PhIxDA Automagically

I agree with Megan and I would like to piggy back off of her post. I think that is a great idea. The monotony of the 8 hour work day can be a creative vacuum. Some days, weeks, months it can literally suck the creative spark right out of you. Or it can motivate you to find a creative outlet. Our creativity needs to be fed. I want to propose a spin off of that photography project.

Based off of the same color premise, I think we should create a designer’s week. There will be a color theme for each week of the month. Each participant will have one week to produce a static web page design only using the color scheme specified for that week. The content is at the designer’s discretion. I’ll briefly touch on content in the next paragraph. Here we want to focus on layout and the importance/role that color plays in the overall design and how the two compliment each other. Color creates emotion in people. People relate color to things(blue=cold red=hot, etc). How can we manipulate the way the user feels with color regardless of the content? How can we make an otherwise simple, boring layout and make it come alive just by using the right color scheme? We can learn how not to ruin a very good design with the wrong color scheme. What type of color schemes compliment what type of layouts? Just a few questions we can attempt to answer during this project.

All Designs will be posted at the end of the week. I don’t think any design will work with just one color so maybe the weekly themes can be monochromatic. Here are a few guidelines that we should follow.

• Weekly monochromatic color theme
• Up to 3 tones not including base hue
• All designs will be allowed 2 colors that will not impact the number of colors allowed in the design
• Allowed colors can be black and white or the allowed colors can change per week according to the theme

These are just a few guidelines that I immediately thought of. Everyone can add suggestions until we hash out an official list of guidelines that everyone agrees on.

This is a little bit of forward thinking but maybe we can start with color themes then move towards content themes(sports, clothing, etc). Or alternate weekly themes. I understand that life, work and scheduling plays a major role in everyone’s week but I think that this will be a great project to keep the creativity flowing as we sit in our cubes and the real design world continues to advance and pass us by. This can be another good way to stay connected to the design world.

Here is a bit more forward thinking. After we get things going we can plan to evolve this project. We can eventually vote on a design that was posted, add interaction, functionality and post it live. Hence, the phrase ‘Interactive Design’. I think this will strengthen our skills on a couple levels; design, interaction, team work and one of the most fundamental and (in my opinion)the most important aspect in the (interactive)design world: The Design Process.