Maeda @ Media
Welcome back. So, up until last Wednesday, I was immersed in a massive project for Graduate Design Studio. Since then, I've been recovering. Now that things have calmed down, I thought I'd write a little about my process.Our second assignment in Design Studio was entitled "Visualizing Information Space." Each of us was given a book, magazine, website, CD-ROM or DVD that contained complex information. Our task was to visually explain the information space of our artifact.
My artifact was a 450 page book written by John Maeda, who spoke at CMU back in September. Maeda's point of view didn't resound with me at first, so this assignment seemed karmically appropriate. It's changed my mind.
One of my first steps in approaching this problem was to buy my own copy of the book and make some modifications to its interface. Viewing the pages of a book adjacent in space rather than stacked in time helps illuminate its structure and content.
Despite the size of the book, it's an easy read. Less than three hours of material. Basically, it's a picture book. The relationship between narrative and image is interesting. Maeda was very methodical in the way he designed the pace of the book. Each chapter is a perfect multiple of 16-page signatures. That consistency of structure suggested a framework for my digital interface.
Three weeks and over 400 scans later, I finished my visualization. It weighs in at over 100MB and almost certainly violates copyright law, so I won't post the whole thing. Here's a compromise that gives a rough overview of the interface. Click each screenshot to see the next one.
Posted November 2, 2003
CMU Grad Studio