When art students do IA…
Every Wednesday night, I teach a class in the Communication Design Department over at Pratt. One of the great joys of doing so (you may be surprised to hear) is the homework I get. Many of my students are illustrators, animators, and other types of people who can draw much better than me. Often, perhaps finding my assignments a bit boring, they take it upon themselves to produce creative and beautiful things that make me glad I teach. While sometimes nearly unrecognizable as what I assigned, the best ones are things I keep around and look at well after I have marked grades and largely forgotten what the other students made. Apart from making some nice desk decorations, it's also gotten me thinking about the permanence of the deliverables we give our clients.
Last semester, one of my weekly assignments was to create site maps for the small portfolio sites the students were building. When a student handed me the object below, I wasn't sure what to make of it at first. You will notice that it bears very little resemblance to any kind of OmniGraffle or Visio document. If you look closely, you can see however that it is actually a kind of site map: each panel is a different area of the site with a pretty clear breakdown of what is on it. The backgrounds, behind the vellum, are collages of what each section contains. I've had it on my desk since last semester and am proud to talk about how surprising my students are with anyone who asks about it.
I'm not sure it would ever fly as a client deliverable for a place like this, but even recently I saw how a well-made book we put together to augment a digital presentation managed to circulate around the client's offices and did a lot to keep messages and enthusiasm from the presentation alive. I have no doubt that the book will have a much longer run in the client's offices than any deck.
I have thus officially listed "inventing new deliverable formats" as one of my goals for work this year - maybe I'll start with an, um, accordion folder sitemap or something. Love to hear the kinds of things other people do in this area. And, to give credit where it is amply due - the map was made by the very talented Lisa Diehl - who is graduating this year.
