Article – Melanie Green

Jun 2016

Designing For Good

Unlike some food, design can be good for you and still be appealing and tasty. Take The Street

Designing For Good

Unlike some food, design can be good for you and still be appealing and tasty. Take The Street Store, for instance. I was recently introduced to this ‘franchise’ of pop-up stores for the homeless through a friend’s Facebook post. I was duly impressed by their charitable mission, but it was their elegant, smart and utilitarian design that really wowed me. The use of simple, bold graphics on cardboard is both understated and powerful at the same time. It is helpful, and enticing without being overbearing or preachy. Images of all kinds of needy people weeping for joy as they find the perfect fit in a pair of shoes reinforce the message that this is about helping people.

Anyone interested in hosting a Street Store event can apply through their website thestreetstore.org and follow seven simple steps to change the life of the needy for the better. Included are five posters with instructions on how to use them:

My personal favorite is the poster which functions as a hanger for clothes, but all have the same simplicity and powerful impact.

Oct 2016

What’s Your Gender IQ?

How do you quantify a deficiency that approximately half of the audience is blind to? That’s the question that led

What’s Your Gender IQ?

Article, Uncategorized Melanie Green

How do you quantify a deficiency that approximately half of the audience is blind to? That’s the question that led Geena Davis, Academy Award Winning Actress and Founder of the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, to become a data head. According to this interview on KPCC’s Take Two, Davis was inspired by the lack of strong female role models for her young daughter, to find a way to hold Hollywood’s feet to the fire when it comes to gender equality in entertainment.

Together with Shri Narayanan, of USC’s Viterbi school of engineering and technical research lead and Julie Ann Crommett, Google’s Entertainment industry educator in chief, the Institute recently unveiled their new software at the Global Symposium on Gender in Media. It’s called GD-IQ, short for Geena Davis Inclusion Quotient, and it measures things like screen time and speaking lines for various characters.

Shri Narayanan explains how it works… “For example just take the visuals, so shot by shot this computer algorithm goes through it and figures out, where are the faces? Once that’s done, it tracks them through the scenes and then automatically another algorithm figures out what is their gender and then you can run through the data in real time…and so by the end of that you have specific numbers and in a quick way have how much screen time a person has and how it’s distributed across various genders.”

The software then produces a score, indicating the level of gender diversity for the program or film. Viewers and advertisers can judge whether or not they want to associate themselves or their products with the show based on that score.

Given that we may soon have our first woman President, and not just on a TV show, I think this is well-timed indeed!

Jul 2016

Feedback Finesse

If you’re like me, you don’t have time to give every seller or service feedback when they request

Feedback Finesse

Article Melanie Green

If you’re like me, you don’t have time to give every seller or service feedback when they request it. In fact, when I see “How did we do…” in the subject line of an email I automatically delete it. So I sympathize with the plight of online retailers and services who desperately want positive feedback to post on their site.

But I was still a little surprised to receive an email request for feedback from Expedia that consisted of nothing more than a smiley face and a frowny face, with the question “Happy with your United trip?” My immediate response came straight from my husband as I thought “Well who can say they’re truly happy?” The next thing that occurred to me was, what if I’m just feeling so-so about my trip? Can I click between the faces to indicate that? I have access to dozens of emoticons every time I post on Facebook. I could write Haiku in emoticons if I wanted! Have things come to such a pass that consumers are limited to happy and sad for feedback?

Admittedly, I’m only moved to leave feedback for something because it was sublime, or terrible. But still it seems demeaning to be forced into such a limited choice. Maybe I’ll go to Expedia’s website and leave them feedback about their feedback request…

Apr 2016

Designing Democracy

Getting out the vote is a priority in any election, but this year’s Presidential election looks to be

Designing Democracy

Article, Politics Melanie Green

Getting out the vote is a priority in any election, but this year’s Presidential election looks to be the most important in a generation. The Supreme Court, Health Care, Education, Financial Reform, Racial Issues, Immigration and the continued existence of our planet all hang in the balance. So what can we do as visual designers to motivate people to vote? AIGA’s Get Out the Vote 2016 campaign is one way.

Starting on February 15, Presidents Day, AIGA is relaunching Get Out the Vote for 2016. This civic engagement initiative wields the power of design to motivate the American public to register and turn out to vote in the 2016 general election, as well as local elections to come.

This year, in partnership for the first time with the League of Women Voters, AIGA will Get Out the Vote by:

Presenting an online gallery of original, nonpartisan posters for printing and public distribution (below)
Organizing exhibitions in conjunction with the Republican National Convention (Cleveland, July 2016), Democratic National Convention (Philadelphia, July 2016), and AIGA Design Conference (Las Vegas, October 2016)
Programming local events throughout the year organized by AIGA chapters and student groupsacross the country in partnership with League of Women Voters affiliates and other local partners

Get involved

Design a poster
All AIGA members are invited to contribute posters to the 2016 collection through the online entry form. Submissions will be accepted through the general election, November 8. Download the .zip file containing the InDesign template for your poster. Designs will be reviewed by AIGA to ensure they communicate a voter-mobilizing call to action through nonpartisan visuals and copy.

Click here to submit your design now!

Share a poster
AIGA Get Out the Vote posters are available for download, printing, and distribution by anyone interested in supporting our mission. Designs are scaled at 11 x 17 inches to suit personal color printers (as well as commercial printing presses). Explore the the gallery below and help us Get Out the Vote in your community!

If sharing on social, use the hashtag #AIGAvote.

Background

AIGA has activated its community of designers across the U.S. and beyond to Get Out the Vote every four years since 2004. To see work featured in past campaigns, visit Get Out the Vote 2008 and Get Out the Vote 2012. The campaign is part of Design for Democracy, an AIGA initiative to increase civic participation through design.

Program partner

A respected leader in the voter engagement field for over 95 years, the League of Women Voters is active in all 50 states and nearly 800 communities. League volunteers conduct nonpartisan voter registration, education, and mobilization year-round with the goal of engaging millions of voters in local, state, and federal elections, and ensuring that they have fair and equal access to the vote. Visit the League’s award-winning election information website, VOTE411.org, to find out about upcoming elections in your community.

Mar 2016

May The Best UX Win…

By CHRIS CALABRESE We can argue until we’re blue in the face over which presidential candidates have the best

May The Best UX Win…

Article, Politics Melanie Green

By CHRIS CALABRESE

We can argue until we’re blue in the face over which presidential candidates have the best plans for health care, the economy, foreign policy, and more. One thing that is not up for debate: the quality of the candidates’ websites. Here, I’ll compare the designs of the official campaign home pages for the five leading candidates: Hillary Clinton, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Bernie Sanders, andDonald Drumpf.

See full article…

Oct 2016

Let’s Play Cubs And Indians

Full disclosure… I’m a Cubs fan. And not one of those Johnny-come-lately, oh look the Cubs are great

Let’s Play Cubs And Indians

Article, History Melanie Green

Full disclosure… I’m a Cubs fan. And not one of those Johnny-come-lately, oh look the Cubs are great now fans. I’ve been a fan for 25 years, and still I’m a lightweight compared to many! But I may be biased.

By any objective standard, if the World Series was based on the team’s logo, the Cubs wouldn’t be hoping to break a 108-year-long World Series drought by defeating the Cleveland Indians this year! Even if the Cubs didn’t have one of the best, most classic logos in all of the major leagues, the Indians are saddled with one of the worst.

Chief Wahoo came into existence in 1932 when the Cleveland Plain Dealer featured a caricature of a Native American with shaded skin and a pointy nose drawn by Fred George Reinert. And now, 84 years later, this racist caricature of a Native American remains the logo of the Cleveland Indians despite a campaign by some to get the baseball franchise to finally do away with the controversial emblem.

In stark contrast is the Chicago Cubs logo… easily one of best. It has been a continual evolution that started with the 1919 version of the logo. There are 6 different versions of the current classic logo of a “C” with “UBS” inside the “C.” The giant “C” has become rounder inside the blue circle and more geometric while the outlines are thicker. The first appearance of the bear was in the 1908 logo, which was also the last time the Cubs won the World Series. Now streamlined and stylized, the bear cub is ready to take on Chief Wahoo and the rest of the Indians in the 2016 World Series! Go Cubs, go!

Apr 2016

Play Ball!

With the beginning of the 2016 baseball season, I thought I’d take a look at my favorite team

Play Ball!

Article, History Melanie Green

With the beginning of the 2016 baseball season, I thought I’d take a look at my favorite team logo, which coincidentally belongs to my favorite team… The Chicago Cubs. As one of the most storied teams in MLB history, it is only fitting that the evolution of their logo should be equally fascinating.

The Chicago Cubs began life in 1870 when they were known as the Chicago White Stockings, they spent one season as a traveling pro team before joining the National Association in 1871. After several different official and unofficial nicknames, and a switch to the brand new National League in 1876 the team started to be referred to as ‘the Cubs’ by local media beginning in 1902. By 1906 this was the sole name by which the club was known.

With the exception of two seasons in the early 20th century, the franchise has used blue in one way or another on their uniforms since 1901 when they were still known as the Chicago Orphans. A prominent part of every team logo has been a large C and for the better part of the past 100 years has used a variant of a large ‘C’ with ‘UBS’ written inside of it. This style made its first appearance in 1918 and subsequently evolved several times in the following decades with changes happening in 1919, 1937, 1941, 1957, and 1979.