N A R R AT I V E MAPPING Design Process Atlas by Kaitlyn Nelsen
N A R R AT I V E MAPPING Design Process Atlas By Kaitlyn Nelsen
Narrative Mapping: Design Process Atlas is set in two typefaces. DIN 1451 Std Engschrift and Avenir Next Condensed. DIN 1451 Std Engschrift is used for headlines, while Avenir Next Condensed is used for body copy. The DIN 1451 – or DIN Schriften Mittelschrift – font family was originally conceived in 1905. Walter Portsmann conceived the first DIN sizes for use on paper; Albert-Jan Pool then digitalized the font in 1995. DIN 1451 Std Engschrift is founded by Linotype. Avenir was originally designed by Adrian Frutiger in 1988. Avenir Next Condensed was reworked by Adrian Frutiger and Akira Kobayashi in 2003. It was published by Linotype in 2004. This book was printed, bound, and designed by Kaitlyn Nelsen for Stacy Asher’s Advanced Graphic Design class at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. The book was constructed and printed using the Hixson-Lied College of Fine and Performing Arts Digital Lab at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
CONTENT PROJECT 2
The Circle
Character Mind Map
Setting the Story
Inspiration
Typography Research
Character Heart & Mind Diagram
Thesis
PROJECT 1
PROJECT 3
Newspaper Article Diagram
Inspiration
Music Video Narrative
Foundation Gridwork & Spreads
Typology
Type Study
Inspiration
Mockette
Food Analysis Map
Happiness Summit
Thesis
Thesis
Final Grid & Layout
F O R E WO R D
By Stacy Asher Assistant Professor of Art Advanced Graphic Design Fall 2014 MAPPING FOR A NARRATIVE ATLAS
During the Fall Semester 2014 at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, students of Advanced Graphic Design / GRPH 421 authored a collection of maps, charts and diagrams that centered around the concept of “well being or happiness.” Each designed artifact addressed aspects of individual design research and illustrates various methods of investigation. The Atlas publication is a compilation of works that document research and explain processes. Projects engaged students in the invention of unique graphic systems that visualize information about happiness and well being. The designs represent quantitative and qualitative narratives and illustrate individual perspectives and interests. These visual displays charting well being and system were compiled into an atlas — a book of maps, charts, illustrations or diagrams united by the interpretations of happiness and systems that are found within a society. The atlas represents a coordinated body of methods, a scheme or plan of procedure that was used to organize data from design research. Various production methods were considered and students were encouraged to explore a wide variety of media and design strategies. These methods were evaluated on their effectiveness as generators of visual information with respect to their project goals and intended meanings.
P R E FA C E Kaitlyn Nelsen
Advanced Graphic Design Fall 2014 Throughout the semester I designed a collection of maps, charts and diagrams that centered around the concept of “well being or happiness.� The theme of health, both mentally and physically is present in my projects. These projects represent quantitative and qualitative narratives and illustrate my personal perspective and interest in physical and mental well being. I would like to thank my design professors, as well as my fellow classmates, for their constant feedback and advice throughout the entire process of designing and compiling this atlas.
INTRODUCTION The purpose of Narrative Mapping: Design Process Atlas is to bring together an entire semester’s work into a unified artifact. This artifact is intended to show the processes and research that took place for each project, and how each project came to fruition. Those who delve into this book should end the book with a better understanding of design processes, as well as an overall understanding of how design can play a large part in how we come to define and communicate happiness.
PROJECT 1
N E W S PA P E R A RT I C L E DIAGRAM Diagramming an article from the Lincoln Journal Star helped me better understand mapping information. Telling a story through a diagram was new to me, and I learned a lot about simplifying information.
Where do cats fit? (If I fits, I sits.)
Warm spaces
Sunny spots Arms
Laps
Human spaces
Keyboards
Your Home
Beds
High spaces
Trees Tables
Shelves
Small spaces
M U S I C V I D E O N A R R AT I V E By taking the lyrics from a music video that makes me happy, I was able to see how context can play a large part in how we interpret information. I chose the video Ain’t It Fun by Paramore. The video is fun because it is made up of the band breaking world records, but the lyrics are fairly dark when taken out of context.
I don’t mind Letting you down easy but just give it time If you don’t hurt now then just wait, just wait a while You’re not the big fish in the pond no more You are what they’re feeding on So what are you gonna do when the world don’t orbit around you?
Ain’t it fun?
Living in the real world
Ain’t it good? Being all alone
TYPOLOGY While considering what to research compare naturally prepared food to prefor the Happiness Summit, I thought served food. Specifically, meat products, because there is a larger variety. about how the preservatives in our food have an impact on our mindset. For my research typology I chose to
I N S P I R AT I O N I was inspired by these maps because I enjoyed their simplicity. The information that they’re showing is extensive but the maps are still easy to read. I also enjoyed the use of accent colors against a more muted, one-color background.
F O O D A N A LY S I S M A P After reflecting on my typology, I chose to do an analysis of food. To begin mapping out my campus food analysis, I started laying out all of the places I knew of that serve or sell food on city campus.
After laying out the overall structure of city campus, I color coded the buildings according to the types of foods they were selling, from least healthy to most healthy.
Scavenger Hunt
An analysis of food on UNL’s City Campus Healthiest food options Fresh fruits, vegetables, whole grains, lean protein, and dairy are available in a variety of options.
Dining Halls University dining consists of Harper Dining, Selleck Dining, Abel/ Sandoz Dining, and Cather/ Pound/ Neihardt Dining. All halls provide a few options for fresh fruits, vegetables, dairy, grains, and protein for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
Moderately healthy food options Some fresh fruits, such as apples or bananas, are available, as well as yogurt and bagels. Most options consist of crackers, chips, microwave meals, deli sandwiches, and cookies. Least healthy food options Most options consist of vending machine foods, such as crackers, chips, pop-tarts, pastries, candy bars, trail mix, jerky, and cookies.
The Training Table The Training Table provides a variety of healthy, performance based food options for student-athletes. Fresh fruits, vegetables, whole grains, lean protein, and dairy are available in a variety of options.
Greek Row Sorority and Fraternity houses have planned meals, catered meals, and specially prepared meals for those who have speciďŹ c dietary needs, such as vegetarian, vegan, and gluten-free. Most meals consist of a few options for fresh fruits, vegetables, dairy, grains, and protein.
HAPPINESS SUMMIT Pinning up early the morning of the Happiness Summit went well. I enjoyed hearing the first speakers and looking at all of the displays.
PROJECT 1 THESIS The problem that my project presents is the lack of healthy food available on UNL’s city campus. I firmly believe that a person’s mental state can be altered by their hunger, the availability of food, and the chemical affects of the food that they eat. I wanted to use my map to show that there are not a lot of healthy food options on campus throughout each building, and that this can have an impact on the happiness of students and faculty. I chose to display this information using a map of the buildings on city campus, color-coded by the food available in each building. I then highlighted the buildings with the healthiest food options, and described in further detail what options they provided. I thought this would be a relevant topic to display because a lot of people who are on campus daily will make up the audience at the summit. I chose my typography to follow the already clean aesthetic I had created, and to resemble the typefaces that the university uses, but I didn’t use minion pro or myriad pro because I wanted to use something a little more original. I think my solution was successful because I was able to show the availability of different types of food on campus in a very minimal and straightforward way. I think that the audience at the summit was able to connect to the information I displayed, and they were able to understand it quickly.
PROJECT 2
THE CIRCLE The Circle tells the story of Mae Holland, a recent college graduate who lands a job at The Circle, a powerful technology company. Mae owes her new job largely to her best friend and college roommate, Annie, one of the most influential people in the company. Mae starts out in Customer Experience (CE), but quickly climbs the company ladder. Mae’s very first day at the Circle ends with a party where she encounters Francis, who remains an on again, off again love interest throughout the rest of the book. Later, Mae becomes romantically involved with a mysterious colleague named Kalden, who she can’t verify actually works for the company. Meanwhile, the Circle continues to develop a range of high tech tools, including SeeChange, portable cameras that can provide real-time video and are easy to hide. Eventually, SeeChange cameras are worn by politicians wanting to be ‘transparent’, allowing the public to see what they are seeing, even behind closed doors. Meanwhile, Mae is dealing with her father’s diagnosis of multiple sclerosis. This eventually leads Mae to enroll her parents on her health care, which lets the Circle monitor them with SeeChange cameras in their home. After Mae gets caught stealing, she ends up agreeing to wear a SeeChange device herself (called going transparent). She announces this at a public talk in which she insists, “Secrets are Lies”, “sharing is caring,” and “privacy is theft.” Mae’s job now mainly consists of touring the campus and showing customers future products; any hints of her own doubts about privacy
seem dropped, in contrast to her ex-boyfriend Mercer, who eventually insists on going “off the grid” to escape the reach of the Circle. Kalden calls Mae, warning her that The Circle must be stopped, but she refuses to listen. Annie becomes oddly jealous of Mae’s success and volunteers to be the first test subject for PastPerfect, a new product that tracks a person’s family history and activities. Disturbing facts about Annie’s family history come to light and she becomes increasingly stressed, eventually causing her to fall into a coma. Embarrassed both by her parents’ distrust of SeeChange monitoring in their home and the conduct of her ex, Mercer - all of which have been publicly accessible to Mae’s millions of followers - Mae becomes upset that they have embarrassed her in this way and, while demonstrating a program designed to catch fugitives within minutes, uses it to find Mercer who attempts to escape using his truck and ends up driving off a bridge and is killed. While
initially depressed, Mae soon rationalizes Mercer’s death with the help of charismatic ‘Wise Man’ Eamon Bailey, saying that he was an extremely depressed, antisocial human being who refused society’s help. As the story builds, it is revealed that Kalden is in fact elusive ‘Wise Man’ Ty Gospodinov, the original inventor and founder who came up with the idea for the Circle. Mae agrees to meet him in secret and he tells her that a totalitarian regime will soon arise if nothing is done to stop it. He explains the need for privacy and asks her to help him take down the Circle. Mae thinks that he is crazy, but pretends to go along with him, but then betrays him by telling the other founders of the Circle what has happened, who ensure that Ty is silenced. The book ends with Mae looking at Annie in the hospital, wondering what her friend is thinking and how she can capture these thoughts and make them known.
CHARACTER MIND MAP After reading The Circle I began making a mind map to organize what stuck out to me in the story. While reflecting on my mind map, I was most interested by the relationships of the
characters. I was especially attracted to the main character, Mae, and how the people within her life fade in and out as she progresses in the Circle.
S E T T I N G T H E S TO RY The Circle campus is where the majority of the story takes place. To better understand the setting and the interactions between characters I began to sketch out how I thought the Circle
campus might look. I mostly pictured it as large glass buildings broken up by small grassy areas.
I N S P I R AT I O N While thinking about Mae’s relationships in the book I wanted to show how her priorities change. These images inspired me to try and show her inner conflicts by exposing and diagramming her thoughts.
P R OTOT Y P E Initially I thought about showing Mae’s thoughts and their importance through a brain diagram for each section of the book. After roughly illustrating a prototype I realized that
it didn’t convey the technical and futuristic feel of The Circle. It also didn’t capture how her heart and mind conflicted throughout the story.
TYPOGRAPHY RESEARCH & I N S P I R AT I O N Orator is a monospaced typeface made up of capitals and small capitals only; it can be used for tabular material or technical documentation. The name Orator comes from the notion that capitals and small capitals are clearer than upper and lowercase letters, thus making it useful for speech notes. It was designed for IBM typewriters by John Scheppler.
OR A T O R S T D Medium ABCDEFG H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V X Y Z abcdefg h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v x y z 1234567 8 9 0 ! @ # $ % ^ & * ( ) Slanted ABCDEFG H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V X Y Z abcdefg h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v x y z 1234567 8 9 0 ! @ # $ % ^ & * ( )
C H A R A C T E R H E A RT & MIND DIAGRAM
Kalden
To show Mae’s inner conflict between her heart and mind I chose to map out what occupied her thoughts in each section of the book. To show how her thoughts keep building throughout the story, I decided to separate her thoughts per section and layer them using transparency paper.
Customer experience
Mercer
Zings
Annie
PartiRank
Top 40
Inner Circle
Kayaking Marion
Outer Circle Francis Control
Sex
See Change
Bills
The Three Wise Men
Parents
Insurance Exhaustion
Work Multiple sclerosis
Surveys
Inner Thoughts
Coma
Stress
Exhaustion
PastPerfect
Gang of 40
Friend College
Annie
Conversion rate
Surveys
Retail Raw
Customer experience
TruYou Frowns Smiles
Exile Sex
T2K
Liar
Secrets
Comments
PartiRank
Kalden /Ty Cancer Risk
Complete Health Data Program PEACE
Theft Maiden Voyages
Marion Seals
Outer Circle
Kayaking
Inner Circle
Zings
Bailey Stenton
Mercer Drones
The Three Wise Men
Chandelier
Isolation Guilt
Dead
Completing the Circle
Francis LuvLuv
Demoxie
Control
Parents Insurance Ungrateful
10 million transparent
Clarification
Sex Tape
Bills
Ty
Multiple sclerosis
Transparency Work Exhaustion
Disconnected cameras
Viewers Privacy is Theft
Secrets are Lies
SeeChange
Sharing is Caring
Inner Thoughts
Coma
Stress
Exhaustion
PastPerfect
Gang of 40
Friend College
Annie
Conversion rate
Surveys
Retail Raw
Customer experience
TruYou Frowns Smiles
Exile Sex
T2K
Liar
Secrets
Comments
PartiRank
Kalden /Ty Cancer Risk
Complete Health Data Program PEACE
Theft Maiden Voyages
Marion Seals
Outer Circle
Kayaking
Inner Circle
Zings
Bailey Stenton
Mercer Drones
The Three Wise Men
Chandelier
Isolation Guilt
Dead
Completing the Circle
Francis LuvLuv
Demoxie
Control
Parents Insurance Ungrateful
10 million transparent
Clarification
Sex Tape
Bills
Ty
Multiple sclerosis
Transparency Work Exhaustion
Disconnected cameras
Viewers Privacy is Theft
Secrets are Lies
SeeChange
Sharing is Caring
PROJECT 2 THESIS For my project I chose to focus on Mae, and how she changes throughout the course of the book. As Mae delves deeper into the Circle, she begins to care more about her work and her customer relationships rather than her personal relationships. The goal of my map is to show how Mae’s relationships develop, while also showing how these changes play into the Circle becoming more complete. I chose to do my map on layered transparencies. As each layer is lifted the background becomes more transparent, playing on the idea of the Circle becoming more transparent and complete. Each layer also represents one of the three sections of the book, and shows how each book brings new details to Mae’s relationships. The lifting of each layer also resembles the action of reading a book, and going deeper into a story. The typeface I chose was Orator. It is known for being used for tabular material or technical documentation. I thought this typeface fit well with the high technical aspect of the Circle. I also thought that having a clean and legible typeface would help the readability of my type through the layers. I think my design is successful because it conveys the struggle between Mae’s heart and mind. I believe that this struggle would be easy for non-readers of the book to recognize, and that they could come up with a general understanding of the story and some of its themes. I also think that the interactivity would draw people in, and would make them curious about the narrative.
PROJECT 3
I N S P I R AT I O N I found these layouts inspirational because of their clean, minimal design. I especially love the use of an accent color or shape. The “Content” and “Introduction” layouts helped me the most in considering how to make a content list more designed and dynamic.
F O U N DAT I O N G R I DWO R K & SPREADS My Initial spreads were tests to see how I could potentially lay out my content. After laying out these spreads I realized that my content would not be as text based as these initial prototypes conveyed. Although these spreads were too text heavy to move forward with, they did give me insight into how might develop my grid to be more image based.
T Y P E S T U DY I liked the look of the simple sans serif typefaces used in my inspiration, so I chose to do a type study consisting of mostly gothic fonts. I liked the bold look of Franklin Gothic the most out of my study, so I chose to move forward with it for my mockette.
MOCKETTE I wanted to use my mockette to get a sense of scale more than anything. I wanted to see how my type and image relationships worked in their actual size. After quickly laying out some of my pages, I decided to increase the size of pages from 6 x 9 in. to 8 x 10 in. Some of my images were difficult to read at the smaller size. This also led me to reconsider my grid to allow for larger imagery.
F I N A L G R I D & L AY O U T Coming to a final grid layout was the most challenging part of developing my spreads. I was able to eventually come to a grid solution that would account for minimal copy and large imagery through variation within a six– column grid.
PROJECT 3 THESIS For my atlas, I chose to compile all of the work that I have done this semester into an artifact. The purpose of this atlas is to show the processes and research that took place for each project, and how each project came to fruition. I would like the readers of my book to gain a better understanding of my personal design process, as well as an overall understanding of how design can play a large part in how we come to define and communicate well being. Reflecting on my past projects, I wanted my atlas design to be simple and modern to avoid conflict between the images of my past projects and the overall feel of the book itself. I chose DIN 1451 Std Engschrift and Avenir Next Condensed as my main typefaces because of their simple style. They also complimented the typefaces I had used in previous projects. Overall, I think my project is successful. I had never done any sort of book or grid layout work before starting this project, so I’m happy with how far I’ve come. I think that readers of my book will be able to easily see how I go about working on a project and understand my methods behind my designs.
CONCLUSION The purpose of Narrative Mapping: Design Process Atlas is to bring together an entire semester’s work into a unified artifact. This artifact is intended to show the processes and research that took place for each project, and how each project came to fruition. Hopefully, after reading this book you now have a better understanding of my personal design process, as well as an overall understanding of how design can play a large part in how we come to define and communicate happiness.
BIBLIOGRAPHY “College of Business Administration.” UNL. College of Business. Web. 1 Oct. 2014. <http://cba.unl.edu/about/resources/daily-drip/default.aspx>. “Dietary Guidelines for Americans.” Nutrition.gov. USDA. Web. 2 Oct. 2014. <http://www.nutrition.gov/smart-nutrition-101/dietary-guidelines-americans.html>. Eggars, Dave. The Circle. Vintage Books, 2013. Print. “Healthy Eating Tips.” ChooseMyPlate.gov. USDA. Web. 2 Oct. 2014. <http://www.choosemyplate.gov/healthy-eating-tips.html>. “Healthy eating & physical activity across your lifespan: better health and you, tips for adults.” August 2012. Department of Health & Human Services, NIH, National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, Weight-Control Information Network. Web. 2 Oct. 2014. <http:// permanent.access.gpo.gov/gpo50014/tipsforadults804bw.pdf>. “Let’s Eat For the Health of It.” June 2011. USDA, HHS. Home and Garden Bulletin No. 232-CP. Web. 2 Oct. 2014. <http://www.choosemyplate.gov/ food-groups/downloads/MyPlate/DG2010Brochure.pdf>. “Sports Nutrition.” Nebraska Athletics. Nebraska Huskers. 2014. Web. 1 Oct. 2014. <http://www.huskers.com/ViewArticle.dbml?ATCLID=1552880. html>.