Our Design Team has been learning Adobe Illustrator and has been working in Illustrator on the creation of two logo options for our Morningside Heights history site. Today both logos were presented. One was relatively complete and the other was complete as a concept but had not yet been fully executed. The Design Team talked a bit about their process. They worked with guidance from Alex Gil; and when they encountered a question about how to accomplish something in Illustrator, they would typically enter the question in natural language in Google to see how it was answered in online forums concerning Illustrator.
The potential drawbacks of the online forum approach were discussed. It can take an expert eye sometimes to recognize when a solution presented for a problem is the most efficient option. Other approaches to learning Illustrator were also discussed. The Lynda.com program on Illustrator lasts 12 hours, and can seem at times too detailed and exhaustive. Bob has ordered a book on Illustrator to offer another learning option. Issues relevant to the presentation and/or stability of logo designs were also discussed. A logo designed in Illustrator 5 on a PC looks different when presented in Illustrator 6 on a Mac. (Does this mean perhaps that we should try out how the logo appears on different devices?)
Why did the Design Team choose to use Illustrator rather than the more accessible Photoshop?
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Illustrator is grounded in mathematical approaches to images. Thus once a design is completed it can be easily and precisely scaled for different uses.
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The point of our project is to learn new tools that library users working in the digital humanities might want to use.
Anice presented one design and Karen another. Both designs made nods to the historical past in their visual elements. The group was impressed by both. Rather than making a final vote today it was decided that the Design Team would aim to have both logos complete for our next meeting on June 17. Due to the inordinate amount of time involved in working in Illustrator, the Design Team is planning to recruit someone in the Libraries with Illustrator expertise to assist them in bringing both logos to a state of completion. The group as a whole will then vote on which of the logo designs will be used for the project site. The timeline of tasks for the Design Team can accommodate this extension. After the logos they will turn their attention to their next projects: the design of header and footer for project site.
In announcements and updates, Meredith mentioned that she had taken a tour of Riverside Church during which she had met a Columbia art history professor. He took an interest in our Morningside project when she described it, since he is having his students for a course this fall study two of the sites covered by our project: Riverside Church and the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine.
