Issue 012: Designing for Michelle Obama, Heuristics, Finding Time

We’ve been enjoying the former First Lady’s podcast on Spotify. Matt Alagiah from It’s Nice That interviews the fine folks at And/Or on how they developed the brand identity for it:

…the identity does a great job of foregrounding the personality of the podcast’s host. “The headline here is Michelle Obama, and our mission was to help that come through, so we were conscious that the graphics should be a support, something that would immediately get to the point and get people excited, and not be too complicated, distracting or overwrought,” says Kendra Eash, creative director at And/Or. For the final identity, she adds, “photography and type animation really let the first lady’s words lead.”

The two national political conventions will be primarily virtual this year because of Covid-19. How will they make it more than just another Zoom call? Hunter Scwartz:

Yet despite the fact that it looks like a contemporary interpretation of the 1992 convention logo, this year’s logo is more dynamic than other Democratic convention logos of the past 20 years. This was, of course, partially by necessity. Recent convention logos have focused heavily on the host city (aside from 2012, which was a direct play off Barack Obama’s campaign logo); this made less sense as a strategy for a convention mainly playing out online. And while convention logos are conceived as standalone designs that can feel disconnected from the larger Democratic brand, the 2020 identity seems to build on a longer Democratic design legacy, drawing from the visual universes of recent campaigns like Obama’s, Hillary Clinton’s, and others.  

Harsh Gorasia is writing about Jakob Nielsen’s 10 usability heuristics over 10 weeks. These 10 principles were codified in 1994 and serve as the defacto standard for evaluating interaction designs. Gorasia brings each heuristic to life by showing examples. “#2: Match between system and the real world” is out as well.

John Couch, VP of Product Design at Hulu, has been writing a weekly essay since November 2019. 

Instead of doomscrolling through your phone or worrying about things you can’t control, try spending the moments between life’s demands to simply sit down with a pencil and paper. Make a goal of putting something down each day on a page – it can be a drawing or a line or two of thoughts or observations. Or it can be your most audacious aspirations or your darkest fears. It doesn’t matter because no one except you needs to see it. This is just for you.

Taylor Roy traces the roots of design thinking back to the early 20th century:

The design thinking that most are familiar with today wasn’t created at a single moment in time. It began in the early 1900s as more of a philosophy and theory. Over the next century, it slowly developed as design and science blended, blurring the lines between the fields. Eventually, it turned into the methodical and rigorous process that organizations utilize to cultivate innovation today. It can be argued that design thinking’s origins began in the modern movement of the 1920s due to a “desire to produce works of art and design based on objectivity and rationality” (Cross). There was a desire to bring the objectivity of science into design.

One of the silver linings of the pandemic—if there can be one—is that events are all online and not relegated to just your locale. In other words, we have the opportunity to attend seminars, talks, and conferences more conveniently. I will try to highlight a few interesting upcoming events each week in this new module.

Ad Age Town Hall: Addressing racism in advertising (Wednesday, August 19, 8am PDT / 11am EDT, Free)
It’s been three months since the murder of George Floyd and the beginning of the nationwide protests against racial injustice. Black business leaders will discuss the progress so far, and what needs to happen next.

Exploring Brand Authenticity (Thursday, August 20, 1pm PDT / 4pm EDT, Free)
Design and marketing leaders from such noted brands as Seventh Generation, Google, GoDaddy, Billabong, BET, and GE Healthcare will talk about tapping into cultural moments in an authentic way. Organized by our friends at Nilll Design.

MICRO TALKS: Creatives In Captivity (Friday, August 21, 4pm PDT / 7pm EDT, Free)
See what your fellow creatives have been up to while in quarantine. Hosted by AIGA Wichita.

5 to 9 Conference (Tuesday, August 25 to Thursday, August 27, $50)
More than 15 speakers will talk about the side hustle and how to take your freelancing game to the next level.

Photo by Keagan Henman

Experts weigh in on the Biden-Harris logo: ‘It could be scribbled on a napkin and I’d be happy’ (fastcompany.com) In case you haven’t heard, Joe Biden picked Kamala Harris as his running mate. FastCompany got some designers to weight in. Meanwhile, FutureBrand CCO Wally Krantz made an unofficial Biden & Harris T-shirt that’s arguably nicer.   

What Happens to Viral Particles on the Subway (nytimes.com) We keep linking to dataviz from the NY Times, and we’ll keep doing it because it’s so good! This parallax page helps visualize just what happens when someone sneezes in a subway car.

Which Face Masks are Most/Least Effective? (core77.com) If there’s one listicle you should read, it’s this one. 

Don’t let Epic’s tragic PR stunt distract you from its true intentions (imore.com) Epic, the maker of the popular video game Fortnite has attracted the wrath of both Apple and Google by circumventing each app store’s payment system. It was a planned, strategic move to blow up the marketplaces.

Chapter 2: Browsers (css-tricks.com) Jay Hoffmann is back with the second chapter in his history of the Web project.

Wedel Art Collective is launching a series of face masks designed by six leading artists, Jenny Holzer, Rashid Johnson, Barbara Kruger, Raymond Pettibon, Lorna Simpson, and Rosemarie Trockel.