eri on the interweb

I recently finished a project where I conducted user testing to validate the effectiveness of a navigation menu. The project was a collaboration with the client’s project team who were responsible for the prototype and the recruitment. Everyone was confident going in to the user testing on the IA scheme but were open to changes. This may seem a mute point—why do testing if you are not going to change anything? Strangely I have seen people be highly selective of what they wanted to have proven in testing. Luckily this project featured no such hubris and everyone was respectful of the problems encountered by the users.

Elsewhere in the organisation other stakeholders held competing and contrasting views of what needed to be designed in the schema and what labels needed to be used. User testing the IA was seen as a means to streamline and manage the internal decision making process by bringing everyone together on the same page and letting users themselves determine the outcome.

My most recent book PL8s is a collection of car number plates. It’s my second attempt at the book, after changing the cover design, and accounting for some issues experienced on my first go.

Why number plates? For the hell of it and because I love making collections and lists of things. I also think number plates are the original source of the shorthand language we use in SMS and IM messages and that before we chuckle at how clever and beyond 2000 we are we should take time and reflect on older sources of short hand language. Enjoy.

La la love you (tribute), originally uploaded by erietta.

Missing playing around in Illustrator, and it’s raining, so I thought I would finish this little idea I had when I saw the Pixies play Doolittle live.

Blurb Self Publishing Book Sizes

I am going to make a version of my graphic design portfolio as a Blurb book in the coming weeks. I already have an old layout I’m pleased with but it’s in A3, so I have to start again. I’m not quite sure what size I will choose as yet. I made some page size graphics in the mean time, that show each Blurb book size on an A3 page. I also made a composite of all the books sizes together for easy comparison.

There are 7 images in total. Feel free to download all the images from Flickr for your reference.

I received my second book made by Blurb in the post the other day. This was the first book I had made that was a black and white text, 5″ x 8″ paperback. I ordered one hard cover with dust jacket and a couple of paperbacks. I was well impressed by the paper quality and the binding. The hard linen cover is beautiful and austere, but unfortunately the image did not align correctly … or at least as I thought it would.

The dust jacket front image went over too far on the right edge. I was thinking to try and refold the dust jacket but the spine was printed in exactly the right place. The soft cover image did fit, but only just and it didn’t look quite centred.   It was interesting to see how differently the same image alligned on the dust jacket and the paperback. The image is a lot bigger on the dust jacket and didn’t fit at all. This could be improved by Blurb.

Hereford Street and Surrounds was made with my boyfriend and housemates for a friend’s 50th birthday. All four of us contributed to the photos on an afternoon running around Glebe and Forest Lodge. I then did minor Photoshop tweaking and layout. Pretty easy stuff, for great effect.