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Speaking on Design: Best Videos of 2010

Eric — Thu, 30 Dec 2010 19:46:21 +0000

2010 was an exciting year for the graphic design industry. Part of what made this year so great was the continued evolution of the trends and traditions that make design what it is. The champions of design have heeded the call and shared their insights to clients, corporations and other designers. They have awakened them to the beauty and the importance of design in everyday life and its relevance in the real world.

Below are links to videos and excerpted text from some of the best interviews and presentations made this past year. In their own words:

Humble Pied: Jessica Hische from Mig Reyes on Vimeo.

Humble Pied is a collection of creative professional advice in an on-going project where the formula is quite simple: one awesome creative type sharing one simple and inspirational tip. All over iChat.

Jessica Hische is the young and insanely talented designer, illustrator and typographer from Brooklyn, NY. She’s best known for her hand-crafted lettering. She’s already received the awards and accolades from Communication Arts, How, Print and Graphis to name a few. Jessica references her own experiences in sharing insight on the transition from procrastination to passion.

Liz Danzico – Adding By Leaving Out: The Power of the Pause from Build on Vimeo.

Build is a small, yet perfectly formed, boutique design conference where interesting, talented web practitioners from all over the world come to share ideas, techniques and inspiration. Some are on stage; some are in the audience — www.buildconference.com

We tend to think of the pause as awkward. In speech, pauses connote uncomfortable silence, an issue at hand, and as communicators, we smooth over silence with fillers. We’re trained to deliver smooth speech, censoring “um” and “ah” out. As designers, as much as we value whitespace, we tend to fill it. This distaste for the pause — and the inverse seeking an always-on state — is a daily battle we face. We’re impatient with the pause, and as a result, we’re missing out on a great deal. What would happen if we become more comfortable with the pause? As it turns out, we can add by leaving out. From Edison to Underhill to web-based software, learn where the pause has power.

Part designer, part educator, part editor — Liz Danzico currently resides in New York where she is the chairperson of the MFA in Interaction Design at the School of Visual Arts, works as an independent user experience consultant and muses on her blog, Bobulate.

Project: Interaction Interviews Jason Santa Maria from Project: Interaction on Vimeo.

Project: Interaction talks with SVA MFA Interaction Design faculty, Jason Santa Maria about what it means to be a teacher and the importance of design education.

Humble Pied: Aaron Draplin from Mig Reyes on Vimeo.

Humble Pied is a collection of creative professional advice in an on-going project where the formula is quite simple: one awesome creative type sharing one simple and inspirational tip. All over iChat.

Aaron Draplin is a graphic designer with proud Midwestern roots. He runs his own studio out of Portland, Oregon where he works on a variety of ass-kicking work, including the ever-popular memo books: Field Notes. You may have seen him rant about why America is F*cked, graphically speaking. Through all of his experiences and travels, Aaron reminds tells us how he got his start, and how you can, too.

Nick Felton: Tracing Our Lives on YouTube

Graphic designer Nicholas Felton is obsessed with data. He knows how many songs hes listened to and how much it costs him per mile to fly. Felton visualizes these numerous details in personal Annual Reports. At PopTech 2009, Felton examines what a weeklong-snapshot of New York Times front pages reveals about America.

Frank Chimero – The Shape of Design from Build on Vimeo.

Build is a small, yet perfectly formed, boutique design conference where interesting, talented web practitioners from all over the world come to share ideas, techniques and inspiration. Some are on stage; some are in the audience — www.buildconference.com

To really think about design, you need to learn and think about everything other than it. Design is a vessel: the most important part is what it holds. As makers of things, the work gets better from outside influences, and gives us clarity about the purpose of the work: to inform, to persuade, and to delight. We’ll spend some time ruminating on what it means to delight our audiences, think of different ways to do so through mechanisms like storytelling, and realize that the real benefit of making anything is to nourish lives.

Frank Chimero is a graphic designer, illustrator, teacher, maker and writer hailing from Portland, Oregon. He also teaches graphic design & typography to eager minds at Portland State University and is managing partner of graphic design blog, Thinking for a Living.

Tina Roth Eisenberg: A Story Of A Swiss Designer Gone NYC on PSFK Conference

Tina Roth Eisenberg, founder of influential design blog SwissMiss, shares her experiences as a Swiss graphic designer in New York, and how and where she finds inspiration day-to-day.

Jason Fried, CEO and co-founder of 37 Signals on The Big Web Show. EPISODE 10: LESS IS ALWAYS AN OPTION

The Big Web Show features special guests and topics like web publishing, art direction, content strategy, typography, web technology, and more. It’s everything web that matters.

Dan Benjamin and Jeffrey Zeldman talk with Jason Fried, CEO and co-founder of 37 Signals about changing an industry, collaborating, reducing distractions and interruptions, design, logos, usability, real and virtual offices, co-working, designing in the open, and more.

PASS IT ON
Do you have a video of a design-related topic for the community? If so, please add them to the comments section.
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Design Spotlight: Bernice Myers

Eric — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 14:13:51 +0000

The work of Bernice Myers is always fun to discover. Along with her husband, they illustrated a number children’s books during the 50′s. Unless you find her books in your attic or on ebay, these scans will give you a good glimpse into her wonderful style.

From the Myers Flickr page

The First Book of Mexico, 1955. – with husband Lou Myers.

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Design Spotlight: Making The Race

Eric — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 13:47:17 +0000

I recently designed the marketing collateral for the 2010 Georgia State Criterium Championship, to be held this year on Sunday, August 22, in historic Grant Park, Atlanta. The opportunity to work on a cycling related project brought two of my passions together, cycling and design. This post will share the design process and reference materials for the project.

Background
The Criterium Championship is the highlight of the Georgia race calendar. This year, the Grant Park Criterium was selected to host the championship. The race is being organized by the Aarons Cycling Team.

It has been great working with the race directors to help brand and promote this event. The project started by designing three distinct posters, which drove the artwork for the event website, event sign-up site and Facebook and Twitter pages.

Race winners will receive a framed poster, prizes, a medal and State Champions jersey. The artwork for the medal and jersey is issued by the governing body, but the framed poster will be the yellow silhouette print (above).

One of the posters included a photo I shot of an Aarons Cycling Team member. Since the team sponsor is also a race sponsor, it made sense to highlight that fact in the design. Photo (1) shows the raw image. After a bit of processing (2), I ended up with the final version for the poster (3).

Twitter
The Twitter background carries the “main” poster design, and the page is used to promote the sponsors and will provide race-day updates. I used the well-designed template from 38Pages to layout the artwork. The template takes into account monitor size, color, and other factors.

Reference/Inspiration
Here are some posters I used as reference/inspiration material. It is always helpful to see how others address certain issues like sponsor logos, event information, etc. Most of the posters end up in bike shops on cork boards along with other flyers, so making sure yours stands out is important.

Summary
It has been a lot of fun to work on this project, and working with such a passionate team makes it that much better! Be sure to check out the LIVE Twitter feed on Sunday. I’ll be calling the races and posting pictures throughout the day. So if you’re in the area, stop by and say hello!

IPhone Apps Every Designer Should Know About

Eric — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 18:01:04 +0000

As a freelance designer and blogger who often travels, it’s essential to stay connected to my work wherever I may be. The following iPhone apps allow me to communicate with clients and readers and are an essential part of the work day.

WordPress

Manage your blog from your iPad or iPhone. Moderate comments and create or edit posts. It’s a must-have for posting content as it happens.
FREE App Store

Evernote

An invaluable tool when attending conferences or at meetings. You can take and share notes, capture images or even record voice messages. You can also access the files anywhere from any device.
FREE App Store

TweetDeck

I’ve been using the desktop version for a few months and I expect the iPhone app to be a winner as well. This will be great for blogging a live event or attending a conference. By creating new windows, you can follow hastags, view DM’s and link to your Facebook account.
FREE App Store

iTeleport

Control your computer from any place on earth. Access your Mac or PC desktop using the interface to find and do just about anything.
$24.99 App Store

Dropbox

My favorite cloud-based storage app. Access, download and share files through the simple interface. Essential when you need to stay connected to your files.
FREE App Store

Diacarta

A daily planner with a slick interface that lets you choose icons to represent that tasks of the day. It’s intuitive and has a nice design aspect that makes you want to interact with it and get things done.
$1.99 App Store

Do you have any apps to share?
The ability to be flexible in your daily work/life is important for freelancers and studios. If you have additional apps to share, tips, or a question, feel free to leave a comment.

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Design Your Own Portfolio

Eric — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 19:28:20 +0000

For web and graphic designers, having an online portfolio is crucial to finding work, getting connected with colleagues and showcasing your skills. I just recently re-designed my portfolio site so I thought it would helpful to share what I’ve learned.

My old site was built using Indexhibit and their archetypal format and CMS. It comes as a zip file that you download and install yourself. If you have intermediate web skills, you can be up and running in less than an hour. For those without some web skills, you can find a nice pre-designed theme from Ed Nacional. It allows limited modifications to the main code if you want a different menu, image scrolling and blog integration. While it suited my needs, I decided to code my new portfolio site by hand and not be limited to redesign and expand the site.

Before deciding to write the site myself, I explored a few of the online portfolio options available. The first was Carbonmade which puts the work front and center and seems especially suited for artists and designers with a minimal layout and user interface. A new version of the app is in progress so be sure to check back with them.

Cargo Collective is another online portfolio site which puts the emphasis on the work. It also allows integration with your Twitter feed and online shop along with multiple layout options.

Flavors.me is a slick online site that allows you to merge all of your sites into one microsite. You can collect your Flickr, Twitter, Tumblr and many other sites into one clean layout. Having the ability to use custom fonts, backgrounds and layouts makes this an attractive option.

Stacey must be downloaded and installed and comes with a custom CMS and several layout options. Although I haven’t tested this platform, the examples show a variety of ways to brand your site. Again, an intermediate level of web skills would be needed to install and activate the site.

With many outstanding online platforms and other options considered, I decided to code my new portfolio site using XHTML and CSS. I used Komodo to write, validate and test my pages as I progressed. The user-interface is similar to FireFox in that it creates a tab of each page and you can view what you wrote in the browser of choice. It was a rewarding exercise and allowed me another portfolio piece to showcase.

SUMMARY:

If you are a graphic designer, an online portfolio website will allow you to have a web presence with little coding and web design experience. For developers with limited design skills, they offer a slick and modern solution to present yourself. The options presented all have strengths and in certain cases, it may be beneficial to use several of these options, thereby increasing your web presence.

QUESTION:
What do you use? Are there other options to consider? Leave a comment and share your thoughts.