remember what Lewis Hyde wrote about social safety valves: “beware the social system that cannot laugh at itself.”) Unfortunately owing to its fun-loving surfeit of spectacle the dinner has won an outsized share of the brand and eclipsed many of the best things about the WHCA; they hoped a new brand and website could help correct some of that imbalance (the dinner does lend itself very well to punchy messaging, and shows off the system quite nicely).&nbsp;Still, it’s difficult not to make this entirely about Trump. Had he not acceded to power I think it’s pretty likely the WHCA would have carried on with a two-presidents-old website and a logo set in Copperplate. The brand, if it could be called a brand, never spoke the visual language of advocacy, but it never needed to. Trump changed that.Now with the cameras turned the other way the public needs to realize the WHCA’s work goes well beyond a daily, now occasional, forty minutes of Q&amp;A with the press secretary, into a broad range of activities which support journalism education and professional reporting. But even if the briefing is the public’s only frame of reference, we should remember that what’s played out in that room, Ethel Payne pressing Eisenhower on civil rights issues, for example, has done more to shape the course of national events than Americans know to give it credit. Questions, even unanswered questions, have nation-shaping power.&nbsp; <img width="2708" height="1535" width_o="2708" height_o="1535" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/fa93297c624f5d39b20dd1ca36d8b0df0c8b0ff726b51a7615cbfc7f67a6f63b/whca-busad.jpg" data-mid="22795883" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/fa93297c624f5d39b20dd1ca36d8b0df0c8b0ff726b51a7615cbfc7f67a6f63b/whca-busad.jpg" /> Interactive and display advertising Transportation and infrastructure are key to circulation and repetition. The Brexit bus was successful in a way that typical mobile propaganda was not, partly because political advertising there, as here, is not regulated the same as consumer advertising. But except for this piece by a semiotician there’s been hardly anything written about the use of the coach in British culture and what impact that may have had on how the message was received.&nbsp; The president v. the people&nbsp; Fights over the First Amendment rarely played out in popular news. Most liberals would agree that Obama was a man whose deference to the inalienable right to speak one's mind to power was so pure, so true, so limpid, he even patiently, graciously took hecklers' interruptions on sufferance. The press would tell you a different story. They did tell us, in fact, about the literal FOIA blackouts, about the threats to prosecute and jail reporters along with government whistleblowers, about the unlawful search and seizure of their phone records. These were arguably as inimical to the First Amendment (and the Fourth) as anything Trump has done so far. But it’s a problem congenital to the office. Returning to Woodrow Wilson, the Espionage Act Obama and Holder invoked to prosecute whistleblowers was partly authored by Wilson and pushed through Congress as a means of suppressing opposition to Wilson’s hawkish about-face upon entering the first World War. Still not quite satisified with this overreach he added the Sedition Act in 1918, which forbidding outspoken opposition led to a handful of prosecutions, no press—a bridge too far, perhaps—but union leaders, most famously the socialist Eugene Debs, didn’t fare as well. The problem of the press still nettled Wilson, however. Denied a request to Congress for executive censorship authority, he realized he could needle newspapers to death with propaganda, establishing an ‘information’ office and burying them in so many press releases that journalists couldn’t keep up with reader demands. This shrewdly allowed the writers of his chief propagandist, George Creel, to step “into the resulting vacuum and provide a vast number of official stories that looked like news.” (Think sponsored content, without the sponsored content disclaimer.)This is germane to this case study for a couple reasons. One, going back to the brand narrative, we see how censorship acts as a displacing force, for example, making space for the appearance of but not the substance of truth, driving a wedge between journalists and their work, creating verisimilitude.&nbsp;I prefer ‘displacing’ to ‘distorting’ when talking about propaganda. Distortion renders something at least partly unreadable, and illegibility invites interpretation. However, if we think of the truth as a picture expanding infinitely out of its frame, connecting an overlapping network of events, then what organized propaganda does is find a part of the picture most coherent with its version of events and shifts the frame to include it. (The best example I know of this in America is the explanation invented years later to excuse the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as necessary to prevent the loss of a million or more marines. The original reason, delivered by Truman, was to demonstrate the might of American scientific progress and as a warning to non-democratic governments. After a piece in the New Yorker detailed the aftermath and humanized the Japanese people Americans started to doubt nuclear inevitability as policy. Mac Bundy, author of the lie, re-shifted the narrative frame back to GIs by ghost writing an op-ed for Harper’s, an equally erudite magazine.)&nbsp; This is also to underscore the cumulative effects on our rights. Until Congress votes to rescind them the acts mentioned exist on the books to seduce future presidents into taking advantage of their precedent. Trump has hinted to all of these. <img width="1728" height="1500" width_o="1728" height_o="1500" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/ed9c2f9a8a08b7773a21ef64b2fd614c14ec68363b19872ca0d29158bcddc849/whcd-reagan.jpg" data-mid="36297784" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/ed9c2f9a8a08b7773a21ef64b2fd614c14ec68363b19872ca0d29158bcddc849/whcd-reagan.jpg" /> Reclaiming the narrative “When [Trump] politely declines an invitation to the WHCD and immediately mounts a Twitter offensive against the ‘dishonest and corrupt fake news media,’ weaponize popular Republican nostalgia against him.” <img width="1728" height="1296" width_o="1728" height_o="1296" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/64ac1f9ed58c9426d727d4cfb5b30100987908b62d86894e47b314af3eb17bc4/whca-nixon-poster.jpg" data-mid="36093030" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/64ac1f9ed58c9426d727d4cfb5b30100987908b62d86894e47b314af3eb17bc4/whca-nixon-poster.jpg" /> Narrative framework The earlier use of ‘organized’ in the context of political propaganda might seem to disqualify Trump, who seems totally chaotic by these lights. But as the linguist George Lakoff pointed out in a 2018 Guardian op-ed, Trump is, despite appearances, “winning the linguistic war.” Consider his use of paltering—“the devious art of lying by telling the truth,” as the BBC puts it. Paltering is when Trump takes a Thomas Jefferson passage out of its larger context and uses it to foment opposition to unfettered expression. Or when he invokes Ronald Reagan to shore up base support for his border wall. Or the two or three examples of the last hour. As Jonathan Swift said of someone of his own time, “the superiority of his genius consists in nothing else but an inexhaustible fund of political lies, which he plentifully distributes every minute that he speaks.” But it's genius nonetheless.By contrasting these left and right examples, I hoped to establish a communications framework flexible enough to create a variety of both reactive and proactive counterpropaganda messages. I suppose calling counterpropaganda proactive would be a contradiction in terms if the same issues didn’t reappear throughout history wherever the people have at least some nominal say on the course of government. Relatively little has changed since Augustus deployed similar methods to con the Roman people into making their free republic into a dictatorship. If that hereditary aversion indeed exists, then advocates like the WHCA should give more weight, even in ‘peacetime’, to sustained counter-narratives—so-called awareness campaigns—that make it more difficult to disarm, desensitize, and thereby disadvantage the general public. The immediate question is what to do about this war on the press. It’s a sloppy war, but all that slop is kind of the point. Taking Trump head on is self-defeating, because any tit-for-tat only gives him additional incentive to reinforce his own narrative schemes—to double down, as they say. Which is to say he needs the free press to tell on him: “Trump has done this with such longevity that bad publicity somehow has become a facet of his perceived authenticity,” wrote Michael Kruse for Politico Magazine, back in July 2016. “He has done it with such consistency that a lack of bad publicity weirdly would feel like a betrayal to his brand.” Even most denials are done sort of sous rature, like a shrug, never completely erased but jumbled together, bad, worse or worst, into some horrible, undecidable mythic canon. So—meet odd manners with odd angles. When he politely declines an invitation to the WHCD and immediately mounts a Twitter offensive against the “dishonest and corrupt fake news media,” weaponize popular Republican nostalgia against him. When he manipulates the correspondence of a Founding Father to weaken the historical legitimacy of a free press, let that Founding Father dispute him. Goad him into the traps laid by counterpropaganda. Reclaim the narrative. (Obama is a different sort of propagandist. I feel bad, as a liberal, besmirching him this way, but there's no other way I can think to characterize his image machine's ability to manipulate the truth. Looking back, I think, unlike Trump, he should have been met fiercely and in the open.) <img width="1940" height="763" width_o="1940" height_o="763" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/4cb8453a628b3f3c8c27c4f775a3f01831d87b7b4b90e4ef56d21be84aaef6fa/whca-id.jpg" data-mid="36559018" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/4cb8453a628b3f3c8c27c4f775a3f01831d87b7b4b90e4ef56d21be84aaef6fa/whca-id.jpg" /> <img width="1728" height="1296" width_o="1728" height_o="1296" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/17d83ab2c6709c4ab847036e52153f7a21080a20fe7ef56ca0e194b3155177b9/whca-hand.jpg" data-mid="36552381" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/17d83ab2c6709c4ab847036e52153f7a21080a20fe7ef56ca0e194b3155177b9/whca-hand.jpg" /> <img width="1000" height="995" width_o="1000" height_o="995" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/cb34b4bb9c58417068dfb815722ddf9a2b0428f50100a06a0e6219b18f93c396/JFKWHP-KN-C28001.jpg" data-mid="36294644" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/cb34b4bb9c58417068dfb815722ddf9a2b0428f50100a06a0e6219b18f93c396/JFKWHP-KN-C28001.jpg" /> <img width="1400" height="980" width_o="1400" height_o="980" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/dfadf649b8727e105de231f0f303b6875c56a141977861cb70e1b6d0bdf6be3a/obama-bb.jpg" data-mid="22938477" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/dfadf649b8727e105de231f0f303b6875c56a141977861cb70e1b6d0bdf6be3a/obama-bb.jpg" /> <img width="1305" height="1728" width_o="1305" height_o="1728" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/9fb0d8cec056474e45b360ce27a4380b9ae90ec357e0b7bf0202c08fa2b45218/whca-nixon.jpg" data-mid="22952286" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/9fb0d8cec056474e45b360ce27a4380b9ae90ec357e0b7bf0202c08fa2b45218/whca-nixon.jpg" /> <img width="1600" height="794" width_o="1600" height_o="794" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/b05684dee884390051a154975c6bda0f3ef0d2f4eecb78e5ab4908953f6e7690/reaganbb.jpg" data-mid="36357715" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/b05684dee884390051a154975c6bda0f3ef0d2f4eecb78e5ab4908953f6e7690/reaganbb.jpg" /> <img width="1728" height="1296" width_o="1728" height_o="1296" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/255a1755cabe273eef4de05d54e3162b96d7cbeb51bd564ed694a9aee899d76c/whcd-turkey.jpg" data-mid="36551940" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/255a1755cabe273eef4de05d54e3162b96d7cbeb51bd564ed694a9aee899d76c/whcd-turkey.jpg" /> Inspiration and origins The White House press corps has West Wing accommodations. In the American imagination this is as good as saying the White House, though they’re separated from the actual ‘House’ by a short covered walkway and billeted partly underground in a few tiny rooms with low ceilings. The actual briefing room is FDR’s old indoor swimming pool, drained and converted into press offices by Nixon under the pretext of magnanimously providing the press with their own space, though it’s any wonder he didn’t want them wandering his halls anymore.Today the offices are so spartan, claustrophobic, and dirty the press mainly cabs back to their workaday offices to type up their beat. The WHCA physical address where the executive director sits is actually Watergate. This got me thinking about how I might represent that physical separation. The idea to use the letters as a symmetrical frame actually came from a laundry truck I used to see on Houston Street in the East Village. Its vinyl logo had peeled away from its front bumper and the four remaining letters I thought framed the license plate in a nice looking way. Chance and the prepared mind, etc.The tension created in the spacing also resolved how to handle the visual language of censorship, which I wanted to reference without resorting to cliche. While obvious can be useful—sometimes a blunt instrument is exactly what you need—I think a good acid test for an idea is how many stock photos exist of it already. (What truly killed it for me was the surfeit of cloyingly sentimental, dada-lite blackout poetry.) What’s left unobscured in a FOIA document is generally too anodyne to be of interest or is missing the context that would give it any real meaning. In this view censorship can be seen a matter of distance, in an almost physical sense—to push phrases and sentences apart, to push people away from the truth—and it occurred to me this could be evoked simply by pushing the text apart.&nbsp; <img width="544" height="253" width_o="544" height_o="253" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/0d9473bad71d4fc0ee1b58fa78ad9003bdb42b7801daf4ceeb38ce51392785e8/Screen-Shot-2019-02-26-at-1.53.52-PM.png" data-mid="36356858" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/544/i/0d9473bad71d4fc0ee1b58fa78ad9003bdb42b7801daf4ceeb38ce51392785e8/Screen-Shot-2019-02-26-at-1.53.52-PM.png" /> <img width="342" height="217" width_o="342" height_o="217" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/49bedd6972e0d8abc150e2c12d414363bd96be3a85f0ed044ea1076bb6cb2989/Screen-Shot-2019-02-26-at-11.15.14-AM.png" data-mid="36342279" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/342/i/49bedd6972e0d8abc150e2c12d414363bd96be3a85f0ed044ea1076bb6cb2989/Screen-Shot-2019-02-26-at-11.15.14-AM.png" /> <img width="283" height="321" width_o="283" height_o="321" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/70880d1a0aef624ceb34451c23c96c322e05ed35a5c233848c6ae0f6d702e352/Screen-Shot-2019-02-26-at-11.16.47-AM.png" data-mid="36342299" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/283/i/70880d1a0aef624ceb34451c23c96c322e05ed35a5c233848c6ae0f6d702e352/Screen-Shot-2019-02-26-at-11.16.47-AM.png" /> Some of this concept’s initial takes, using Druk and Larsseit, 9/17.&nbsp;The inspiration to use the grid as a randomizing element came from an Ellsworth Kelly I used to visit in the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The primary headline text is Schmalfette Grotesk/Haettenschweiler, made popular by Twen magazine. (Druk, above, didn’t go over so hot, and was too unreadable apart from the logotype.) The condensed text was meant to evoke the visual language of news and protest posters while making a reference to the crowded confines of the briefing room and press accommodations.&nbsp; Photos were predominantly historic to reinforce the organization’s long history covering the White House.&nbsp; https://work.mleland.com/OMF-brand-sprint-2018 Thu, 24 Dec 2020 20:48:33 +0000 MJ https://work.mleland.com/OMF-brand-sprint-2018 $(document).ready(function(){ // Selected states + scroll // Cache selectors var lastId, topMenu = $("#mainNav"), topMenuHeight = topMenu.outerHeight()+1, // All list items menuItems = topMenu.find("a"), // Anchors corresponding to menu items scrollItems = menuItems.map(function(){ var item = $($(this).attr("href")); if (item.length) { return item; } }); // Bind click handler to menu items // so we can get a fancy scroll animation menuItems.click(function(e){ var href = $(this).attr("href"), offsetTop = href === "#" ? 0 : $(href).offset().top-topMenuHeight+1; $('html, body').stop().animate({ scrollTop: offsetTop }, 850); e.preventDefault(); }); // Bind to scroll $(window).scroll(function(){ // Get container scroll position var fromTop = $(this).scrollTop()+topMenuHeight; // Get id of current scroll item var cur = scrollItems.map(function(){ if ($(this).offset().top < fromTop) return this; }); // Get the id of the current element cur = cur[cur.length-1]; var id = cur && cur.length ? cur[0].id : ""; if (lastId !== id) { lastId = id; // Set/remove active class menuItems .parent().removeClass("active") .end().filter("[href=#"+id+"]").parent().addClass("active"); } }); $("button, button1").click(function(){ $(".row-2").slideToggle(200,"swing"); }); }); ↔ background applications <img width="831" height="812" width_o="831" height_o="812" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/2296765e0a70f08e516930fdae57ef0bf20cc7ff0479a2fd7cdec565f17937ab/omf-home-2.jpg" data-mid="93040480" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/831/i/2296765e0a70f08e516930fdae57ef0bf20cc7ff0479a2fd7cdec565f17937ab/omf-home-2.jpg" /> Rebrand concept for emergency ‘main street’ lender Brand update, not implemented. Creative direction, workshop facilitation, concept, copywriting, design. Designed for Vector Media Group with OMF, November 2018. With few options left to them because of their credit histories high-interest borrowers are ideal marks for shady downmarket banks. That a majority of these loans are predatory probably goes without saying. Rather than trap desperate lendees in a never-ending cycle of debt dependency, OMF tries to earn repeat customers by taking considerable interest in their financial futures, tailoring realistic plans to individual circumstances and including complementary financial planning and household budgeting among their financial literacy services. &nbsp; From the outside looking in you’d be hard-pressed to spot that difference, though. All downmarket lenders share the same language, all appear compassionate, kind; all invoke that ‘human touch’ (hand-drawn icons, saccarine stock photos); all traffic in the same folksy signs and symbols (piggybanks); love blue; portray the bank as neoclassical greek temple (you should feel so blessed to get this money!), etc. Yet nothing they share is so hideous and invested with rhetorical power as the credit score meter,&nbsp;a dumb, vulgar reduction of consumer history, competency, and&nbsp; trustworthiness introduced in 1989 as the FICO Score. (FICO unironically says it ‘took prejudice out of the equation.’) This simple score, illustrated as a number along a continuum between 300 and 850, is supposed to tell a lender the inverse degree of risk a potential borrower carries. Being only one of a handful of OMF’s qualifying factors I thought its erasure and subversion was an interesting departure point. The initial mark we workshopped blended the credit meter into a rainbow, erasing the distinctions between credit bands. The symbol was accompanied by an updated strapline, ‘loans for every stripe and color,’ a reference to OMF’s commitment to openness and inclusivity. The final iteration, shown below, cuts the meter at its apex, suggesting the gentle flowing arc of the rainbow (particularly in the post-emoji age) even when it’s unvariegated. Fittingly the front half is also where the credit scores of its customers tend to fall. The shape can optionally be used as a container to bring people out of their background context, an allusion to the central conceit that potential customers are people who, regardless of where they fall on the FICO continuum, are irreducible to simple – and frequently accidental – circumstances. <img width="435" height="890" width_o="435" height_o="890" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/50f94aaf19b25ca9226c678e231c3cdbd8af8e5c9da28b906508b689cd5e041e/Screen-Shot-2020-12-27-at-2.32.41-PM.png" data-mid="93193195" border="0" data-scale="94" data-icon-mode src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/435/i/50f94aaf19b25ca9226c678e231c3cdbd8af8e5c9da28b906508b689cd5e041e/Screen-Shot-2020-12-27-at-2.32.41-PM.png" /> <img width="898" height="1236" width_o="898" height_o="1236" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/d04e81ee6c829adee5cdd381a549c18d81929fdea3a130a44774188369ce5247/Screen-Shot-2020-12-27-at-10.20.04-PM.png" data-mid="93220594" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/898/i/d04e81ee6c829adee5cdd381a549c18d81929fdea3a130a44774188369ce5247/Screen-Shot-2020-12-27-at-10.20.04-PM.png" /> <img width="2186" height="793" width_o="2186" height_o="793" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/b571817cc292ae4bce6b3fdfea2b21cfb2abcec100ed49a0064d1135f20508df/Screen-Shot-2020-12-27-at-10.36.18-PM.png" data-mid="93221156" border="0" data-icon-mode src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/b571817cc292ae4bce6b3fdfea2b21cfb2abcec100ed49a0064d1135f20508df/Screen-Shot-2020-12-27-at-10.36.18-PM.png" /> <img width="541" height="102" width_o="541" height_o="102" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/1b8a2d4d2f73f29231d0188a0bf80512ee922032d9de835e2707012a2cb9343a/icons.gif" data-mid="93252941" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/541/i/1b8a2d4d2f73f29231d0188a0bf80512ee922032d9de835e2707012a2cb9343a/icons.gif" /> <img width="892" height="755" width_o="892" height_o="755" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/cee9e2fea457e477efb0a6c045fa383fc3f38269e79e9a4a883aeb384498618b/Screen-Shot-2020-12-27-at-10.11.46-PM.png" data-mid="93220466" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/892/i/cee9e2fea457e477efb0a6c045fa383fc3f38269e79e9a4a883aeb384498618b/Screen-Shot-2020-12-27-at-10.11.46-PM.png" /> <img width="2600" height="2500" width_o="2600" height_o="2500" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/311d0e8fe1e4ff14b7c69913a19871fa44e071bb67a443ede29a8576d5e3a86b/omf-bag.jpg" data-mid="93040084" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/311d0e8fe1e4ff14b7c69913a19871fa44e071bb67a443ede29a8576d5e3a86b/omf-bag.jpg" /> https://work.mleland.com/IFAW-advocacy-education-conversion-2016 Fri, 01 Jun 2018 00:45:06 +0000 MJ https://work.mleland.com/IFAW-advocacy-education-conversion-2016 $(document).ready(function(){ // Selected states + scroll // Cache selectors var lastId, topMenu = $("#mainNav,#mainNav-white"), topMenuHeight = topMenu.outerHeight()+1, // All list items menuItems = topMenu.find("a"), // Anchors corresponding to menu items scrollItems = menuItems.map(function(){ var item = $($(this).attr("href")); if (item.length) { return item; } }); // Bind click handler to menu items // so we can get a fancy scroll animation menuItems.click(function(e){ var href = $(this).attr("href"), offsetTop = href === "#" ? 0 : $(href).offset().top-topMenuHeight+1; $('html, body').stop().animate({ scrollTop: offsetTop }, 850); e.preventDefault(); }); // Bind to scroll $(window).scroll(function(){ // Get container scroll position var fromTop = $(this).scrollTop()+topMenuHeight; // Get id of current scroll item var cur = scrollItems.map(function(){ if ($(this).offset().top < fromTop) return this; }); // Get the id of the current element cur = cur[cur.length-1]; var id = cur && cur.length ? cur[0].id : ""; if (lastId !== id) { lastId = id; // Set/remove active class menuItems .parent().removeClass("active") .end().filter("[href=#"+id+"]").parent().addClass("active"); } }); $("button, button1").click(function(){ $(".row-2").slideToggle(200,"swing"); }); }); ︎ ↔ about IFAW content strategy the human problem proof of concept section x section continued engagement <img width="1197" height="704" width_o="1197" height_o="704" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/c70158fc71066cfc35471f21c8ea36088e682619b2b59a8f3b7225e1c430eeb8/trophiccascade.png" data-mid="17388851" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/c70158fc71066cfc35471f21c8ea36088e682619b2b59a8f3b7225e1c430eeb8/trophiccascade.png" /> International Fund for Animal Welfare: content strategy and architecture proof-of-concept for advocacy, education, and conversion Research, direction, mockups, datavis. Made at Happy Cog, November 2016. The International Fund for Animal Welfare’s (IFAW) belief in the intrinsic value of all animal life is demonstrated in the rescue, rehabilitation, and rewilding of distressed members of both protected and unprotected species. Such stories help architect their fundraising and outreach strategy.&nbsp; This is in contrast to top-down organizations such as the World Wildlife Foundation, who don’t allocate funds toward rescue and rehab if the affect on the species population doesn’t warrant it; that, to them, is money better spent elsewhere. While the aims of both are arguably the same, in terms of the general public IFAW’s value system often works against the organization’s broader goals. This can largely be attributed to the rescue and rehab of abused, domesticated house and farm animals. Most of their repeat and estate donors fall into this camp of “dog and cat lovers.” But IFAW is a bona fide conservation organization on par with the WWF, responsible for, among other programs, starting and managing a massive counter-poaching initiative in Kenya under the leadership of a former counter-terrorist Air Force officer turned animal advocate. Rightly situating them in that context was the primary goal of a new digital strategy. &nbsp; <img width="1200" height="850" width_o="1200" height_o="850" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/de069b262df4844d0ed1d37b30ded965a1dd7cb86def83b6d19e7bf0ee6057ff/taxonomy-tiger.jpg" data-mid="17388864" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/de069b262df4844d0ed1d37b30ded965a1dd7cb86def83b6d19e7bf0ee6057ff/taxonomy-tiger.jpg" /> <img width="1200" height="850" width_o="1200" height_o="850" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/f4d55baa6b9b41c91d5cc9800bff433b9dbe5f5e9e9c4c53799035fd24ebc64e/elephant.png" data-mid="17388853" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/f4d55baa6b9b41c91d5cc9800bff433b9dbe5f5e9e9c4c53799035fd24ebc64e/elephant.png" /> Their mission isn’t inherently incompatible with the goal of rebranding as a conservation charity. Two problems undermined their digital strategy. &nbsp; One, the site was compartmentalized according to programs, and those sections cross-pollinated either not at all or by visual likeness (cetaceans, big cats, thick-hided megafauna), inhibiting circulation between sections. Two, no connection was made to the exigencies of human beings and their affect on animalkind.&nbsp; That said the wrenching stories are still key. I read six activists’ memoirs and invariably each author reports a moment when they locked eyes with a distressed animal, and each interprets this passing instant as a nonverbal entreaty of help. IFAW’s stories tug on the same strings. But in five of the six cases this initial interaction—what I referred to as a “gateway animal”—blossomed into dedication for another species:&nbsp; their “passion animal.” These two species were not connected by taxonomic order or visual likeness but by the shared abuses and indifferent pressures placed on them by human civilization. This confirms something anthropologists know very well: we humans think in terms of stories, not in categories. <img width="857" height="430" width_o="857" height_o="430" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/69bb66abf411c2af1d69749d58cab074d48d127a8c341df94fc23f8565cff234/tigerstowhales.png" data-mid="17388854" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/857/i/69bb66abf411c2af1d69749d58cab074d48d127a8c341df94fc23f8565cff234/tigerstowhales.png" /> Humans at the center&nbsp; We’re a complicated problem to unravel. It’s easy to make bogeymen of people like poachers. It’s much less easy to put them in the appropriate context. Understanding that inequality, globalization, and colonialism are the actual root causes responsible for human-wildlife conflict can dramatically increase gains in conservation by placing humankind into a greater global ecology, rather than the usual pernicious and incorrect human vs. nature dichotomy. “For every two tusks a whole village has been destroyed, every twenty tusks have been obtained at the price of a district with all its people, villages, and plantations. It is simply incredible that, because ivory is required for ornaments or billiard games, the rich heart of Africa should be laid waste ... that populations, tribes, and nations should be utterly destroyed.”—Peter Matthiessen, African Silences (1991) In the end this arbitrary duality only pits us against ourselves. Until we perceive the natural world less as a zoo, a kind of observatory we exist apart from, than an interconnected web of which we’re highly dependent, there can’t be meaningful change. (Even my own repeated use of “animalkind” and “humankind” evinces a deep-seated prejudice.) The principal enemy is then not the poacher, or the smuggler, or even the buyer, but the entire human part of the chain. We are each complicit by degrees. The problem is, we aren’t informed.&nbsp; “Informed sympathy is empathy, expressed as compassionate understanding. Rational empathy is the only basis for ethically responsible behavior.” —M.W. Fox, “Empathy, Humaneness and Animal Welfare” (1984) Topic center proofs-of-concept: Programmatically generating connections according to human pressures The new experience was engineered around&nbsp; “topic centers,” single pages assembled by modular content blocks. These pages would be lightly curated—headlines, photos—but otherwise be programmatically generated by the content model, which would be recalibrated every so often based on analytic reviews. This permitted the creation of additional topic centers as new threats arose or became better understood. In these wireframes the site navigation has been stripped to focus on the chance possibilities inherent to content as a wayfinding mechanism. <img width="1587" height="4191" width_o="1587" height_o="4191" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/990bc3375d764a91a65e8446ed32a274f95945e279b4a913f3dc8a5717cc677c/ifaw-elephant.jpg" data-mid="23218791" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/990bc3375d764a91a65e8446ed32a274f95945e279b4a913f3dc8a5717cc677c/ifaw-elephant.jpg" /> <img width="1650" height="4038" width_o="1650" height_o="4038" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/247d0791cfc52bbb3c4884246134d17a470e5d01f3995463a4b3f31a652838a5/TigerFarming.jpg" data-mid="17388866" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/247d0791cfc52bbb3c4884246134d17a470e5d01f3995463a4b3f31a652838a5/TigerFarming.jpg" /> Breakdown Header image and messaging Past a certain threshold all numbers feel the same. Most people can’t comprehend a difference between 100,000 and 1,000,000 because these are not numbers we encounter routinely, even in an urban setting. I know some twenty million people will pass through New York today, but in my mind one numberless mob blends into another. Every statistic of this magnitude needs help being visualized. <img width="1587" height="937" width_o="1587" height_o="937" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/44204f49ae4f3d57b02da91e376830bc6c9f0262d7d8425219d9fc7d8f2be9f6/elephant-top.jpg" data-mid="23234151" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/44204f49ae4f3d57b02da91e376830bc6c9f0262d7d8425219d9fc7d8f2be9f6/elephant-top.jpg" /> <img width="1800" height="1323" width_o="1800" height_o="1323" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/35d1050cec520253b239bf9de66a096462712b022b1c18f8c0f6c86ed9654963/elephant-2.png" data-mid="23001816" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/35d1050cec520253b239bf9de66a096462712b022b1c18f8c0f6c86ed9654963/elephant-2.png" /> Issue overview and history The hero image provides scene setting. The content immediately below acts like a recap. Note how much of the summary is bent toward human stories.&nbsp; The point of all marketing material is to simultaneously raise awareness and raise funds. Content priority should be judged along these axes. Does it inform? Does it explain how money will be used? These answers don’t have to be didactic or overly explicit. Vietnam committing to destroying confiscated ivory and rhino horn—taking it out of circulation—suggests progress, hope. People need to know they’re not contributing to a lost cause. Conservation is an endlessly optimistic pursuit. <img width="1587" height="751" width_o="1587" height_o="751" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/95476ef399305d3b972502772c9dc52d1e275dd4f8923c20c40a9683c812f9a2/elephant-threats.jpg" data-mid="23218741" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/95476ef399305d3b972502772c9dc52d1e275dd4f8923c20c40a9683c812f9a2/elephant-threats.jpg" /> Deep dive education In the narrative flow this would be close to the middle of the journalism pyramid. Only a thin band (as conceived in this wireframe), but the meat of the experience. While the web is a medium well suited to facilitating serendipitous discovery, you can’t manufacture it. Thus the point here isn’t to create a banal “you might also like” recommendation module but instead open up a series of possible related pathways into animals and issues connected by narrative rather than facile visual similarity. <img width="1587" height="714" width_o="1587" height_o="714" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/b368b4373a4c3b6f9e84898ef9e0f0859307308e367fd4ea849f9d2279222607/elephant-video.jpg" data-mid="23218769" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/b368b4373a4c3b6f9e84898ef9e0f0859307308e367fd4ea849f9d2279222607/elephant-video.jpg" />Evidence The first thing that should be said is people like video a lot less than certain experts say. (Note that most of those experts are in media buying and want to sell you pre-roll.) Even great video content is a bad lead. People want to know it’ll be worth their time first. In the IFAW topic center templates I proposed it come near the bottom—the showiest piece of evidence placed near the donate button. Then finally: Make it local, make it actionable In the developed world some of these issues aren’t seen as domestic problems, meanwhile the U.S. is among the largest markets for various animals and their parts. There are more tigers in captivity in the U.S. than exist in the wild. In any event, though it’s less common that a person will donate on a first visit (unless moved by some crisis) it’s enough for the moment to provide them with information and contagious anecdotes (“you know I heard…”) at every opportunity. <img width="1587" height="570" width_o="1587" height_o="570" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/4920575eedd3e66b55458f55312b8396b4d14fc8a16a4a9dbaa67b909cd5da3e/elephant-bottom.jpg" data-mid="23218787" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/4920575eedd3e66b55458f55312b8396b4d14fc8a16a4a9dbaa67b909cd5da3e/elephant-bottom.jpg" /> Continued engagement&nbsp; <img width="1650" height="1377" width_o="1650" height_o="1377" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/c82df2208d76b08a343e656e530332a5f12f710e0b15ad4f58c10f7f5bbfeb19/Tigersignup.jpg" data-mid="17388873" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/c82df2208d76b08a343e656e530332a5f12f710e0b15ad4f58c10f7f5bbfeb19/Tigersignup.jpg" /> Though the sign-up allows for animal-centric options, new discoveries can be made obliquely through email alerts. For instance, “legal” trade of animal parts is often used as a cover to effectively launder and subsidize black market trade. This connects tigers to, among others, rhinos, elephants, even whales (the Japanese still allow minke hunts for “scientific research,” the whale meat ending up on restaurant menus). In the end the hope is that cold leads or one-time donors will become repeat if not&nbsp; regular donors through a steady stream of varied communications. https://work.mleland.com/Gettysburg-College-liberal-arts-XD-2017 Sun, 16 Dec 2018 03:59:42 +0000 MJ https://work.mleland.com/Gettysburg-College-liberal-arts-XD-2017 $(document).ready(function(){ // Selected states + scroll // Cache selectors var lastId, topMenu = $("#mainNav"), topMenuHeight = topMenu.outerHeight()+1, // All list items menuItems = topMenu.find("a"), // Anchors corresponding to menu items scrollItems = menuItems.map(function(){ var item = $($(this).attr("href")); if (item.length) { return item; } }); // Bind click handler to menu items // so we can get a fancy scroll animation menuItems.click(function(e){ var href = $(this).attr("href"), offsetTop = href === "#" ? 0 : $(href).offset().top-topMenuHeight+1; $('html, body').stop().animate({ scrollTop: offsetTop }, 850); e.preventDefault(); }); // Bind to scroll $(window).scroll(function(){ // Get container scroll position var fromTop = $(this).scrollTop()+topMenuHeight; // Get id of current scroll item var cur = scrollItems.map(function(){ if ($(this).offset().top < fromTop) return this; }); // Get the id of the current element cur = cur[cur.length-1]; var id = cur && cur.length ? cur[0].id : ""; if (lastId !== id) { lastId = id; // Set/remove active class menuItems .parent().removeClass("active") .end().filter("[href=#"+id+"]").parent().addClass("active"); } }); $("button, button1").click(function(){ $(".row-2").slideToggle(200,"swing"); }); }); <img width="1055" height="331" width_o="1055" height_o="331" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/fead63c6ca1255849f003dc1c8675c64fb719cec417ff84bc56626083e64e248/4d.png" data-mid="36938017" border="0" data-scale="68" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/fead63c6ca1255849f003dc1c8675c64fb719cec417ff84bc56626083e64e248/4d.png" /> How the intersectionality, ambiguity, and possibility of the liberal arts translates to interfaceResearch, strategy, creative direction, design. Made at Happy Cog, November 2017–April 2018. Information architecture and content strategy led by Lisa Maria Marquis.&nbsp; ↔ top visual system liberal arts as ux teen identity development add’l research stages as mental models <img width="2200" height="1270" width_o="2200" height_o="1270" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/990c7ae3036da1d31eee9542440f6780bd981105650458a01c305b77a7e54b25/gc-social-justice.png" data-mid="37032451" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/990c7ae3036da1d31eee9542440f6780bd981105650458a01c305b77a7e54b25/gc-social-justice.png" /> <img width="2200" height="1279" width_o="2200" height_o="1279" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/7b877a8b0d1ae3aa00bce379bd75bed4ef177a82ca1beeb304f2851157b59c97/gc-home-hero.jpg" data-mid="34432017" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/7b877a8b0d1ae3aa00bce379bd75bed4ef177a82ca1beeb304f2851157b59c97/gc-home-hero.jpg" /> <img width="805" height="1465" width_o="805" height_o="1465" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/2e709efa4ca3f2a56e8d38734ef65b85c96ef458f4fce0c43321f29c77a40041/home.png" data-mid="31514045" border="0" data-scale="40" alt="➊ ② ③" data-caption="➊ ② ③" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/805/i/2e709efa4ca3f2a56e8d38734ef65b85c96ef458f4fce0c43321f29c77a40041/home.png" /> <img width="805" height="1465" width_o="805" height_o="1465" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/19fcfdcfa9991cd77c18674eb0e41620ce52698339c0fc1338c45827bbb64db6/academics.png" data-mid="31514044" border="0" alt="① ➋ ③" data-caption="① ➋ ③" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/805/i/19fcfdcfa9991cd77c18674eb0e41620ce52698339c0fc1338c45827bbb64db6/academics.png" /> <img width="805" height="1465" width_o="805" height_o="1465" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/ca8d96f11ee4807259d22f190429edb6c28e27f42a6a93e1904bc961a5d9d4f2/sociology.png" data-mid="31514043" border="0" alt="① ② ➌ " data-caption="① ② ➌ " src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/805/i/ca8d96f11ee4807259d22f190429edb6c28e27f42a6a93e1904bc961a5d9d4f2/sociology.png" /> <img width="805" height="390" width_o="805" height_o="390" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/31d7cbeeae3cad07b5c08ca0d12650d6b02d82bf24c8cb71d08a6aa20699c7b1/cusor3.gif" data-mid="31457238" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/805/i/31d7cbeeae3cad07b5c08ca0d12650d6b02d82bf24c8cb71d08a6aa20699c7b1/cusor3.gif" /> <img width="1400" height="793" width_o="1400" height_o="793" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/afec0c1416586a871acf0b92af35bada7e5da83d5b2fe5d778bdea302c302658/typepalette.jpg" data-mid="30714599" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/afec0c1416586a871acf0b92af35bada7e5da83d5b2fe5d778bdea302c302658/typepalette.jpg" /> The refreshed identity livens up the brand while maintaining the visual hierarchy and relationships internal teams were comfortable using.&nbsp; <img width="2000" height="1154" width_o="2000" height_o="1154" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/27773993323e5bd434cafcb456f307f80970adad4d4e5ef06dfa3a60d436cf57/laptop-search.png" data-mid="31708560" border="0" data-scale="100" alt="◦&bull;&bull;&bull;" data-caption="◦•••" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/27773993323e5bd434cafcb456f307f80970adad4d4e5ef06dfa3a60d436cf57/laptop-search.png" /> <img width="2200" height="1270" width_o="2200" height_o="1270" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/d144b0eea32b17890d89924eec9c9e6a3caf38a3dc14d2a7ca98a28b18a6c3a8/gc-people.png" data-mid="37032273" border="0" alt="&bull;◦&bull;&bull;" data-caption="•◦••" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/d144b0eea32b17890d89924eec9c9e6a3caf38a3dc14d2a7ca98a28b18a6c3a8/gc-people.png" /> <img width="2000" height="1154" width_o="2000" height_o="1154" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/495061315b6f818482e0a1a98f0b41fc9f6f9e6219a80abf61bb69f130b846b5/laptop-physics.png" data-mid="31620696" border="0" alt="&bull;&bull;◦&bull;" data-caption="••◦•" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/495061315b6f818482e0a1a98f0b41fc9f6f9e6219a80abf61bb69f130b846b5/laptop-physics.png" /> <img width="2000" height="1154" width_o="2000" height_o="1154" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/44cfbfa43cb3def36ef726bafb930aa148ea7839573605a6a3cedd2c12900b5a/laptop-lincoln.png" data-mid="31691410" border="0" alt="&bull;&bull;&bull;◦" data-caption="•••◦" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/44cfbfa43cb3def36ef726bafb930aa148ea7839573605a6a3cedd2c12900b5a/laptop-lincoln.png" /> Designing an experience with the liberal arts in mind The astronomical cost of college has become increasingly prohibitive to all but the most privileged. The blame for this has been laid at the feet of the colleges themselves, and not altogether by the political right, where being uneducated has been made out to be a kind of virtue, a synecdoche for uncomplicated honest living, but also by left-moving liberals, where the free-college movement has cast mainline institutions as villainous robber barons. These characterizations bother me for reasons I won't get into much here, other than to occasionally point out both extremes are based on ideological grounds rather than historical fact, and unfairly diminish the federal government’s role in passing national debt onto individual students. My job for Gettysburg wasn’t to do public relations anyway, either for college in general or the humanities in particular, whose enrollments nationwide have declined so sharply that some colleges have eliminated them altogether. But this decline is just too hard to ignore. Take University of Wisconsin–Stevens Point, for instance, who dropped art, philosophy, language, history, but not graphic design, presumably because of its status as a trade, though without its antedisciplines it’s been so thoroughly denatured I have difficulty imagining the actual curriculum. Gone too are American studies, sociology, political science. Taking the changes as a whole you see Stevens kept only what was immediately serviceable to the market, eliminating liberal arts ambiguity for the non-branching paths of a trade school. Other liberal arts colleges less interested in forsaking their belief systems to make enrollment goals have instead adopted marketing language around outcomes and career placement. Naturally part of convincing a student that your college is the one for them is giving these kinds of assurances. <img width="400" height="522" width_o="400" height_o="522" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/f63bc128261f47342297099d003f1dc666fc5eb9c2060c6523b896f15d500273/gettysburg-1970s.jpg" data-mid="37033426" border="0" data-scale="11" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/400/i/f63bc128261f47342297099d003f1dc666fc5eb9c2060c6523b896f15d500273/gettysburg-1970s.jpg" /> Basing the design off 1970s materials had greater significance than just aesthetic: Reagan’s policies, namely financial deregulation and restrictions on federal funding for education, marks the beginning of higher education’s transformation from place of self-discovery to vocational bootcamp. Returning to Gettysburg’s 1970s look squared with the overall site strategy. Still, I wouldn’t say many colleges fully embrace ambiguity. Southern Illinois University–Carbondale on the other hand has totally dissolved academic departments to streamline operations, cut costs, and eliminate “bureaucratic, artificial boundaries.” Insiders are dubious of its honesty, but at least on paper chancellor Carlo Montemagno’s plan reflects a core liberal arts belief in that a blended, unbounded education facilitates innovative interactions between disciplines. Interestingly when I met with Gettysburg they followed a similar model in spirit, organizing programs on the website strictly by alphabet and making use of departments only when administrative scaffolding couldn't be avoided. Eventually we learned the faculty’s reverence for this arrangement was out of deference to one another, since any other organizing principle inflicted a top to bottom ordering of importance, and all programs were, in theory, equally important. (I’m not blowing smoke, either. We proposed departmental organization as an option and several faculty members on one committee were, let’s say, vociferous in their dislike.) <img width="600" height="496" width_o="600" height_o="496" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/a4f69b2221de823aaeca0d150128f2e434b0af096a1afa7ae52faf3dbacbab93/lessisabore.jpg" data-mid="37026675" border="0" data-scale="34" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/600/i/a4f69b2221de823aaeca0d150128f2e434b0af096a1afa7ae52faf3dbacbab93/lessisabore.jpg" />Less is a bore: The original, apolitical yet still deeply political academics landing page. While noble, this presented a couple of unusual challenges. The first was that, being flat—fair is, I think, the better word—the College was ‘showing its underwear,’ exposing its political life on the website and thereby imposing a sort of featurelessness on the user which made certain parts of the site—arguably the most important sections—difficult to use and uninteresting to look at. (That old designerly saying, “if everything is important, then nothing is important,” doesn’t work in the reverse: When nothing is important….) The bigger trouble, though, is how a design ethic like this can be taken. In the wrong setting deliberate non-design, already a contradiction in terms, is liable to come off less egalitarian and democratic than unimportant and uncared-for. Recognizing that we saw two ways forward. Either steer the College toward more traditional ways of web-thinking—which would contemporize the site, achieve basic parity with other schools, but perhaps go against their values—or take a cue from their own attempts, bushwhack our way through a jungle of unknowns, and conceive of a total experience, from brand to content model, based on their liberal arts epistemology.&nbsp; <img width="600" height="600" width_o="600" height_o="600" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/3026396c21653d678efe9a96673b46f42295a9fbbcbf4bbd7e3ec5254cfecd66/tesseract.jpg" data-mid="36944966" border="0" data-scale="43" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/600/i/3026396c21653d678efe9a96673b46f42295a9fbbcbf4bbd7e3ec5254cfecd66/tesseract.jpg" /> The four stages of intellectual and ethical development A second and validating source of inspiration came from researcher William G. Perry, whose groundbreaking studies on undergraduates correlated students’ intellectual and ethical development to non-linear positions which he advised educators should look for in their students and tailor their lesson plans to. In short, a student matures from simple dualism (a thing is either this or that, right or wrong), to multiplicity (an individual must make up their own mind), to relativism (one makes peace with uncertainty), and finally commitment (concrete belief—all of these I simplify). <img width="1055" height="331" width_o="1055" height_o="331" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/fead63c6ca1255849f003dc1c8675c64fb719cec417ff84bc56626083e64e248/4d.png" data-mid="36938017" border="0" data-scale="33" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/fead63c6ca1255849f003dc1c8675c64fb719cec417ff84bc56626083e64e248/4d.png" /> A way to think about the three main stages: dualism (2d), multiplicity (3d), and relativism (4d). Their presentation implies linear progression, but belief systems can retreat as well as advance. Image source The difficulty with this scheme is not only that students mature at different speeds and have to be taught accordingly, but that each individual—like the rest of us—contains multitudes: meaning a person who has grown past an either/or view of one topic and found meaning within its many contextual layers likely still has dualistic views on a variety of other subjects. This has obvious implications to coursework and teaching methods but also more broadly can be applied to a person’s value system, in which views such as political positions may not always be in agreement and almost certainly won’t be evenly developed. I owe a debt to Liz Freedman, an admissions assistant at Butler University, whose brief essay warning against premature major selection brought Perry’s work to my attention. Citing available statistics on major selection and abandonment she makes a strong case for colleges fully prohibiting major selection until at least the sophomore year, the earliest point at which a student's intellectual and ethical development can have matured into “multiplicity”: Perry’s name for the rebellious stage when lived experience has shot through the child’s black and white world and opened the mind to cognitive independence. As Freedman hints, this is coeval with physical independence: “First-year students are still attempting to understand their own identity and, having lived a majority of their lives under someone else’s guidance, they may not yet be able to come to legitimate conclusions about themselves. This raises the question, without knowing one’s self, how can one effectively choose a major?” <img width="517" height="233" width_o="517" height_o="233" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/6bab1580d9624cba858b3f48f413bf4112126f1c235de1872c5244b7148f018a/ucla-paper.jpg" data-mid="37023905" border="0" data-scale="32" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/517/i/6bab1580d9624cba858b3f48f413bf4112126f1c235de1872c5244b7148f018a/ucla-paper.jpg" /> Scan from a 1974 issue of the Daily Bruin, UCLA’s student paper. Prior to the 1980s it was not uncommon for colleges and universities to dissuade first-years from declaring a major. So what happens? Well, pressured to declare a major, dualistic students reflexively turn to authority figures for the “right” answer, resulting in an “uneducated, unrelated, and ineffective decision not based on their true personal goals, interests, and values.” (Look at major attrition rates. One of the most flexible and hirable degrees, math, is abandoned by half of all students, either because of missed expectations or poor alignment. That math suffers the highest rate of attrition is probably not a surprise, since mathematics is, by its very nature, perfectly suited to unambiguous dichotomies, and would appeal to worldviews inclined to absolutes.) Finally, to address the disconnect, Freedman recommends a culture shift toward “the use of appreciative advising, which is asking positive, open-ended questions when helping students consider goals, passions, and interests—all of which are vital aspects of major choice.” <img width="805" height="390" width_o="805" height_o="390" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/31d7cbeeae3cad07b5c08ca0d12650d6b02d82bf24c8cb71d08a6aa20699c7b1/cusor3.gif" data-mid="31457238" border="0" data-no-zoom src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/805/i/31d7cbeeae3cad07b5c08ca0d12650d6b02d82bf24c8cb71d08a6aa20699c7b1/cusor3.gif" /> Open-ended search / confessional <img width="1715" height="875" width_o="1715" height_o="875" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/8f674235da29f4e361cb05bed49299523e4f902f9067470c1c7f93b44778d96d/spreadsheetzoo.png" data-mid="92960631" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/8f674235da29f4e361cb05bed49299523e4f902f9067470c1c7f93b44778d96d/spreadsheetzoo.png" /> Illustration of how majors, partner programs, courses, and student stories are layered into searches for interest keywords based on taxonomic relationships and relevancy. <img width="627" height="620" width_o="627" height_o="620" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/2da3cadcbc91a80591378eeb0e60791440d9395b70b87f1c5ea35cdb79544254/tiers.jpg" data-mid="31483931" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/627/i/2da3cadcbc91a80591378eeb0e60791440d9395b70b87f1c5ea35cdb79544254/tiers.jpg" /> Supporting research Several other sources, including a study of how these decisions may affect students into adulthood, helped guide the UX strategy and ultimately sell the concept through committee. The tl;dr of all that research is, the decline in support for the humanities, and the rush to pick a major tied to a high financial payout—nearly all of which are in STEM, save maybe law—can be connected to economic policies and attitudes rooted in Reagan-era legislation. As a consequence Millennials don’t find the same meaning in work as previous generations have because the limitless future promised by neoliberalism demanded they be inculcated into generalist automata for the sake of hitherto unknown methods of globalized production. They have jobs—many jobs, sometimes several at one time, in fact—but not careers, and few identify with any particular calling, all of which rolls into the drastic decline in work identity. And perhaps this would be fine, if it meant that the Protestant work ethic had loosened its grip on labor as a means of stratifying American society. Of course, we know this isn’t true. Remote communication tools have all but eliminated the shrinking hyphen in the home-office divide such that Americans can now claim the dubious distinction of “most overworked in the world.” So if Perry is right about meaning being essential to identity, and we spend most of our waking life working, then we’ve basically denied an entire generation an essential metaphysics—and not only by pushing them away from the humanities. On the quantitative end of things, neuroscientists recently observed that the brain doesn’t actually develop by age 10, as long believed, but much later, sometime in the mid-20s, with the frontal lobes, the locus of decision making, the last to fully connect. The study which NPR reported on in 2010 concludes—to no one’s surprise—that teenagers lack foresight at a very basic, physiological level, a fact which only time and lived experience can correct. Which leads me to think either Perry was ahead of his time or, more likely, we have fallen behind in ours. Marilynne Robinson: “It has been characteristic of American education that it has offered students a great variety of fields of study and a great freedom to choose among them. It has served as a mighty paradigm for the kind of self-discovery Americans have historically valued. Now this idea has gone into eclipse.” <img width="2200" height="1270" width_o="2200" height_o="1270" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/990c7ae3036da1d31eee9542440f6780bd981105650458a01c305b77a7e54b25/gc-social-justice.png" data-mid="37032451" border="0" data-scale="100" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/990c7ae3036da1d31eee9542440f6780bd981105650458a01c305b77a7e54b25/gc-social-justice.png" /> <img width="2200" height="1270" width_o="2200" height_o="1270" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/d144b0eea32b17890d89924eec9c9e6a3caf38a3dc14d2a7ca98a28b18a6c3a8/gc-people.png" data-mid="37032273" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/d144b0eea32b17890d89924eec9c9e6a3caf38a3dc14d2a7ca98a28b18a6c3a8/gc-people.png" /> The search was pre-populated with terms which mapped both directly and indirectly to major programs. Broad, abstract keywords yielded some of the more interesting branching paths. The aim was to give confidence that, at Gettysburg, students could figure it out—whatever it ends up being.&nbsp; ’70s throwback: “This is exactly what the liberal arts is supposed to do” Inspired by Freedman’s suggestion for open-ended, exploratory dialogue, the academic interest search collates and contextualizes the various academic enrichment opportunities tied to a keyword. These are not programmatically driven (see IFAW) but tightly woven together by subject matter experts who have the career insights to do professional advising. The point is to provide, in measured doses, wide exposure to unexpected disciplines or activities which connect, sometimes unexpectedly, to the student's interest or preferences. For example, a young person vaguely interested in “data” may have been prejudiced to mathematics, statistics, economics. This is the direction a generalized audience would point her. But manipulating data structures is essential to a host of other disciplines not typically associated with numerical patterns: wildlife biology, climate science, anthropology, forestry. In fact I read something earlier this year by a data scientist theologian, a paradox if there ever was one: binary absolutes in league with the ineffable. No doubt there are even stranger hybrids. And therein lies the beauty of a science-sensitive liberal arts education: how the vital commingling of heterogenous knowledge systems engenders newness, innovation, and most importantly, self-discovery. Multiplicity rests on this. The question, of course, is whether a college website can bump a student from one mental position to another. No, I don't think it can. But I do believe good design and good framing can help prime students to see their options for what they truly are in a liberal arts tradition: like themselves, deeply interconnected, unfinished, and still unfolding. And as one excited faculty member said after a presentation: “This is exactly what the liberal arts is supposed to do.” https://work.mleland.com/Cirrus-Logic-web-id-refresh-2015 Wed, 20 Feb 2019 04:47:32 +0000 MJ https://work.mleland.com/Cirrus-Logic-web-id-refresh-2015 <img width="685" height="400" width_o="685" height_o="400" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/7c85a8dbd20596ba2680dc9d4a6e41a7d0c327f95ae24b8689e6adbefc5ee5f4/hotspots.jpg" data-mid="35848941" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/685/i/7c85a8dbd20596ba2680dc9d4a6e41a7d0c327f95ae24b8689e6adbefc5ee5f4/hotspots.jpg" /> Cirrus Logic: Brand authenticity, from the inside out Site redesign, brand refresh. Strategy, creative direction, design concept. Made at Happy Cog, late 2015.&nbsp; Information architecture: Amanda Buck, Aura Seltzer. Designer-in-charge: Amanda Buck. Design support and illustration: Dana Pavlichko. Front-end developer: Stephen Caver. Project manager: Andréa Pié. Cirrus Logic is a semiconductor and audio technology company based in Austin, Texas. Quietly they supply a significant portion of the chips that go into the iPhone. Semiconductors may evoke sterile images of clean rooms and static-free suits, but Cirrus’ staff is largely made up of passionate musicians and audiophiles, hence the motto “audio is in everything we do.” The aim of the visual identity and website redesign was to better reflect this aspect of their company culture. Drawing inspiration from the doppler effect, the new visual language references how sound modulates relative to an observer by placing interaction points inside a series of concentric rings.&nbsp; <img width="1400" height="1217" width_o="1400" height_o="1217" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/030dbe147c9d5a35794ff6da6c2080440dc2ea074b7c8b234706549c36f11e9e/cirrusrocks.jpg" data-mid="35848961" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/030dbe147c9d5a35794ff6da6c2080440dc2ea074b7c8b234706549c36f11e9e/cirrusrocks.jpg" /> <img width="1400" height="1217" width_o="1400" height_o="1217" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/a48355ee493c38e8b78dfb8f56e2c4fea0d6adc0f718680592ccd3415661c045/cirrushurricane.jpg" data-mid="35848960" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/a48355ee493c38e8b78dfb8f56e2c4fea0d6adc0f718680592ccd3415661c045/cirrushurricane.jpg" /> Improving the marketing side of the website was instrumental to attracting new talent and satisfying investors. Most users of the site have historically been engineers. The redesign took great pains to make the dense technical information they need easier to filter and browse regardless of device. <img width="1216" height="754" width_o="1216" height_o="754" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/dc90a49647d57b23d4da55b57ed922a094f7f92dcc24ef612fbe3a1f251b0cb6/cirrusmobile.png" data-mid="35848935" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/dc90a49647d57b23d4da55b57ed922a094f7f92dcc24ef612fbe3a1f251b0cb6/cirrusmobile.png" /> <img width="1400" height="1229" width_o="1400" height_o="1229" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/3bcaaa9c9a58c5d427f02343a08a5589b2c48ba7813254b833085ca2f499639b/cirrus-parasearch.jpg" data-mid="35848934" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/3bcaaa9c9a58c5d427f02343a08a5589b2c48ba7813254b833085ca2f499639b/cirrus-parasearch.jpg" /> <img width="1400" height="457" width_o="1400" height_o="457" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/6ed6ec21cb194d877052419e1fccdd5f0e274fd5504385914ac96e99ff752941/cirrusjapanese.jpg" data-mid="35848956" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/6ed6ec21cb194d877052419e1fccdd5f0e274fd5504385914ac96e99ff752941/cirrusjapanese.jpg" /> <img width="1400" height="1184" width_o="1400" height_o="1184" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/201a29a7e9e04ae2c9b60953fdecddb4ea81797a53bddc2652944255a1b42915/cirrusproduct.jpg" data-mid="36019843" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/201a29a7e9e04ae2c9b60953fdecddb4ea81797a53bddc2652944255a1b42915/cirrusproduct.jpg" /> <img width="685" height="400" width_o="685" height_o="400" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/5ec93c55b08d9272ae7c827413fb0f51f28a80888f174c61d6d14744544b6559/device-grid.png" data-mid="35848942" border="0" alt=" " data-caption=" " src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/685/i/5ec93c55b08d9272ae7c827413fb0f51f28a80888f174c61d6d14744544b6559/device-grid.png" /> <img width="685" height="400" width_o="685" height_o="400" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/7b36bb22d22efe1ab6a351338d086827f29e6fe2ee94464250a0a1e9b9f6752b/camera.jpg" data-mid="35848940" border="0" alt=" " data-caption=" " src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/685/i/7b36bb22d22efe1ab6a351338d086827f29e6fe2ee94464250a0a1e9b9f6752b/camera.jpg" /> <img width="685" height="400" width_o="685" height_o="400" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/0d137f1249566af95c6e774d0fb9e02ef5cd2d4564f721c3d047a2005799ce19/watch.jpg" data-mid="35848947" border="0" alt=" " data-caption=" " src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/685/i/0d137f1249566af95c6e774d0fb9e02ef5cd2d4564f721c3d047a2005799ce19/watch.jpg" /> <img width="685" height="400" width_o="685" height_o="400" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/cae837da6940d807b043774d1ea209b06a043c44b2932910e237a672317cb5b3/speaker.jpg" data-mid="35848953" border="0" alt=" " data-caption=" " src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/685/i/cae837da6940d807b043774d1ea209b06a043c44b2932910e237a672317cb5b3/speaker.jpg" /> Leaving no stone unturned, the entire brand language was refreshed during this process, including technical illustrations and diagrams.&nbsp; <img width="600" height="80" width_o="600" height_o="80" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/287749d30c35b3a5d9c441d8b5e32b847a43d010661eb3fb984286ef6eb31c41/signalchain.png" data-mid="35848945" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/600/i/287749d30c35b3a5d9c441d8b5e32b847a43d010661eb3fb984286ef6eb31c41/signalchain.png" /> <img width="929" height="611" width_o="929" height_o="611" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/df8a8d40653b593952f81f763c1dca23fa5867272af9c0bbc8b8d550deed810d/Screen-Shot-2017-12-12-at-11.13.01-PM.png" data-mid="35848948" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/929/i/df8a8d40653b593952f81f763c1dca23fa5867272af9c0bbc8b8d550deed810d/Screen-Shot-2017-12-12-at-11.13.01-PM.png" /> <img width="1400" height="1184" width_o="1400" height_o="1184" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/0f59f5d39b38c8bf0ab08962fd2c30b062108acb61efdb0ce358daf253eaed22/cirrusworkhere.jpg" data-mid="35848937" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/0f59f5d39b38c8bf0ab08962fd2c30b062108acb61efdb0ce358daf253eaed22/cirrusworkhere.jpg" /> The color palette was updated to a kind of candy assortment of pinks, yellows, oranges, and purples to complement and, at the same time, enliven the corporate blue and gray.&nbsp; Type is GT Walsheim, GT Pressura, and Georgia.&nbsp; Information architecture: Amanda Buck, Aura Seltzer. Designer-in-charge: Amanda Buck. Design support and illustration: Dana Pavlichko. Front-end developer: Stephen Caver. Project manager: Andréa Pié. https://work.mleland.com/Rogers-on-Demand-product-horizon-2011 Fri, 01 Jun 2018 00:45:33 +0000 MJ https://work.mleland.com/Rogers-on-Demand-product-horizon-2011 <img width="2105" height="3267" width_o="2105" height_o="3267" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/f71517b4ffdc74476be553d0ea46825be1a8388fc385aae7a1ba217c7901691a/304a6a0f9ba0e5f19ccc013a38695610.jpg" data-mid="23101492" border="0" data-scale="26" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/f71517b4ffdc74476be553d0ea46825be1a8388fc385aae7a1ba217c7901691a/304a6a0f9ba0e5f19ccc013a38695610.jpg" /> Rogers on Demand: Exploring a futurescape Digital product design. Art direction, design. Made at Empathy Lab, 2011.&nbsp; <img width="2000" height="1080" width_o="2000" height_o="1080" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/9afc2ef13e965a098289b62c5fe08f9138fb88d48f29448231fb785b39d7fc40/rodo-top.png" data-mid="23337657" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/9afc2ef13e965a098289b62c5fe08f9138fb88d48f29448231fb785b39d7fc40/rodo-top.png" /> <img width="377" height="773" width_o="377" height_o="773" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/6a6b532c23018f11aef64b3b11822275024e5a8035306b6ad3419697a3fd1b46/rodoiphone3.png" data-mid="17389072" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/377/i/6a6b532c23018f11aef64b3b11822275024e5a8035306b6ad3419697a3fd1b46/rodoiphone3.png" /> In the book Speculative Everything, authors Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby describe a three-cone model for speculative design thinking: The first cone, the probable, “is where most designers operate.” It’s what we can assume will occur with a reasonable amount of certainty. Next there’s the plausible, for “exploring alternative futures” which can help ready an organization for “a number of different futures.” Plausible futures have a direct link to the present and are not technological fantasy. And last, the possible, “the space of speculative culture —writing, cinema, science fiction—” where we conceive of loosely believable events serving to “make [the impossible] acceptable.” To these three Dunne and Raby introduce a fourth cone, a shaded area of preferable futures: imagined realities which engender discussion and debate “about the futures people really want.” By speculating smartly, the designer “can help set in place today factors that will increase the probability of more desirable futures happening.” <img width="457" height="267" width_o="457" height_o="267" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/4f858cfdcd5f17948ab2bd6e1686f46a181d9254305c67fd03a2cc51fdfb0fa7/speculativecone7.png" data-mid="17389076" border="0" data-scale="38" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/457/i/4f858cfdcd5f17948ab2bd6e1686f46a181d9254305c67fd03a2cc51fdfb0fa7/speculativecone7.png" /> We can apply the cone model to any kind of design—all design is to some degree speculative—but in my own experience I find it describes most closely the creative roadmapping involved in product design.&nbsp; <img width="2000" height="1080" width_o="2000" height_o="1080" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/b35a043580bdf27c2bfec17c78267a3218db0ac3e4a70c23aaef59d939664ada/player.png" data-mid="23337654" border="0" data-scale="100" alt="○&bull;&bull;" data-caption="○••" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/b35a043580bdf27c2bfec17c78267a3218db0ac3e4a70c23aaef59d939664ada/player.png" /> <img width="2000" height="1080" width_o="2000" height_o="1080" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/3090f39fbbecc26bc26f1af341d9431509c12531cbdb9aa8934597f8d9abe4bf/rodo-middle.png" data-mid="23337656" border="0" alt="&bull;○&bull;" data-caption="•○•" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/3090f39fbbecc26bc26f1af341d9431509c12531cbdb9aa8934597f8d9abe4bf/rodo-middle.png" /> <img width="2000" height="1080" width_o="2000" height_o="1080" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/5e46a47eec1e550ba5730cde288ca7b4eb6cadbf67dcfb07937aac2a2fd78129/rodo-bottom.png" data-mid="23337658" border="0" alt="&bull;&bull;○" data-caption="••○" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/5e46a47eec1e550ba5730cde288ca7b4eb6cadbf67dcfb07937aac2a2fd78129/rodo-bottom.png" /> Rogers on Demand Online began as a speculative comp I designed for a pitch in 2008. The year before Netflix had just expanded into streaming media. It was enough to win the gig, and a subsequent iteration imagined the service as its own sub-brand of Rogers, uniquely named and nuanced, for which Rogers had contracted a branding partner. This version soft-launched in 2009. Following two years of Agile sprints the service expanded into the experience early speculation promised. But two years on the service was at the mercy of decisions made without the benefit of hindsight: much of the site had been parceled and sold to channel partners who were obfuscating the RODO brand with their own, neither the architecture nor interface aged well—the set-top box translated poorly to the we—and the performance was sagging under the weight of an ad model ill-suited to a video platform. The service needed retooling from the ground up.&nbsp;The speculative comps shown here—a homepage and iPad and iPhone apps—were some of the result of that speculative exercise. “This potential to use the language of design to pose questions, provoke and inspire is conceptual design’s defining feature,” wrote Dunne and Raby. Which isn’t an indictment of incrementalism. Product design this size doesn’t generally work on a major-release model. But by its nature incrementalism allows for only a narrow, predictable future that limits the freedom of the imagination to wander into newness and “unsettle the present.” Futurescaping, though, is an explosion, a rewriting of the beginning, a chance to act on if-I-knew-then-what-I-know-now, the chrysalis by which we might actually make the idealized and unreal, real. <img width="1255" height="887" width_o="1255" height_o="887" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/9eaff581d24300ba9de0776e1ab2694e63deac16c4b6fc089c23ef8cf089998c/rodoipad.png" data-mid="17389071" border="0" data-scale="100" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/9eaff581d24300ba9de0776e1ab2694e63deac16c4b6fc089c23ef8cf089998c/rodoipad.png" /> https://work.mleland.com/Homepage Fri, 01 Jun 2018 00:45:52 +0000 MJ https://work.mleland.com/Homepage Select projects2011–18 https://work.mleland.com/Citi-Bike-Nike-Biketown-green-design-system-2016 Fri, 01 Jun 2018 00:45:25 +0000 MJ https://work.mleland.com/Citi-Bike-Nike-Biketown-green-design-system-2016 $(document).ready(function(){ // Selected states + scroll // Cache selectors var lastId, topMenu = $("#mainNav,#mainNav-white"), topMenuHeight = topMenu.outerHeight()+1, // All list items menuItems = topMenu.find("a"), // Anchors corresponding to menu items scrollItems = menuItems.map(function(){ var item = $($(this).attr("href")); if (item.length) { return item; } }); // Bind click handler to menu items // so we can get a fancy scroll animation menuItems.click(function(e){ var href = $(this).attr("href"), offsetTop = href === "#" ? 0 : $(href).offset().top-topMenuHeight+1; $('html, body').stop().animate({ scrollTop: offsetTop }, 850); e.preventDefault(); }); // Bind to scroll $(window).scroll(function(){ // Get container scroll position var fromTop = $(this).scrollTop()+topMenuHeight; // Get id of current scroll item var cur = scrollItems.map(function(){ if ($(this).offset().top < fromTop) return this; }); // Get the id of the current element cur = cur[cur.length-1]; var id = cur && cur.length ? cur[0].id : ""; if (lastId !== id) { lastId = id; // Set/remove active class menuItems .parent().removeClass("active") .end().filter("[href=#"+id+"]").parent().addClass("active"); } }); $("button, button1").click(function(){ $(".row-2").slideToggle(200,"swing"); }); }); ︎ ↔ initial concept simplification framework One system to rule them all Multi-site system. Strategy, research, direction, design. Made at Happy Cog, early 2016. Webby nominee.&nbsp;Designer-in-charge: Amanda Buck. Front-end developer: Dan DeLauro. Project manager: Abby Fretz. <img width="1500" height="4150" width_o="1500" height_o="4150" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/b943c25913b91c4ce1eaee24b0f909989af80414644fcf2015d1add3b7034eaf/home-1.jpg" data-mid="17389017" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/b943c25913b91c4ce1eaee24b0f909989af80414644fcf2015d1add3b7034eaf/home-1.jpg" /> The original concept has a very Citi-fied interface and layout. In the first concept, above, the layout and interface heavily references the overlapping pixel grid emblazoned on bikes and vans, but a literal attempt at ‘brand as interface’ was actually less than ideal. (I remain rather fond of it though.) Because Citi Bike is identical in service to other major-city bikeshares administered by Motivate, the design system needed to be easily adaptable to all of them: both those already in operation and those to be established. Launching a branded web experience for each new city was at loggerheads with how quickly and efficiently Motivate could deploy a bikeshare in a new city. Finalization of the agreement with the brand sponsor and host city to the first station installation was often mere weeks, so rolling out a branded experience for each new bikeshare would have led to delays and operational losses. The final design then aimed to be a kind of cure-all: templatized, confined, but still brandable.&nbsp; <img width="1250" height="3467" width_o="1250" height_o="3467" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/0a7b54cd514f890554baa892960a47d9b4664ed52bf73b72ff6c99f424eaff7b/home3.png" data-mid="17389024" border="0" data-scale="100" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/0a7b54cd514f890554baa892960a47d9b4664ed52bf73b72ff6c99f424eaff7b/home3.png" /> <img width="1250" height="3467" width_o="1250" height_o="3467" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/13cf2d29ca4e631a21a11c0c38d27bb5f00d12bab4d744af16495c1a1dcca825/howitworks-copy.png" data-mid="17389023" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/13cf2d29ca4e631a21a11c0c38d27bb5f00d12bab4d744af16495c1a1dcca825/howitworks-copy.png" /> What sometimes gets lost in the implications of human-centered design is all the humans between designer and user. An argument could be made this deployment chain of people matters as much (if not more than) the customers and users the thing is intended for. Untold products have failed because the design was ‘user-centric’ to the exclusion of all its handlers.In Motivate’s case, the ‘white glove’ CMS and design system my team developed satisfied the needs of all users, internal and external, client and customer, while the balance between flexibility and fixity left plenty of space for brand sponsors such as Nike and Ford to play. One of the cleverer implementations was the use of SVG icons which would adapt to the brand hex colors specified in the CMS. The system was nominated for a Webby in 2016 in the green design category, I believe because bikeshares are considered a transporation alternative, though the design’s intent certainly fits the bill. Designed for longevity, this is as sustainable as web design gets. <img width="1530" height="1997" width_o="1530" height_o="1997" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/13c6a33462e53519b244eb6829e0d7e8233da71270c418a0a62328cbf285b837/Fordgo.png" data-mid="17389028" border="0" data-scale="100" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/13c6a33462e53519b244eb6829e0d7e8233da71270c418a0a62328cbf285b837/Fordgo.png" /> <img width="1530" height="1997" width_o="1530" height_o="1997" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/de804eb5a601b72248b2a05b8aab27da54947d283daa1d4f8339a4513b7161c1/divvy2.png" data-mid="17389027" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/de804eb5a601b72248b2a05b8aab27da54947d283daa1d4f8339a4513b7161c1/divvy2.png" /> <img width="1500" height="1959" width_o="1500" height_o="1959" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/21e7a97b6dd4a59d46fbd266f2e18c1c3f2a59cd88dbd8bea9226c1f38555f67/motiviate-nike.jpg" data-mid="23075786" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/21e7a97b6dd4a59d46fbd266f2e18c1c3f2a59cd88dbd8bea9226c1f38555f67/motiviate-nike.jpg" /> https://work.mleland.com/Club-Nintendo-form-ever-follows-fun-2011 Fri, 01 Jun 2018 00:45:22 +0000 MJ https://work.mleland.com/Club-Nintendo-form-ever-follows-fun-2011 <img width="970" height="700" width_o="970" height_o="700" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/84d37f1c181b02ec83aa967faf70a49f0ac3325863a2d152b10f92c972c2e53f/smbth.jpg" data-mid="17388982" border="0" data-scale="52" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/970/i/84d37f1c181b02ec83aa967faf70a49f0ac3325863a2d152b10f92c972c2e53f/smbth.jpg" /> Club Nintendo: Form ever follows fun Site refresh. Art direction and design. Made at Happy Cog, 2011.&nbsp;Information architecture: Kevin Hoffman. Creative director: Chris Cashdollar. Front-end dev: Allison Wagner. Project manager: Brett Harned. <img width="1200" height="1229" width_o="1200" height_o="1229" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/6c43637a0801d258674b7081e8d1127b7ab93d84fb5ffab8abbd8000908790b3/smashbros.jpg" data-mid="17388986" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/6c43637a0801d258674b7081e8d1127b7ab93d84fb5ffab8abbd8000908790b3/smashbros.jpg" /> <img width="1200" height="1229" width_o="1200" height_o="1229" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/dc08f2280424fe89e227aec37a69ffc387ab6675d155b65bb4ca173371f47ae6/cn-home1.jpg" data-mid="17388980" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/dc08f2280424fe89e227aec37a69ffc387ab6675d155b65bb4ca173371f47ae6/cn-home1.jpg" /> <img width="1200" height="1229" width_o="1200" height_o="1229" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/73b1aa2bc6a740e08c794bab0aa180e09ce406415cd50630a722bd2df3e5c8d0/cn-home2.jpg" data-mid="17388981" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/73b1aa2bc6a740e08c794bab0aa180e09ce406415cd50630a722bd2df3e5c8d0/cn-home2.jpg" /> <img width="1200" height="1229" width_o="1200" height_o="1229" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/cb04d1c279f61c0a796ec7fcd6270a0d3520db4c6dba34193c73052a308202a0/cn-home-loggedin2.jpg" data-mid="17388984" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/cb04d1c279f61c0a796ec7fcd6270a0d3520db4c6dba34193c73052a308202a0/cn-home-loggedin2.jpg" /> <img width="1200" height="1229" width_o="1200" height_o="1229" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/fee6ef5ca9c39d630895823a506561a0385ffe5a5f2b81b494c7eb03a0e6e217/cn-game-1.jpg" data-mid="17388978" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/fee6ef5ca9c39d630895823a506561a0385ffe5a5f2b81b494c7eb03a0e6e217/cn-game-1.jpg" /> <img width="1000" height="450" width_o="1000" height_o="450" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/3ae00d376719411293b911f40f332ccd2fd1e3094ff4dc5164c1155643778c1a/cnextras.png" data-mid="17388985" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/3ae00d376719411293b911f40f332ccd2fd1e3094ff4dc5164c1155643778c1a/cnextras.png" /> Dan Mall • 16 Dec 2011@happycog That “Go!” button is probably the best button I’ve ever seen on a website. Beautiful stuff! Club Nintendo was a loyalty rewards program members used to register their games and devices, accumulating coins that could be exchanged for prizes. The redesign was popular with customers and led to increased conversions of over 20% in its first major test during the 2011 holiday season. Jason Tiernan • 16 Dec 2011@danielmall @happycog Can’t. Stop. Rolling over… Truth be told, this is pretty surface level stuff. The underlying architecture wasn’t significantly changed from the design it replaced. Only the homepage, which could be themed around flagship releases, saw a major revamp. Ultimately its success, I think, just came down to a little bit of Nintendo magic. https://work.mleland.com/Philly-com-blue-collar-intellectual-web-redesign-2015 Fri, 01 Jun 2018 00:45:24 +0000 MJ https://work.mleland.com/Philly-com-blue-collar-intellectual-web-redesign-2015 Philly.com: a Tale of Two Cities&nbsp; Redesign concept, unused. Art direction, design. Made at Happy Cog, July 2015. Collaborators: Dan Mall, Patrick Marsceill.&nbsp; Unlike other major cities along the 95 corridor, Philadelphia hasn’t been able to push its Revolutionary War history into the background.That’s unlikely to change while the municipal logo go-to remains the Liberty Bell (used again for the 2016 DNC, another squandered opportunity to rebrand the city as forward-looking), and so much of the infrastructure budget is centered around improvements along Independence Mall. This concept recontextualized Philly.com’s archival content based on the day’s events, rebranding the paper—and to some degree the city it speaks for—as an intellectual, tech-savvy influencer with a proud, blue-collar past. The site is set in Knockout and Caslon: Knockout as a nod to boxing posters (Philly is, after all, home to Rocky), Caslon because Benjamin Franklin seldom used anything else. The existing Philly.com red-dot logo is repurposed into a comments bubble. <img width="1600" height="4400" width_o="1600" height_o="4400" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/1818a46b20a9a909e7f3d4cb0666b0b241f5ce414955d0058bc28afccfdbdaeb/home.jpg" data-mid="17388997" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/1818a46b20a9a909e7f3d4cb0666b0b241f5ce414955d0058bc28afccfdbdaeb/home.jpg" />