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.