Experimental Typography Posters

Besides doing freelance web development, I’m also attending a Typography class this fall at California State University. Recently I worked on 2 AIGA typography posters, that were some kind of experimental public advertisement work to visually communicate typographic terms. I based my work on notes that I took while reading AIGA’s mission statement.

 

Term1: STEM

Definition: The stem is the main vertical stroke of a letter.

AIGA Mission Statement: Stimulate creative thinking

Stem has a pretty straightforward explanation. So to stick to the mission and make my target audience think, I took a playful approach and chose to leave out (vertical) strokes from the letters of the alphabet. The end result is like a simple puzzle and in my belief more engaging for the viewer than just listing down the definition of the term.

Sometimes if something is very obvious, we take it for granted and don’t notice it. Once it disappears; it strikes our attention. That’s the basic idea I had, while working on the design.

 

Term2: Widow/Orphan

Definition: (built into image)

AIGA Mission Statement: Improve the human experience

For the second poster, I wanted to explain the term yet it had to be more than that. In paragraph anatomy, there’s no place for widows and orphans, because it’s simply poor typography. I wished to emphasize that widows/orphans are a BIG NO NO in your paragraphs and columns. Some might not care if there’s a single lonely word (widow) in the last/first line of a column, however little tiny details are what make an experience different (Mission #2) after all.   If you look closer, the definition is there too, so that those interested in the information can check it out. The texture of the sign is somewhat worn out and grungy and the typeface looks rather destroyed. This is also to highlight, that the rule of avoiding widows/orphans is old and shouldn’t be forgotten.

 

 

How cool would it be, if AIGA actually used these posters? Especially since I’m the only one, who isn’t a Graphic Design major in class. Now I’m definitely in tune with my blog tagline; non-stop daydreaming!

LA has a new Silverlight UG!

Los Angeles has a new Meetup group - LA SLUG – for interaction designers and developers interested in Microsoft Expression tools, Silverlight and RIA. The first meetup is just one week ahead – it’s going to be next Wednesday, October 28th.

Victor Gaudioso, author of “Foundation Expression Blend 3 with Silverlight“  and Rick Barraza, Senior Experience Architect at Cynergy, are going to be at the first meeting. Currently, Victor Gaudioso is collecting info from members on which topics they would like to see at LA SLUG presentations/meetings. Don’t wait to send in your comments on this page.

See you there!

IF – Flying

This week’s Illustration Friday theme is “flying” and here’s my contribution; a little bird named Tombix. She turned out looking clumsy, out of place and obviously out of shape… yet so bright, colorful and determined to fly!

 

Tombix would perfectly survive without any attempts to fly; yet what’s life without any trials/errors, struggle and adventure? Hence the title “Life is more than merely staying alive“. Enjoy!

Silverlight Navigation Framework Sample – Tiny Fix

 For a project I am recently working on, I needed a quick intro into the Silverlight 3 Navigation Framework and as ever so often I found myself checking out the tutorial videos on Silverlight.NET.

Tim Heuer’s Navigation Framework video is quite helpful and I would recommend it to anybody who needs a speedy introduction to the navigation framework introduced with Silverlight 3. The video shows the Navigation references and SDK controls needed, it talks about UriMapping and deeplinking plus some NavigationService and NavigationContext methods.

Instead of downloading the code right away, I decided to follow along and do the coding, while watching the video. But when I ran the app, an error message was awaiting me:

 

 

So I went through the most recent comments on the video’s page and discovered a very helpful blog entry from Mister GoodCat.

The video had been recorded in March 2009, when Silverlight 3 Beta was out. Clearly the Silverlight 3 RTM had some breaking changes in store for the navigation framework! To fix the problem I first tried out the  first step outlined in Mister GoodCat’s article and added  a preceeding “/”s to all URI’s throughout the app  (Files: MainPage.xaml, CustomerList.xaml.cs). In fact; the error message gives you also a precise clue in that direction!

Running the app again, I could see that the error message had changed. This was error#2:

 

 

So I went on to try out the second fix; which was to add a UriMapper to the navigation:Frame declaration in MainPage.xaml. Here it is:

<navigation:Frame x:Name=”MainFrame” Source=”Home”  HorizontalContentAlignment=”Stretch” VerticalContentAlignment=”Stretch” Margin=”20″ UriMapper=”{StaticResource uriMapper}”/>

This time the app just worked perfect!

 

Code Fix – Discovery:

I thought I should just make the code available here; as it’s almost identical to the code for the video except for the minor fix. 

That’s when I decided to check out all the code differences line by line and made an interesting discovery! Once you add the UriMapper as a static resource; the preceeding “/” are no longer needed. I’m sure there is a very scientific explanation for that; which I haven’t had time to find out so far…

 

So – in brief; if you define the UriMapper as a static resource in the frame, your app should be good to go! You might not even come across this problem in newer tutorials; however this video is pretty good and the source fix is not that hard; right?

Source Download:

You can download the source code here.

The only difference is the app name; instead of NavigationSample, you will see SLNavigationSample. Probably page titles may also differ; but the code is identical in syntax. I started out with a clean Silverlight 3 + Web App and didn’t use the Silverlight Navigation Application option available in Visual Studio 2008.

 

Hopefully this tiny source fix will save you some time + trouble!

 

IF Pattern

Sometimes we fit too easily in the crowd of unnoticed identities. Only few of us act brave and make an effort to distinguish their precious self.

What makes us invisible is our behavioral pattern to act calm, content, happy, silent and indifferent, while we might have a screaming giant, a murmuring poet or a confused illusionist deep down inside. 

 

 

The drawing is supposed to be a reflection of my almost weird idea. A tidy recurrent pattern forms an exterior, which safely hides the intricately wired interior. Pretty much - a chaos in disguise.

 

This is my first IllustrationFriday submission; it’s not hard to guess – this week’s topic is “pattern“. Hope you enjoy!

 

IEDOTNETUG in October: RIA with WPF and Silverlight

There is still two more weeks to the next Inland Empire .NET UG  meeting, which will be on October 13th, 2009. This month’s speaker is Jason Campbell, UX Evangelist for Microsoft for the Southwest based out of Los Angeles. His presentation is going to be about “Rich Internet Applications with WPF and Silverlight”. I find the intro on the IEDOTNETUG site extremely promising; it simply states that the talk will outline the paradigm shift of the role of the developer from plain coder to a designer/developer.  Basically Developer + designer = devigner.

 

I’m looking forward to the meeting; since I have been trying to polish my developer identity with design skills for some time now, through design classes, experimental UI work and acting as a co-founder for Devign34. 

A transformation is never easy; daily self-motivation is needed along the way; but I’m determined to summarize my UX down this road as “Per aspera ad astra” - Through difficulties to the stars ★★★

1 is enough to break the web silence

I have been web silent for a while, except for my Twitter updates. Now I feel it’s time to break the ice with my blog.

 Leading an invisible web presence doesn’t mean that I haven’t been active. During Spring/Summer, I completed 4 ART classes at California State University and I had a chance to work with Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign on Mac. In fact, I also spent some messy time with charcoals, pencils and paper. Recently I modestly shared some of my digital work on Deviantart. All these efforts to boost my knowledge in design are not solely for distraction or entertainment. It might be a brave goal to admit, but I’d like to be able to design as a developer.

Though irrelevant, I also started to learn French and completed two classes. Now and then, I get some instant moments of happiness, when I catch a word or two in some lyrics, a restaurant menu or a beauty magazine. C’est merveilleux!

But besides my artsy aspirations, I kept my geeky persona alive. I worked on .NET web development assignments, continued to experiment with Silverlight 3 and tried out the new features of Expression tools. Here’s a more accurate list of my routine…

 

My latest geeky reading list

Silverlight 3 – Programmer’s Reference

Accelerated Silverlight3

Expression Blend 3 with Silverlight

The Passionate Programmer

The Golden Ratio - The Story of Phi, the World’s Most Astonishing Number

 

My latest geeky activities

being a community volunteer at Digigirlz Camp, Culver City, LA and proctoring Small Basic, Kodu, Blend 3, Windows Live Movie Maker classes

writing about MSDN Kid’s Corner and Digigirlz events/sessions on Digigirlz’ Space – Windows Live

tuning in to the Silverlight 3 Firestarter event

watching Ignite Your Career WebCast Series

solving puzzles while playing Professor Layton and the Curious Village

refreshing my algorithm skills through Programming Interviews Exposed

 

In case you missed it, you can find the Silverlight FireStarter slides on Mithun Dhar’s blog; the sessions will also become available soon on-demand. The next Firestarter live webcast I’m looking forward to is the ASP.NET MVC event. ASP.NET MVC seems so much more familiar for someone who has done Java development with MVC methodologies and it’s great that you can associate your former coding experience with all the features you are reading about. Basically; it’s nice to know that you already know something.

Another interesting news to mention is the WebsiteSpark program that Microsoft announded yesterday. It will offer web developers and designers access to Microsoft services and products at no upfront cost.

 

For someone keeping silent; I’m surprised about  how much I had to write about. I’ll do my best to keep up with the writing. But from now on, I won’t wait till I come up with a crazy invention or original topic, but rather simply share the basic discoveries that I make during my developer work, my Silverlight experiments, my design progress and my daily life. The longer I plan, the less I can share and the less genuine it will be. 

 

After all, why should we have a web presence, if we don’t use the opportunity to share and provide information that could be useful or interesting to others; even if that turns out be only one person.

I’ll be a community facilitator at WomenBuild next week!

Microsoft TechEd will start next week and I’m pretty excited because I’ll be a community facilitator at the WomenBuild event on May 14th. Only registered attendees can take part in the event, but the event is open both to women and men, who want to grow the number and visibility of women in IT.

 As a facilitator I will lead a table (up to 10 attendees) through a series of building / sharing activities around the issue of Women in Technology that have been pre-determined by Robert Rasmusen from Lego SeriousPlay in Denmark.

The  WomenBuild program is specifically designed to address the decline of female talent and leadership in the computer science industry.  Microsoft partnered with LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY (LSP) through Robert Rasmussen & Associates to create a unique interactive workshop, using LEGO® Bricks to model solutions for growing strong female leaders in the software industry. WomenBuild’s principal goals are to drive awareness that diversity is important in the field of technology and to build a community to help attract, retain and empower women in technology. Reading through the WomenBuild information, I couldn’t help myself and note down some points for future reference:

The importance of diverse opinions and respect in achieving common goals.

Having your voice heard as a woman and discussing differences in communication style.

Diversity isn’t about celebrating what’s different about us, but celebrating what we have in common.

Diversity is about celebrating differences in opinion. You can’t have a solid solution based on only 1 type of opinion.

Up till now, there have been WomenBuild events in the following cities: Los Angeles, Houston, Atlanta, Chicago, Detroit, Minneapolis, New York, Boston, Washington DC,  Orlando, Dallas,  San Francisco and Seattle. Yet the WomenBuild event next week at TechEd 2009 will be the largest event to date!

 WomenBuild in DC was featured in the Washington Times on Inauguration Day – January 20, 2009.  The line -an event to find and develop female software “stars” for the future- in the article meant a lot to me! Who doesn’t want to be a genius with star quality? I’m not sure why, but I think we need constant reminders that being a genius (girl) geek is something highly desirable and extremely enjoyable.

 

Here is a series of  mixed links:

Lego Serious Play: http://www.seriousplay.com/

Video about previous WomenBuild events:
http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/LauraFoy/Tech-Ready-8-and-WomenBuild/

Video about WomenBuild at MSDN Developer Conferences (with Asli Bilgin and Stephen Forte): http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/LauraFoy/WomenBuild-with-LEGOS-at-MSDN-Developer-Conferences/

You can also join the WomenBuild Facebook group, if you want to promote WomenBuild events!

Inspiration Boost

I thought I spice up my MIX09 UX notes with more evidence today.

 

I loved the keynotes with all the cool product announcements on day 1 and 2 at MIX09, but I especially thought Bill Buxton’s and Deborah Adler’s  talks were very inspirational. Daily life overcomes us too fast and we forget very soon our reinforced inspiration and ambition, which we need to put our ideas into reality. Yet this time I have something to hold on to! I had the chance to get a photograph with Bill Buxton and he even remembered me the next day, so that I got an autograph with an extremely meaningful message. Since – “Verba volant, scripta manent” (Words fly away, the written remains); my newly fueled energy and ambition should endure for quite a while I hope.

Bill Buxton@MIX09

 

Inspiration Boost

 

As a Computer Science graduate, I’m definitely not a Design Pro, however I try to enrich my design knowledge everyday with books and courses. Design and technology, in my case software development, are intertwined and I don’t just care for the functionality, but also for the overall interaction between those two. I wanted to attend the UX Design class at UCLA Extension from March till June, however the class was filled up too quickly. It might be offered next semester too, we’ll see. At least I started off with Design Fundamentals at CalState this Winter-Term and I’ll continue with Design Management in the Spring Term.  There’s no time to lose; right?

 

Additional Note: What I love about Silverlight is that it gives me the option to do coding, while practicing design basics and doing my RIA experiments with a lot of fun. For those interested, there is an all day .NET Master Series event on April 4, 2009 at the LA .NET Developers Group with Jason Beres. The event will cover rich interactive web development with Silverlight, and working with Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) to transport data across the wire.

MIX09: My UX

Due to the crazy list of releases and announcements (Silverlight3 Beta1, SketchFlow in Expression Blend, Blend 3 Preview, Super Preview, IE 8, ASP.NET MVC 1.0 etc.) at MIX09, there is already an intense overload of information out there. Some blog entries were posted the minute the keynote was over. So I decided to let the storm cool down a little bit, before I write about my first impressions and experimental samples. I truly plan to keep this wait short… But until then I want to share personal UXs of my MIX09 Adventure, which turned out to be inspiring, unique and … yes, they are all mine! First thanks goes out to my geeky MIXDIVA – Developer Evangelist Lynn Langit.

 

Let’s start off with my Silverlight UX:

On the last day of MIX09, I finally had a chance to meet Dave Campbell(Wynapse), who spent almost two hours to introduce me to a brilliant Silverlight crowd. Right at this moment, I still blush, as he has even mentioned this encounter on his blog.

I should thank him once again; I guess I got a real-time demo of a sincere developer community involvement action. As a matter of fact, he is always very kind to include my Silverlight entries in SilverlightCream.

 

Here’s a list of Silverlight Pro’s I had a chance to meet:

Jesse Liberty: Silverlight Geek” and “Developer Community Liaison

Tim Heuer: Microsoft Silverlight Program Manager

Laurent Bugnion: Author of Silverlight Unleashed. Surprisingly he is from a German speaking country (Switzerland); which was so refreshing!

Shawn Wildermuth: Microsoft MVP C# and he is the one, who’s behind the Silverlight-Tour workshops

Mike Harsh: Silverlight Program Manager

Corrina Black:  Silverlight platform – Lead designer

John Papa: Microsoft C# MVP, Author of Data Driven Services with Silverlight 2

Corey Schuman: Author of Microsoft Expression Blend 2 for Windows:
Visual QuickStart Guide

Pete Brown: Microsoft MVP for Client Application Development (Silverlight and WPF)

Koen Zwikstra: The Silverlight Spy guy

Corey Miller: Senior Consultant Magenic Technologies

Bryant Likes: UX Developer for Avanade, Co-author of SQL-Server 2000 XML Distilled

 

I even have some pictures to support or should I say prove:) my happy ending SL UX. To recognize me, just look out for the girl, who doesn’t know where to put here hands; isn’t that funny?

 

 

Certainly, it wasn’t only me, who took pictures… So I discovered myself on Jesse Liberty’s Photo Essay blog entry as well…

It seems – what happens at MIX, doesn’t stay there! Luckily all content is also available to everyone. You can check out tons of Silverlight video sessions right here! Get ready to be surprised!