Back in the day of OS 8, Adobe Type Manager was required, and it was and remained a dog. We loaded and unloaded fonts manually, that is, we put them in the system font folder, rebooted, and then reversed the process once done using them. It was easy to miss something, and often designers would just keep activating fonts without ever removing any, and this would clog their system performance.

When Apple moved to OS X, the problems multiplied, as there were now 4 different font folders, and Murphy’s Law set in. Font Book, which comes with OS X, works, sort of, but it is not a professional level tool. Font management programs have several advantages, including previews of your font collection, folder organization and activation, automatic loading and unloading of fonts, and resolution of duplicates.

We used two of the leading products, Suitcase and FontAgent Pro, but when it came time to upgrade a couple of years ago, I looked around once again, and to my surprise found the best of the lot was the new Font Explorer X from Linotype, and it was free! When I first opened it, I thought I had opened ITunes by mistake; the interface is very similar, including a Linotype store where you can buy and download fonts.

Linotype is one of the oldest European font houses, with many famous font designers including Hermann Zapf, Adrian Frutiger, and Akira Kobayashi. I could understand that they could make such a great product and give it away (Suitcase/FontAgent are $100), as they were able to get you to their store. The prices are the same as Adobe, but much easier to preview and buy. Besides, many of the fonts we use are Linotype originals, and licensed by Adobe for sale.

Font Explorer X is still the best tool, IMHO, and there are two commercial versions available, workstation and server. However Linotype still offer Version 1.2.3 which is a free download available at http://www.fontexplorerx.com/download/, and at that price, it’s the best deal out there. Snow Leopard is said to improve font management within the OS, with unlimited fonts allowed (without system degradation) and auto-activation, two major steps in the right direction. In fact, if things go right, we may not have to buy any font management software in the future, Font Explorer X Version 1.2.3 will bridge our needs till after upgrade to Snow Leopard.

Here is a link to a review of font management tools written last fall, (I think it is still valid):
Font Manager Review

So I gave up on the search for work, got some orange chicken from Panda Express, and I have settled into a co-worker’s office for a nice, long blog post about life, love, the meaning of the universe, editing, and the summer. (But mostly the last two.)

I’ve noticed something since I started working here as a writer and editor. Even when I’m not at work, I now have the urge to edit everything. I am officially the person who everyone hates because I am always pointing out mistakes on signs and brochures and being really snotty and condescending about it (despite the fact that I, myself, absolutely depend on Microsoft Word’s automatic spell check). But I come across about 50 things each day I want to edit. From Facebook statuses to restaurant menus to the student newspaper (which got my last name and major wrong in my last of 60 columns) to the fortune cookie I got the other day telling me “it is time to moving forward.” I just want to fix the world’s mistakes.

And speaking of moving forward, this is totally unrelated but I am excited to continue working here as we move on into summer. Summertime in Bloomington is wonderful with most of the students gone, and it will be nice to have a reason to be in town every day. I am also excited for summer because I just opened my fortune cookie from my lunch and it says “You will have full contentment by summers end.” So achieving full contentment is definitely something to be excited about.

(Although there should really be an apostrophe before the “s” in “summers.”)

The Dunn Inn turned out to be a very friendly place. When our food came out, the waiter sang out our orders as he placed them in front of us. I ordered a salad along with a few others, and everyone else’s food came out before ours. “The salads will be out soon, we’re just waiting on a cucumber!” the waiter said to us. (Sang to us, rather). About a minute later a cook emerged from the back and scurried through the restaurant and out the front door.  About ten seconds later, he returned—a cucumber in hand. (How this cucumber managed to materialize in so short a time span, the world may never know). When my salad came out it was enormous, and I made the obligatory remarks: “This is so big! I’ll never finish! It’s bigger than my head!” But of course I downed it in minutes flat, as I always do. It happened to be the birthday of one of our writer/editors, so we all sang Happy Birthday to her. When we finished, the cucumber cook from the kitchen ran out to us, grinning. “It’s my birthday, too!’ he exclaimed and we all started applauding.

Also this week we hosted our first ever intern fair for new interns for the summer and fall, and I got to talk to the aspiring writers/editors who will one day replace me. *tear*
The internship fair was a big success with an impressive turnout, but if we had to do it all over again I would suggest that we not serve cupcakes. They are awkward to eat in front of people you are trying to impress.

I wasn’t even particularly trying to impress anyone, and yet I became so self-conscious sloppily eating my cupcake with the thick layer of chocolate frosting that I momentarily considered hiding out in the bathroom to finish eating it, but then I remembered the scene from Mean Girls where Lindsay Lohan has to eat her lunch alone in the bathroom because she has no friends, and I decided to try not to be that pathetic. (Instead I regretfully threw away my half-eaten cupcake).

My time management skills have always been nonexistent. My excuse is that I “work best under pressure,” but in reality, I can’t work on papers or projects until the last minute because I have so many other things I’ve procrastinated on that need to be taken care of. Despite my terrible habit, my work has always been finished and I’ve earned good grades.

Working at OCS is forcing me to learn and practice time management skills. Everything we do at OCS has to be tracked on this program called the Infowit Job Tracking System. Editing proofs, writing profiles, and writing blogs—all are tracked and billed to clients or recorded as overhead through this software. The ability to see who is paying me for each hour of my time has been a nice incentive to stay on task.

If only our professors would track our work and pay us accordingly, I know I would be a more dedicated student. I can see the project names in Infowit now: “IUB Psychology 101, Read pages 72-120”—or “IUB SOJ 917 Communication Law Review, Write/Edit.” My apartment might even get cleaned once in a while if I could bill someone for my time.

But even though I’m not getting paid, I am trying to apply the concept of job tracking to my schoolwork. Lately, I’ve tried breaking projects down into a few hours every night. For an annotated bibliography that was due two weeks ago, I allocated three hours each night to work on it. However, change is coming slowly: the three hours were 11 p.m. to 2 a.m.—after I took a nap, ate dinner, and caught up with Facebook and Perez Hilton.

A holiday weekend would have been the best time to apply this new method, but I didn’t take advantage of it. Hunting for Easter eggs with my 4-year-old brother trumped research papers and I didn’t get anything done. Consequently, I was at the library until at least 6 a.m. Monday and Tuesday. But like I said, I do my best work under pressure.

]]> http://creativeservices.iu.edu/blog/?feed=rss2&p=42 http://creativeservices.iu.edu/blog/?p=36 http://creativeservices.iu.edu/blog/?p=36#comments Wed, 08 Apr 2009 14:33:16 +0000 Ryan Design Usability http://creativeservices.iu.edu/blog/?p=36 On the Web today, it doesn’t take much to leave a bad impression on a user. However, awareness of a few common usability pitfalls can drastically improve your site.

• Straying from Web standards – This holds true for not only the style standards of the organization and department, but the Web in general as well. For example, light text on a dark background has been shown to slow reading speeds by up to 30%, so use it wisely. Also, no one wants to see your flashing, seizure-inducing banner or your tie-dyed horizontal row divider.
• Endless text – Overestimation of the interest of users in textual content is all too common. A recent study found that users read half the information only on those pages with 111 words or less. Skimming has become the norm, and it should be accounted for in your writing and layout.
• Bad architecture – Some experts report a site’s information architecture encompasses 80% of usability problems. Investment in an architecture planning stage, including addressing features like logical content organization, link labeling, and consistent navigation, typically pays off several times over in usability.
• Mobile inaccessibility – The mobile device will be the primary connection tool to the Internet for most people in the world in 2020, according to the Pew Research Center. This means that your site must support mobile devices, load quickly, and allow for my stubby fingers to distinguish between tiny text on my phone while I am driving my flying car (they’re coming out any day now, right?).

These select oversights most commonly occur when designing for the Web in isolation from users. This facilitates forgetfulness that real people will be using your site, not merely the idea that you have of their behavior. Not having the resources or time for usability testing is no excuse for user interaction, when meaningful feedback can be generated by asking simple tasks of those around you. For example, you can get some sense of how a novice user would handle your architecture by asking a parent or grandparent to find something on your site without using “the Google.”

I hope my boss realizes that, now that she has set the bar (pun intended), I will expect chocolate in increasing qualities each time I blog. Over the next few months I expect to receive the following in this order: chocolate chip cookies, a chocolate bunny, a three-layer chocolate mousse cake, a chocolate fondue feast complete with fresh fruit for dipping, and—eventually—my very own chocolate fountain to reside permanently in my office.

Also after my last blog post, my co-workers started feeling sorry for me for never getting mail. So the next time I passed my mailbox, it looked like this:

If you think you’re looking at a toy car, an IU promotional mug from the 80’s, and some kind of nut that has been spray-painted metallic for reasons I cannot even begin to imagine, you’d be correct. Mail at last!

I’m still having a lot of fun working here and I continue to learn a lot about writing, marketing, and IU. Our office has been working hard to develop a YouTube channel for Indiana University. When we all arrived at our weekly staff meeting a couple weeks ago, we were told to go out on campus to interview students about what they watch on YouTube and to come back an hour later to report our findings. (The student I ended up interviewing told me that he watches YouTube videos to learn military tactics, which I found slightly frightening…) But I think we received a lot of interesting insights that day and started developing some really innovative ideas. I also got to spend some time surfing YouTube to see what kinds of videos IU students have made and posted that we could link as favorites on our channel.

I’ll leave you with a few of my personal favorites:

IU’s Straight No Chaser—Stand By Me

Why I Like IU: Squirrel Cam

Jordan River Junkies

Anyway. I am really enjoying myself here. This is, after all, my first job that doesn’t involve serving either pizza or fried chicken. Also, I have two computer monitors at my desk, which makes it easier to pretend that I am extremely and irreplaceably important. Also making me feel important is my very own mailbox. I have never gotten any mail here, but each day I walk by it, hopeful. I refuse to be discouraged. I like to think that one day, when I least expect it, a piece of mail will be waiting for me. If not, maybe at least someone else’s mail will be delivered into my box accidentally, which would be equally exciting.

But I do more here than open multiple browser windows to spread out on my two monitors (just because I can) and think up reasons to pass by my mailbox six or seven times a day. I have spent most of my time working on the Founders Day booklet. I have been researching the distinguished teachers who will be honored with awards at Founders Day this year and writing page-long biographies of each. I have gotten to read about some amazing people, and I truly feel honored to get to do something for them—even in this very small and anonymous way.

I also enjoy going to biweekly meetings with all the other editors here to discuss current projects. We have also been known to debate our favorite punctuation marks, which is something that nobody outside of this office has ever wanted to do with me. For a while the editors were split evenly between the semicolon and the em dash, but slowly everyone but me has jumped to the em dash ship. I will loyally stand beside the semicolon until the day that I die, though, even if it costs me friends, family, and health. (Unless I eventually decide I like the em dash better. I didn’t even know what it was until a few weeks ago. And secretly, I’m still figuring out how to use it.)
I will continue to update about my internship throughout the spring. But right now, it’s time to go check my mailbox.

by Julia Boriss

The LEED Green Building Rating System provides standards for environmentally sustainable construction. Among the elements incorporated into the Von Lee that contributed to the LEED certification are these:

• Reused a previously developed site, minimizing the environmental impact
• Utilized proximity to bus routes
• Installed a green roof and reflective roof
• Maximized water efficiency/usage by 20%
• Optimized energy performance levels
• Enhanced refrigerant management by reducing ozone depletion
• Managed construction waste by recycling and/or salvaging 50% of non-hazardous debris
• Purchased building materials with recycled content
• Purchased building materials that have been extracted, harvested or recovered, as well as manufactured within 500 miles of the project site
• Implemented an indoor air quality management plan
• Installed low-emitting materials to reduce air contaminants that are odorous, irritating, and harmful to the comfort and well-being of installers and occupants
• Reduced indoor chemical pollutants by providing a permanent entryway system to capture dirt and particulates from entering the building and provided proper ventilation in areas where hazardous gases or chemicals may be used
• Provided thermal comfort that supports productivity and well-being of building occupants
• Purchased green power (renewable energy certificates - 100% biomass) which assists in “greening up” electricity and neutralizing carbon

In addition to receiving the LEED certification, the Von Lee redevelopment project has won a Revitalization Award for Historic Preservation from Downtown Bloomington Inc., an Outstanding Design award for renovation/modernization from American School & University, and a Certificate of Appropriateness from the Bloomington Historic Preservation Commission.

The project team included: Tartan Realty Group, Inc. (developer), Gilliatte General Contractors, Inc., OKW Architects (design architect), Tabor Bruce Architects (architect of record), Sieben Energy Associates (LEED consultant), Smith Neubecker, Inc. (structural engineer).

But ever since I created my own YouTube site, I’ve discovered something about myself: I like watching other people’s videos. I like to see the funny things people do, their little domestic habits, what they love and hate about the world.

So, naturally, when I was back at work and thinking of ways to get the word out to IU students about the Celebrate IU festivities, how to get 18-, 19-, and 20-year-olds engaged and excited about all of IU’s accomplishments, it occurred to me that a video contest might be the way to go. Let IU students from all eight campuses tell the world—with their own words, music, images (G-rated because this is a family site, you know)—what they love about IU. That is how the Celebrate IU Student Video Contest was born.

We here at IU Creative Services got the word out around IU, and 55 students posted their unique video response to that age-old question, “Why do you love IU?”

Here are the winners:

Third Place

Second Place

First Place

With Apple’s recent firmware updates to the iPhone and iPodTouch, users can now save a ‘webclip’ to the device’s home screen. When you add a Web site to your home screen, the default icon is a cropped image of the site. This tip explains how to add a custom icon for your Web site. The process is similar to adding a favicon, or favorites icon, to your site.

First, create a PNG image, name it apple-touch-icon.png, and upload it to the root of your Web site.

I have created an IU webclip icon and posted it to the iu.edu/ indiana.edu server. If you have an IU subdomain (such as creativeservices.iu.edu), this webclip won’t work by default. To get this to work with an IU subdomain, you’ll need to either upload the PNG file to your own Web account, or add the following line of code to the head of your documents:

< link rel="apple-touch-icon"
xhref="http://www.iu.edu/apple-touch-icon.png" />