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I don’t want to be here right now. Not now and not ever. This is the 7th sleepover I’ve been invited to. I had a way out every other time, until now. (She says with frustration). I still got my list of excuses: a family member died, early doctor’s appointment tomorrow, I’m sick, dog died, and my favorite: throwing mom under the bus and saying she’s making me finish all my homework. But my good old mother just had to rat me out this time. (Sighs and laughs.) She told Lucy’s mom I was free tonight! (Shakes head.) And now I’m stuck here and I can’t even have fun. I want to, I really do. But it’s just eating away at me.

It’s midnight. (Looks towards window.) It’s really dark out. They already watched movies, chugged gatorades, and they just finished the final round of truth or dare. One of them just curled up on the couch with a blanket! Soon they’ll be sleeping. First one will drift off, then the next. I’m not worried about a sharpie mustache on my face. No. I can’t sleep. I just can’t fall asleep. If I do, my friendships will all be ruined. They’ll know, the secret will be out. That I’m a freak. A weirdo who wakes up almost every night in tears, unable to breath, shaking, sometimes screaming. It’s the terrors, the night terrors.

They started a year ago. Every night, it’s the same god damn thing. The same image, the same person haunting me. It’s a never ending nightmare, but worse. I just can’t fall asleep. Lucy, Olivia, Emma--they all won’t like me anymore. They won’t know what to do with me, or how to help. (Tone switches to hopeful.) I mean maybe, maybe if they see me like that, maybe I won’t get another invite. Then I’ll be in the clear! (Frowns.) But, no. They’ll still know. I mean, I’ve dealt with it long enough. None of my friends know, I’ve kept it to myself. If people know they’ll just ask too many questions. (Shakily.) I’m tired of all the questions. (Sighs and tears up.)

He hit me. He beat me. He made me feel so worthless. My mom’s boyfriend. (Screams) He hurt me. (In a more exhausted tone.) And I’ll never forget it. He’ll never let me forget it. He’s gone now; he’s been gone since I told my mom. But now, look what I have to deal with. Every night he’s there. In the darkness he comes. I don’t know how to make him leave. I just want my life back, I want to be normal. I want to go to sleepovers, I want to sleep a full night through. I just want it to be over!

So for my me magazine I talk a lot about my passion with cars especially drifting and rally driving. So what I decided to have in my slide design is to have a visual of a car drifting because The Presentation Zen stated that we humans notice compelling images and also we can easily remember visuals. What Presentation Zen also taught me is to have only one point because if you put too much information, the reader gets bored of reading it and just pass. Also the audience wouldn’t be able to remember it all in less than 5 seconds because there’s too many words and we humans can remember things visually better than reading. So I decided to keep it short, a way for the audience to remember, understand that I am a very passion about cars, and make is humorous. I decided to use the word skrt skrt because it a common slang term for cars that is drifting on the road which is a perfect thing on my slide. I also play with the moment of my two words. I decided to have the word follow that car path so I organize the font in a way to make the words lead up to the car. What I also play around with the words is the font size and the color. For size, I wanted to have like a sort of noise effect like the closer the word is to the car, the more loud it is which I demonstrated by increasing the size of the word near the car. Then vice versa for the word father away from the car because the sound is now softer. I wanted the word to stand out from the light brown dirt from my background image of the car so the reader can easily see the word and also have this contrast of warm and cool colors. While doing further research, I found about the wheel of color which was a helpful tool to help find the right colors. To make my text stand out from the light brown, I use complementary colors which are colors that are directly opposite from each other and are useful when you want to make colors stand out. So I use the wheel of colors to find out the complementary color of light brown which is light blue. Finally, the light brown is a warm color and the light blue is a cool color to make a good contrast.     

Sam: This collaboration of images you see before you are all related to Vegetarianism. I have been a vegetarian for my whole life, it has affected my life in the following ways, the way I interact with people, my options, and the way I think about animals. I chose to add these images also because they are colorful, Also these are all images of things that I see pretty often. I also chose to have a balance of color between white and color. I also chose to make it multiple images because I am more than one image.

It affects the way I interact with people because people always ask “oh you're a vegetarian” or “you're a vegetarian, how!”, and that's what people mostly talk about when they find out.

The way it affects my options because when I go out to dinner there might not be vegetarian options, or when I'm in the school lunch line there might not always be a meal ready or at all.

Lastly it affects my opinions on animal cruelty, and meat in general. I think that It is important that we conserve animals, because they have feelings too, also no offense if you like meat but just how you might think my vegetarian food is gross, I think that meat is gross.

In conclusion those are just some ways it's like to be a vegetarian.

Fionn Hyland

11/16/17

Red Stream

The slide

    I made my slide the way it is because I put thought and research into it. In my slide there is a map in the background I decided to put the map in the background because people can look at the map just by looking at it it does not take time to look at it. I decided to say places I have been as the title was because I thought it was short and to the point but I also decided to do that because of my research. In the article presentation zen in the section glance media they mentioned that people will not slow down to look at something that takes time to read they will not slow down to read something that does not take forever to read. I decided to put the country’s I have been to in different colors because I thought that it made the country’s pop but I also did it because of my research. I research I used was presentation zen and it was in the same section of the article glance media in that section it said when people slow down they notice a few things but one of them was color so I put some color in there.

I learned that I could do more research about the design about my slide. I could mess around with the theme and colors for my text. They also asked why I chose my font. I chose my font because most lawyers use Times New Roman and I want to be a lawyer.

The changes I made was changing the theme and color. I made the theme a basic black background as to not distract anything from the text. I also made the text red instead of orange since it is my favorite color combination and it contrasts well with the black background. Lastly I centered the words instead of having it off to the left. 

My research told me that using few words in a slide is valuable, but I feel as though for a slide about me I can not be described in few words. I decided to have my name as the center piece since the eyes will go to my name first and then move around to the rest of my slide. 

I used sources such as businesstutsplus.com and pcworld.com to help me understand how to make colors pop and what colors to use.

The purpose of restaurant designers are to create a foundational design meant to draw in potential customers. The key to a successful restaurant is the use of subtle tricks and psychologically researched design choices made to attract clientele and keep them coming back. Restaurants have three main areas that the customer experiences and needs to be perfect. The most important is the menu, followed by the restaurant appearance, and finally the physical layout. Each of these three parts are vital to a restaurant's potential for success because they all work together to create the perfect image to draw in future customers.

The menu is perhaps the most important part of any restaurant. Every single restaurant has one and every visit includes one. The purpose of a menu is to tell the customer their food options and how much they cost as quickly as possible. Gregg Rapp, a professional menu engineer, has contributed to Janie Kliever’s article on the best hacks for menu design. “One of the biggest problems in menu design is that on average, a customer will only spend 1 minute and 49 seconds reading their menu (Kliever)”. For this reason, menu designers must analyze their target audience’s reading patterns. This means putting the best and most expensive dishes where the readers eyes will pass over the most. Menu designers have to understand the clients’ strongest menu choices and most expensive items, so they can place those choices at the tops and bottoms of food lists, because that is statistically where our eyes read the most. Another very important part of the design is the theme of the menu, which must adhere to the same concept as the restaurant for aesthetic purposes. Finally, the designers will sprinkle in some sneaky psychologically appealing tricks to keep the customer looking at the expensive menu items. One will notice almost every single good restaurant does this through arrows and ribbons, extremely appetizing images of the food, and highlighting the most or second most expensive thing on the menu to make is seem better than the others and worth the buy. Every feature of the menu designed in this fashion to promote the restaurant. All of these ingredients collage together for the ideal menu in any restaurant employing these methods.

The arguably second most important part of a successful restaurant is the restaurant appearance. This includes lighting, wallpaper, the materials, the color scheme, and more. According to Tom Strother, a co-founder of an established interior design firm, the most important aspect of restaurant appearance is the lighting. “...It has to be soft and flattering to make guests feel comfortable so that they are confident and relaxed and enjoy their stay in the restaurant. We tend to do this through soft ambient lighting to complement the more targeted architectural lighting and also to suit the time of day. (Gander).” Different basic lighting techniques have different psychological effects on any customer. This reaction can actually be tested and then applied in different settings through mass experimentation. What one does is test 100 volunteers with different stimuli and have them rate them. This creates a clear percentage of how popular the stimuli is. The psychological reaction to different stimulants works with wallpaper, furniture comfort level, testing restaurant impressions, etc. All of the restaurant appearance choices are considered when constructing the restaurant.

The last, but not least major aspect of restaurant design is the physical layout. This is how the tables, chairs, restroom, kitchen, host/hostess stand, and basically anything decorative are arranged. Chris LaBan, a professional restaurant critic, includes a description of one great example of a random restaurant showing how the physical layout influences a customer's perception. “With sleek glass walls folded up for al fresco dining and an airy dining room outfitted in woody Nordic chic, this ambitious corner restaurant-bar in West Philly's new Study boutique hotel gives University City a handsome all-purpose destination for a stylish New American meal.” The way that every part of the restaurant looks gives the restaurant something of a theme. In this case, the theme was New American or modern eating. This restaurant categorizing is very important for customers because they have options, and they like those options to be clear. Physical layout dictates the atmosphere of the restaurant.