Design Time

Ever since I was a little kid and would think about the topic of time, I would make a visual connection between it and the days of the week in my mind.

I've always been a visual thinker and no one told me not to do this, it was just how my imagination made sense of the topic that far greater minds have wrestled with through out history.

When most people think of a timeline be it historical or otherwise it tends to be a horizontal linear line moving from left to right. They view if almost from a third person perspective, an observer if you will.

When I view the subject of time in my mind I see it more from a first person perspective with me in the current/now looking ahead to the next minute, hour, day, month, year etc.


How I see a week in my mind.

Even though I've pictured this concept in my head my whole life I've never bothered to share it with anyone, it just never came up and when I have thought about it I've never spent more then a few seconds analyzing it.

One day about five years ago while driving with my wife I was telling her about a cool program I watched on the string theory. During that conversation I thought about my view of time and shared it the best I could.

My wife furrowed her brow and said "Your mind is weird."

I tried doodling out what I meant but it didn't help and we started talking about something else and I once again let the topic slip back into the recesses of my subconscious.

A week in my mind starts on Monday and ends on Sunday. I think that is pretty normal. But for some reason I've always pictured Sunday being off to the left of Saturday. In other words you take a left at Saturday and arrive at Sunday. Why you ask? I have no idea. It just feels that way to me.

So in my head time marches onward forever stair stepping to the left.

( I tried to show my diagram in more of a perspective but I kept having errors with Illustrator.)

This same stair stepping format applies not just to the days in a week but also to the hours in a given day. Instead of a circular aspect for time I've always thought of it within the same visual framework as I do days in a week.

Midnight is like Saturday and so on. At this point in my post you're probably saying the same thing my wife said to me? You have to admit it's at least interesting even if you think it's a bit psycho. But if you think this is weird you should read up on the latest in Quantum Mechanics.


How I see a year in my mind.

This same structure of thinking also shapes my view of an entire year. But I'll admit this has more to do with a feeling then anything else. July and August feel like a Saturday, September feels like a Sunday and so on. And once everything is moving to the left.


The Stair Stepping of Time.

So why would I devote a blog post to this? Well, because it came up again today. I was driving somewhere with my daughter and she asked "Where are we going?" to which I replied "We'll take a left at Saturday."

When I got home today I decided to document what has been floating around in my head since childhood. The diagrams in this post represent how I see time in my own minds eye.


A new day: Someday

Have you ever wondered where the days of the week got their name? It's an interesting bit of history. I've often fantasized about creating a new day to add to the calendar.

It would fit in between Sunday and Monday and I'd call it Someday. Basically forever creating a three day weekend and serving the purpose of playing catch up on all those things you never have time to do or finish. You know what I mean. How many times have you heard someone say:

"I'll get to that someday."

Well now they could, literally.


Creating a bigger step.

I know someone will read this post, neglect to discern the sarcasm and humor and feel obligated to post a comment that this idea wouldn't work because of the lunar calendar or it would conflict with the time continuum. Regardless I welcome your feedback.

There are other aspects to this that I could expand upon and perhaps I'll get to that Someday? We'll see. ;-P

To Live and Let Dieagram

Every which way but approved concept.

I've said it before, but I'll say it again, "Agency work is fickle."

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy it. It may be fickle, but it's always fun!


Circling the conceptional wagons.

A lot of agency work is exploritory. The project may never see the light of day in a real world use, but the agency in charge is exploring all graphic possibilities of what could be done.

I was hired to explore different ways a diagram graphic (think pie chart etc.) could be carried out to make it more interesting, be flexible enough so it had animation attributes, and reflect a more feminine target audience.

This post contains some of the ideas I created for this project.


Steps to no where concept.

I was provided with some very rough general directions and also asked to go beyond them as well and share what I think could work as well. Many of the ideas in this post I see animated in my mind. I was only providing static images but I think it was important to think through how they'd build out in motion as I created them as well.


This idea blossom was sprayed with creative Roundup.

Some of the ideas were pretty straight forward and probably not too practical. It's a balance of trying to be unique, but still retaining an element of graphic pragmatism. After all, there is a reason why the pie chart is used so much, it works well for it's purpose.


My personal favorite: Globulous Nodes.

How can you not like this when it's named "Globulous Nodes?" I'd animate this so when you moused over the fat ends of the nodes they would increase in size and everything else would scale back as the information populated the node end.

I've already recycled this motif into a new pattern for a bonus edition pattern set I'm creating.


A concept inspired by game show graphics.

Just search Google images for "The Dating Game" and you'll get an idea of my source of inspiration for this design.


Technicolor Rams horn concept.

The term "Technicolor" is one of those words that take a reality of life "Color" and turn it into a brand name. As far as I know reality has always been in color.


Rams horn extruded.

Follow the multi-colored brick road but watch your step, you may fall off into the alpha channel netherworld.


Animation centric concept.

Slowly spinning, transparent, pulsing, and when moused over scales up and text slides in.


Revised direction "Flat."

After taking in all my ideas the agency requests another specific direction playing off several of my ideas. Kind of like if Pantone created mag wheels I guess.


Revised direction "3D."

With the help of Google SketchUp I created this 3D version.


New Revised direction "Flat Perspective."

The agency asked me to work some of the other colors back into this new version and I also played with the perspective so it wasn't so flat as well. They also requested a version that took this same motif and extruded it into 3D. Oh yeah, they asked that I include a heart in the diagram too. (No I didn't ask why)


New Revised direction "3D" with spacing.

With all the colors and 3D applied I felt it was getting too busy. The more I looked at it the more it felt like a Fisher-Price™ version of Stonehenge.


New Revised direction "3D" without spacing.

I rendered out the detail a little more and removed the spacing which I felt added too much visual tension.

When it was all said and done the project was killed leaving me with a stink load of "Dieagrams."

Recycle Icons

Recycle Icons 1-4.

A local agency here in Salem, Oregon hired me to create a set of icons that their client the local waste management company could use to put on blue bags that would show what could and couldn't be recycled. It's not a glamorous job but it was still challenging trying to make junk look nice and iconic, yet still accurately spell it out for the average joe consumer.

The challenge was to do it using one color "White" on a blue bag and simple enough that it could be silk screened easily and hold up small. I have to admit the hardest one was "Styrofoam." At first I had no idea how I was going to do it then I just though about those nebulous shapes the come in a package and just made one up and that combined with a regular cup worked better then I had expected.


Recycle Icons 5-8.

One thing that cannot be recycled is general "Garbage" so this was my first ever illustrated garbage icon. It was a good waste of time. OK, bad pun.

Isometric Diagram Illustration

'Isometric Diagram Illustration for Kazeon.'

How do you relay technically complex IT processes and methodologies in a simple visual manner so a layman or garden variety corporate suit can quickly and easily get a grasp on the big picture and understand a products benefit to their bottom line? That was the challenge I faced on this project.


'Diagrams integrated into Kazeon web site.'

Kazeon equips large companies to manage and isolate individual data points within their own networks that may contain millions of documents, files and emails. They needed to show these services visually on their web site at www.kazeon.com, and within presentations to potential clients and investors alike.

In total I created four diagram illustrations for Kazeon along with some GUI icons you can see on their web site. Working in this isometric style is fun and is kind of like vector SIMS in a way. To view a larger version of the illustration above click here.