Category: Uncategorized

Thinking about international, global intended design, I started my research for typography that is meant to be suitable for everyone’s needs.

While thinking about a universal typeface that suits the needs of the whole world, I want to recall to development of the idea of International Typographic Style, that emerged in Russia, the Netherlands, and Germany in the 1920s and was further developed by designers in Switzerland during the 1950s.
The style emerged from a desire to represent information objectively, free from the influence of associated meaning. In some way, this can be very useful considering that the typefaces like Helvetica could be endlessly interpreted for everything from signage (the New York City subway, for example) to web pages and logos.

This style was guided by the principles that design should be as invisible as possible. All traces of the designer’s subjectivity should be kept hidden in order to let the “core” of the work comes in the front.
The style highlights cleanness, readability, and objectivity. Many of the early International Typographic Style works featured typography as a primary design element in addition to its use in the text, which refers to the style’s name.

International Typographic Style thought us that this kind of typography can be applied to anything and used across the globe, but sometimes it could be helpful to think in the opposite direction.

While designers try to make the typeface that will suit the needs of every language, on the other hand, every language has to have the typeface that reflects its qualities the best. Before entering this sphere, we have to consider font psychology first.

Font psychology means, simply said, that the more specific the font style is, the more unique the brand personality can be, and the easier the brand recall.
Referring to font psychology Helvetica is the most popular and one of the more “readable”.
But font psychology is also connected with the users’ psychology. That is why I’m wondering, is it possible to associate certain fonts to a certain language to understand their meaning better?

Can font psychology influence our ability to compare and learn different languages faster?
What typeface is the best for designing the language app? Can it influence our ability to learn or our speed of making conclusions?
What do we have to think about, when designing for other languages?

All these questions lay open for now because we can not give a precise answer yet, but the truth is that every design has a goal. And by choosing the fonts that inspire the right emotional response in your audience, it helps you reach your goal.
That means that we can definitely choose the font that inspires people to learn and to find similarities and differences between different structures of part of sentences, and what fonts work the best for which language needs to be tested.

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Sources:

https://material.io/design/typography/language-support.html#language-considerations

https://en.99designs.at/mobile-app-design/contests/app-design-language-learning-472768

https://www.canva.com/learn/font-psychology/

The former conference program consists of dates, time, names of streams and names of the lecturers. All of the information is displayed on one sheet, which is confusing. In the app the information is well-structured so that every important information is clearly visible depending in the user’s input. As consumers, we’re accustomed to finding exactly what we need, where we expect it to be. And when we find it easily, it’s generally no coincidence. It’s usually the result of extensive user research and testing.

Information Architecture is the practice of organizing the information / content / functionality of an app or website so that it presents the best user experience it can, with information and services being easily usable and findable. These are 8 principles for optimizing an IA:

1. The principle of objects: Content should be treated as a living, breathing thing. It has life cycles, behaviors, and attributes.
2. The principle of choices: More is less. Keep the number of choices to a minimum.
3. The principle of disclosure: Show a preview of information that will help users understand what kind of information is hidden if they dig deeper.
4. The principle of exemplars: Show examples of content when describing the content of the categories.
5. The principle of front doors: Assume that at least 50% of users will use a different entry point than the home page.
6. The principle of multiple classifications: Offer users several different classification schemes to browse the site’s content.
7. The principle of focused navigation: Keep navigation simple and never mix different things.
8. The principle of growth: Assume that the content on the website will grow. Make sure the website is scalable.

This is the overview of the information architecture of the conference app:

The App solution is easily updatable and more sustainable than the paper solution. The userfriendly design helps visitors to find the Information they need. The App can be used on all mobile devices and the former version is available for iOS and Android.

Quellen:

www.eurospi.net, https://careerfoundry.com/en/blog/ux-design/a-beginners-guide-to-information-architecture/, https://applikeysolutions.com/blog/designing-the-information-architecture-ia-of-mobile-apps

Mode neigt dazu, die Branche zu sein wo Grafik Designer neue Wege einschlagen können und das bisher Unversuchte wagen. Die Zusammenarbeit mit Fotografen, Mode Designern, Stylisten und Make-up Artists verstärkt die Möglichkeit zur freiesten kreativen Arbeit.

It seem that I somehow missed to upload my post about the EYA-Awards, so here it is finally:

Die EYA-Awards bieten eine Bühne für soziale Projekte im digitalen Bereich und haben als Ziel, junge Selbstständige und Start-Ups mit sozialgesellschaftlichem Schwerpunkt zu motivieren und „connecten“.

Mich persönlich hat die Diversität der vorgestellten Projekte beeindruckt – von Reisen über Naturschutz bis hin zu dem Aufzeigen, welche Schicksale geflüchtete Menschen ereilten – Ideen, wo und inwiefern man die Welt eine Bessere machen kann, gibt es nahezu überall.

Eines der vielen Projekte, das mich sehr angesprochen hat, war Path Out von Abdullah Al-Karam, Georg Hobmeier und Zsombor Sváb. Hierbei taucht man innerhalb eines Videospieles in die Welt von Abdullah ein, der 2014 aus seiner syrischen Heimat vor dem dort wütenden Bürgerkrieg fliehen musste. Obwohl in unserer mitteleuropäischen Blase Worte wie „Flüchtlingskrise“ keine Ausnahme mehr sind, wissen wir zumeist dennoch erschreckend wenig über die tatsächlichen Umstände, die Menschen keine Andere Wahl ließen, als ihre Heimat zu verlassen. Gerade für junge Menschen kann ein Spiel wie Path Out eine zusätzliche Informationsquelle zu Schule, Internet oder sonstigen Medien werden und zu einem breiteren Verständnis der Lage verhelfen. Ich hatte bisher mehrmals mit geflüchteten Menschen zu tun und würde einen breiteren Austausch sehr befürworten.

Ich finde den Mut und die Motivation bewundernswert, aus seinem eigenen Schicksal Inspiration für ein solches Projekt zu schöpfen. Ich werde höchstwahrscheinlich nicht an den kommenden EYA-Awards teilnehmen, da momentan die Ideen für passende Projekte fehlen – allerdings finde ich das Konzept der Awards sehr ansprechend und würde eine zukünftige Teilnahme auch nicht ausschließen.

As in my last post mentioned communicating effectively on a global scale is certainly difficult. The idea that people with different experiences, genders, goals, and ages – often from diverse cultural, linguistic, and ethnic heritages – using varied thought processes and communication styles, can actually understand one another is an accomplishment indeed. But there are obstacles in the world of typography as well, preventing the undisturbed exchange of information.

But some collaboration in the field of design and precisely speaking, a five-year collaboration between Monotype and Google, has brought to the world important innovations all people can create benefits from.
The goal of the Google Noto project, as earlier mentioned was to develop a typeface family that encompasses all languages with a harmonious look, while digitally preserving rarely used languages, to help enable global communication across borders, languages, cultures.

The term “Noto” is shortened for the expression “no more tofu” with tofu referring to the blank boxes that appear when a computer or website isn’t able to display text, what happens oft when watching movies with subtitles in a language with special characters. These boxes appear because the font that supports that text is not available to the computer, causing confusion and a breakdown in communication. Google Noto now covers more than 800 languages and 100 writing scripts, which includes letters in multiple serif and sans serif styles across up to eight weights, as well as numbers, emoji, symbols, and musical notations.

“Even though we prioritize widely used languages, we still want to support other languages, even if no people are speaking them. There are some characters you can only see on stones. If you don’t move them to the web, over time those stones will become sand and we’ll never be able to recover those drawings or that writing.” – Xiangye Xiao, product manager, Google.

Today, when people are self – publishing in Native languages, both in print and online, these problems have a deeper meaning. Consistent usage of Unicode characters is vital for internet searches and databases; in Kwak’wala, for example, an indigenous language spoken in Western Canada, the same underline accent character is used across the board. That is why it is absurd when current limitations in computer technology dictate how a writing system should or should not look.

Sources:

https://www.linuxinsider.com/story/83979.html ;

https://www.bloomberg.com/press-releases/2016-10-06/monotype-and-google-collaborate-on-one-of-the-most-expansive-type-projects-in-history ;

https://www.uxbooth.com/articles/information-surfacing-communicating-through-design/ ;

http://www.languagegeek.com/typography/ ;


Books:

“Communication Highwire : leveraging the power of diverse communication styles” ; 2005;
Saphiere, Dianne Hofner;
Mikk, Barbara Kappler;
Devries, Basma Ibrahim ;

“Global Village : Design – Ursprung und Moderne” ; 2011;
Wenzl-Bachmayer, Monika, 1957- [HerausgeberIn];
Wagner:Werk Museum Postsparkasse;

Bei dem diesjährigen European Youth Award 2019, welches unter dem Motto „Europe on Fire“ stand, wurden frische, digitale Projekte, welche von jungen kreativen Köpfen aus ganz Europa entwickelt wurden, am FH-Joanneum gepitcht.

Besondere gut hat mir das Projekt „Path Out“ gefallen. Die Idee entstand durch ein treffen mit dem Syrischen Flüchtling Abdullah. Gemeinsam mit ihm wurde ein digitales Game entwickelt welches mehr Aufschluss über sein Leben in einem Kriegsland geben sollte aber auch über die Flucht ins Ungewissen. Das Spiel erinnerte von der Grafik/Ansicht an ein klassischen Gameboy Spiel (Pixelgrafik) – für mich an Pokémon für den Game Boy Color — gerade dies macht es für mich noch interessanter. Das Ziel war die Gesellschaft aufzuklären um somit ein Stück mehr Verständnis und Respekt für Geflüchtete Menschen zu schaffen. https://path-out.net

Bei dem Projekt Forest and Climate geht es prinzipiell um die (illegale)Abholzung in den Serbischen Wäldern. Durch die interaktive Karte welche sich auch der Webseite https://sumeiklima.org befindet hat man die Möglichkeit sich über die Lage in den Regionen zu Informieren. Das Ziel des Projektes ist es die Wälder neu aufzubauen. Die Grundidee ist natürlich großartig, nur gibt es mittlerweile schon sehr viele Ansätze in diese Richtung. Für mich scheint es noch ein sehr unausgereiftes Projekt zu sein, so es wurde auch noch keinen einzigen Baum tatsächlich gesetzt (obwohl ein sehr großes Team dahintersteht). Zudem ist die Webseite nicht auf Englisch übersetzt und nur drei Baumarten wird zurzeit Aufmerksamkeit geschenkt.

Beim diesjährigen European Youth Award unter dem Motto „Europe on Fire” wurden kreative digitale Projekte aus ganz Europa vorgestellt. Insgesamt wurden zehn Pitch-Präsentationen von den Gewinnern aus den Bereichen Forschung, Entwicklung, Innovation, Technik und Nachhaltigkeit gehalten. Unter all den spannenden Talks, gefielen mir besonders die Projekte „Eye Build It Creator“ und „FreeHour“.

Ich hatte noch nicht von European Youth Award gehört, aber bin sehr froh dass ich dieses Jahr bei den Präsentationen von den Gewinner teilnehmen durfte. Wir haben einen Einblick in einige innovative und vielversprechenden Projekte bekommen, die die Welt verbessern wollen. Es ist sehr inspirierend junge Unternehmer wie diese zuzuhören. Einer von den Beiträgen die ich besonders interessant fande war FreeHour.  

In the European Youth Awards, 2019 was one project that I found different from the others, it was a computer game telling the real story of Abdullah, a Syrian refugee that is trying to survive and escape the war zone during the Syrian war clashes.

As a fan of biography films that are telling an interesting life story, I found the idea of this game as a great way of telling the story from a Syrian individual perspective.
Letting the option of taking part in the quest of Abdullah in an active way, compared to a passive one (movie) is much more exciting and maybe even creates more empathy with Abdullah.

Although the graphics were not “my cup of tea” I picked it as my favorite project because I was very impressed by the story behind the game. I hope that more games based on real stories will be created in the future.

From the place I stand now, I can’t see myself applying for the EYA 2020 but things can change.