First off I am using Adobe Acrobat Professional 8.1.6 running on Mac OS X 10.4.11 and have created the pdf with InDesign C3. This wont work if you are just using Adobe Reader.

Step 1

Open the .pdf file you are looking to check out in Adobe Acrobat Professional.

Once the file is open, click “preflight…” under the “Advanced” menu drop down [Advanced–>preflight...]

This should open up a dialogue box like the one below.

Step 2

Click the triangle next to the PDF analysis category to reveal all its options.

Scroll down and click on the “List images below 250 ppi”. As a side note, ppi (points per inch) is the same as dpi.
*Some versions might not have all the tasks categorized, so just scroll and find “List images below 250 ppi”.

Step 3

As you will notice, for my purposes 250 ppi will not work (I need 800), so we will have to edit it. So click on the Edit button in the window’s menu bar while you have “List images below 250 ppi” selected. If 250 ppi works for you, skip to Step 6.
*Please note that Adobe Acrobat Professional version 8.1.6 does not give me the option to duplicate the task and then edit. I just edited this one because it will serve the same purpose of finding images below 250 when I execute it.

Step 4

Under the Edit Profile, you will need to change the Name and the Purpose to correspond with your needs. Since I wanted to make sure my pdf was 800 dpi, I need to edit the task so that it checks for images under 801 dpi. If I make it 800 dpi and it happens to be 800 dpi, then this task will run clean thereby not telling me the dpi of my pdf.

Setp 5

Next, click on the “Images” category under the “List images below 801 ppi” (the name has been automatically updated once I edited it in the previous step) and change 250 to 801 in the dialogue box “lower than” under the “Resolution of color and grayscale images is”. Click OK.

Step 6

Now you need to execute the task by clicking “Execute” while the “List images below 801 ppi” is selected. You should have automatically been taken back to the “Profiles” tab once you clicked OK in the last step.

When the task is executing you should get a box that looks like this:

Step 7

Once the file has finished executing, the “Results” tab should appear and if your pdf was below 801 dpi (or your desired dpi) a registry will appear that looks like this:

Click the expanding arrow next to the first “Information Dot” to reveal your desired information. According to this summary, my file was not the desired 800 dpi, rather it was 300 dpi. Now I know I need to go back into InDesign and re-export my file with different settings to make my file 800 dpi. Then I can recheck it using steps 1, 2, 6 and 7. You wont need to edit the task again because it will already be saved.

I hope this guide will be usefull to some of you. It’s a pretty basic operation, you just might not know where the appropriate tools are to perform it. Heck, I didn’t.

The specs:

• only use type
• final product has to be in a square

Now while I am quite familiar with the programs, I tend to rely too heavily on them.

So for this project I decided to stick with tracing paper, pencil and ink.

Nothing like pencils, paper and ambigrams to throw me into a whirlwind of second guessing and startovers.

You can see the final in animated giff form below and some of the Works In Progress even farther down.

Can you see the words?

Ladder of Inference

The “Ladder of Inference” is a learning model developed at MIT by Chris Argyris and made popular in Peter Senge’s book, “The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of The Learning Organization.”

Gary also called it the “Ladder of Interference,” and his spin on the name gives insight into the ways we communicate with each other and how that translates into our workplaces.

So here’s how the exercise went:

Gary asked for a volunteer and my fearless fellow-BDWer, Benton, stood up. Gary handed him a pen and asked Benton to toss it up and down for about a minute in front of the rest of us. He performed a few tricks, tossing it over his shoulder and around his back, but more or less he just stood there tossing a pen from one hand to the other for 60 seconds.

(Benton dropped it once or twice but that’s more than understandable when you have 25 people watching you.)

Gary asked Benton to stop and then asked the class to make observations about what we could surmise about Benton just by the way he handled the pen. Very quickly, we shouted out things like “Showboat,” “Uncoordinated,” “Confident,” and my favorite, “He’s wearing pants!”

Gary then revealed the MIT diagram of the Ladder of Inference:

The ladder’s rungs (from the bottom to the top) are assigned as follows: Observable Data; Selected Data; Affixed Meanings; Assumptions; Conclusions; Beliefs; Actions. Here’s a diagram:

In our case, the Observable Data was Benton tossing the pen along with his surrounding environment. Observable Data is how a video camera would record this exercise if it were placed at the far end of the room.

Here’s the hitch.

As people, we often color Observable Data with Selected Data. Benton tossing the pen behind his back is not simply the act of tossing a pen behind one’s back when Selected Data is factored in. Selected Data takes the action to a new level.

For instance, some in the audience assumed Benton was a showboat, or that he was uncoordinated because he dropped the pen, or that he was self-confident because he thought he could execute advanced maneuvers.

When you look at all of our “observations,” the only one that truly fits the category of Observable Data was the comment, “He’s wearing pants!” Everything else resulted from moving up the Latter of Inference too quickly.

It’s something that happens everyday. In business. In personal relationships. Everywhere. A lot.

Now here is what we can learn from this: if we hold off just a bit longer before climbing up the ladder to assumptions and conclusions, communication gets better. Frustration gets less.

Here’s an example: Say you’re meeting with a client and begin to present ideas that creatively solve your client’s business problem. As the conversation moves to implementation costs, their body language begins to change: folded arms and serious expressions uniformly greet you across the table.

You ask yourself: Are they disapproving? Are they resisting? Are they about to kill our ideas?
Of course, the actions of your client signals something, but you can’t be sure that it’s disapproval (remember, at this moment, that’s an assumption).

This isn’t the time to run up the ladder, formulating reasons why this client is short-sighted and too fiscally conservative, and making notes of other projects you’d rather be working on (which brings you all the way up to the “Actions” rung). Instead, address your observation and “clear the air.”

Say something like, “Are there new budgetary constraints we should know about that would make any of these ideas difficult to execute?” Hanging on to the “Observable Data” rung just a bit longer can help prevent breakdowns in communication.

However, like many things, this comes with practice.

So. Start making mental notes of when you jump up the ladder two rungs at a time and work on lingering at the “Observable Data” rung a while longer.

After working on the creative side for four years, recently getting married and now starting a new graduate program that proclaims it will change everything (and no doubt will), these little lessons in communication will come in handy.

One last little nugget here. I came across this Wired Magazine article about feedback loops a few months ago, it’s a great read and helped me understand a bit more about motivation, behavior and persuasion.

It just so happened that we rounded out the day with an exercise in feedback loops. Our task was to guide Fouhy through 3 separate-but-related actions by providing him with one mode of feedback: song.

Farajaka to be exact.

The louder we were the closer he was getting, the softer we sang the farther away. His actions/objectives were:

Walk over to the couch and pick up the pillow
Place the pillow on his head
Walk over to Lindsey (the girl with the brown hair and glasses) and had her the pillow

Here is a video of the whole exercise. It’s a tad long (6 minutes long) and I thought about editing it down, but felt there is merit in watching the cycle of feedback loops in action. Particularly when he is tossing the pillow. Enjoy!

This first one explores a portfolio website.

This is a motion comp I put together with After Effects for a concept of mine called Every1Else. It’s a site that allows you to search and support local, community-based social initiatives. Kind of a Kickstarter meets charitable-giving effort.