 Okay, hi, my name is Gaibia Jr. and I am a lecturer and currently the coordinator of Graph Design at Columbia College Chicago. So today I'm talking about data type graphics and literature. I usually give a lot of my students projects that involve sort of me being a voyeur. I really want to know what what the kids are into these days. So what I like to do is this project basically evolved from it used to be an advanced type project and at Columbia College we recently revised our BFA program to a point where we did something pretty radical that sort of put off a lot of the, I shouldn't say this, put off a lot of the older instructors. So at Columbia we had four type classes and we realized that in over the years of having these type classes and having regular graph line classes if a student was in say like an intermediate graph line class and you talk to them about their typography they would respond by saying but this isn't a typography class. And so we realized that let's do something radical, get rid of half the type classes and then incorporate more typography into the graph line classes so this way they're just getting it so they know that the two are always going to be combined together. So the objective is to learn how to gather data and use information design as instructor for complex content as a vehicle for implementing and enhancing readers understanding of content, how to interpret and present data and user friendly applications, and how to use and analyze several different models of basic information design theory. After completion of the assignment students should have acquired ability to gather, interpret, and edit data to conduct user tests and analyze and report the results to make appropriate choices and explain content as well as acquire working knowledge of information design terms. So basically what the project consists of I the first day of class I tell the students you have to come back next week for the following class with 10 to 15 of your favorite books. I don't care if you're embarrassed by the books it should be your favorite books and over the years students have gotten more comfortable with it so as a jumping off point what we've done is I've had the students go to Amazon and type in the name of the book into the search mode and I just say see what the results come back and don't gather all the information and see what you can find and that's a jumping off point for them to figure out how popular where their book ranks and then they have to create a narrative once they figure out all the information on it so it's basically trying to find sort of like these commonalities that they wouldn't have discovered and so the other part of the project is the fact that where are these books being stored and so we assign I assign them an essay by the avant-garde theorist George correct that his essay is called the art and manner of arranging one's books and he has this conversation with friends about how should you start arranging books or why you should arrange books so the student starts off by having the number of books in her personal library which is 64 and then she classifies them by classics cultural theory design fiction graphic novels history nonfiction philosophy plays poetry and reference and to the other side of the spread what she shows is she creates these little icons that are going to direct the reader into if it's a personal rating of visual appeals size genre if she's read at a home or school and nostalgic attachment so I'm going to show just three or four spreads of observable students I've been doing this for a few years and I can't show like entire books so the requirement of the other requirement of the project is the fact that they have to include prex text throughout the assignment so they're dealing with one level with this prex text their narrative the information I did gathered from other sources and then any other information they can find about the book that relates to it so basically what happens that this comes out as a so this project is in a class called graphic design for which is narrative and research and so this sort of prepares them to start gathering information so you could see so for example the catcher right which is to my surprise and I actually really like it that a lot of students are still reading the catcher right so they have information of when it was published who's a publisher when they read it where's six next to in their library and then they also have a little description about catcher right and then they have a personal narrative about why they like to catch her right so these some of these end up being pretty standard sort of grid and typographic layouts because we want the students to still have this information as we want the information to be easily read by other people who aren't familiar with these books and being graphic graphic students you realize that there's a lot of these books that come up over and over again so some students will do sort of what the assignment entails and some students will go out and so each student the student Sammy decided she wants to write at least one sentence narrative that describes how she really feels about the book so she describes the knife of never letting go as a tear jerkers and she writes while this book is action-packed badass and a social commentary you're still going to need a whole box of tissues the book the books in which books in which one encounter at least one once the word book and she writes 319 number of 319 is the number of times the book the word book is used and then she just says this goes without saying so the bell jar for severe plashes as books doomed to fall on deaf ears so she does some from information she realizes that there's there were 18,000 number of lobotomies performed in us from 1939 to 1951 one in 370 ratio of those deemed insane to say in early 20th century and in 1945 the year lithium was introduced as a medical drug knowledge and understanding of mental disorders was severely lacking at the time flat wrote the semi autograph out of autobiographical book and unfortunately this lack of understanding continues today the other book that comes up a lot is Lolita and it's one of those books that I feel that it's it's students are very passionate about their take on the content and so she writes pedophile or lover Herbert in fact is a pedophile look at their ages but in Herbert's mind he and a leader are just two lovers so 12 to 36 the latest age compared to Herbert's at the time of their first meeting and she writes it is a book that about conflicting emotions Lolita's simultaneous simultaneously disturbing and poetic it is definitely a book I wish I could have talked over with a loved one I'm like come on that's kind of deep for a 19 year old so books containing at least one sentence that would make you cry if you dared to read it aloud and it's the room so she says scale comparison of the size room to the size of people living in it there are many things about this book bound to make one cry whether read aloud or one's mind but little Jack's contentment with the life and the 11 by 11 shed is enough to make one implode so then she devices this information graphic where she has she calls it the happiness continuum and she says if Italian Calvino was right when he when he wrote that the house houses full of books contains a story of the reader what does this continue to say about me and so she says the continuum shows where each of the aforementioned books lies in comparison to each other in terms of sadness and happiness and then she just goes on to talk about how she breaks down between the star ratings in Amazon and the ratio of male to female authors and then if you rearrange it by color and so one of the key things with a lot of the the products that I do at Columbia is I don't want the students to sort of have basically I don't want there to be a stylistic thing that comes out of Columbia so there's like there's a lot of other universe in college where you can tell that this is from a particular school and so I try really hard to have these products be a personal take on what they want to show so this is so the student calls the book they're all supposed to have the name of the prex essay but some do stuff heads and so this is a books on display so this is how she's going to display prex text throughout the book while I'm showing you one spread of how she does it and then the rest show where she has her books at so so basses a life in film and design she puts words displayed at in the bill told chef built on chef and she says reading preference so she's flipped through it and she's read specific passages and reading progress she's already completed it so then she described why it's on display this is an amazing undertaking of one's designers contributions of film and design history it is displayed because of its content and because it's so damn huge again the catcher in a rye she read it cover to cover reading preferences specific passages and she completed it why it's on display this particular edition is collectible and printing books like it from other areas you can those we see the ink getting lighter in some parts of the book it is one of those books you had to read in high school but ended up loving a wall and piece reading preference she's flipped through it cover to cover and she's completed it Hitchcock which is the book which is which Francis Truffaut interviewed Hitchcock about his methodology and she writes design books are wonderful but I love watching films to two iconic filmmakers who define the history of cinema talking in depth together now that's amazing so she's read it from cover to cover specific passages and she's still reading it's in progress the complete Calvin Hobbes and you notice that she has these little illustrations of where she has them in her apartment so obviously the Calvin Hobbes is on the TV stand while in peace is on the coffee table so really shows you what students are sort of proud to show throughout their apartment so this student decided that she wanted to her 15 books she wanted to sort of she realized that they were collectively about strong women and so she organized them through personal narratives so this is her contents page and you can see that they're all very each of the books that she involves have strong female characters in it Anne of Green Gables so what she does is that she set up the grid to where there's going to be a couple colors and she has a quote that sort of resounds with her so her quote is but if you call me and please call me and with an E and and then she described so she didn't want to do actual information graphics so she decided she wanted to have certain words that will call out that would be subjective so instead of graphics she said you know I just want to have these words that would tell people if you like smart imaginative kind willful feisty passion ambitious and curvil you'll like Anne of Green Gables the same thing with the ring of endless lights at a great and a great ring of purine in a slight dazzles the darkness in my heart so she says it's creative brave honest generous wise romantic interested in a short she also talks about the gender how old they are what's the full name their hair color and eye color pride and prejudice and so she so what I'm when I'm actually what you're looking at now these are actually book spreads and so she wanted some of the text get lost in the binding of the book that's why the text goes over the spread because she wanted people to sort of try to figure out what was it you know she wanted to make them read the book Scott pilgrim he's a creep you're a bitch and you're all and you all deserve each other so she described it as combative sexy glowing commanding mysterious agile guarded and sarcastic the other thing I want to say is the students so so basically happens this ends up being a project of a book about books so the students have to do at least 32 pages a hardbound book they have five or six weeks to do it they have to pick two tight faces a seraph and sans seraph and again Amazon is the starting point to gather information so this student decided that she wasn't a pick her books and then she was gonna have the year that was published and then what happened in that year to the book was published so little house in the big woods flashback in 1932 Amelia Earhart was the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean so on the other side she has the audience that would read it the characters the number of pages the collection which is the books Amazon ratings and then a quote which is they could not be forgotten she's thought because now is now and it can never be a long time ago Laura Ingalls Wilder oh sorry I thought I had a trick for figuring out JP but it's not working okay oh oh boy okay well the student use all white white so alright there's an all white white okay so this student decided that she wanted to show the reader in the very beginning of the book how she arranged a book she has a little diagram of where the year the title of description author and where the protect was going to be and then she has a list of her texts of where her books are going to be so she arranged it by publication date the book describes in this publication appear in chronological order of the date where they were written these books do not include the earliest written book in my collection which is Beowulf 8th to 10th century nor the latest book the White Tiger so she has a number of pages publication date the difference between fiction and nonfiction reading level and the number of books and where they originated from so her book one of her books is Dubliners what she describes the 18-time Dubliners submitted for publication 14 times publishers were used to print Joyce's stories and one copy survived after printers that fired to the controversial tales the great gas fee she says hunter as Thompson retype the great gas be just to get a feeling of typing a great novel so I'll go through some of these so this one was pretty unique so this student realized that all his books in his collection mentioned food or drinks so he's going to figure out how many times in each book food and drinks mentioned so in Ulysses by James Joyce hard drinks were mentioned 12 times soft drinks were mentioned seven times and in food mentions he has there was greater mention of animal between comparative vegetable and then he talks about he does these pie charts it says the difference between how much breakfast lunch and dinner were talked about a portrait of an artist as a young man there are four drinks of hard liquor and three of soft so again it's again Lulula pops up and there's seven mentions of hard drink unspecified liquor beer gin and pineapple juice red wine and then soft which is tea water coffee ginger ale milk coke with cherry syrup and orange juice and he again writes a narrative and then he goes on to talk about how each of the books contained food so that's a brave new world which is another book that pops up a lot grapes of wrath and then this is his overall data information so he says that the food mentions were three hundred and seven time out of his 15 books and 55 mentions of hard liquor and 64 mentions of soft liquor or soft drinks okay so this was a recent addition to this presentation this student loved the project but for some reason hated George Preck she didn't like the idea of a man telling her what to do so in her narrative I'll read some of this she actually argues with Preck so she says why she says does there need to be a problem it makes sense that a library should be somewhat organized not everyone's mind is working the same way but in your collection shouldn't you do as you please who needs to write formulas and keep tables and things like this a library ought to keep a stack of books by the toilet but why can't you and while no one likes the guy with 2,000 books he hasn't read no one has really read infinite jest is it your given right to give those 2,000 books and throw them all over the place so she decided she wanted to have all the stuff look like a which I was kind of surprised I didn't know that she knew this like an old library card because you know students don't go to libraries anymore so she defines it as borderline personality for girl interrupted here to spy she files under stalker and then she says here that three hours looking for a book without finding finding it all right buddy you need a new system generally the best policy is to do what makes you happy is and if wasting three hours of your life tripping over your stacks of decades old newspapers I'm looking at you prex so be it one for the cuckoo's nest she files on a triangle monster and she also has a lot of information so Mildred is stuck in the literary history as the purest of villains so easy to range never let me go she files under week because she feels like the main character Kathy is weak and she says yes the illusion of perfection it's an illusion that's the point correct your beautiful bastard the sooner you embrace effect that you're disillusioned oh the sooner you can start living life Hamlet she files on a disillusioned so so I have two more so this student decided he wanted to have his very books were sci-fi books so he decided to create this system where eyeglasses meant that it was a nerdy book the school chair meant that it was it could be assigned to us an assignment through school so doing doing chronicles was a nerdy book there was a lot of argument about some of these things I'm a big sci-fi person and I actually thought that 1984 it should have been like a really nerdy book Fahrenheit 454 another and I thought it's been a nerdy book so he talks about how his historian in a nutshell what's the rating prex text and then he talks about if you love this book how likely is it your nerd and how likely is this book to be required for reading we go through these so this is the last one so Jen realized that in her books that it was time within time so her books she did pie chart about the the Amazon ratings a timeline including that on now it begins in your publications author's birth so lesson zero takes place over four weeks one floor to cuckoos nest takes over six weeks 100 years of solitude is a time warp because it goes back and forth in time this is book relations so she says if you like less than zero you're probably like one for a cuckoos nest million little pieces has been thrown out to the side because you know Oprah really loved it in the beginning and then Oprah realized that the author exaggerated and so the student felt like no one would read it so it's sort of like Oprah give it and Oprah take it away and coming from Chicago that's a lot so really quickly so she devices her grid where she has the description of the book and then the first sentence of every book so in less than zero people are afraid to merge on freeways in the Los Angeles 100 years of solitude many years later as he faced the firing squad so it just goes on and on sorry I'm out of time thank you