4.1/5.1: Decisions, Decisions

Happy August, everyone! Today’s post covers both Canva and Chapter 4 of Designing with Emotion by Aarron Walter, as well as a brief look at my dummy layouts for my Fortune 500 company newsletter.

As the CIA once wrote, “I can neither confirm nor deny the existence or nonexistence of blog post 4.1 responsive to the professor’s requirements. The fact of the existence or nonexistence of the required blog post is currently and properly classified and is intelligence sources and methods information that is protected from disclosure by section 11 of my blog’s secret code, as amended.”

Okay, perhaps I didn’t get it quite right, but I think I was pretty close. All joking aside, I had written a draft for Lesson 4.1 and failed to complete and publish it, and I’m sorry. Hopefully the attached wall of text in some part redeems my sins.

Thy Canva Come, Thy Will Be Posted

Canva is a web-based design platform that integrates stock images, typographic elements, and document sizes for a variety of applications, including social media, marketing, and documents into one spot, allowing users to easily create new documents, search for elements (shapes, layouts, etc.), and drag and drop them into place. It serves as a unique, free platform for non-designers and designers alike to create nice, clean graphics on the go without hunting for resources. Finally, you don’t have to Google for the size of your Twitter header with Canva!

I’m generally impressed with the resources Canva offers. As long as you’re not trying to fit the entire Pledge of Allegiance in a small space (where the default says “Hello!”), you’ll create a pretty good looking image. It has a very Apple approach to interface design: provide the user with a few quality options and the results will be more consistent and reliable for most people than something made from scratch. It’s a really sensible model. Frankly, it’s completely unfair to expect someone who only needs a quick flyer for their book club to know how to use the Adobe Suite or have the money and time to find a designer to do it for them. Canva offers a great middle ground between Adobe InDesign and Microsoft Office.

… And of course, it makes me feel awkward. I’m an elitist graphic designer. I take pride in my work—the time investment, the R&D, the experience—and it’s hard to accept something like Canva. It reminds me of 99 Designs, in that it’s a well-meaning, affordable alternative to hiring professional graphic designers in a firm or freelancing, but unless the people behind those tools are pulling extra hours, it really seems like it can’t (or shouldn’t?) beat the pros.

When I used Canva, I felt like I was fighting it for control. In InDesign, I set up master pages with columns, guides, baseline grids, and margins/bleeds along with paragraph styles for every type element and swatches for any important color. Canva did not let me copy and paste elements from one document to the next, nor could I save swatches, eyedrop colors, add Google Fonts, or use exact pixel values to place or move objects. It asked me to rely entirely on my eyes and gut feelings about whether or not things were aligned correctly. I felt like I was spending a lot more time adjusting how it looked rather than how it should feel.

I’ll go ahead and wrap it up: I strongly prefer InDesign, Illustrator, and Photoshop to Canva. I want to make it clear that I legitimately appreciate the niche it serves and how well it flows. I might return to it myself when I’m given a small project, like an ad on Instagram, and I don’t have access to the Adobe Suite and/or a good computer. Still, the vast majority of the time, I’ll be sticking to the Adobe Suite

If you came this far, first, thanks for putting up with me this far! Secondly, if you want to use Canva for more projects, check out Section 3 of their One Time Use Agreement for a specific list of what you can do with your designs. I’m not telling you this to bore you to death so much as to make sure you don’t get a gentle but firm GTFO letter from Canva after your Canva-designed coffee mugs go viral and sell out on Etsy.

Designing for Emotion: Chapter 4

If you’re nerdy enough to listen to podcasts, I recommend Freakonomic’s latest episode, How to Create Suspense, as a vaguely related companion piece for this chapter. They spend the whole episode talking about suspense and surprise in everything from soccer to M. Night Shyamalan and how it affects people’s interest and beliefs.

Chapter 4, titled Emotional Engagement, focuses on some details of what makes a successful design persona. Walter concentrates on designs that create “surprise, anticipation, elevat[ed] perceived status, and limit[ed] access” (65) in such a way that users feel like they’re a part of something special. He touches on open systems in game design, which is often referred to as an open world experience by gamers, found in games like The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Minecraft. I find the comparison intriguing. Game designers have now spent decades trying to refine gamers’ experiences by experimenting with both closed systems with linear narratives and gameplay decisions, and open systems that allow players to wander around a map, make personalized decisions, and design a unique narrative arc. Open systems are increasingly popular in games, because people love to feel like their in game decisions really affect their digital world. Popular open system games tend to deliver a huge variety of content, paths, secrets, and powers for people to pick from.

It’s worth noting, however, that no matter what a designer or game developer does, the user will end up with a “premade” result. Sure, the user may be able to decide which one to take at first—may it be buying a new camera lens or joining magic college—but there’s more than likely a predetermined outcome ready for that user on the other end. Randomized elements, like Freddie’s humorous quips, add life to a daily experience, but you’re still going to end up sending emails to the office. Everything you can do on those sites or in games was, at some point, programmed into the experience, and really… that’s okay. A well-designed open world experience might only have 2 different endings (such as the world getting saved versus the world ending in fire), but it will feel like it resulted from the user’s experience and decisions in the rest of the game. Great design should be no different. No matter how a person gets from point A to point B, point B should feel just right.

I’m going to stop here, since I’ve grown quite tired, but hopefully I’ve said something intriguing here. Onward to the newsletter for now!

Newsletter Dummy Layout

I’ve selected Costco as my Fortune 500 company, since I have a lot of respect for their business practices and the way they treat employees. Below, I’ve attached previews of my dummy layout for a 3 page newsletter, which plans for 4 fairly brief articles about Costco’s internal and external interactions with consumers and employees alike. I’m hoping to include some small interactive elements, such as the ability to zoom on images or embedded video, thereby adding in-depth content for people reading it on a screen.

 

 

 

 

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Written for PR Publications course at the University of Oklahoma, Lessons 4.1 and 5.1