GAUGE TALK---ISMAEL OBRGON

On Thursday Nov.4, 2010 at 7:30 pm I went to a presentation at Cal State LA's Music Hall.  The featured guest was Ismael Obregon who is the Creative Director and Founder of OISHII Creative.  Obregon proved to be a very funny and informative person who is very knowledgeable in his chosen profession.  He shows the audience a sport reel of items his company OISHII has worked on.  (Mostly video games like Madden NFL.)  He also spoke of how important language is especially visual language.  It's important because it's the most universally designer in their creative art.

Towards the end, Obregon began answering question fro the audience.  This proved to be informative as well as interesting.  For example, in order to start your own company,  it's vital to know the rules of business, creativeness, and design.  The overall structure of a business depend very little on talent.  It's those aspects that help a company stay afloat.  I also thought his answer to whether he has turn down offers due to personal beliefs and/or preferences doesn't escape the fact that business always comes first.  (Sad but true.)  also with dealing with clients needs and own input.  While it's your job to translate the visual aspects of a design, it's important to understand and work with what your client wants.  It's his project (and money) so they spend a lot of time figuring out what they need.  It's up to the designer to get to the core of the client's needs to produce amazing results.

I found the overall presentation to be pretty good.  I have already been to a couple of these and the presenters are always polite, respectful, and informative people who loved what they do and want to help others discover their passion for the same.

Narrative of Space and Time

The reading for chapter Narrative of Space and Times has been an enlightening and interesting read.  What this chapter deals with are exampes of informative displays reported on graphs featuring three-space and time.  In order to design these variables narrations of space-time on flatland, we must combines 2 familar designs, the map and the time-series (or time tables).  One of the strategies for understanding these designs is holding the underlying information and watching how designs and designers deal with data.  They are trying to commicate how they see and view data to the viewers.  Except it's not an easy thing to commicate.

For example, timetables design.  They are the center of envisioning data.  It's about arrangement of annoated numbers, information densities, type and images and techniques for narrating several variables.  These ascepts are important to envisioning data because designers are making these for diverse audience that range from skilled to inexperienced.

Layering and Separation

I found the chapter on pages 52-65 to be insignful and filled with variable information.  What this chapter deals with is the technique of layering and separation of information and data in design.  The point of this chapter, according to Tufte, is to find strategies that show details adn complexity.  The failure to do so reflect badly on the design.  However, Tufte points out that effective ways of layering and separation is no easy task.  Many issues can come up.  There is an example.

Tufte explains tha several elements that go together an flatland tend to interact, which creates non-information patterns and textures through their combined presense.  Tufte cites Josef Albers on pages 53 who says that this is an effect know as 1+1=3 or more, when 2 elements show themselves along with assorted incidental by-products of their partnership.  While it has a nice effect, it reveals itself to be a danger to data display because it can become obstrusive.

What I got from reading this chapter is that information is made up of "differences that make a difference" (65).  It means using effective stragtegies to showcase meaning in your designcan help make the distinction look presentable.  By not following that, it will look cluttered and featured incoherent displays with misinformation.

Micro/Macro Reading

I feel that the chapter about "Micro/Macro Reading" on pages 35-51 are interesting.  Micro designs are made up of million upon million of details featuring  data that help clarify their information it's portraiting.  Mirco reading is important to us because we tend to thrive in worlds of information because of our capacities to select, edit, choose, catalog, highlight, etc. aout everything we know about information.  When it is displayed on a visual format that is even better because we get to compare, comtrast, and choose.  From what I have beeen able to observe in this chapter is nearly all the designs have shown quaritities of data at high densities like 1000 bits per square cm and 20 million bits per pages.  Every bit is vital in order for the design to produce the proper information to display.

Escaping Flatland

The pages on 12-35 is chapter about "Escaping Flatland."  This chapter informs us that trying to escape these "flatland" is a very important part of how we must envision information on designs.  By giving more depth and illusion, we communicate that right kind of information on a flat dimension plane (like paper), which is all honest is almost never easy.  For example, Tufte explains that standards of excellence for information design are made by high quality maps with various details, layers of close reading mixed with overview and data from engineering surveys.  The designers for this must care about what the viewer will find it interesting and engaging yet remain simple enough that the viewer can understanding what it is trying to say.

Reading 9-11, 80-9

The introduction pages (9-11) were informative.  It basically tell us what is in the book.  For example, there are many techniques, photographs, computer visualization, etc. that features a brand of information that is useful for creating designs.  Every image has been carefully restored to the finest quality so the readers can have a better view and understanding of the illustration.  It displays work from many different countries, centuries and even planets.  I believe that the point of the book is to show that creating and producing quality works of art consists of understanding and working with writing, typography, statistical analysis, line, color and layout.  By reading this book it will help you create work of the highest quality.

On pages 80-95 is the chapter about color and information.  Putting color to information can be a very complex process.  There are many things to think over.  For example, on page 88, there are 3 gray squares with many colors inside. According to the book, every color is located in 3 space: hue, saturation, value and classificationed by red, green and blue (for video display) and cyan, magenta and yellow (for printing inks). The matter of picking the right color is of important consideration and not one to take lightly.