Designs Thoughts by Alia

When discussing technology in graphic design you are talking about thousands of devices, apps, and programs that designers around the world use to create their media. Something recently that I have been interested in is the application Procreate. I don’t have an iPad currently but on instagram and other sites I’ve seen more and more art and design created with this application. For this post I am going to focus on Procreate and if it is actually worth shelling out the cash for an iPad to use the program. 

What does Procreate do? Procreate is an application meant for illustrators and designers wanting to use hand drawn elements in their work without actually having to get out pen and paper. Why is this useful you might ask? Because it removes the need to draw an image, scan it into the computer, and trace it on Adobe applications such as Illustrator or Photoshop. When discussing this application with a colleague who’s worked in the graphic design field for many many years, she said that Procreate was something she didn’t quite understand how to use. For her it was just one more program she’d have to learn to stay up with the constant change in technology within our field. She had played around with it from time to time but hadn’t actually focused on if it was useful to her design practice. 

What might make Procreate useful to someone in the graphic design field? Procreate works a lot like Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop because of its use of layers. You can export with transparent backgrounds, create brushes that are custom, and export final images as PSD. Having the ability to cross over from Procreate to other Adobe programs makes Procreate ideal for doing “hand drawings” compared to other programs such as Inkscape. 

Where Procreate would be useful to me is when I’m doing illustrations for brochures and posters. As someone who struggles to draw with a mouse on Adobe Illustrator, Procreate might be a better option. On the flipside there are also easier solutions to that problem like using a Wacom tablet. I think at the end of the day, it comes down to if you want to learn a whole new program or if you want to keep the ones you’ve always had. Procreate might go out of style in a few years, and iPads are expensive. I think it’s really up to the user about if Procreate is useful, or just another tool that you have to learn.

Designers often are told to think about their audiences when creating designs, but they don’t always think about minority groups within their audiences. What I mean by this is their disabled audience is often left out by designs. For this blog post I decided to look at the modern chirping crosswalk and why it is, and is not an effective design for blind people. 

How do blind people know when to cross the street? How do they know if there’s a crosswalk or a button to push to make a crosswalk change? These are all questions designers need to be thinking about when creating good crosswalk designs. The chirping crosswalk solves the problem of blind people knowing when to cross. The chirping has a different pitch for which crosswalk is green, left or right, and some even have a voice that says walk along with the chirping noise. This is an effective design, but parts of the design are also ineffective. Something i found ineffective about this design is hope does a blind person know the crosswalk has a button to push to make it change? How do they know where the button is? These parts of the design make it ineffective and hard for a blind person to use.

Pros of this design however is its versatility for non blinde users. In our digital age lots of people walk and talk on the phone or text and often don’t notice when lights change. The chirping crosswalk makes this aspect of the design useful for everyone except deaf people. In this way deaf people are excluded from this design. 

Making a good design for all groups of people is very hard. You can have the best intention, but there is always that one what if. What if someone is blind, deaf, or deaf and blind? I think overall this design is successful and a good example of a universal inclusive design that other designers could take as a benchmark for interactive and experience design. Design doesn’t have to be complicated, but it does need to engage positively with the target audience. What i’ve learned from this design is to have a successful design you always need to try and brainstorm who your target audience is, and how people with disabilities might interact with your design.