Edward Tufte Conference

ET, as friends call him, addressed the crowd of perhaps 400+ people. He had an air of confidence but a humble smile while shaking hands in the first two rows. Most of the attendees were older business men and women who most likely work in the Silicon valley. I felt a bit out of place sitting in my biz-cas ensemble among sardine packed rows. My collared shirt, that I ironed in my sterile hotel room, was itching my neck.  Behind me, a woman watched in slow mo as coffee covered her new books. I looked around and imagined what my life would be like if I fit into this crowd. The nine to fivers who work to invest in modest midsize homes while fretting over retirement. They came in groups of colleagues and chatted about deadlines and meetings. I should take Tufte’s lead, who by the way makes a boat load of money with these conferences, and become an absolute expert at something. I would hold a conference where tech savvy college grads, rejected from the apple store, set up power point slides while ditzy girls with penciled in eyebrows register the suckers, 300 bucks at a time.

Tufte has made quite a name for himself in the world of informational graphics and the presentation of data. At each break, a line of at least 20 waited eagerly to have one of the four included books signed in silver felt tip. I remained in my seat and pretended to do the assigned reading.  With registration, we were given a cute cardboard box of his books and an 11 by 17 handout in his signature Gil Sans font. The assigned reading was required before the official start time of 10am but I was just too hyped up to focus after that free Styrofoam Starbucks coffee.

I have been interested in Edward Tufte for about a year now. M. Price, my prof for exhibit design at UCLA extension, recommended Envisioning Information for an assignment. Seen here. With the student discount the conference was a pretty good deal, I got a lot out of it.

During the conference Tufte’s main point was that we can consume much more data than most people expect. Highly dense graphics that use multi-levels of information are much more engaging than the excessively designed bar charts and graphs included in Microsoft Office. In viewing a graph that is dense, each person will search for the content of interest, thus the designer releases the authoritarian need to lead people through the exploration process. This forced exploration is often referred to as the painfully tedious, “Slow Reveal.”  You know,  those slow power point presentations with paragraphs in bullet form. Instead, if a person searches through information to make personal associations, this data will most likely be more memorable. Each person must use their own cognitive style to scan the information.  Tufte says “ there is no such thing as information overload, there is only bad design. Reduce the clutter”

Simple rules to follow:

• Never put information in boxes

• Always annotate

• Use gray linking likes

• Reduce optical clutter by calming down thick lines (mind the figure ground activity by using light lines)

• Find a good font and stick with it : Gill Sans/ Trebuchet

• Develop a sense of what is relevant (become a good sorter because 95 % of published material is junk)

• No matter how beautiful your interface design is, there should be less of it

• Mind the Quality, Relevance and Integrity of the content

• Fundamental design principles and solutions should arise from cognitive tasks and content not from the trends of software

Tango with Cows

A new exhibit was recently installed in the Getty Research Institute. Robert Checchi, the lead designer and my boss this quarter, has been working on this exhibit since last January. Typically it takes a year of planning for a show of this size. The new exhibit, Tango with Cows, explores the book art of the Russian futurists before the communist revolution of 1917. Parallels can be drawn to the Italian futurist movement where Marinetti (the founder) called for a reinvention of all the arts, propelled by modernization, technology, science and fast automobiles. However, the Russian Futurists where more concerned with examining and reinventing magnificent traditions of language and Russian antiquity. The curator, Nancy Perloff, writes “poets and painters sought to express the dialogue between the ancient and modern, past and present, and sacred and secular that characterized modern Russian culture.” Read Nancy’s essay here.

So now that you have a sense of the history, lets talk design. When you enter the GRI (at the west end of the museum), you will see a large poster covering the windows. Upon entering the building, a floor graphic extends towards the door continuing up the wall to meet the playful handwritten title. The title wall helps to set the mood for the exhibit while introducing the audience to the graphic identity before diving into the art.

Tango with Cows Title wall

The floor graphic wraps around the corner and into the gallery. Here is the introduction panel. Notice the offset paper. This was printed in house to save money because the floor graphics were about ten thousand dollars to produce.

A proper introduction.

This is where you will pick up a brochure. It is printed in black and white on a thin yellowish, off white paper. Three staples bind 4, 2 sided pages of text that introduces each artist with a small thumbnail of their work. Originally the brochure was going to have a time line and information from the text panels but due to budget this was cut down.  The aesthetic of the brochure is supposed to emulate the small books created during the Russian futurist movement. After the brochure was printed there were some concerns about the brochure looking cheap. The exposed stables and thin yellow paper was used to represent the scarcity of resources for these artists during the turn of the century. The curator thought it looked like a kinkos xerox copy. Using additional colors may have been an easy remedy for the “cheap” look however this would add significantly to the printing costs. When budget is concerned, clear priorities must be established. During the final stages of installation someone noticed that the exhibition were not included. Robert quickly typeset a stamp and had it created in a matter of days. Each of the 15,000 brochures were hand stamped by a volunteer in a green color keeping in line with the movement.

Brochure in hand, I walked into the small, dimly lit gallery, and took my first photo. As usual, the flash went of and my face burned with embarrassment. I muttered my apologies and the guard called me out and exclaimed that these are valuable pieces of work; sorry doesn’t cut it. Isak the guard, a Russian immigrant who has been in the states from 30 years was knowledgeable and eager to talk to me about the exhibit.  He pointed out on the back of the ‘Handheld Facsimile’ books that there is a price. Isak showed me one book, printed in 1912, that read 70 K (or Kopeeks sp?) which is roughly 70 cents. We got to talking about the facsimile books in the gallery and he was convinced it was the real thing. I was skeptical but he pointed out the thickness of the paper and the saturation of the black ink. I couldn’t believe that the GRI would set out the real books for everyone to thumb through and drool over. The books had such a likeness to the real ones behind glass cases that Isak and I were fooled until I read the label. I later asked Robert about the books imagining that he spent hours making the facsimiles but in actuality the GRI imaging services was responsible. THis department is in charge of photographing the work for designers.

The real book behind plexiglass.

The handheld facsimile.

Thick yellow pages look worn and aged.

My only frustration with this exhibit was the interactive screens that were not functioning. Perhaps the software was too complex or the images were too big because the screens would freeze. In addition, I felt like the design of the software was a bit busy and not so user friendly or intuitive. Many of the visitors would overlook the screens and the audio devices. Robert mentioned that one of the most difficult aspects of this exhibit was creating the mount for these screens. The mounts have to be the perfect height for most visitors and they must be simple enough not to grab too much attention. The work should be the star of the show. For this reason, Robert chose to keep the graphics on the floor rather than on the walls. Exhibits can get busy pretty quickly and then you will lose the audience without a clear hierarchy of information.

This was a successful exhibit that communicated effectively. Some questions to keep in mind might be:

How can a clear hierarchy of information be created for people to enter into the show at various depths?

How can the structure of the mounts be invisible and understated?

Where can a designer scrimp on budget without the majority of the audience noticing?

How can interactive pieces be more engaging, intuitive and user friendly?

How can compromises be made to please both the designer and the curator?

Developments: French Bronze Show

Here are the preliminary boards that the designers and curators use to assemble the models. These are similar to the mood boards used in fashion and brand development.

The designers and curators use this board to get inspiration for the space.

At this stage, the designers start to organize the moods for each gallery in the exhibit.

Foam core models, created at 1:12,  are finished while colors and themes are chosen. Here the curators are finalizing where each piece will be displayed in the gallery. Different color sticky notes tag locations and other specifics. While adhering the color to the walls I had to remove my shoes to tip toe around the models already affixed to the floor.

When I returned today I noticed that all the colors, (from the previous week of painstaking color matching), had been printed out and placed in the model. It transformed the space!

Here is an aerial view of the gallery.

When I was in Merritt’s exhibit design class at UCLA extension, I forgot to place a scale figure into my model for the final project. I truly thought I had covered all my bases when turning in that final, however I forgot the most important aspect of creating a model. That is imagining people interacting with the space. How do the galleries flow from one room to another?  Will people easily access the text and interactive materials in the show? These are questions that should be easily be answered when a scale figure is introduced. It also gives the designers a sense of scale. Here is the title wall with two model people. Perhaps the text is too high for most people? These questions should be tackled before installation.

Title Wall for French Bronze

Here the designers needed to show how a printed scrim will look against a bronze sculpture. It was necessary to create a full size model and place a sample printed scrim in the background. The translucent material behind the piece frames it nicely. Using scrims are also a great way to divide spaces. It is understated and elegant.

Yellow fabric scrim