Taylor Hood's Archive

Project 5:

After this project, I think I’ve finally found that I really do love this realm of design. I feel like through out the semester, I just kind of had a bad taste in my mouth and found it hard to be fully enthusiastic with everything. Being a graduating senior and just wanting this class for pure experience and not being too concerned for my grade, I realized that I had to really dig deep and find my motivation. With this project something clicked. I LOVED IT! I enjoyed exploring the personality of the app and what all I could make it be. Finding it’s own style and letting that personality come to life was the best part of this project. I feel that I finally understood the balance between complexity and simplicity. I loved that this was something that was purely for entertainment. Designing something just for pure fun and to most likely waste time made this entire process more simple for me.

Especially with this project I found myself wanting to keep going and to have page after page after page to make. This project could have kept going for forever! I honestly enjoyed the group aspect of this and getting the feeling of the collaborative environment.

Every now and then there’s a project that makes you especially excited for your future as a designer, and this was for sure one of them.

Year:

Like I said above, for most of the semester I didn’t feel like this type of design was my strength, but after looking at all of this work and actually letting myself explore all the ideas a possibilities interactive design can hold, I feel that something clicked. Even though I was exactly seeking that “A”, I feel like I’m taking more away from this class than I have any other design class. So glad ya’ll are making this required! It’s very needed. I feel that this semester more than any other, I’ve come to see where design is going, and because of that I couldn’t be more thankful that I’ve had this experience.

Everytime I see a piece of interactive work, I view it differently. I finally see how much work goes into certain things. I appreciate more the balance between design and user experience. I think differently! Which I suppose is good :)

www.cargocollective.com/taylorhood

more coming!

Name: Zach Johnson

Occupation: Illustrator

Location: New York, New York

Interest: Art, creativity, working with others, being outdoors, and traveling

Zach is a pretty well known illustrator up in New York, I’m sure you’ve seen some of his stuff. He is a “go go go” type guy when it comes to his work. Also, being an extreme right brain, he doesn’t always have his ducks in a row when it comes to his process work. He recently got hired to do a new freelance job and they want all of his inspiration organized and ready to show. Also, they want to know where he got it from so they can document that for future reference. At a loss of how to do this, Zach came across the “designers inspiration organizer” app and found it to be exactly what he needed. He could even link up with his art friends.

Name: Zooey Brooks

Occupation: Graphic Designer/Typography obsessed

Location: Austin TX

Interest: sketching, cooking, kayaking, and thrifting

Zooey is a young graphic designer who is really concerned with staying in the know of what’s relevant. She also loves seeing what her friends are finding and sharing her own inspiration. She came across the insp’rd app and loved it the second she saw it. She found it to be helpful in her organization.

1.) Inspiration network. A place where you can save all of your design inspiration, see your friends, have genius recommendations for websites, and categorize your images.

2.) Coffee App. Find local coffee joints other than starbucks. There are always different and funky places to get a good cup of coffee. Customers can post reviews and images. Maps, special events listings. Also has special recipes, and you can store and share all of these.

3.) Concert social network. Not just for main stream! This would include open mic nights, small concerts, charity events. Purchase digital tickets and download them right to your phone/ipad

4.) Email manager. This would let you type up and email and send it at a specific time. For example, if you think of something that needs to be sent, but not at the moment, you cold set an alarm/time for it to be sent.

5.) Color Palette manager! Make up color schemes from photographs, get the specific pantone #, share with your friends.

At the start of this project I have to admit I was a bit overwhelmed. The task at hand seemed almost impossible! I am the type of person that when presented with too many options, I get a little scared. Like I stated in critiques, this type of design has proven to be extremely difficult for me. I get so caught up in the “box” and the grid and all the things that could possibly constrain you in the process of web design. Trying to find different ways and different approaches to design took up much more time this time around than I expected it to. I finally had to take a step back and put pen to paper. Novel idea, right? Actually do sketches for something like this? Now, I typically do these kind of things with any other design. I’m very much for the hand-drawn and fine art aspect when it comes to graphic design. However, for some reason with Interactive Design I have trouble combining the two. Once I finally took a step back and looked at the bigger picture and let myself go through the process that was at hand, I feel like I was finally able to get a hold on what I could do. After finishing this project I can confidentially say that I did worlds better then the first one. It was so much easier for me to get a hold on how to do this, how to make the sizes right and how to make everything work together. I also love branding, so the idea of getting to start from scratch helped me out with wanting to be passionate about this project as a whole. Also, after completing this project I am even more excited for the next one. I can’t wait to let myself continue to grow. At the start of this class I thought there was no way I would ever enjoy any project in this class. From the start of being a designer I swore off interactive design, simply because I hated it and felt it was too simple. Well, I got slapped in the face. I’m actually learning how to enjoy this and how to push myself in new ways.