An interactive choropleth map & dashboard tracking the coronavirus outbreak across U.S. counties
with Justin Chen and Miranda Luong
With the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak now a pandemic, many tools have emerged to track new confirmed cases of the virus from online digital maps to detailed dashboards. These tools are instrumental in the fight against this pandemic. They help public health officials coordinate response efforts and allow citizens to better understand the reach of the virus so that they can prepare accordingly.
While these maps are undoubtedly important, many lack the granular scale necessary to contextualize new confirmed cases of the virus’ across large swaths of area. In large states such as California, seeing…
Overview
This post is a catalogue of ongoing experiments to create a “tangible” interface that displays personal health data. As this post continues to mature, I hope to expand my scope beyond pulse and the material explorations beyond ferrofluids.
Personal Health
Our personal health habits influence nearly all aspects of our daily lives. Sleep quality can influence our mental health while tachycardia (rapid heartbeat) can suggest psychological stress. It comes as no surprise that personal health devices—such as Fitbit—have staked their fortunes on their ability to catalogue, analyze, and display personal health data. …
I think I did a fairly good job of outlining Arvo’s unique qualities and personality here. In a nutshell, however, Arvo is a quirky elegant font that balances modern as well as classical qualities.
When tasked with the formidable job of creating a video that demonstrates Arvo’s personality, I am at a crossroads. While the possibilities are limitless — actually it is precisely that. There are too many potential paths to explore. Facing this mental quandary, I start with my spread as a basis.
My spread in many ways embodies some of the elements that I hope to bring alive…
Arvo is one of those hidden gems that we, as designers, stubmle upon every once in a while — and I mean this sincerely. As a typeface, it is quite easy to glean over its finer nuances that make it a compelling typeface. It both sticks to its geometric slab-serif roots yet is also poised for the digital age.
In retrospect, I am able to break my process down into three parts: research, insights, iteration, feedback, and final. I’ll briefly go over each aspect of my process in this post.
Research
There was little to no information regarding Arvo on the…
This post is a deep dive into my design process in regards to a poster assignment for Pittsburgh Arts and Lectures, a non-profit that connects celebrated authors with the local community.
The post is split into 5 categories:
(1) Contrast, Space and Alignment
(2) Color and Scale
(3) Composition
(4) Putting it Together
(5) Final Work(s)
1 Contrast, Space and Alignment
This exercise presented an opportunity for a rigorous exploration of typographic variables: (a) stroke weight, (b) linespacing, (c)Horizontal shift: two flush-left margins, and (d) Horizontal shift: three flush-left margins.
For this exercise and subsequent exercises, I used Neue Haas Grotesk Display Pro with a base stroke weight of 55 Roman and a secondary stroke weight of 75 Bold — originally set at 65 Medium, but changed post-critique. While other options were given, such as Acumin…
For the following study, I used Neue Haas Grotesk Display Pro with a primary stroke weight of 55 Roman and secondary stroke weight of 65 Medium. The subject of my inquiry was the Pittsburgh Arts & Lecture Ten Evening Program though this was reduced to 5 evenings for spacing sake.
The Pittsburgh Arts & Lecture Ten Evening Program can be best described as a lecture series that presents the research and creative processes of well regarded authors.
Below are 12, of 20+ total, selections from my exploration. Before I dive into some of the details regarding choices, there are some general comments I want to make. There are 3 general sections: (1) Program Title and Date Information, (2) Event Dates, Speakers, and Names, and (3) Other Information. Most of the editing (shown below) revolves around these sections.
Overview
What is Wired and how do its target audience inform its visual elements across its website and print magazine? This is the central question that my partner, Mimi Jiao, and I wanted to discover. The following post is split into sections: history, research and insights, and process.
History
Wired is a monthly technology-oriented publication with a print and digital presence. The magazine debuted in 1993 at the Macworld Conference with a mission to empower the upcoming digital generation. Historically, the print magazine has been aimed at a fairly affluent 30–50 year old college-educated male audience who are…
In hindsight, this project boiled down to time and expertise. I must say that I truthfully did not think that this project would be either interesting or meaningful to me when I first heard about it last year. Going into this project, I was not as motivated. Though this project does not embody the work I want to do as an environments designer, I have come to appreciate its nuances and difficulties.
The motivating factor for me were the skills and experience that I could expect to receive upon completing this project from basic fabrication to digital prototyping. This also…
As I kept iterating with Sketchup, I noticed some of the more nuanced things. Though I could drone on and on about the small changes and adjustments made, the one I think best sums of this part of my process is text size. Because my artwork was so big and because I was dealing with preconcived notions of what was right rather than facts, I was prone to making some mistakes. In the end, I took too much liberty with text sizes and ended up unknowingly making them way too large. Only after imposing humans did I realize how ridiculous it was.
After referencing multiple sources, I determined the appropriate dimensions.
