Shape

What I Discovered
Washington D.C. was a really interesting experience from the perspective of my IP project. At museums like Ford's Theater, the Newseum, and the National Portrait Gallery, I was able to see a variety of successful—and unsuccessful—ways to convey a space visually and then Monday I visited the Kelsey Museum with a class.

Unfortunately, I didn't take a camera because I thought a lot of museums would forbid it, but I can at least talk a bit about it. Ford's Theater, where Lincoln was assassinated, had a lot of really interesting and engaging information—particularly for a history dork like myself. Yet, it was entirely overwhelming, there weren't any levels of access. You weren't certain where to start first.

Similarly, the Kelsey Museum here in Ann Arbor had great academic information about their pieces, but a total lack of consistent color palette made it impossible to tell where one section, say Greek, Roman, Far East, Pre-Historic, began and where another started.

Both made me consider both levels of access and entry points a lot more, combined with consistency of material (e.g., printed maps, labels, and walls at least have some similarity). I'm not sure it directly relates to the logo I'm working with now, but it certainly will be influential in working with the larger visual system I hope to create later.

I'm going to shift gears a bit and talk about this survey I created for the group and talk about the results. I used a website called eSurvey, which was great because it's free and allowed me to ask as many questions as I wanted. The downside is it doesn't allow me to export information into a PDF unless I pay, so I just took some screenshots of questions I found notable. It wasn't mandatory, but it looks like the response rate I got was around 70% of known active members in the group—pretty high by survey standards.





So what are we looking at when we think of the group? A small advantage of women over men, something that has become typical at most Universities, but there is a skew toward older, heavily involved students. A huge part of the group is networking, over 90% of them are involved in at least some other student organization. There's probably a cross-pollination of interest. They also skew toward older, more advanced students. The vast majority are juniors and seniors or beyond.

What about where they live? We can see from above a lot live off-campus now, but what about where they came from?


No surprise here, most students spend at least a year in the dorm, some two.


This breakdown is more interesting. You're see a lot of South Quad and East Quad members, most East Quad members are probably from the Residential College. I'm surprised Markley had a high percentage (comparatively), but it also is one of the larger housing complexes.


Here, too, is a selection of majors. History, public policy, urban planning. Very humanities driven. There's a few interesting ones in there, geology, civil engineering, mathematics.


Where do people usually go to class? It seems like we're all doomed to exist in Angell/Mason Hall unless you're doomed to be on North Campus.

I'm not completely sure this information will be entirely useful, but it helped to give me a better idea of who I'm working with. Certainly, when I get to the point of discussing strategy—how The Roosevelt Institute should advertise and where—this will be influential in the decision making process. You can see either where the group comes from and focus there, or work on areas where we have little coverage.

Speaking of which, continuing the imagery from around campus. I took some snaps from the Dude the other day, one side was the school sponsored bulletin board:





It's quite different from what you see in the Architecture Corner, smaller format, not as design conscious. Not everything is color. Across from it is the student bulletin board:


How can you separate yourself from that? Yikes.

So, looping back; work on the logo. It felt like last week I was getting a lot of great comments about the direction I was heading and was trying to get a variety of feedback before I moved forward, so these past few days I went back to sketching.

I've started working with trace a lot, which is something that had been suggested to me a lot by Jan-Henrik and Hannah in previous years, but I've tried taking more to heart. I like it because I can quickly spit stuff out, I also find that tracing a decent idea I have and reworking it is a bit easier.







Anyhow, I'm trying to dump the letter for a little while and take it in some more abstract directions. I was playing around here with lines and points, notions of connectivity. It's actually making me think a lot about Malevich and Russian Suprematism, here's a bit of that work:




And also the sort of ideas around the Bauhaus. Taking really rational, geometric forms, and combining them to do radical, new things. It's really intriguing. I'd like to try and find a book or two about Suprematism. I'll be the first to admit my basis in art history is a bit shaky.

I'm not certain the visual direction I'm taking this week is really working per se, but it's making me think about an abstract concept (connections, pragmatism) in rather… Well, abstract and new ways. This common point, overlap, or divergence of ideas is key though. Visualizing it has become such a task though.

I will say, I'm learning a great deal about my own creative process—something that has been an unexpected consequence of this project—and my ability to work through my own ideas.

What Next
This weekend I'm going to Detroit to attend a conference for The Roosevelt Institute. My reasoning is two-fold. Part is that, I really do think the group does great work and I want to stay in tune with them over the year still. Though my project may have zoomed out a bit and is gearing more toward a legacy production, working with them is really informative, it lets me know what their needs air, their expectations, their budget, the realities they work in. That's not to say I should or by any means have to heed those concerns, but it's good to keep in mind.

The second is that people from the national organization will be coming into town. Luckily, a few of them are former U of M students that I vaguely know, so there is potential to float the idea of my project in the hopes for a broader adoption. In my mind, the more eyes from the group I can get to see the work, the better.

That's kind of long term though, keeping with the next few weeks, I want to keep working on this logo, getting more advice, and working again. If I've allowed myself the luxury of time, then it's important I do it right.

I also want to connect with Hannah and Dwayne again to talk about what comprise visual identities. I can look through a lot of books and make a lot of judgements about what does, but I have firsthand resources who've done that kind of work I should take advantage of. The outcome will probably be some combination of the groups needs and what commonly comprises identity.

Unfortunately, I ran into a kind of crazy week this between an exam I have tomorrow (which I should be currently studying for) and work to make-up after traveling to D.C., but I'm trying to clear more things out of the way so I can focus better.

How I Spent My Time
I spent a few more hours with a roll of trace plotting out ideas, I went to the Dude to take some images of bulletin boards, I compiled demographic information, I started looking a bit more into Russian Suprematism, and spent time in D.C. looking at visual systems of museums.