The Designers
Posted 17 December 2008 // Julia Vodanovich
Part five of our series of posts about how Te Ara comes into being.
Being a designer for Te Ara involves two main jobs: optimising and designing.
Optimising
The resourcers, as Mel mentioned in her post, find all the artwork, cartoons, documents, ephemera, maps, photos, sound and video. It’s this raw media that designers clean and optimise for the site. We touch-up, colour-correct, and generally fix images, as well as cut and edit video and sound clips. For each resource we take particular pride in creating unique and interesting thumbnails.
Optimising also includes converting images for zoomify and pageflow. Zoomify is an image viewer allowing zoom-and-pan of large images created by Zoomify Inc. Pageflow was created by us to allow navigation amongst multiple pages of a document, but it is also a great way to view Footrot flats cartoon strips.
Ultimately optimising is about compressing large files, so they’re quick to download, but still look good.
Designing
The resourcers also draft maps, graphs, diagrams and interactives, essentially providing us with a design brief. Attached to a yellow sign-off sheet, these ‘dreaded yellow sheets’ plague our desks and our dreams.
We tackle these briefs by doing some research and looking into various solutions. But more than anything we try to figure out the most effective way to communicate the information. Here are some examples:
Working out the magnitude of an earthquake is complex, but by breaking the information into smaller sections, the concept is easier to understand and more visually appealing.
Originally conceived as a single map showing the break-up of Hutt County, it was impossible to clearly illustrate all the information in one image. By showing each step separately the break-up process becomes clear.
Sometimes, however, we just make something that is plain or dull look more interesting.
After our designs are complete, they are returned to be checked by the writers and editors. Finally, when the yellow sheets are signed off, our work is loaded onto the site.
Here are some of our favourite designs.
Lamb cuts
Parasites of sheep
Places named for politicians
The whakapapa of apples
Planting effective shelter
Mushroom production
Rotary dairy shed
Catalogue in pageflow
Fertiliser imports
Barrington’s journey
Faults and earthquakes
Wairarapa earthquake
Layers of the atmosphere
Main commercial ski fields
Shipwreck sites, Auckland Islands
What are your favourites?
This greenhouse diagram is one of my favourites,
http://www.teara.govt.nz/EarthSeaAndSky/ClimateAndAtmosphere/ClimateChange/1/ENZ-Resources/Standard/1/en
I loved the Footrot flats cartoon. I remember reading it when I was a kid.
I quite like Interpretations of Orion, and the Greenhouse gases diagram .
One of my all-time faves is this map showing the journeys of Thomas Brunner et al in the upper South Island - informative, and illustrated with the wonderfully evocative, slightly dreamlike paintings of William Fox.
In the Place names entry there’s a great little aerial photo of Wellington’s Cuba St with pop-up pics of the array of Cubanismo-themed bars and businesses in the area. Cuba St of course was actually named after a ship, but it’s still a good place for a mojito…
Hey Rusty,
I remember working on that diagram with the designers (Helene and Heath at that time). We had things like this which just confused them http://www.windows.ucar.edu/earth/Atmosphere/images/earth_rad_budget_gwa_big.png
So we stripped it down to the simplest concepts - and that’s what works in the end. Designers like editors teach you that less is more.
The Coln
Youse guys do lovely work, and this post is yet another example. Though my memory is still haunted by the Barmac Rock Crusher. I don’t know how many iterations this one went through before it turned out to be a relatively simple (though not particulary attractive, but what can you do with material like that?) diagram.
I’m a fan of the apples. I like apples. And the diagram is cool too.
One of my favourites is the “how to make moccasins” click-through - http://www.teara.govt.nz/TheSettledLandscape/AnimalFarming/Shearing/4/ENZ-Resources/Standard/3/en.