SAIC’s Core Values
We are explorers.
At SAIC, we exceed boundaries. Our commitment to an open structure is embodied in a curriculum of self-directed study within and across a multiplicity of disciplines and approaches that promote critical thinking, rigorous investigation, and playful creativity. Through interdisciplinary practices and in deeply focused mediums, faculty and students conceive and accomplish exchanges in cultural study, production, and research with artists and scholars around the world. We are a community that challenges the notion that any field is ever beyond rediscovery.
Meaning and making are inseparable.
At SAIC, we believe that meaning and making are inseparable, existing as a perpetual and productive cycle driven by experience, research, and critique. Our commitment to a wide range of media and processes supports our assertion that the artist, designer, scholar, and writer are uniquely qualified as makers to provide leadership, creative perspective, and hands-on skill for shaping today’s world, as well as contributing to its opportunities. Critique, as a fundamental component of the creative process, provides assessment as well as new ideas, possibilities, and directions that enable our community to sustain argument, rigor, experimentation, playfulness, invention, subversion, and mutual respect.
We are artists and scholars.
The students, faculty, and staff of SAIC are engaged and innovative creators of art, design, scholarship, and writing. The faculty drives our curriculum, and each member brings the diverse experiences of his or her practice directly into the classroom and studio. Our students are viewed as emerging peers and full participants in the learning that occurs in collaboration with faculty and each other. Through their diverse practices, the staff participate to support the learning process, promote the overall well-being, growth, and development of students, and enhance student success and the realization of students’ full artistic potential.
Chicago.
Our symbiotic relationship with the city radiates outward as students, faculty, and staff connect themselves to the diverse communities of Chicago and the entire world. Forming a city within a city, a campus, close and yet not contiguous, we are urban. The city’s richness, complexity, and contradictions are the perfect environment for our own diverse community.
We make history.
Our major encyclopedic art museum, libraries, special collections, and public programs create an unparalleled environment for maintaining a thoughtful and tangible relationship to history and the ways in which it is continually revisited and represented, fueling our innovation and experimentation and keeping our historical and critical discourse completely active. Students, faculty, and alumni of SAIC have made significant and groundbreaking contributions to the art, design, and scholarship of the 20th century, and continue to do so in the 21st.
(Source: saic.edu)
(via weareallstarstuff, sealmaiden)
I contacted Comcast last week to ask them to stop sending SPAM mail to my home addressed to someone else (I’m already a customer!). This is the awkward e-mail I received back:
Dear Natasha,
Thank you for your message and I hope you are in a good health right now.
With regard to your concern, I understand that you do not want to receive any notification anymore addressed to Anthony. Rest assured that we can provide you the information you need.
As per checking here in your account, it shows that there is no name in your account. I have placed note in your account to check that name if it is really under your account.
If you have further questions or any concern in the future Natasha, please do not hesitate to send us email or check our other support options:
…
You have a wonderful day Natasha!
Sincerely,
Dani Mae E
Comcast Customer Care Specialist
Some Thoughts on the Visual Design of Login Pages
We’re rolling out a new visual design for our application’s login page and today someone on my team asked, “Is there a reason why the background color to the login page is grey? Why isn’t it white?”
The question initially caught me off guard. This person believed that it should’ve been white to be consistent with the background color used inside of the application, which is also white. Truthfully, I hadn’t given it much thought at all. My initial reasoning for it being gray was just so that it was a logical transition from the old visual design, which had a slightly darker grey background. But then I got to thinking about her argument: Would it really be better to be consistent with the application’s background in this case?
I’ve concluded that no, it wouldn’t be. The login page isn’t the application, but an interim step between the user and the application. Sure, it should allude to the application in some way, so that you know you’re in the right place, but it should have strong contrast with the actual application so that it’s completely clear you’re not in it. When a user may have been automatically logged out due to inactivity, the strong contrast can help them understand what happened that much faster.
Dark-to-light contrast is preferable. When I think of the best login pages, I think of dark, simple, spotlight-like interfaces, like Tumblr’s, whose login page I hold as the archetype of login pages. And I think they work so well because they’re reminiscent of “turning something on” and help reinforce the concept of “entering” an application to begin a task. When something is turned on, the feedback is usually that it “lights up” (in the case of a radio, computer, even analog “turning on” like the opening of a door or window).
(Source: craigslist.com)
I’m so pleased to say that Geomancy was used as the primary font for Gentse Feesten, a campaign for the festivities in the city of Ghent in Belgium this past summer.
I think it looks amazing, with the exception of the lowercase “S”, which at some sizes, looks too small. But overall, Geomancy works great at large scales and Modulo, the studio who created the campaign, did an awesome job.
Also kudos to them for informing me of this altogether!
(Source: designboom.com)
— “I HEREBY VOW TO MAKE THINGS FUTURE FRIENDLY!”
— “What does that mean?”
— “You know… like, so that it can change later.”
— “Oh, you mean modular and extensible?”
— “…Yeah, I guess so.”
— “Oh, well, I’ve always tried to do that anyway so we’re cool.”
Is it me, or is this parrot not actually saying anything, but just making loud noises that sound kind of human-like?
How cute! The first appearance of Charlie Brown, from October 2, 1950.
