I’m sure David Carson rotated a “9″ 180 degrees at some point so it looked like it was a “b”. So it is very appropriate that Group **B** brings you Be Aware number **9**. Just go with it. I challenge Group A to create a post this divine. Student logo competitions, designing trains, rowdy revisions, letterpress word scramble . . .

Paul Berkbigler: Design Education

We’ve mentioned it before on the site, but an e-mail I received just this morning reminded me again of why it’s especially important as a design educator to discuss the merits and detriments of various design contests and “create a design” competitions.

I found a request in my Inbox this morning from a company inviting students to “Submit your best logo designs for our new business! One winner will be picked and three runners up can list this experience on their resume!” – It’s always so nice to find such stellar business ethics on display in my e-mail right away in the morning!

We have to work as a community to educate companies, practitioners, and students alike in why this practice directly devalues the work we all do – a colleague of mine used the example of a business inviting artists to bring their work to decorate a new building so that they’ll gain “exposure” for their creations. Nothing like saving the company the legitimate cost of purchasing any artwork they would choose to display by offering such great “exposure”, eh?

Delete these requests, but also take the time to write back to them and let companies know that this won’t be tolerated, especially when students are involved.

Kyle Heinemann: InDesign Tip

InDesign’s Book feature has rescued me from hours of boring, repetitious tasks in the last year. Nestled under the File menu at File > New > Book, it’s real power shines when you export a PDF or print 50 documents at the same time. A book is simply a collection of InDesign documents. They could be chapters of a book, sections of a magazine/catalog, or 50 different 1-page documents. I’ve even had success at sorting multiple multi-page documents of 3.5 x 7ft. tradeshow signs into sections through the use of books. Once added to a book, documents may reordered so the pages are continuous. All sorts of styles and colors can be synchronized/updated at any time. To export or print, go to the palette options pop-up menu for that book (upper right corner). Will this help you save time? Perhaps-try it out for yourself, or post a question.

Bennett Holzworth: Letterpress

Letterpress Word Scramble: When an acquaintance gave me his small collection of letterpress equipment he immediately became a good friend and also started my very “weighty” addiction. Amongst the varied type cases and press pieces was some orphaned metal type (aka pied type). I was of course drawn to the larger sizes and started sorting. There was not near enough to create an entire font, but I automatically tried to figure out what this 48 pt. and 60 pt. type once spelled out (if anything). A couple months later I tried again, and this time I figured it out! It had some small historical significance as well. I was even able to track down a piece that was printed from this type.

If you like . . . try to figure it out for yourself. Anyone living within 50 miles of Grand Island, Nebraska has a distinct advantage, if that gives you any clue. I will post the answer in a few days. And yes, the two different typefaces spell the same thing.

Daniel Schutzsmith: Design Business

ROWDY REVISIONS: When you find yourself getting deep in the muddy waters of the revision swamp take some of these possible escape routes into consideration for the future:

· Explain that further rounds of revisions will take more man-hours and must be billed as such. Be up front about any overages that might occur as a result of extra revisions.

¬∑ Don’t be afraid to sell your design to the client. Chances are, the client may want more revisions because they just don’t understand the solution you’ve provide to them. Show them why it works and how it will help them.

¬∑ Remember to always firmly outline the number of rounds of revisions in a contract at the beginning of the project. I’ve found the standard to be 2 or 3 rounds.

Nate Voss: Grunt Designer

Here’s to the variety.

Yesterday I was concepting a brand-refresh for a new client. The day before that I was designing a train. Today I am tracing Helvetica Condensed Medium from a printed InDesign page-that I laid out-into a marker comp. Why? Because it gives it the quality of an unfinished thought. It makes it more alive to the client. Those are things that I’m being told as I’m using a worn Sharpie marker to trace the curve of the lowercase Helvetica “a‚Äù and the near-serif finish at the bottom of the stem of a “t.‚Äù It makes me think of my shiny new copy of Elements of Typographic Style, currently occupying the passenger seat of my car. I never read it in college, and I’m planning a full-on, wide-eyed, adoration-free book review for the Design Cast as soon as I finish it. I purchased the 2005 printing of it in hardcover, and a part of me hopes there is a section at the end about how to do everything I’ve just learned in InDesign quickly. Tonight I’m grading projects for my class. After that I’m planning an AIGA event. Tomorrow I’m figuring out how to make a capabilities brochure with a cover made out of cement.

So, if nothing else, I’ve got the variety.

Eight is definitely not enough . . .

Donovan Beery: Web Tips

*Redirecting Pages*

Sometimes you want a short URL to send people, need to create a promotional URL for tracking, or just want to move some files and don’t want the links to those pages to come up as the dreaded ‘page not found’ warning. As sometimes there isn’t a programmer available to write the code for you, or one to make the changes on the server itself, here is some code I’ve found very easy to use. All of these do the same thing, which is sending the viewer from the page the code is in, to a different page.

On a server with ColdFusion support, simply create a blank page with nothing but the following code below the <BODY> tag (file must have a .cfm extension):

If any programmers out there have better options for server languages not listed, please chime in.

Drew Davies: Seen and Noted in the Design World

*The World’s Most Awesome Millennium Logo*

For those young designers out there still pursuing the height of perfection when it comes to logos capturing that “Turn of the [21st] Century‚Äù feel, it’s time to hang up your mouses. I have found the very logo we’ve all been chasing. This logo caught my eye the very first second I saw it, and I’ve been unable to shake it since. Who’d have thought that anyone would ever actually be daring enough to include the three most trite, overused visual elements of the last 10 years of logo design – the ubiquitous globe, the “digital‚Äù pixels, and yes, the Millennium Swoosh — into the same logo? I found this beauty on a large sign just off West Bay Road north of Georgetown in Grand Cayman. (That’s right, no US designer would have the cojones to try such a daring gambit.)

What’s it for you ask? Well, the company name won’t shed any light on the matter: Precision Industries, Ltd. Turns out the organization behind this logo is not global, nor digital, nor “Millenniumy‚Äù. They’re a local roofing company. Genius or insanity? I’ll let you make your own decision on that one. All I know is that my search is finally over.

Travis Gray: TypeWatch

Adrian Hanft: Alternative Photography

I thought I would share part of an email I received this week. Arul tells me that “There’s an ancient ruined city in South India called Hampi, the remains of the capital of a vast empire. Among the ruins is a magnificent rock cut temple. Within the temple’s many rooms, all carved entirely out of stone, there is one room which is in complete darkness, except for a tiny hole in one wall that looks out on the courtyard. As you would imagine, the result is a camera obscura, which the architect of the temple apparently included just for the wonder of it all. A pinhole camera, made out of stone! The camera projects an image of the main temple tower, which stands across the courtyard form it. The really interesting thing is the date when the temple was built – around 1450 AD! Maybe around the same time that da Vinci was writing about the concept”. Thanks, Arul for sharing that with our group.

David Kadavy: Design and Technology

Throw away your Flash books, because AJAX is poised to become the vehicle of choice for internet applications. Ever since gaining attention as the mechanism that makes the amazing Google maps possible, the buzz around AJAX has been enormous. AJAX primarily uses XMLHttpRequest and Javascript to create interfaces that have the standardization / accessibility / search engine friendliness / semantic organization that makes HTML appealing along with the ability to update information on a page without a refresh that makes many people prefer Flash for internet applications. Here are some examples of AJAX at work.

Tom Nemitz: Awesomely Bad Website

www.beercats.com

You know what, folks? I’m gonna let you pick your favorite part to enjoy here. Mine is the ginormous menu that takes three scrolls to completely see. But maybe yours is the welcome sounds that change each time you visit (“Hello. Hola. And Bonjour”; “Are you ready to rock”). Or maybe its the several java applets that don’t seem to load. Or maybe its the ten thousand graphical links/phrases/animated GIFs at the bottom. So much good stuff, how can one pick one’s favorite? Actually, I see they won the “EarthLink Monthly Homepage Contest Beginner Runner-Up” award, so perhaps I shouldn’t…ah, of course I should! As should you. Enjoy. You bet.

Number seven is a good number, and a great opportunity to introduce the newest member of our Be Aware cast. Daniel Schutzsmith from Graphic Define will be writing about design business for Group B. Welcome aboard Daniel.

Paul Berkbigler: Design Education

In a classic “it-was-never-this-way-when-I-was-growing-up” moment, I was amazed this evening as I started to research some possible items to mention in the design / education realm. Although I’ve talked with some good friends who teach high school about the “design education” that’s started to move into their art programs, it looks like it may be making a swifter trip than you might expect.

designeducation.org

While the site itself is a little unsightly, the fact that the NEA is willing to offer funds to K-12 programs exploring design education speaks to a serious sea change occuring. As of the moment, it seems that most K-12 design education might fall primarily into a “Learn the Adobe Applications” model, but this funding and the design focuses that come attached to it signal a serious devotion to really teaching design THINKING as much as design practice.

I sincerely look forward to meeting any of the college freshmen who have come out of a design foundation study like this – it might make for some seriously intense and exciting programmatic futures…

Clinton Carlson: Design Quotes

“Our society may have its superstitions – there is always the crank fringe of astrologers, foot reflexologists, and so on – but when it comes to the media, particularly among executives and academics, many expect a rational discourse to prevail. But it doesn’t. People hold beliefs about the media for which there is no evidence, and when they are asked to explain their beliefs they offer arguments which are identical in form to the arguments offered in other societies to justify magical practices.”

David Sless in *Media Information Australia* in 1988 No 48, 22–24 (Now *Media International Australia*)

Kyle Heinemann: InDesign Tip

SmartTransform, a Mac OS X plug-in for InDesign CS, is a helpful plug-in I’ve used for over a year. Let’s say you have 20 little boxes on a page that are approximately the same size, and you need them to be exactly the same width so they’ll line up in a column/grid. Simply size the first one, then add the other 19 to the selection, and click the button in the palette. SmartTransform will scale them all proportionately. That’s it – it’s quick and easy!

I am in the process of upgrading to/learning InDesign CS2. As you may already know, Adobe included 4 different “Transform Again” functions in this version. Even though SmartTransform does not work with CS2 (why would it need to?), Mac users who aren’t upgrading anytime soon could still benefit from this InDesign CS plugin.

Bennett Holzworth: Letterpress

When you live in a small town, you have to seek out things that would interest a designer. I was pleased to find out that our local history museum owns one of the original Chandler & Price presses that Edwin Perkins used to print materials for Kool-Aid. In the late 1920s, Mr. Perkins invented Kool-Aid in the small town of Hastings, Nebraska. There is an entire section of the museum dedicated to Kool-Aid. Side Note: Before he became an inventor and successful business man, Edwin Perkins was a printer.

I am looking for a little advice from the more experienced letterpress printers out there. Here is a photo I took of an enlargement of the original “Kool-Ade” packaging. I assumed that Mr. Perkins used letterpress to print these packages, but something tells me this isn’t letterpress. Does this look more like lithography than letterpress to anyone else? Please advise.

Daniel Schutzsmith: Design Business

CLIENT WISH LIST: Don’t sit around waiting for clients to come to you, instead take action by creating a list of your dream clients.

On a sheet of paper write out a list of the companies and industries you’d like to work with. Next, take a packet of index cards and write each company on a seperate card. Lastly, go through each card and write at least one way you can get closer to working with this client. You could write down the contact info for a friend who once worked for the client, or a specific conference coming up that the client will be at, or maybe the name of a charity they sponsor.

Once you are finished you’ll have a substantial list of clients you’d like to pursue and an idea of the resources available to you to make that connection.

Nate Voss: Grunt Designer

Working late? Is your 14th consecutive listening to Iron and Wine putting your sharp young designer mind to sleep? Check out Design Matters with Debbie Millman, now available in Podcast form through iTunes, for hour-long interviews with such prolific design visionaries as Michael Bierut, Stefan Sagmeister, Paula Scher, Adams Morioka, and Milton Glaser (my personal favorite). If you can put up with the occasional commercial break and “conference-call” sound quality, you’re in for a real treat as Millman, prolific in her own right, delves into the creative minds of these great designers.

Be Aware 6 has arrived. They don’t call us Group A for nothing….

Donovan Beery – Web Tips

*JPEG vs. GIF or Why I stopped worrying and send people their
logo in a GIF format even when they request a JPEG*

The general rule of thumb is that line art, text and solid shapes work better as GIF files, and photographs work better as JPG files. GIF files also hold the advantage of allowing transparency and animation (well, sometimes that’s an advantage). For those who never trust a good rule of thumb, learning how the two image compression methods work will explain it better.

Travis Gray: TypeWatch

Adrian Hanft: Alternative Photography

This week I finished building my newest camera: a medium format pinhole lego camera. What should I call it? LegHole? Pinholego? Pinhole Lego? Anyway, this camera even has something that my Holga doesn’t – a film counter! You gotta love legos. I will tease you with a picture of it for now, and check out FoundPhotography.com later this week for a tutorial and some of the pictures I took with it…

David Kadavy: Design and Technology

I recently attended a “Mobile Web and Wireless” presentation put on by the Silicon Valley Web Guild, and it seems that the mobile web is growing at an alarming rate. Unfortunately, the rise of mobile web is bringing with it a vast array of operating systems, browser types, and screen sizes to develop and design for. Those of you who have been breathing a sigh of relief over the success of the web standards movement, take a breath because web development won’t be getting any easier, and how hard is it going to be to purchase one of each of these mobile devices to develop for?

Be Aware number five is alive.

Paul Berkbigler: Design Education

On education this time around, I’d just like to highlight two somewhat sobering concerns that have presented themselves in the recent weeks:

1. I know that in addition to the millions of people displaced by and disrupted by the events of Katrina, there are a healthy number of students who have found their academic plans drasticly altered for this year. I heard from a colleague about LSU sending out a request for art supplies for the many additional students who are now part of their population – check out their site for contact info: Read more at: www.lsu.edu/

They have graphic design studies listed within their offerings so I’m certain students would welcome more design-specific supplies as well.

2. The AIGA has been looking for requests / replies related to design relief for Katrina on their site, but also recently posted an article by Steven Heller analyzing the imbalances between the amount of design students enrolled in / graduating from GD programs and the amount of design jobs in the market. Heller calls for design educators everywhere to examine their respective programs and see whether we’re acknowledging this imbalance or not…

Read more at: designforum.aiga.org

Clinton Carlson: Design Quotes

“The process of ordering, disordering, and reordering design is revolutionary, and I believe we are now in the midst of such a revolution. Instead of focusing on symbols and things, designers have turned to quite different places to create new products and to reflect on the value of design in our lives. They have turned to action and environment…. It is certainly important that designers know how to create visual symbols for communication and how to construct physical artifacts, but unless these become part of the living experience of human beings, sustaining them in the performance of their own actions and experiences, visual symbols and things have no value or significant meaning.”

Richard Buchanan in Design Issues: Vol. 17, No. 4 Autumn 2001

Kyle Heinemann: InDesign Tip

Find /Change, under the edit menu, is another way to increase your productivity, especially on long documents. I use it to change double spaces to single; double paragraph returns (^p^p) to single(^p); double tabs(^t^t) to single(^t). Those are easy. Here’s one example that continually amazes people. Say I have bulleted/indented lists and I want the bullet to be the “4″ character in Webdings, but 1.5 pt smaller, baseline shifted .5pt, and blue. I already have my paragraph style setup with a nested character style to format the bullet character, but not the rest of the line. Now all I need to do is search for spc spc tab ‚Ä¢ spc spc spc (that’s how the author typed it) and replace with “4^t”, choosing my paragraph style under Change Format Settings. That’s it. If you don’t want to type out “^t” for tab, just click to the right of the “Find what” or “Change to” fields on the little pop-up menu for a whole list of choices. The possibilities are endless. Try Find/Change to make all time formatting consistent.

Bennett Holzworth: Letterpress

On a recent trip to Portland, Oregon I had the opportunity to stop by and visit Oblation Papers & Press. They are a letterpress printer/paper maker/boutique shop. While they specialize in designing and printing letterpress wedding invitations, their retail store is enough to entertain for hours on end. You can take a look at the century old presses in action, feel the grain of their handmade papers or look through some of the fascinating letterpress work from other artisans from around the country. If you happen to be in this neck of the woods, head on down to the Pearl District and do your best to restrain yourself from buying too many letterpressed greeting cards.

Oblation had a good number of companies represented in the varied greeting cards that they sold. I purchased beautifully crafted cards from each of these companies: Egg Press, Manifesto Letterpress, Old School Stationers, Pancake & Franks, Saturn Press and Two Piglets