Graphic Design Biweekly Topic Challenge

Question

As a nice, quick and hopefully fun way to expand the scope of the site and improve our questions and answers, I introduce to you the Graphic Design Biweekly Topic Challenge...

Here's how it'll work:

1. Suggest topics

Everyone suggests topics in answers below.

Suggest whatever you like; it can be something really specific and fun or just a general theme, something you're interested in or something you think the site would benefit from. Just keep in mind the aim here is to improve the quality of questions and expand our scope (the topic obviously needs to be on-topic and have enough interested users to generate the questions and answers though).

Topics that may be relevant to users from other sites could be a good idea (mention the site in your answer and any ideas on how to promote the challenge to that site if you have an idea for something like this).

Keep suggestions to a single topic per answer please. Suggest a tag if you can. Some reasoning behind your suggestion and some example questions wouldn't hurt either (but not essential).

2. Start the Challenge

Every other Friday I'll pick one of the topics and write up a new meta post introducing the challenge for the following two weeks. The topic will be associated with a specific tag so that we can count how many questions were asked (it doesn't matter if it's an existing tag or we come up with a new one, or if the tag is only useful for the challenge, we can clean up tags after the challenge).

3. Get Involved

Anyone who wants to participate asks about the topic. Ask a question (remember to tag with that challenge's tag). We ask and answer as many good questions as we can. Simple as that.

I'll make an effort place some decent bounties on some of the questions asked.

4. Profit?

At the end of the challenge, I'll post an answer to the challenge with a count of how many questions were asked and anything else notable (e.g. favorite questions, bounties awarded). I'll also update this question to log all the completed challenges as we go. Then...

5. Repeat

Start again on step #2. For as long as we have topics and enough interest.

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Feel free to (and please do) add new topic suggestions at any time and we'll keep this up as long as people are interested in doing so. I'll do some analysis on question asking rates etc. periodically to see if this is actually having a positive effect.

For more on the idea and to see how other sites have done similar things, see:

• How do weekly topic challenges work?

Please let me know what you think and start suggesting some topics! Go...

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Current Challenge:

• Topic Challenge #4 – Print Production

Completed Challenges:

• Topic Challenge #3 – User Interface Design
• Topic Challenge #2 – Font Design
• Topic Challenge #1 – Famous Designers

Answer 1

This topic was used for Topic Challenge #1 – Famous Designers

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I'd like to see more questions on famous graphic designers and/or design agencies. And I want to accompany this with a new tag. I'm thinking graphic-designers or famous-designers but am open to ideas.

We have very few questions:

• Name for blocky, imprecise illustration style (like Saul Bass, Paul Rand)
• Does Paul Rand's odd typographic layout style have a name?

We've had some other questions/answers that mention Saul Bass, Paul Rand, Milton Glasser, Edward Tufte but none specifically for them or the countless others.

Answer 2

This topic was used for Topic Challenge #3 – User Interface Design

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I am a front-end dev, not a designer. (Although I do a fair bit of designing, art and just doodling around in my free time) This gives me a poor background in everything to do with theory and history and typically everything they teach you in design school. Being at the other side of the table and having to actually code some designs gives me another perspective though.

So here's the actual topic idea: UI elements.

I cannot start to tell you how many times I've seen a beautifully designed button. But in only one state. No hover, no touch, no active. It's like the button is just decoration, not an actual interaction element. Same goes for inputs, dropdowns, menus, ... Basically everything that's not static.

I think there are some really good questions to be found in the area of user interfaces, interaction and user experience. Questions on best UI practices can be asked over at UXSE, but on how to put these best practices into an overall design belong here.

We do have a tag interface-design, but most of these questions have little to do with the practice of designing an interface. Some are font-id questions for Chris's sake! Here's some examples of not-too-bad ones:

• Should an arrow for "update" point up or down?
• Color scheme for three different goals
• Web design concept to represent categories

Answer 3

This topic was used for Topic Challenge #4 – Print Production

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print-production

Print Production is a very technical topic lending itself quite well to our format while being more advanced than many of our questions.

Stuff like how to plan a foil. What is the benefit of a particular printing system (gravure, risograph, lithograph, etc.). Different papers. Profiling. Scoring and Folding. Mixed Media. The list goes on and on.

There's a whole world here that I would suspect not a single person here knows everything about which means any one of us should be curious enough to ask something useful about printing.

Answer 4

This topic was used for Topic Challenge #2 – Font Design

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font-design

First suggestion; Font Design. I'd be interested in seeing some more typeface designs questions. We're trying to get away from software support type questions so something non software related would be great.

A few of my previous font-design questions to give you an idea of the type of questions I'd be interested in:

• Should I care about diacritic collisions?
• Consistent angles in my font
• How to design the letter ß (eszett or sharp S)

Answer 5

The problem with this approach is two fold as I see it:

1) It requires that users have questions regarding the specific topic. Let's be honest: most of the people participating in this challenge will be GraphicDesign regulars. These regulars are also the people that end up answering these types of questions most of the time, or at least having the expertise to research and come up with a good answer for it. As such, these questions will by nature be the fringe questions, ones that don't get much traffic because they are lesser needed than very popular questions, because the askers are well-seasoned veterans.

Asking good questions is also hard, especially if one doesn't really need the answer. If it's a question completely unrelated to what someone is doing, the probability of it being too broad or low quality is high. It's possible that people will start side projects in the related field, that way real, necessary questions can be asked, but that is asking a lot of regular contributors.

2) It's not what people are searching for. People aren't searching for or asking these questions, as seen in how they have not been asked before. Therefore, this is not likely to bring in much traffic directly. The possibility for success in this venture is that people from outside of the site (non-regulars) notice the type and quality of the questions and answers, have some of their own, and care enough to ask them. I would think the chance of that happening very often is pretty low.

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All in all, I feel like this is a noble effort but believe it is likely not going to have a big effect on the site as a whole.