COMMUNITY  PRACTICE

Description: For this act, we were asked to collaborate as a team to design our name and logo and create a team contract. I was not able to collaborate much with my team, so I made a separate infographic. First, I updated the infographic with our team's name, motto, logo, font, and color scheme. I improved it further by adding more graphics to make it less text-heavy. I represented our team skills with icons and included state/country maps to help readers visual our global experiences. I also used icons to show how our focus at medley is to combine creativity and function. Additionally, I used colorful shapes that connect to our logo to highlight our team members’ names. Finally, I organized the most essential text in a clear, concise, and visually appealing manner to engage readers without overwhelming them. 

Description: For this act, we were supposed to research a used building materials store. I began by exploring a local store called Bauer Bros Salvage in Minneapolis, Minnesota. I spent several hours exploring the many floors of the over 80,000 square feet building and interviewed the owner and a customer. I then made an infographic to show some of the most interesting items and materials and convey the information I learned. I specified our object – a coffee table – and included icons to help readers visualize. I put images of similar materials together and labeled them. Additionally, I made my own annotations/drawings to express how I imagined these objects could come together to create a coffee table. At the bottom, I included text that showed my most significant interviews takeaways regarding desired features, time available, and budget. Throughout, I used orange and blue colors to match our team logo. 

Description: This act we were asked to investigate one used building materials store and their stakeholders – we chose BBR. I also way not able to work together much with my team, so I made my own infographic to one of our slides based on feedback. First, I reorganized the slide to make room for bigger and more readable text. I also made the text darker as the white text was difficult to read. Additionally, I organized the “says”, ”thinks”, “does”, and “feels” sections into columns and the stakeholders’ words into boxes within rows for ease of understanding and clear text hierarchy. Then, I added colorful symbols to help express their meanings. I also added icons to represent each stakeholder to help the slide be less text-heavy overall. Finally, I updated the color scheme and font of the slide to fit our final decided brand theme and added our logo to tie it all together. 

Description: For this act, after being introduced to the concept of a zine, we created the first iteration of our zine which explored how to make a coffee table out of repurposed items. First, I curated our team's color palette based off our logo and helped my team decide how each slide should be formatted to achieve a clear and coherent appearance. Then, I drafted ideas about how I would create my recycled object, which I decided I wanted to make primarily from reused radiators. Once I had a final idea, I made drawings of each assembly step and material, an assembly diagram, and a final drawing. Next class, I gave my peers some feedback on our design thus far and created the cover page. Finally, I created a compelling infographic for why people should choose to create a DIY object, listing advantages as well drawing a cozy space featuring our coffee tables. Last minute, before uploading our first zine design, I did go and make slight changes to the logistics page too to give it a bit more visual interest. 

Description: I began this act by interviewing members of my community about the effectiveness of our zine while taking notes. Then, I compiled the main changes and improvements people suggested into a group document so everyone could add the feedback they revived as well. Once this was done, we decided the most significant positives and changes that should be made based on what we heard the most, also taking into account peer feedback received in the prior class. Then, I created a to-do list for each team member listing the individual changes they each should made to their pages of the zine. I completed the work I assigned to myself, including making formatting changes to everyone's slides to improve organization and adding green boxes to clarify which objects were reused. Finally, we presented our new and improved zine in class.