--- tags: cd --- # reading notes for workshop + mdf mtg prep ## visual explanations, edward r. tufte * visual means of depicting quantities * labels * encodings (color scales) * self-representing scales (objs of known size) * significance of scale * capturing at different scales * giving different representations so that the size of an object is legible * when to distort scale for effect - to heighten awareness of a phenomenon/detail/etc., ex. ## the process genre, Salomé Aguilera Skvirsky * documentation transforms the object - and in so doing, transforms us, our understanding of the world * embodiment/physical body actually making something as something capturing process can entail * "the sequentially ordered representation of something making or doing something. Whether the action is performed before a live audience, is recorded and later projected on a screen, is drawn from imagination, or is narrated discursively; whether or not the action employs tools and machines; and whether the representation is received by children or adults, the sequential representation of people successfully making and doing things produces in the spectator a singular wonder and deep satisfaction." * steps of a process * encounter between the body and instruments and materials * capturing the beginning, middle, end - this gets to the storytelling aspect of documentation; a temporal element often shapes documentation * can be prescriptive - a how-to or can be individualized - this is the process of THIS particular artist * making a process legible requires curation and formally strategies will vary depending on the process being captured/represented * editing, framing, slow motion and animation, fast motion - some strategies in film for capturing process ## design is storytelling, ellen lupton * posters and illustrations as temporal, build to show a whole picture of something * design builds a structure that, like a story, reveals incrementally/bit by bit * freytag's pyramid: exposition > rising action > climax > falling action > denoument * goal or intention of every move, every experience someone has through design process/engaging with design * gestalt principles * brain takes data (about color, tone, shape, movement, orientation) into objects - useful chunks of info called 'precepts' * it's about individual elements being perceived as a larger/more unified whole * proximity (closer spacing = group), similarity (same color and shape = group), common fate (elements seem to change as a group), figure/ground ambiguity (white spaces are active or inactive), closure and continuation (we mentally close gaps in regular shapes and strong lines)