l o o m 2
w  o  r  k   i  n   p  r  o  g  r  e  s  s

professor judith donath . danah boyd . hyun-yeul lee . dan ramage
w/ support from scott golder . ming-en cho . jonathan goler


Phase 11 - Thinking about type and formal qualities - patterns
What was learned from Phase 10 was: how we can start to use type as image. This iteration concentrated looking at the representation of an individual and their post.

The first couple of sketches show the idea of putting a post content within a shape or a letter. Here we were thinking of using the idea of initials of the person who posted that particular message. What was interesting to see from this design was that, people who really did not have much content would have an airy letter (because the amount of kerning would be increased until the content of the post filled up the letter) versus one can immediately tell a dense letter represented someone who was very wordy.

We also thought about simplifyling all the content into a form and then overlapping the form according to where they have been posting most recently. The idea of overlapping in a systematic way designed for this sketch is not convincing but the visual effects of the density of type when overlapped is a compelling image.

We also thought about going back to the idea of Loom by Karrie Karahalios. Here, instead of using dots we would actually use type and content of the post to weave out the tapestry of the thread.

Again an important challenge we face is: what characteristics do we want to highlight?

:: Next challenge is how to break the form and make it looser... for example less defined edges.

:: When we start adding colour and other complexities to this it may become more interesting and intuitive.