Week 11: Outside the Classroom

Thursday night I went to The Cork Factory Hotel to listening to Mikey Burton talk about his work. It was a short lecture but I really enjoyed it.

Mikey talked about how he got started as an illustrator/designer, his very first project, what life was like in the beginning after earning his degree and what he does now.

When Mikey was younger him and his friends enjoyed making posters together and they very first project was creating a poster for his then girlfriend's, ex-boyfriend's band. Him and his friends kept that trend going by making posters for local venues for shows they were having and as payment, Mikey and the guys got to go to these shows for free....


For homework over the weekend we needed to do more research on our kickstarter campaign and structure how we were going to display the information on our webpage. I did not find a lot of information on my campaign specifically so I may add a bit more info on some of the other work my person does alongside the Interference posters.

We also had some readings to do, Chapter 4 in Above the Fold and from the IID book, we needed to read Activating Composition Space, Entry Point, Cognitive Load, Minimum Usable Design.

In Above the Fold, Chapter 4 talks about the anatomy of a web page and how it is laid out. It first goes over the form and function of web design, such as how a person reads in regards to the layout of the information on a web page (most important info on the top left because most people read left to right, top to bottom). It also goes over things like borrowed conventions (newspaper fold), user expectations (tabs for organization), headers, navigation, the layout of the web page's content, how side bars are used, the footer and why it is so important, and ways to use backgrounds to enhance the content of the page.

Activating Composition Space explains how having white space (and using it correctly) helps create a flow through the web page design.

Cognitive Load Theory talks about how a designer can create a web page with information that will not overwhelm the reader and instead allow them to absorb the information into their long-term memory.

Entry point compares an inviting storefront with the first page of a web site and how they can use similar layouts to coax first time users in.

Minimum Usable Design explains how some web pages don't need to be complete before becoming usable to viewers, if at least 50% of the intended audience can navigate the web page even without it being complete, it follows the idea of the minimum usable design.