by Kyle Heinemann

Many yeas ago, when I was 15 and working in fast food….if you would have told me “Pay Attention!” since I would be learning valuable life lessons, I would not have believed you (to put it mildly). That job was purely income. Not for socializing, not so I could eat the food, not to be popular, just money. Today, many years later, I can see where I learned customer service: back at Dairy Queen.

Customer Service, to me, is one of those areas of work that everyone says “well, duh” it’s important. To really excel at it, translates to a big payoff. You can learn to serve your customers/clients so well that a) at the end of a project, they get what they really wanted, but maybe not what they initially asked for, or b) so happy they will tell their friends and colleagues, or c) so happy they congratulate your manager—and your manager remembers to compensate you accordingly when it’s bonus/raise time (wink wink).

by Drew Davies

On behalf of designers everywhere, I am writing you this letter with a very simple request. My message isn’t particularly novel — in fact, you may have heard something like it before. But, it’s become clear that it’s time to say it again as clearly as possible.

I made a quick stop animation of our magnetic inspiration wall at work being created. Enjoy all 13 seconds!

To start off, I thought this little video I shot would be the best way to show you the design of The Learners.

I have to admit that since I first learned that Chip was working on a follow-up to The Cheese Monkeys, I have been eagerly waiting to see layout, kerning, and typeface decisions weaved into a work of fiction again. While there was plenty of graphic design geekery to be enjoyed, the emotional and psychological aspects of Happy’s life are much more in the spotlight. Having previously worked at several small ad agencies it was very entertaining to follow the politics of a similar size office of yesteryear. The domineering boss, the talent that should have moved to the big city, the eager newbie, the burnt-out hack copywriter … they are all part of the ensemble.

While there are plenty of basic descriptions out there on this book, here is my two sentence summary (the summary from the publisher is more clear). After Happy has graduated from State he goes out to find his dream job at the firm his (de)mentor Winter Sorbeck, worked at. We follow Happy from his interview, to his first weeks and subsequent perils of dealing with clients and the things they promote.

A commenter on the last story recommended I read Don’t Make Me Think in response to the previous chapter in my story. Instead of listing my response to his response in the buried comments section, I thought I’d give my official position on Don’t Make Me Think right here: it’s the same as my official position on Hey Whipple Squeeze This: Stay away from it if you want to retain free and rational thought. I’ve seen people read and subsequently abuse the information in each book as a substitute for creative and original thinking. In the case of Think, it’s “people are used to using websites a certain way, ergo all websites should look and function in this way.” I saw it at my last job and it obliterated my ability to seek new and creatively intuitive ways to design for the web. Like Whipple, in two years it will be outdated anyway. Stick to A List Apart.

When we last left …er, me … I was in the death throes of my last website.

The Task: Design a poster for a Chip Kidd (why do I always want to spell it “Chipp?”) that will hang in bookstores and comic shops around Omaha.

The Complication: Must appeal to the common man and woman, not the design community. Book and comic book enthusiasts who have no familiarity with the design world and who, indeed, probably have no idea who Chip Kidd is.

The Challenge: Complete this free gig in 4 hours or less.

Starting your own business is a hellacious challenge. Very intimidating, scary, ulcer-inducing, that can contain a sort of panic that freezes you to the core of your being. I find the Fear to be interesting in that regard. I mean, once you look out a window and see umpteen thousand Targets, Wal-Marts, Starbucks’s, Home Depots and Burger Kings and realize those were all started by somebody, a lot of that fear dissipates. Every business started somewhere, by some yay-hoo who thought they could do it better than somebody else. And in design this is no different. When you choose the road to self-employment, you’re doing nothing different than what the people you used to send resumes to did five, ten, or twenty years ago. And that, again, is a bit of an empowering thought.

And what happens then but we a run out and screw up the very first step: the name.

In the very, very, very very super-first Be A Design Cast Donovan predicted that blog functionality would one day take over for content uploading and site maintenance. That’s a point that stuck with me from then on, as my own, woefully out-of-date site nathanvoss.com neither reflected my current work nor my current design sensibilities, not to mention nobody in the whole world calls me Nathan anymore. Really. I would not design a site like that today. To be honest, I’m so out of the game on web design I didn’t really know what to do when it came time to put a presence up on the web.

A few weeks ago I wished Armin Vit good luck as he left the lofty confines of a modest design studio to tackle Under Consideration full time, lamenting that I, myself, would love to take such a daring plunge.

Careful what you wish for?

When we last left our hero, strange things were afoot in downtown Denver, and the big, fancy-people party was nowhere to be seen…

Over the course of the next few days I will be chronicling my experiences as I travel into TEH FUTUR for the 200X AIGA NEXT Conference. This is not a review, nor will I spill the secrets of the fabulous presenters. This is my NEXTperience.

A few weeks ago, Donovan and I had an off-air conversation about careers at Pentagram. Sure, you get work with some of the most amazing people in the industry, in really cool offices, for really cool clients, but how far can you go? You know you’ll never make Partner, because Pentagram partners all come from outside of the company. So in the end, we decided you just kind of languish in the Land of Super-great.

We must not have been too far off, because I opened up SpeakUp today to see that founder Armin Vit gave Pentagram his walkin’ papers as has left to handle Under Consideration full time. He notes it’s a little scary, and I’m sure it is, what with the ad revenues from SpeakUp, BrandNew (best site evar!), Quips, and Design Encyclopedia, plus a few book deals and being on good terms with 95% of the entire design industry, it probably looks like an uphill battle.

Well, from all of us here at BA, who have not quit our jobs to do this full time (yet), we say “good luck” and if anyone in NY has any freelance or overflow work, dude could probably use a hand-out.

Iowa State wants you to vote on their next ugly helmet designs, to go into use in 2008. Why I initially thought this would be a fun way to help them pick the worst of the bunch and call it popular, this paragraph in the article on their webpage brought my blood to a boil.

“Several months ago, the ISU Athletics Department asked for uniform and helmet design concepts from its fans, students, professional designers or anyone else who felt they had a vision of what the Cyclones should wear on gameday. Many individuals submitted concepts and a committee of department and campus officials poured over the ideas, tweaked them and chose three “finalists” for consideration to be the new look for Iowa State football.

“We received lots of terrific concepts,” Director of Athletics Jamie Pollard said. “Although no one design was chosen, our final three options are a compilation or hybrid of several of those suggestions.”

So in short: A design “contest” to gather work designers would normally use to put food on the table, followed by mashing several concepts together to avoid giving credit to the designers they just ripped off. There is a feedback form for you to voice your opinion on the matter, but I’d like to put mine right here:

Dear Iowa State,

Go * * * * yourselves.

Quickly I’d like to point out an article that, while reading, struck me as fantastically important. David Stair’s Why Design Won’t Change the World is part reaction to Design for the Other 90% at Cooper-Hewitt, part assessment of the global community’s aid to impoverished nations in Africa. It is a fascinating read and will cause anyone who has ever thought to do “more” with their design may be forced to step back and re-evaluate their cause and direction. (I have disabled commenting on this post to encourage discussion to take place on the D.O.)

“A starting point might be to recognize that in many cases, we don’t need to remake other people or their societies in our image and likeness.”

—nv—

Pure genius.

What put me over the top = pourin’ one out for Freehand. By Kyle T Webster.

Due to the occasionally wicked-busy schedules of your hosts and our desire to make Be A Design Cast 39 something really special, we are pushing back its release to Monday, August 6. Ugh. I know. We don’t take missing our release dates lightly around here, believe me. But we’ve got so much goodness packed into our next show (already recorded) that we want to make sure it really counts. So thanks for not throwing rocks, and remember to send your questions, comments, and 5-Minute Review submissions to the email below.

—nv—

podcast [at] beadesigngroup [dot] com

I wanted to point you towards an article called CEOs Must Be Designers, Not Just Hire them* written by Bruce Nussbaum. If you don’t feel like reading the whole article, here are a couple highlights:

“CEOs and top managers hate the word “design.” Just believe me. No matter what they tell you, they believe that “design” only has something to do with curtains, wallpaper and maybe their suits. These guys, and they’re still mostly guys, prefer the term “innovation” because it has a masculine, military, engineering, tone to it.”

“If you are in the myth-making business, you don’t need design. You need a great ad agency. But if you are in the authenticity and integrity business then you have to think design.”

“Design is so popular today mostly because business sees design as connecting it to the consumer populace in a deep, fundamental and honest way. An honest way. If you are in the myth-making business, you don’t need design. You need a great ad agency. But if you are in the authenticity and integrity business then you have to think design. If you are in the co-creation business today—and you’d better be in this age of social networking—then you have to think of design. Indeed, your brand is increasingly shaped and defined by network communities, not your ad agency. Brand manager? Forget about it. Brand curator maybe.”

Do you agree with Nussbaum that CEOs should be designers?

When it rains, it pours. When it is dry, it is a desert.

My years in the design industry have been a series of rushes and lulls. We work crazy hours and over holidays for weeks on end, and then we have a dry spell that is mind-numbingly boring. Earning that paycheck feels good and I bet most of us would rather be overworked than bored.

When the lull begins it can be hard to adjust. At first some of us fall into the trap of trying to look busy. George Costanza said that looking irritated made him appear busy, and that can be an effective method for hiding your inactivity. At some point though, you realize that it takes more energy to LOOK busy than to actually BE busy. Then comes the realization that those around you are in the same boat. The next thing you know, you are in a full-on lull. After a few days of it a strange sort of creative cabin fever starts to set in. What do you do now?

One of my creative directors says to enjoy the lulls, because the storm is always coming. When these lulls happen I have my own methods of coping. I read design blogs. I do online software training to learn some new tricks. I catch up on design magazines. I chat with friends, take coffee breaks, or do file server housekeeping. The important thing is to continue to be productive even if you aren’t producing design. How do you handle the peaks and valleys in your workload?

Bill Kerr is a Graphic Designer in San Francisco, CA and active BetA member.

Noted without comment, but with much love… —nv—

Yes, you can. I did. Have you?

If you click through to see how “awesome” the designs are, you make sure you go ahead and vote for one, okay? Because letting public officials randomly pick designs and opening up the final selection to everyone on the planet Earth to vote always turns out well. Lower (and at the same time, raise) your expectations and you won’t be disappointed. (I voted before I got screencaps, or I’d show you right here)

Go #2!

—nv—

I have heard plenty of arguments for and against the Design It Yourself movement. What follows is two very convincing arguments for these opposing viewpoints. I will let you decide …

What do you get when you combine graphic design with 400 free bottles of bubbles, about 1000 people, and New York City’s Union Square? BubbleBath: a scene right out of Willy Wonka’s fizzy-lifting drink testing room — but with snazzier branding.

Held last month on a bright Saturday afternoon, BubbleBath was the brainchild (and part of the senior thesis) of Anthony DeFranco, a student in the BFA design program at the School of Visual Arts (SVA) in New York. The idea came to him when he saw bubbles floating around a Manhattan street corner (thanks to an old man selling toys a few feet away). DeFranco noticed how the bubbles made people smile and brought them together, kind of like great design.

“Design played a major role in the project,” DeFranco told me. “It was how BubbleBath went from being an idea to a tangible object.” His BubbleBath brand, in a distinctive hue best described as Mr. Bubble Pink, popped up on his website as well as the event’s press kit, t-shirts, and of course, the bottles of bubbles distributed on the big day.

While looking for a new job I was soon reminded that graphic design is an incredibly competitive field and one in which employers don’t have to do much to get hundreds of applicants pandering to be in their very presence. And while graphic design jobs are fairly numerous, ones that seem exciting are much more rare. Going into a job search is an incredibly humbling experience and one in which you should enter with a great deal of energy and the knowledge that employers can be complete … well you fill in the blank. While egotistical design gods love to write articles for design pubs on how to impress them and win the coveted seat at their right hand, I would like to turn the tables on them. While the employers are holding all the cards at this point, I can’t help but see a future where the designer demands more respect. You could almost take what follows here as the perspective designers Cluetrain Manifesto. If designers continue to be treated as poorly as they do by potential employers, the resentment will surely create a need and desire to share with other designers. One can only imagine an online employer rating system or an epinions for design firms. While I see that getting pretty ugly, I would instead urge creative directors and principals to read the following manifesto and rethink your hiring process.

I just got The Creative Group’s 2007 salary guide in the mail. If measuring how your salary stacks up against the national averages isn’t enough motivation for you to place your order, it is also a handsome piece of design by itself. it has a die-cut cover, velum overlays, and some handsome typography. The information is not only a comprehensive report of salaries, but it is also an in-depth evaluation of the overall health of the current creative industry. Luckly, the news is good! The only thing not included in this little book is the courage to ask your boss for a raise! Sorry, you are on your own there. If you haven’t already ordered your free copy, call 1.888.846.1668 and they will hook you up. Highly recommended.

You should know that getting a job in graphic design is not easy. But neither is getting a job in any field where people actually care about what they do. You want to work in a bank? That’s easy. So rule number one is: you have to be prepared to work really hard at becoming a good or great designer.

Rule number two is that there will be a lot of people, like me, writing articles like this for you to read. But there are no more test answers here; there is no right or wrong way to do it; no absolute guide to success; no single method to greatness. You should read them all, and take with you the parts which best fit your own unique outlook on life. This guide, for example, is for the non-jaded, energetic, glass-half-full young designer.

This guide is for the jaded, lethargic, I-only-want-brutal-honesty young designer.

(EDITOR’S NOTE: I had to edit this post because Nate has a tough time communicating without using four letter words. I apologize for him if you were offended by his “raw” version. I was.)

Not that we wouldn’t love to spend another week looking at RSS feed updates, but there is a question that only the venerable readers of BADG can help with.

My wife and I are both designers, and we both see design as more holistic than to simply refer to the “graphic” arts. We dabble in many things with both surprising and limited successes, with an eye towards interior design being one of her favorites. So when the need arose this week to find a suitable pedestal on which to place our forthcoming 46” HDTV (ooooooooh yeah), we decided that, as designers, it was our duty to both design and construct this pedestal. Some might call it a “TV stand,” but we choose not to for the sake of the project.

A few sketches into this foray and we’re both feeling the need for some further education in the field of furniture design. This, dear readers, is where we seek your help. If you have favorite links, stories, stores, blogs, or friends in the field, please post them below. And while we’re at it, we can all help decide if being a “graphic” designer is enough of a base to stretch into other fields.

Why does outsider art and student work sometimes blow away some of our own work? Why (like Tricia mentions in the BADCast) is the student work, sometimes the best in a design show? Why do great artists and musicians often not reach the quality of their first release? Could it be that these people have the unique perspective of an outsider?

In his book, Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, David Sedaris tells the story of a neglected neighbor girl that lashed out at him and destroyed some of his possessions. He had a mixed reaction when he found the pile of his scrawled on and mutilated belongings. “It was the exact effect I had been striving for in my bland imitation folk art. So, not only did I feel violated, I felt jealous. I mean, this girl was the real thing.”

When Wired arrives in my mailbox, I feel like 46% of you feel about design magazines. It is one of a very few publications that I look forward to reading. I got the February issue today and was treated to a surprise redesign. The new design was lead by Scott Dadich and sports four new families of type designed by Hoefler & Frere-Jones. Here are my observations, but feel free to add your own in the comments…

I drove to Denver last night to hear Chip Kidd speak at an AIGA Colorado event. While I might not be as big of a Chip Kidd fanatic as some of the other BADG aurthors, the chance to hear a graphic design celebrity speak doesn’t happen often and it was definitely worth the $20 non-member fee. His lecture lasted an hour and fifteen minutes and was really entertaining. He talked about his comic book obsession, his new book, working with Paul Simon, and described two important design lessons. The most interesting part of his presentation, however, was a 28 minute section where he describes some of his work that was rejected last year. Chip said, “There seems to be a misconception that everything I do just sails right through and nothing ever gets rejected or cancelled or anything and that is simply not true.” I found this to be both encouraging and discouraging at the same time. On one hand it is reassuring to know that even Chip Kidd comes against resistence when he presents good design solutions. On the other hand it sucks to think that we will never escape the tyranny of client rejection - even if we become living legends. What kind of an idiot would stand over Chip Kidd’s shoulder and tell him how too improve a book cover?!

For your listening enjoyment I made some mp3s of Chip Kidd’s lecture. If you don’t want to listen to the whole thing, at least check out this chunk where he talks about his rejected work: Chip Kidd - rejected work excerpt, 11mb

For you hardcore Kidd fans with an hour+ to burn, here is the entire lecture: Chip Kidd - complete lecture, AIGA Colorado event, January 11, 2007, 31mb

Afterwards I introduced myself to Chip and thanked him for commenting on our site. I handed him one of Bennett’s letterpressed business cards and invited him to be a guest on our podcast. Chip seemed open to the idea, so keep your fingers crossed!

Before I got my big break into the world of graphic design (ha!) I worked for almost two years at a Costco. As I moved up the ladder there, I eventually found myself as an inventory auditor working with my friend Paul Maurawski. He was an endlessly interesting co-worker, and one of his skills was his amazing penmanship. He had the best handwriting of anyone I have ever known. He had actually created a bunch of different “fonts” and could switch between them depending on his mood. He had some modern ones, some decorative ones, some funny ones. He could write with serifs or without. It was a sight to see. As an auditor you are constantly filling out forms and the paperwork never ends. He would fill out these forms with an artistry that astounded me. Every time his pen touched paper, he would concentrate on the forms of the letters and the results were amazingly beautiful. He took pride in this skill, and it was a running joke whenever someone else would hand him a hand written note. He would pretend to struggle to read the message as if the person’s penmanship was almost undecipherable.

Eventually I asked him what the secret to his handwriting was. Basically he told me that it was practice, and he taught me (as funny as that sounds) to improve my handwriting. One day Paul wrote out the alphabet complete with alternate figures for me to use as a reference. I remember filling page after page with the alphabet, only to have it critiqued harshly by Paul. My hand writing was readable, but it was a long way from beautiful. I decided that from that point on I would use every word I wrote as an exercise towards improving my penmanship.

That was probably about 5 years ago, and I have carried around his handwriting chart in my wallet as a constant reminder of how beautiful handwriting can be. I was cleaning out my wallet today and decided to scan it before the paper disintegrated any further. You can click on the image above to view a larger version. My handwriting still isn’t beautiful, but it is a little more enjoyable to fill out forms and paperwork when I think of it as an opportunity to improve my handwriting. If you are looking for a resolution this new year, consider improving your penmanship. Happy New Year!

Building a bit off of Adrian’s 2005 review of “designy” Christmas gifts, I wanted to toss out favorable reviews of a couple great gifts I received this year and poll the BA audience to find out what other swell knick-knacks and “toys” we found under our trees this year.

We’ll stop short of calling them “trends”, in part because the word “trends” implied a certain relation to the aesthetic of design. “Oh, that typeface is so trendy right now,” or “oh, rounded corners were so trendy 5 years ago.” Sometimes you just look around the world of design and see things that once seemed so normal, but now so need to go. We (though surely this will spark some debate among the BADG authors, I did ask their opinions) proudly present The 2006 Top 5 Officially Played-Out Design Industry Occurrences, or OpDiocs, for short:

Number 1: Entering Your Name Under Multiple Categories on a Single Award Entry

Today marks the end of Season One of the Be A Design Cast, and what a long, strange road it has been. When Tom, Donovan and I began the show over a year ago, we would never have dreamed it would garner the amazingly positive response that it has. Even less so that we’d be interviewing the likes of Joe Duffy, Ric Grefé, Aesthetic Apparatus, Brian Edlefson, CSA, Volume Inc., Lorenzo Apicella, Robert Brunner, Kit Hinrichs, Tricia Bateman and Debbie Millman.

But we, as good (or at least passable) designers know we can always grow, so Donovan and I are taking the next few months to retool and improve the show. Things like—gasp!—a regular schedule and better sound quality! But that’s not all. We’d like to invite everyone who listens to post a comment below with their thoughts on how we can deliver a better, brighter, more caffeine-induced BADCast to you. You can let us know anything you’d like, from “get a better microphone” to “get Paula Scher” to “you guys suck/rule.” We can take it. Well, maybe not Donovan. Be nice to him, he’s gentle.

I spent the past week at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida, and I was stunned at how perfectly they both captured and adhered to this notion of “magic.” Magic, mind you, is not always a trick. Well, not the kind I’m speaking of, per se. I’m not talking about The Presitige’s form of magic, though there are parallels which I will cover shortly. No, not the Pledge, Turn, Prestige form of magic; the eye-widening (but never eye-opening) sense that the world still has some wonder in it.

Perhaps I am ahead of myself. Let’s start with a fantastic quote from Michael Bierut:

“When I do a design project, I begin by listening carefully to you as you talk about your problem and read whatever background material I can find that relates to the issues you face. If you’re lucky, I have also accidentally acquired some firsthand experience with your situation. Somewhere along the way an idea for the design pops into my head from out of the blue. I can’t really explain that part; it’s like magic.”

That is important. I want you to keep that part in mind. We’re not really sure where ideas come from, it’s like magic. As well it should be. As well we should treat it.

There are two types of magic when it comes to design: Design Through Magic, and Magic Through Design.

Q: What’s the difference between a bad designer with no good ideas and a good designer who can’t get ideas made?

A: Nothing.

1. Come up with a great simple idea.*
2. Execute in one color (or green + black).

I thought you might enjoy this letter I received from some lawyer in Nebraska. I have been sitting on this post for about a week as I debated how much trouble I wanted to get into. I have come to the conclusion that as good as it would feel to make this corporation look foolish, I am going to play it safe and “protect” their identity by referring to them as “X Corporation.” This letter comes in the context of work shown in my online portfolio which was never used by the corporation. Other than changing the names, here is the letter without any further editing:

Re: X Corporation unauthorized use of trademark

Dear Mr. Hanft:

Our office represents X Corporation and our client has discovered that you are utilizing the trademark of X Corporation and materials, including photographs that are the work product of X Corporation.

You probably caught the term “designism” that has been getting thrown around the design blogs lately (SU, Unbeige, Core 77, DO, and many more) . Before I get to my rant, I would like to introduce the new polling feature of Be A Design Group. Informal survey questions will become a regular addition to our posts and I think this will be a great way to take the pulse of our readers about current design issues. Our first poll has to do with designism. The question is:

What do you think about the attention designism has gotten lately? Pick the answer that best matches your thoughts about designism:
1. I have no idea what they are talking about.
2. I like the idea of using design to promote social change. Where do I sign up?
3. The discussion is interesting, but the left wing politics turned me off to the whole thing.
4. Designism is a waste of time and I don’t think it will ever become a movement.
5. Designism is a monumentally important design movement and it is imperative that we keep the discussion going.
6. Design has always been about making the world a better place, so I don’t really get the point of inventing the word “designism.”

Voting is annonymous and simple so cast your vote here. If you just want to check out the results, they can be found here.

After you vote, continue reading to find out what I think of designism and why the movement is off to a bad start.

Over this past Labor-Daybor, my fiancé and I were traveling about between towns, here in the sprawling American Midwest, and against my better judgement she persuaded me to pull aside into a very sad-looking outlet mall. You all know the Outlet Malls, right? The leftovers and castaways of society’s worst chain-retailers set out for your perusement, ever hopeful they’d merit a purchase for an inordinately miniscule amount. In this very sad mall we found a bookstore readying to close its doors forever. I know what you’re thinking. Outlet mall + store closing = junk on massive sale.

I found three books and purchased two, got out of there for $6. The first was the saddest design-annual ever made: The 2000 Point-of-Purchase Design Annual. That means everything in this book was produced in late ‘98 and ‘99, and every terrible design cliché from Y2K (remember that?) was not only featured, but celebrated. The next was a book filled from cover to cover with surfboard designs. The third I almost passed up due to the worst-looking dust jacket I have ever seen. it was called The Product Book.

I had an interesting opportunity the other day, and I thought some of the blog reading public out there would appreciate it as much as I did. You see, they recently shut down a Target store not far from my office, in midtown Omaha. (They moved it into a new building about 2 miles down the road.) As a god-fearing designer, I obviously choose to shop at Target when I’m in need of just about anything. So I’d been inside this building dozens of times over the last few years. I was sad to see it go, although it had been getting a little rough around the edges, as far as Targets go. But I watched with morbid curiosity as they shuttered the doors, and started throwing various broken-up pieces of signage into the giant dumpsters out back. (No, none of it was salvagable: believe me, I looked.) Then one day, it happened. Commerical auction of all the store fixtures and left behinds. It gave me the opportunity to go inside the belly of the dead beast, autopsy in progress. What follows is my photographic record of the graphic, disturbing experience.

Through Be A Design Group, I have become even more embedded into the fabric of the graphic design sphere. While most of what I see in our profession I find encouraging, I find the tolerance and celebration of arrogant and rude designers puzzling. Maybe I shouldn’t, since most other professions deal with some of the same issues on a larger scale. NPR recently had a story on Tom Cruise and other public figures that are being reprimanded for their bad public behavior. Should there be ramifications for belligerent behavior in our profession?

Of course, being a part of the blogging world, we probably encounter a few more rude designers than the rest of the world, but most of the behavior on our site doesn’t bother me. A good heated discussion can be healthy, as long as those involved can keep it on a non-personal level. It is when personal attacks start flying that I start to get disgusted. The part that puzzles me most, is that some of the most personally abrasive people are put-up-with or even celebrated as adding “personality” to the mix. Even some of the bigger names in design blogging seem to celebrate the most annoying and personally abrasive “flavors” out there.

I’ve had occasion recently to spend a great deal of time in Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson airport. (A place they proudly proclaim as the world’s busiest airport, as if that should be a great source of pride.) During my numerous wanderings through the various concourses of the airport, I’ve encountered all sorts of different and interesting things. I’ve spent a lot of mental energy evaluating the directional signage (not bad) and the design of the subterranean moving walkway areas between concourses (less successful).

My time in Hartsfield-Jackson is a never-ending quest to waste time, spot interesting things, and find a worthwhile place to eat. (La Petit Bistro in Concourse T, if you’re wondering.) And, every time I’m back, I stop by Concourse C to make sure that it wasn’t a dream when I saw the iPod vending machine. (Yes, iPod vending machine; but that’s a whole different post.) But during my most recent visit, I stumbled across a couple of things much to interesting not to share.

The anti-sit gallery compiled by Transfer* is a fascinating collection of design related photos. Image after image shows city objects that have been modified to prevent people from sitting on them. As I thought about these devices, I wondered if there was an equivalent to the anti-sit in graphic design. The closest thing I can think of is the ubiquitous starburst. Aside from their pointy exteriors, I think they might have more in common than you might think…

While I am not a huge fan of anonymous comments on blogs, I think it could be therapeutic to get it all out of our system in one string of anonymous comments. Let it all out! I am partly inspired by those now famous anonymous confessional postcards.

So confess you anonymous design sins and no one can judge you this one time. Maybe you promoted a product you despised. Have you done freelance on company time? Have you used Brush Script in your work in the last couple years? Did you take credit for someone else’s work? Did you copy a design straight out of a design annual? Did you lie on a resume to get a job? Let’s hear what we don’t admit to, and I promise, no one will ever know!

Disclaimer: While we have the capability to track your IP address, I promise to not look them up on this post (unless you are ripping on me).

Last month I found myself in San Francisco for the AIGA Leadership Conference. If you’re unfamiliar, this is a three-day conference open only to chapter board members and committee-types from each of the more than 50 AIGA chapters (so you’ll have, for instance, Nebraska farm-boys rubbing elbows with highly-talented Hawaiian ukulele-strummers).

It’s funny who you run into; both at the conference, and in the middle of the street casually minding their own business.

Designers never really worried much about the “do it yourself” movement until recently when the phrase “design it yourself” started getting thrown around. That phrase has been causing uneasiness among graphic designers who fear that the power of design might fall into the wrong hands: ordinary people. GASP! I will give you a chance to catch your breath. The most recent (and highest profile example I can find) was just posted on Design Observer by guest author Dmitri Siegel in an entry called “Designing Our Own Graves.” The panic goes like this: If the power of design is put in the hands of ordinary people, graphic designers could lose their jobs! By supporting these rebels, design is devalued, and even more designers lose their jobs!

It is a tempting to embrace the “sky is falling” mentality, but in reality, the DIY’ers are the designer’s best friend. Let me point out a couple of flaws in Dmitri Siegel’s article that really show the absurdity of his fear, and give hope to the rest of us who see the potential in this exciting new audience…

I saw the sign above on the side of a C & S Concrete Cutting Company, L.L.C. truck today and I had to share it with you guys. It isn’t even worth criticizing, so let’s take a tip from Nate’s contribution to the last Be Aware post and have some “fun with design.” Everybody pick out your favorite part of this sign and explain why you would hire this company. Me, I just like to refer to them as the C&S C.C.C. L.L.C. It’s catchy.

There is a relatively strong anti-design movement happening right now and it seems to be gaining momentum. I am not talking about anything organized, and maybe it isn’t really a “movement,” but I seem to keep reading things that try to argue against (or simply ignore) the benefits of design. You may have read some of these articles already and not recognized the danger that these anti-design articles present. The scary thing is that they are getting promoted by some high profile sites. For example, Design Observer had a post about Google and the Tyranny of Good Design. Seth Godin has endorsed stock logos. Probably the most talked about article comes from site-reference.com where it is argued that badly designed websites earn more advertising revenue. In fear that this anti-design movement was creeping up on BADG, I had a passionate exchange with Clint on his last post about designing for the Wal-Mart crowd. Today I read yet another article called Ugly Design Works… Most Web Designers Miss the Point. This is the article I would like to focus on because this guy claims to have a design background. (On a side note, his story got Dugg, and it is always interesting to hear the average person’s opinions in the comments

As some of you may know, I have occasion to spend a fair amount of my time these days on an island in the Caribbean. Before you conjure up exotic visions of mud huts and tribal natives, let me clarify that this is the Cayman Islands, a fully developed, first-world British protectorate. Nevertheless, in the time that I spend there, I run across all kinds of things that I find fascinating from a design perspective. It’s always interesting to me to see how different cultures (even those of the English-speaking variety) interpret the world, and develop their visual communications. While Grand Cayman is probably more like the United States than most of the countries in the Caribbean, I still regularly encounter things there that I feel compelled to share with other like-minded designers. Think of this as a travel journal of things that non-designers look at you funny for finding interesting. (They certainly look at me funny when I’m standing there taking the pictures.)

Often times when I hear a designer talk about design celebrities and “who is hot”, I hear them talk about how fickle the design world is. Often sighting that “whoever is hot in the design world, won’t be for long”. I often wonder what I am missing. Compared to other visual/creative fields, it seems like the graphic design world is pretty consistent and faithful to its celebrities. Illustration seems much more susceptible to trends and styles than graphic design. Year after year, you still see the work of Bierut, Sagmeister, CSA, Chip Kidd, Scher … in the design annuals. Maybe Charles Anderson isn’t as dominate, and we haven’t seen much in the recent publications from David Carson, but am I missing something? Maybe when people speak of designers falling in and out of favor, they are speaking of the tertiary perimeter of the design celebs and not the legends that I listed above. Maybe I just haven’t been in the profession long enough to see someone totally fade out of the limelight.

I am curious to hear from everyone on this subject. Every once in a while, I will hear a friend or art director mention some amazing designer from the mid-eighties or early nineties that I have never heard of. Are there some designers in the last few decades that I am missing? Could we all learn a great deal from their work? Please share.

It seems like every printer I meet is promoting their “one-to-one” capabilities for direct mail. You know what I am talking about, right? They have their printer connected to a database of names, so that every piece that gets mailed is personalized with the recipient’s name. The technology keeps getting better and better, and the other day I got a postcard in the mail that was pretty impressive. The photo on the front had a girl in a bathtub writing my name in the bubbles. If you don’t mind seeing attractive women bathing, take a look at the full postcard. The back of the postcard was less impressive, but I never would have read it if it weren’t for the customized front. The postcard is promoting a seminar for designers about one-to-one marketing. If anyone is interested, it is in Fort Collins, Colorado on March 23, 2006. The speaker is Toby Gadd and you can call Carrie at (970) 484-2330 to make reservations.

Tonight I visited my extended neighborhood’s first Panera Bread bakery cafe. For those of you in southern California, it’s at Foothill and Haven in Rancho Cucamonga. For those of you in St. Louis, Nebraska, and many other areas, this is probably a dead topic. “Mine” opened less than a week ago. Although we’ve already covered Panera’s holiday designs, I can’t help but express how much the design part of my brain thanks me for going there. Every little detail in that place was atteneded to. The running themes in signange—the endless sophisicated menu choices—the special carpet around the long Thanksgiving Dinner family table—the embossed frequent-buyer cards—having lids that actually work for water glasses so that my toddler doesn’t spill them—the artwork on the wall—the great food and service, all supporting the brand.

We now know about your great successes. Selling us a billion iPods, getting that controversial ad approved for the Super Bowl (it made me laugh-out-loud), and I think of you every 27 seconds, when my RDLBA (Recommended Daily Level of Brand Awareness) gets frighteningly low.

But where were you when I pulled the door handle, only to find (after a slight back strain) that the door needed a push?

And where were you last fall when I followed instructions on my new end table, only to mistake the long screw for the medium screw—drilling right through the table top.

Oh what about the three dozen times I’ve filled out a form only to discover that the line I just put my name on, was actually intended for my address?

And what about that ballot I filled out a few years ago that had my head spinning so badly I voted for Yosemite Sam.

I could continue. There’s the tax forms, insurance forms, my personal banking website, the directions on my prescription, and countless switches and buttons that make no sense on my remote(s).

As a currently displaced US citizen, I’ve missed most of the United States Mint’s 50 State Quarters® Program. I tried to catch a few of the new designs over the holidays, and was overwhelmed by all the new-to-me quarters. Now I see the State of Washington is gearing up for the final selection of their state quarter. It’s an interesting process, that according to the US Mint, is a collaboration between the governor’s of each state, the US Mint and its designers.

Dear Doritos,

We regret to inform you that your bag is wrong. We understand you’re using a new identity on your bags, and there seems to be an error on your Cool Ranch flavor where the “Cool” Ranch is actually on fire. We’re sure you meant to keep the flames at the top of the bag closer to your wonderfully blue color pallet. Because big red flames atop a Cool Ranch bag in an entirely cool color pallet named after a cool flavor is so off base we might actually stop dead in our tracks and take a photo of it at the grocery store. And that’s just crazy talk.

ps: if you switch it out real quick, it’s possible no-one will notice.

The best design to reach my mailbox in a long time …

Nobody likes filling out forms; yet, the design of the one I received Tuesday in a plain white 11.5 x 6” envelope made it an okay experience. I was expecting it to arrive soon since the U.S. Census Bureau already notified me. Inside the envelope was the surprisingly well-designed American Community Survey. I suppose I was surprised at this form design because I’m used to experimenting my way through poorly designed forms at local doctors’ offices.

In case you missed it, AIGA, the professional association for design, announced their annual 365 competition winners and added their selections to the phenomenal Design Archives. 104 selections culled from thousands of entries (we assume) are featured, so congratulations to the winners. Donovan, whose opinion of award shows has been well documented, was not awarded.

Ladies and gentlemen, the most amazing thing I’ve seen all week. I give you USA Soda. And within it, a brief history of graphic design as told by hundreds and hundreds of pop cans. Yes Tom, including every single flavor of Mountain Dew and Fresca. Ever. You’ll just have to forgive the site design and dive in. This is a collector, actually—not a designer—who it seems has accidentally compiled a huge resource of graphic design’s roots. And root beers.

Thanks to Kelly McIntosh for the link.

Told you I’d do another one. Pay attention, Kid Who Wrote That Story About Working Late a Lot. This one’s for you.

I was reminded recently of a couple more reasons why design shows no signs of leaving my blood stream any time in the near future: in the midst of several other records in a Lincoln, NE thrift store I found at least one, and likely two album covers created by Alex Steinweiss and picked them both up for the outrageous price of 75 cents a piece…

I love design because we have the opportunity absolutely every day to obtain a piece of “original” work by practically any of the major names / figures / all-stars in our field - and even if you want to by-pass the consumerist participation in this artform, we at least have the opportunity to experience and enjoy great design work in the “galleries” of any number of stores and locations.

Sometimes I think Seth Godin is a genius and occasionally I think he is a moron. Here is another one for the moron category…

Seth needs some free advertising for his new book, and he was able to get MSN to donate advertising space on their home page. Only one problem: he didn’t have anyone to design the ad. How about a contest? How is this for devaluing the advertising/design industry:

“…you do an ad on spec, and if it’s great, you get publicity far and wide, leading, perhaps to not just good feelings around holiday time but plenty of new business, and maybe a shot at being on Oprah, if that’s your business. Amateurs are welcome to apply.”

Even without the Oprah reference (cringe) and MSN hompage location (shutter), this is still a terrible idea. Yes, the profits of the book go to charity, but that doesn’t justify such an obvious attempt to avoid paying a qualified person to design an ad. Seth, you have the money, don’t waste your readers time! If you are really hurting that badly for cash, a better solution would be to find an ad agency to do the work pro bono. Don’t waste people’s time with a contest. A contest like this does much more harm than good, even if it is for charity.

I doubt that anyone noticed that Be A Design Group’s code is now valid HTML. Although the site doesn’t work any differently, and everything looks exactly the same, I feel like this was a real accomplishment. I don’t know about you, but the web design I do is nothing like the web design I learned in school. When I started out, web design was just a matter of slicing up large Photoshop images. Now the sites I work on rely so heavily on coding that sometimes I wonder if this is even design. Almost everything I know about building a website I have learned on my own by trial and error. As I have grown into the role of web designer, things like validation, usability and stylesheets have become increasingly important to me. Whether I like it or not, I have turned into something I never would have thought possible: a programmer. At least that is what it seems like. Troubleshooting HTML sure doesn’t feel like graphic design. I doubt that there are many graphic designers that got into web design because of the appeal of learning HTML. Maybe all websites should be designed in Photoshop, and then a programmer should be hired to build the code. We are designers, not programmers, right? Wrong. Like it or not, a good web designer is going to have to be a good programmer, too. Disagree? Drop me some comments…

Fellow BADG author Donovan Beery ran an article past me that he wanted to post on the site. His writing focused on a piece of design that had crude language and he wanted to make sure that it was acceptable to post. While Adrian and I try not to censor comments, we work to keep vulgarity and profanity away from this site. Other sites can do what they like, but we like to keep it a little cleaner. In the end I am deciding not to publish Donovan’s piece (sorry man). While Donvan’s piece was respectful and gave the reader full warning, ultimately it was the standard that we had set, that kept me from letting it onto the site. Donovan’s post reignited a thought that has been running through my head over the last year of so.

Every once in a while you will see a post from a guest author on Be A Design Group. While we don’t guarantee that we will publish anything you send us, if you have written something and want to get some feedback, send it our way. Keep it clean, and more than likely we will give your writing a home. Here is a letter from a visual communications student who will remain annonymous:

A guest speaker at my art/design school informed the graphic design majors that it is normal for professional designers to work 70+ hour work weeks consistently. I am deeply committed and passionate about art and design, however, I am extremely scared that after I graduate, I am heading toward a lifestyle that will leave no time for me to relax and enjoy other parts of life. I already live at my studio due to the large amount of work, and can’t see myself being able do this much past graduation. I feel very lopsided. I enjoy the work, but there are too many all nighters - I don’t see my non art school friends anymore!

I know that a lot depends on where you live, and who you work for, but I would like some help in getting a sense of what kind of hours and time commitment I will have to adopt to be successful. I know I can do the work, I just don’t want to make myself miserable doing so.

P.S. I have had a couple internships in my hometown, and been reading magazines like print, communication arts, and digit; this is the fist time I have been made aware that professionals usually live in their offices / studios. How could I have missed this for so long?

Do print designers have a natural instinct for interior design? I mean, why is it that people (co-workers, family, and so forth) assume that you do? Have you [print designers] ever been asked for your “authoritative” advice on how to rearrange a room? Maybe it’s just me, but I hardly know a thing about it. Hanging pictures on a wall is easy—that’s 2-D. Picking colors is fun—you do that all day long. But arranging furniture? That’s when I rely on the experts—like my relative with the interior design degree—and am amazed by the results.

“You’ve got a very good job as an art director. To do better, you’d either have to move to another firm, move to another town, switch careers or go back to school. And all of them have costs and very uncertain returns, so you stay.”

I read that on Seth Godin’s blog today, and it just nailed me. I know several designers who are in this same situation doing exactly what Seth is talking about. I just passed my two year anniversary where I work, and have been reflecting on my short career and trying to make plans and goals for the future. Maybe you are asking these same questions:

Have I learned all I can from my current job?
Is there any way I can turn my current job into my dream job?
Can I afford to leave the job I enjoy to pursue something else?
Can I make more money doing something else?
Am I just in a slump, and things will get better?
Do I really want to be a designer anymore?

I bet we all ask ourselves these questions, but I got to tell you that writing them down is much more scary. I really do love my job, and don’t plan on leaving any time soon, but I know some of you are ready to move on. Seth’s article talks about the need to get past the fear of leaving a comfortable situation and accepting the pain that comes before your next big success. I encourage you to read his article if you are ready to find your next big thing. Then follow it up by reading this one where he offers this assurance, “You don’t have to get a formal MBA or quit your job to start a profitable business or sideline. You can leverage the amazing tools that exist without having to wager everything.” I could be wrong, but I think there are quite a few designers going through this same type of thing. What are you going to do (or what have you done) to get past a career that seems “stuck?”

In the area residing somewhere between a blatant self promotion and sacrificial guinea pig, I offer you my online portfolio. Having lost my job at the low of our last economic downturn (three years ago) and not having my “book” ready to go, I swore I would never let my portfolio get outdated again. Easier said than done. Never-the-less, I have recently updated my online portfolio. It is nothing fancy, but hopefully it makes my work accessible.

I figured this discussion could work on multiple levels…

1. I get some of my own medicine. I critique others work fairly regularly on this blog and I should be able to take it as well. I’m not sure that I’m ready for this part of the deal.

2. What should an online portfolio be? Should it be in blog form, flash, html, or in my case, PDFs?

3. What kind of work and how many samples should be in an online portfolio?

4. Let me know what I can work on. Constructive criticism is one of the best ways to grow as a designer.

Disclaimer. Much of this work was either created within an agency environment and in collaboration with other designers, writers, AEs, etc. No designer is an island.

I give you bennettholzworth.com.

Just when you think that Chip Kidd couldn’t get any more outrageous with his book design … he goes and design’s outside the cover of his own monography, Chip Kidd: Book One. I was looking at sneak peaks of his new book on his website, goodisdead.com. (As far as I can tell the website is new as well.)

How far beyond the edges did he go? How about pages that are twice the size of the book cover. The concept I would assume is something like this… The book couldn’t contain all of the content and Chip is larger than life. This fits in with the audacity of calling your life’s work, Book One. I would expect no less from Chip. One thing that I really appreciate is the size reference of his new book to the size of the average fiction book (his specialty). It pays tribute to what has made him famous, while allowing to show work at a large scale. I look forward to looking, reading and seeing how well this piece works as a functioning book. No matter what, I’m sure it will be entertaining.

Now that I’ve gotten your attention, I’d like to discuss an important topic. I hope that Adrian and Bennett will agree with me that this is not a political discussion, per se, but instead a discussion on the meaning behind design.

I was a bit taken aback when the latest issue of STEP Inside Design magazine showed up on Friday. A snippet of the cover is shown above, but suffice it to say it’s splashed with the headline “Women of Design”, surrounded by a grid of kitten photos, each labeled with the name of one of the designers featured inside. (See the full cover here.)

We had a short discussion at my office on Friday about the meaning of the cover, and what message it was trying to convey. I thought that was the end of it; but then it stayed with me, percolating in the back of my head all weekend. At the risk of sounding like a prude or a fuddy-duddy, I’m a bit troubled by the cover.

A graphic design blog isn’t the place for a debate between evolution and creation. So why does this topic continue to get raised in graphic design circles? With Design Observer’s unapologetic reputation for not being able to separate design from politics, it wasn’t surprising that they jumped into the Intelligent Design debate without hesitation. I was somewhat more surprised to see the debate taking place on SpeakUp today. I really didn’t want to read it, but being a fan of Debbie Millman, I forced myself in hopes of finding a relevant link between evolution and design. I finished the article very disappointed to find no such link.

The obvious bait for starting this discussion is that “Intelligent Design” has the word “design” in it. As if designers have a patent on the word “design.” Danny’s comment on SpeakUp’s post was profoundly accurate:

“I have to be honest and say that the discussion of Intelligent Design vs. Evolution is a discussion that should probably take place somewhere else. Because the word “Design” is in the name of the proposed theory doesn’t automatically enlist us as experts.

Maybe we could rename it “Intelligent Construction” and let the crane operators hash this one out?”

I couldn’t have said it any better. In the end, I suppose every blog has to decide for themselves what is and isn’t off limits. As for Be A Design Group, rest assured that we will do our best not to confuse politics with design. To repeat what I have said before, “politics is not off limits, but when the topic comes up, you can be sure we are talking about design, and not pushing an agenda. A political agenda can only lessen the impact of our design discussion. We are professional graphic designers who have dedicated our lives to design, not politics. I know that many people disagree with this viewpoint, but I think it is important for you to understand where we stand.

If you’ve stayed in a W Hotel or flown on Jet Blue recently, you’ve probably noticed the Colorcalm Skies playing on their screens — rolling clouds and shifting colors set to soothing music. Those same people have gathered Irma Boom, John Maeda and Peter Saville and a roster of musicians including New Order to produce the first ambient design DVD, ‘by Design.’

Each of the segments are completely unique in their concept and look: Irma Boom’s Art Barcodes mixes color palettes from 80 paintings by artists from Van Gogh to Warhol, in a series of vertical stripes that blend from one painting to the next — and you can view it chronologically or randomly; John Maeda digitized the palettes of food he found in his refrigerator one day to create “Food Coloring;” and Peter Saville has two sections in “Color Wheel,” one which creates a color palette used by Renaissance painters, and one which slowly, imperceptibly changes from blue to red. Saville’s is set to New Order music, of course; Boom’s to composer Michael Nyman, and Maeda’s to Japanese pianist Ryuichi Sakamoto.

Not only is this a remarkable collaboration between such revered designers, it represents this entirely new genre of design-based ‘entertainment.’ It’s like a piece of collectable artwork on DVD, perfect for showing off your brand-new plasma or flat screen monitor. Plus they’re accepting submissions for volume two, which they plan to release next year.

Designing with stylesheets can be one of the hardest things for a young Jedi web designer to learn. I learned HTML without the benefit of styles, and avoiding the dark side of tables isn’t easy. Mastering styles is hard, but the rewards are worth the Rebellion against tables. The real power of stylesheets is that you can change the design of an entire site by changing a single css file. So, it is with a real sense of accomplishment that I announce that Be A Design Group is now fully sylesheet driven. That’s right, no more tables for Be A Design Group.

“Now witness the firepower of this fully armed and operational battle station!” (click for full sound effect)

Released from the carbonite chambers of tables, our layout can take on any design we want. If we feel like DesignObserver, we can use our “is that the template that came with Movable Type” style:.

Or if we are in a SpeakUp, “man, that’s a big table” mood, we simply slip into this disguise:.

As you can see, the power to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the power of CSS. Then again, uh, they are no match for a good blaster at your side? Ok, I have to stop before this Star Wars theme gets out of hand..

…Well, maybe a couple more…

Jedi mind trick disclaimer: I hope our friends at DO and SpeakUp are flattered by my parody. I love those guys, and have no intention of starting any clone wars. For the rest of you, thanks for putting up with my Star Wars nerdery.

WIth all of the buzz, I had to watch Martha Stewart’s Apprentice. While not all that different from Donald’s, I felt compelled to keep watching week after week. Because it was excellent entertainment? No, not really. More because it is set to answer the age old question … Creative or Corporate? Ok so maybe it is at best a decade old question, but a question that has been getting a lot of press as of late. The idea of the MFA being the new MBA is mainly what I am talking about. I have also been reading Richard Florida’s book, The Rise of the Creative Class. In it he correlates the success of economic booms to the percentage and acceptance of creatives in the community.

So why have the self described creatives done so poorly on Martha’s Apprentice? They have failed the challenge three weeks in a row, they are always fighting and everything they do doesn’t seem to really be creative. Why are they failing us? They (Matchstick) started out slightly more creative than the opposing “corporate thinkers” (i.e. Primarius) with their name, but it all stopped there. Whatever it is they are doing wrong, they seem to be trying too hard. They took on too big of a challenge and tried to write a rhyming children’s book (few can master this). They narrowed down their flower shop to just tulips. Last week, they made an asymmetrical, oval wedding cake that severally limited their potential customers. They also seem to fail at sales. So what is the problem?

I’ve been thinking something for a long time, but afraid to say it, fearing the repercussions of divulging my deeply-held secret: I do not like the typeface Avant Garde. It is at this point that I would question my fears, and wonder aloud whether or not anyone actually likes Avant Garde. But I don’t need to look any further than 90% of the architecture firms in the nation to remind myself that someone likes it. If I didn’t know better, I’d think that setting your business cards in Avant Garde was a requirement of membership in the AIA. (p.s. Attention all design students: just because I didn’t call you out specifically doesn’t mean I haven’t noticed what you’ve been up to with this font. Pre-installed on your machine doesn’t necessarily mean it’s good.)

I found this sign quite comical in the back halls of the University I am at. At somepoint, somebody put some serious money into signage, as every bulletin board, closet, nook, and cranny has one of these vinyl cut signs. They were all probably part of the original construction in 1972. Obviously somewhere along the line, someone discovered that the delivery people and the designer of the sign had two different vocabularies. The beauty is they chose to retain the beautiful original sign and just add a very polite additional clarification…great work guys!

Editor’s Note: It has been brought to our attention that the in-house team at The Walker Art Center created the featured identity below. Process Type Foundry took the identity and painstakingly converted the Walker’s new identity into a usable font. Sorry for the confusion.

This past weekend I was in Minneapolis to see the Twins play the Sox, visit my friends at CSA, and of course to hit the IKEA store. While we were there, we visited the famous Walker Art Center, now home to a very memorable graphic identity by the Process Type Foundry. You’ve probably seen images of this identity, including its excellent and highly-celebrated garage-wall graphics.

Did I say “excellent?” I meant to say “failed.”

Following in the footsteps of the Quark logo debacle, logo parody debate and the LogoLounge/Lanor controversy, I came accross a story where design similarities have caused a scene. In this case, the lid of the Burger King Icecream desserts contained a swirly design that resembled the Arabic inscription for Allah. (And we thought their poor registration was bad!) An offended Muslim was so upset that he threatened a “jihad” and called for all Muslims to boycott Burger King. Needless to say, Burger King has recalled the lids.

A bit overshadowed by the release of iPod nano, iTunes 5 was also released last week. Although you can’t exactly call it a redesign, there were some design changes to the interface. As has come to be expected from the Apple faithful, let’s dissect the changes…

It’s safe to say that there is a consensus that gas prices are too high, so let’s talk about it. No matter what you drive, you are feeling the pain of high gasoline costs. After trading my truck almost a year ago for a Tercel that gets over 30mpg, 3 bucks a gallon still hurts. This is the post where we can all complain about high gas prices, but first let me rant about BP for a little while…

The AIGA has sent an email outlining their response to the devastation that Hurricane Katrina has left. aiga.org/reliefeffort While the AIGA is not a relief organization, they do have an important role to play. Aside from donating to the already existing relief organizations, we can help our fellow designer get through this. Here is a portion of the email explaining a little of what the AIGA is currently doing.

"Designers in southeastern states who would like to take an active role in the task force should respond at relief@aiga.org. AIGA will focus on creating a network to allow displaced designers to communicate with those who can help; we will also help displaced designers in regaining their professional practice.

AIGA will launch a relief fund with $10,000 to help designers re-establish their practices and will encourage our corporate partners to work through the task force to coordinate additional financial and in-kind support."

Growing up working in the produce department at the local grocery store left me with very high standards when it comes to eating fruit. I have been thoroughly disappointed with the produce from the chain grocery stores, and it has been years since I have had a good peach. When I saw the peach stand selling locally grown peaches today over lunch, I had to stop. The lady attending the stand offered me a sample, and we had a delightful little chat about peaches. I left with a $5 bag of six delicious peaches and a smile on my face.

Fast forward to 8:30 this evening when I was picking up my film from Sam’s Club. I hadn’t eaten dinner so I decided to see if there was any pizza left at their food court. The guy behind the counter was friendly when I asked if it was too late to get a slice of pizza. He recommended the pepperoni so I bought a slice. The total was $2.01 and he gladly said he could cover the penny. Then he gave me the last two slices of pizza. I left with a plate of grease and a smile on my face.

As I reflect on my day, I feel like I can learn a lot from these two workers. Sure, graphic design seems like a dream job compared to slinging grease in a food court or standing outside at a roadside fruit stand all day, but is it really all that different? Aside from the occasional awesome jobs that come along, the majority of our time is spent resizing ads, burning disks, making endless text revisions, and hours of tedious work. That’s not what I signed up for, but they don’t call it work for nothing. Both of the workers I met today show that we are selling more than peaches, pizza, or graphic design. Do your interactions with your co-workers leave a sweat taste in their mouth? Do your clients feel that they got more than what they paid for? We have the potential to make the days of the people we interact with better, it just takes a little effort. I don’t know about you, but I could definitely do better.

Recently my wife and I were in a doctor’s office waiting for the doctor to come and share with us the results of an MRI. He came in, placed a cd in the PC and we watched as he scrolled through the images from the MRI. Despite the obvious stress of the situation, I was captivated by the images on screen. The controls let you scroll through layer after layer as we traveled up and down my wife’s spine. The doctor pointed out the landmarks and explained the landscape inside the human body. It was a fascinating visual journey. As we were leaving the office, I asked the doctor if his cd would work on an ordinary PC. To my surprise, he said that all I had to do was ask for another cd, and I could view the MRI on my PC at home. Since the results of an MRI are routinely reviewed by many doctors, asking for a copy of your own MRI isn’t an unusual request.

When I got our copy of the CD, it worked just fine on my PC. The disk automatically opened a program called eFilmLite. The interface was the same that we saw in the doctor’s office, and by trial and error, I was able to scroll through the same images that the doctor showed us. The designer in me wanted to tweak the interface a little, but overall the navigation was actually pretty well designed. After spending over $1000 on an MRI, it is nice to see that at least something is free and maybe even a little fun.

I have recently been thinking about what constitutes deception in design. After all, much of what we do is improving the image of a client. We make non-profits look friendly and small companies look like sophisticated corporations. As a designer you would have a hard time making a living if you had a problem with making things look a little better than they actually were.

I have been pondering some other examples which seem to push the ethical limits of deception by design. Is it alright for the credit card companies to send your bill in the most “undesigned” envelope so it gets lost in your stack of junk mail, you subsequently miss the payment and get late charges? At the same time these companies send “pre-approved” applications that try to look like a handwritten letter from a friend. How about herbal supplements that gain validation by adopting the look and feel of prescription drugs? Then we have companies that appear to be foreign and authentic (i.e. Haagen Dazs), when they were actually formed in the Bronx. Are we packaging a nicely crafted story or a deceitful pack of lies?

What are your limits as a designer? Where do you draw the ethical line when it comes to misrepresenting your client to the unsuspecting consumer?

As Sir Bennett Holzworth Esq. would say, “When is something an homage to a fondly recalled piece from the past, and when is something just a blatent rip-off?”

Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you the Breakfast Brawl.

Obviously not a surprise to those who have followed the Adobe/Macromedia story, but Macromedia has announced the Studio 8 bundle today.

As they mention, “Studio 8 is the essential software suite used to design, develop and maintain interactive online experiences.”

It appears that Freehand is not included in the bundle – as it has been in the past.

What are the best designed movies of all time? I'm not talking about the movie with the best titles or one that has an accurate portrayal of a designer. (does that even exist?) Not even a movie that has a representation of the infamous Peter Seville (24 Hour Party People). My criteria for these movies was simple ��� the best use of design as an integrated part of the movie itself. I didn't include any animated movies, just so I could narrow the selection. Here are the top ten best designed movies of all time. . . in my opinion.

While listening to Stefan Sagmeister talk at this years HOW Conference I was shocked to hear him say that he did not believe in Style=Fart anymore. He said this, and then went right on with his presentation. Most people don’t just put their philosophy on promotional material, on the National AIGA Conference poster, carve it into their chest and then change their mind. In my mind this was similar to the moment in history that Jan Tschihold abandoned the New Typography. Or was it? I asked Stefan about this switch in philosophy and he was kind enough to respond by saying:

“I just found that the utilization of good or appropriate style can be very important in communicating content. So I started to take it more seriously.

I still don’t like stylish pieces that have nothing to say (in the same way I don’t appreciate well dressed people with nothing to say).

But if dressing well gets you heard, why not do it?”

Once I found out that Speak Up’s Word It for the month was “Extreme” I knew I had to track this van down. I had seen it several months ago and I had wanted to post it here, but it took a little research and driving to find it and take the photo. I know that the “Extreme” trend has been considered over for a while now, but this is a whole new end. This is Charles Dickens deader than a doornail … dead. Please, no more!

So what’s really in a logo that gets our design-blood stirring so hotly? It’s boiled me a bit, as evidenced in the Seth Godin string below, but is definitely a great discussion-button I know we all have perspectives on…

The UPS logo is a favorite hot-button for me, especially with an appreciation of all that Paul Rand was able to invest in the original mark and all the meaning that’s been stripped out of it in its current incarnation by FutureBrand.

A quote borrowed from Design Observer to get us rolling:

“The abstract total-design logo is the most marvelous fraud that the American graphic arts have ever perpetrated upon American business. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, these abstract logos, which a company (Chase Manhattan, Pan Am, Winston Sprocket, Kor Ban Chemical) is supposed to put on everything from memo pads to the side of its 50-story building, make absolutely no impact-conscious or unconscious-upon its customers or the general public, except insofar as they create a feeling of vagueness or confusion…Yet millions continue to be poured into the design of them. Why? Because the conversion to a total-design abstract logo format somehow makes it possible for the head of the corporation to tell himself: “I’m modern, up-to-date, with it, a man of the future. I’ve streamlined this old baby.” Why else would they have their companies pour $30,000, $50,000, $100,000 into the concoction of symbols that any student at Pratt could, and would gladly, give him for $125 plus a couple of lunches at the Tratorria, or even the Zum-Zum? The answer: if the fee doesn’t run into five figures, he doesn’t feel streamlined. Logos are strictly a vanity industry, and all who enter the field should be merciless cynics if they wish to guarantee satisfaction.”

- Tom Wolfe, “From Bauhaus to Our House” quoted in 1972, the year he was a judge for the AIGA’s Communication Graphics competition. (See more on the topic at Design Observer)

I had a friend ask me where I buy my paper when I do short run letterpress work. Since most of the local paper suppliers don’t carry the various colors that I like to use, I order directly from the mill. I know a lot of fine letterpress printers like to use actual art paper, like Arches, but I haven’t had a job that called for that quality or had that kind of budget. One of these days …

As of right now I have only ordered paper from two online suppliers, Fox River and French Paper. If you weren’t aware of the paper mills that you can order directly from, here is my short list. Even if you don’t do your own printing, these sites might come in handy if your local paper supplier doesn’t carry the stock that you would prefer.

I would like to share a few examples of bad packaging that I have encountered over the last month. Some big names (Starburst, Hershey’s and Buger King ) and a no name (Dr. J. H. McClean’s Volcanic Oil).

The above Starburst packaging is in my opinion the worst of the bunch. What color do you think of when you hear the name Starburst? Yellow I would assume. I have purposefully taken a side shot of this package to show how much red the average shopper will see. The designers of this packaging apparently never went to Walmart and saw all of the Starburst stacked with hardly a spot of yellow showing. I now know that the new packaging is mainly red and I still have a hard time finding it in the candy aisle.

Today I received my new Bogen Manfrotto Tripod. When browsing through the warning booklet, I was immediately stopped by the illustration next to the warning “Do not exceed the maximum specified load.” As my public service to you tripod owners out there, I figured I’d scan the warning and share it with everybody. (Basically, it looks like you’re not supposed to put the tripod where the sun don’t shine.)

Just wanted to point out a cool article I read over at Typographica about “Delete: Delettering the Public Space,” a project by Christoph Steinbrener and Rainer Dempf. They took yellow foil and covered all the letters on a popular shopping street in Vienna. It shows exactly how much advertising and typography we encounter on a daily basis…and how much we probably tune out.

(Be sure to check out the “Untitled Project,” another cool project mentioned in the Typographica post.)

AIGA���s application for membership in ICOGRADA (International Council of Graphic Arts and Design Associations) was accepted at the ICOGRADA board meeting in late May. AIGA will immediately begin our involvement with representatives of other design associations from around the world, extending the AIGA network to a global network; we will describe the implications for members in the fall. AIGA Communique Vol. 5, Issue 5

I just read this in the email that AIGA National sent out today. I’m not even sure this is news to anybody but me. Will this affect the average AIGA member beyond the $20 increase in membership dues (this will pay for more than just the ICOGRADA involvement)? I have been familiar with ICOGRADA for some time but I don’t know a lot of the specifics of the organization. What have other national design organizations done when they joined ICOGRADA? Do they keep their name? Is this more of a symbolic involvement?

A few of our authors were just at the National AIGA Board retreat. I wonder if this was a topic of discussion? Where is the AIGA headed? I don’t really see how this “involvement” would be a bad thing, but I just wanted to get some reactions and little bit of feedback.

When you go to the zoo, do you feel sorry for the monkeys? Me neither. Why should I? Is their situation much different than most graphic designers? We are caged up in an art department all day. People look through the bars and point at this weird breed of humans classified as “creatives.” Every once in a while the zookeeper will come along and throw us a banana or two of kind words. Before I wear out this analogy, let me make my point. One of our fellow monkeys is getting some recognition 40 years after he died of tuberculosis. Three paintings by Congo the chimpanzee sold for $25,000 at auction in London on Monday according to NPR. Hopefully this news brings hope to all the monkey artists out there struggling to get by.

Bennett and I got back last Tuesday after an exhilerating and exhausting weekend at the HOW Conference. In about three days we wrote full reviews of 19 different sessions that we attended. We know that is alot to sort through, so here are some of the highlights:

Steven Heller, William Drenttel, Steve Rhodes, Armin Vit, and Patric King talk about the influence of blogs on the design community.

Abbott Miller and DJ Stout talk with the editors/art directors of HOW and Print about the redesign of their magazines.

Brian Collins of Ogilvy talks about the spiritual side of branding.

There are some helpful notes on hand lettering from Ken Barber’s session.

Jeff Kleinsmith talks about how he got the dream job of being art director for Sub Pop records.

Petrula Vrontikis preview for her session consisted of some great career tips even if you weren’t going to the conference.

Brendan Dawes preview was just plain inspirational and a nice piece on its own.

Marshall Arisman preview consisted of short hand notes for his session. This is a rare look into how someone like Marshall prepares for a lecture.

Jakob Trolback preview is actually his unedited session proposal to HOW. This was also an interesting side of the HOW Conference that we don’t normally see.

In the Matt Mattus review Bennett shares some notes on where Matt looks for inspiration and trends (i.e. Japan, contemporary art …).

With photo quality printers being sold for under $100, even beginning designers can afford to create press quality samples to show clients. Some of these samples are of an even higher quality then the final printed pieces. So everyone is happy except me, who now has to pay more for lunch.

When at the office, my car usually is parked about 5 foot from the Subway sandwich shop next door, so naturally, I end up getting lunch there at least once a week. Subway has, for as long as I have eaten there, given ‘stamps’ with each sandwich purchased. Collect enough of these stamps, and you get a free lunch, but no more.

Why? Counterfeit stamps are part of the answer. I think if you ask enough questions, you’ll find every designer has a story of forging something (the majority of which I find are practical jokes), but when it comes to taking away my free sandwiches, I draw the line. So please, design for good only.

HEAD Magazine is an online publication designed to showcase the creative talents of established and emerging visual artists from all over the world. HEAD Magazine was founded in 2003 by Steve Kraitt and Nicolene Hannan, and provides an editorial and advertising-free platform for exhibiting the work of photographers, artists, illustrators and designers.

Featured artist: Gary Baseman- HEAD Magazine

Every company in the world wants to be on the top of the search results page. Some companies pay big bucks for it. Others invest in spam and other underhanded search engine trickery. People write books on the subject, and other companies make a fortune by promising search engine domination. Unfortunately for all these people, there is a very simple way to control your ranking on the search results page. I will tell you the secret of search engine optimization for free. Are you curious?

Relatively early on in our graphic design careers, we learn this simple truth: When your client is faced with choosing one of your three designs, they will always choose the worst one. Even if all three of your designs are strong, you almost always have a favorite. So how can you get your client to choose the design you want them to choose? Garrett Dimmon has the answer: only show them one option. He makes a strong case for this approach in his essay, “One Idea is Better than Three.”

My good buddy and esteemed colleague Bennett’s post a few days ago about Sin City and its design or lack thereof got me to thinking.

What if there are other movies with design worth talking about? And if so, is anyone talking about them? And if not, why not? And if double not, should I? And if double deuce not, which movie should I crack wise about?

The answer to the first four questions was a resounding “yes”. And the answer to the fifth question?

I had planned on writing an enlightening piece about design for the World Day of Design, which is today. Inspiration was hard to come by for this event. Aside from having the honor of my design(above) selected for the poster contest, I don’t have many positive things to say about the poster contest and the national AIGA involvement in this day.

I admire the fact that the AIGA is recognizing the World Day of Design and doing something about it. Unless I am missing something, the effort seems to have stopped at the idea phase. Ever since I signed up to design an entry for the contest, I have been less than impressed. A few days before the submission deadline I sent a question to the provided email and expected a response. I never even received a simple reply. The posted deadline to notify the winners was March 9th. After the day came and went I just assumed that my poster didn’t impress Paula Scher and company. Then on April 6th I received a PDF attachment of a form letter. The PDF letter didn’t have any indication that it was to me other than it was sent to my email address. It said, “Congratulations! The World Day of Design Committee is pleased to inform you that your poster has been selected for the first World Day of Design celebration in the United States…” I was pumped, but confused as to why it took them an extra month to notify me. All of these things are annoying, but not really a big deal.

Here are a few news articles that have caught my attention lately. Some of the newspapers might make you register, but I think they are worth it.

The 2010 Vancouver Olympics revealed their new logo this Saturday. The logo is decent but the fact that it was handled as a logo competition is not. At least the prize was $25,000. With 1,600 entries, just think of the wasted time designing this logo.

Here is a revealing interview with Peter Saville. This article makes it clear why he only stayed with Pentagram for a short time in the nineties.

Another Chip Kidd interview.

A couple of gaming companies disagreeing about wether their logos are too much alike. View the logos.

Here are a couple of Toronto Star articles on Bruce Mau. One is a review of Massive Change as it moves to a new location. Side Note: Does anyone else think that Hartio Sans on SNL could play Bruce onscreen. I also thought that this article that compared Mau to William Morris and Buckminster Fuller was very interesting. I would never have put Morris in the same crowd but after reading the article, I see the connection.

NCC has been around for some time now. I have always liked their work. I admire them because they create design that is art…art that is design. Experiments in color and typography and get paid to do it somehow. They just opened a new online store but be sure to check out their project section too.

NCC-Shop

Adobe has just purchased Macromedia for $3.4B according to CNN Money. Can anyone say Monopoly? I am a huge Adobe fan, but I can’t see this as good for our industry. I haven’t had much time to think about this, but I thought I would get everyone’s reactions. I can’t see how this would go through. Now they just have to buy out Quark, but I don’t see that happening any time soon.

You can also read about this on the Macromedia website.

Thanks to John Chrise for the link.

I rarely go to a movie with as much anticipation as when I went to Sin City last week. Visually it was everything I had hoped for. What a beautiful movie. I’ve never seen a better interpretation of a comic book or cartoon in a live action movie. The style of this movie was perfect. The design of this movie was horrible. This movie is all style and no content. You can not have one without the other.

It seems that the graphic design industry has really embraced this film. We are so enamored with a director doing something graphic and interesting with the visuals that we don’t even notice the content. Even Chip Kidd is part of this renewed interest, with the design of the covers for the re-release of the original graphic novels.

Design should clarify content, not mask it. This movie (and I assume the novel) candy coat a weak and disgusting story with beautiful visuals. I’m ashamed to say that when the credits rolled I kind of enjoyed watching it. After I realized the depravity that this movie endorsed, I knew why I had a sick feeling in my stomach when I left the theater.

Do you ever feel like you are confronted by chaos on a daily basis? I think a reasonable definition of design might be the ability to recognize structure within a seemingly chaotic situation. As designers, we must bring order to the unorganized, and create structures that can support the weight of often chaotic situations. We do that by looking at the situation from many different angles. Finding a solution requires a change in perspective. If we stand back far enough, we start to see that beneath the chaos there is structure. That’s the analogy that came to my mind when I was looking at Google Maps today.

I was amazed by Google Maps when they first released the beta version, but it’s recent addition of satellite images is even more impressive. Enter an address and click enter and you will see a regular map. Now you can hit the Satellite button in the upper right, and it will switch from a map to a satellite image. You can zoom in and out, and you can zoom in to the point where you can recognize your back yard. You can also click and drag your mouse to scroll across the map, and this is really mesmerizing. Streets, towns, farmland, and rivers become patterns, lines, and shapes. The image above on the right is Nebraska, and the image on the left is somewhere in the southwest. You may dread the thought of driving through Nebraska, but flying across it on your computer screen is a fascinating pattern of farm circles on a grid of dirt roads. It looks like a gigantic game of Othello. From this distance, you can’t help but be amazed by the structure and order that exists from this change in perspective.

by Stuart Alden

The Nike logo is probably one of the most recognized logos in the world, and is often cited as an example as the value an identity can have towards the brand of a company. This is why we need to charge for the ìvalueî of the logo.

Ironic that a student designed the logo for $35 in 1971.

According to the story, Carolyn Davidson was asked to create a shoe stripe that would be applied to a shoe that Phil Knight (who was teaching economics) had developed. ÝA few things to think about: He didnít pick a final polished logo - rather a ìrenderingî out of a few she presented on the first round. She didnít even provide camera ready artwork. She decided what to charge and billed him the $35.00.

Most designers will tell you this is a tragedy. Look at the billions of dollars a year Nike makes. Of course the logo should get credit for much of their success, as it is so recognizable. And besides ñ a logo is worth so much more ñ as it will become the recognizable symbol that represents that company. The foundation of the companies brand.

Visually ñ this can be true. But letís ask ourselves a few things before we rush off and say how fancy and important we are.

A couple of weeks ago my goal for that weekend was to see Kit Hinrichs speak at the Nebraska AIGA Member’s Party, see some good friends and hopefully get to talk to Kit a little. I was able to hear him talk, ask him questions and then have a weekend filled with other design highlights. When asked about the future of design, Kit eluded to design and graphic design becoming even more prevalent and more valuable in the coming years. If my encounter with products over that weekend are an example, then I think Mr. Hinrichs is correct.

I know to some that it would seem that the design world has heard all it needs to about the practice of engaging in speculative work. But if the past week has taught me anything, itﾔs that we donﾔt talk nearly enough about it. The reality is that engaging in spec work continues to erode the value of what all of us do as designers, and if any of us want our profession to have even a modicum of respect in the world, weﾔll answer the call for spec work with an emphatic ﾔNo.ﾔ

The typical story plays out like this: a prospective client calls your design firm. They say theyﾔd like to talk to you about an upcoming project. They want you to develop a proposal for them, some pricing, and theyﾔd really like to see ﾔsome of your ideas.ﾔ They mention that theyﾔre talking to a few other firms as well, but they make it very clear that thereﾔs a huge payday at stake for the firm who makes the best presentation (i.e. delivers the best speculative work).

Graphic Design USA came out in January sporting a new design. I can’t say I am overly impressed. I guess it’s called GD USA now, I don’t know. In a way the logo is more simple, but then again it is kind of redundant to say Graphic design USA twice on the cover. Anyway, the reason I am talking about it is because this is their yearly issue where they feature the designers to watch in 2005. Basically they pick about 30 designers, give a brief bio and then ask them some simple questions. I thought it would be fun to list the questions here and let everybody answer them, or criticize them, or whatever. Here’s the list:

1. Do you feel hopeful about 2005?
2. Has graphic design changed since you started?
3. What is your workday like?
4. How and where do you find inspiration?
5. What are you currently listening to, watching, or reading?
6. Who would have been your ideal presidential candidate?
7. What do you like to do in your time away from work?

So there you go. One of my first posts on Be A Design Group was about last years “People to watch” issue. If you want to compare this list to last years questions it seems that this year’s results were a little less predictable, but also a little more boring. Luckily most people avoided the presidential question, or it got edited out except for a few non-serious answers. You already know how I feel about confusing politics with design, so lets steer clear of that topic, if possible. So are any of these questions worth answering?

One of the things I enjoy about my job is talking to printers. I love looking at print and paper samples, and I love learning about the latest print technology. I love touring print shops, and I love press checks. I love the pampering that comes with being courted by printers. I think if I had a second career, I would want to run a huge press.

Well, since our company recently moved, we are exploring some of the local printing options, and that means I get to meet some new printers. Today I met with Steve Johnson from Colorado Printing. The website isn’t much to look at (holy animated gif, Batman!), but the quality of their printing is. Specifically, they are able to print at 450 line screen on a sheet-fed press. I was expecting him to say they were using stochastic printing, but to my surprise, he said their high line screen is created with a square dot. Very interesting.

The photo reproduction Steve showed me was so beautiful that the thought of continuing to use a 130 line screen web press doesn’t excite me, to say the least. I instantly notice halftones in most 4 color printing, and I hate it. I think it is because of my photography background, because when I see a coarse screen the voice in my head says “cheap, low quality.” Not a fun phrase to be bouncing between the ears, especially when you put so much time, effort, and money into the design and photography of a piece. In a twisted bright side to the situation, I think that most people barely notice a difference between 150 and 450 linescreen. To my dismay, that makes a high line screen a hard sell, and I am probably fighting a losing battle if I want the high quality. However, if you have the luxury of selecting a high quality printer, I suggest you give Colorado Printers a call. In addition to 450 line screen, they also have some impressive new proofing systems. And like any printer, I am sure they would love to tell you all about it.

When Kit Hinrichs was in Nebraska last week he gave a great presentation for the AIGA. He is a great speaker and he was very gracious and friendly to us all. When it came time for the question and answer, the old Pentagram male/female ratio question popped up again. I’m sure Kit stepped on a few toes with parts of his answer, but he was just being honest and not pulling any punches. That is not what this post is about.

What he said after he answered the main question made me curious. He said that Pentagram is reviewing a new female candidate and she will probably be approved to be a partner. Of course he gave no hint as to whom this mystery female designer would be, but wouldn’t if be fun to come up with our own short list. Which one of the great female designers out there is exchanging glances with Pentagram. She would have to add something unique to the office, run a great business and work well with others. Here is a great article in Financial Times’ Creative Business that explains how Pentagram works and what they look for in their partners. I found this excerpt especially appropriate for this discussion.

A couple different competitions have popped up on my radar in the last week. One is a poster contest by the AIGA and the other is a logo contest by an online radio station. One is exclusive and the other is all inclusive. From what I can tell, you have to be an AIGA member to enter the World Day of Design poster contest. Absolutely anyone can enter a submission into Radio Paradise’s logo contest.

Bad I have been listening to Radio Paradise every day at work for over a year now. It is labeled as “eclectic online rock radio” and I love it. Of course I don’t love all the music on Radio Paradise, but it is very diverse and the music selection never ceases to amaze me. I was fairly disappointed with RP’s choice to try and get their new logo through a competition. I thought with such an appreciation for creativity, they would show a little more respect for design. I wanted to start a discussion on this website, but I found something even better… An all out discussion/controversy on RP’s own forum.

It seems that many of us graphic designers are concerned about how we are portrayed on the big and small screen. Jessica Helfand started several interesting discussions on Design Observer about this very topic. One of her posts was about the new Catwoman movie and the other about the design challenges on The Apprentice. While both of these seemed kind of negative, I saw a glimpse of hope for our portrayal recently.

Genevieve Gordor, who is a graphic designer among other things, is getting her own show on TLC this coming Saturday. Genevieve will get the chance to redesign an entire main street in Town Haul. Among interior design and building, will graphic design be able to give a supporting role? Will Genevieve get to design the store fronts and signage for this little town? Will the audience actually get to see a small portion of the design process, or will that part be left on the cutting room floor? Or, will the end product magically appear as if the enchanted graphic design elves came when the interior designers and builders sleep? Hopefully not. This kind of treatment can only perpetuate the idea that what we do is quick and magical. Of course “finishing touches” like this make for a more dramatic reveal. For now part of our public image rests with Genevieve and more importantly the editors and producers of Town Haul.

O.K. I’m not big on these things, but every year Pantone and a few magazines (like Communications Arts and Graphic Design USA) come out with their annual color forecasts (colour if you’re a Brit). And this always results in me thinking “who in the heck decides these things for the whole design world?”

Is it a few secret “color experts” bent on world color domination? Is it some old ladies picking Pantone swatches out of a hat? Is it just a computer algorithm? Searching for the answer, I was happy to find that at least one designer had the wherewithal to put together his own color forecast for 2005 rather than using my current method of “this looks good.”

Adam Polselli’s 2005 Color Forecast

I read an interesting article on the Art Director’s Club of Denver’s website. You can read the entire article here, otherwise, here is a highlight:

“According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics ( BLS), employment for people in design fields, including graphic design, is expected to increase 10 to 20 percent between 2002 and 2012… While the BLS did not make salary projections, it reports that median annual earnings for graphic designers were $36,680 in 2002. The middle 50 percent earned between $28,140 and $48,820. The lowest 10 percent earned less than $21,860, and the highest 10 percent earned more than $64,160.”

Sounds like good news for graphic designers. Lets hope the forecast comes true.

Last week I came accross a chess program, called Thinking Machine 4 that mapped out the moves it was thinking about making. As the computer processed more and more moves, the board filled with more and more lines. As more and more moves were mapped out, patterns began to form. Paths began to appear between the squares marking the strongest moves. When a strong enough path was worn, the computer played the appropriate move. I have always thought of chess as a beautiful game, but seeing the result of making the thought process visible was really impressive. I can’t help but think that the process of graphic design is similar to chess. The comparison won’t ring true for everyone, but any serious chess player will tell you that success in chess requires something very important to designers: creativity. To steal a quote from Clint’s post last week:

“Creativity?although requiring uncommon skills?is based on a number of controllable processes, such as observation, attention, research, and analysis, and, to a certain extent, on the possession of thinking strategies that combine flexibility with efficiency.”

I hope you have some fun with this game. Thanks to Kadavy.net for bringing the game to my attention.

I came across a brief description of creativity in a new book I’ve been browsing. I found it interesting and thought some of you might resonate with it, I did:

“Creativity can be defined as the ability to conceive unexpected solutions to apparently unsolvable problems. Without magic or mysterious touches, creativity is nothing other than intelligenceóan intelligence that, in certain ways, can be developed and that, in the midst of a flood of unconnected and chaotic data, allows one to discover connections that others do not discover, see differences that other do not see, and, as a consequence, produce new and surprising integrations… Creativityóalthough requiring uncommon skillsóis based on a number of controllable processes, such as observation, attention, research, and analysis, and, to a certain extent, on the possession of thinking strategies that combine flexibility with efficiency… [creativity] has nothing to do with self-expression and an indulgent egocentrism. It requires, instead, an objective and flexible intelligence, an ability to analyze any problem from a multiplicity of viewpoints, so as to be able to understand the intentions of a client, and the possible perceptions that a wide range of sectors of the public could have of a given message.”
ñ Jorge Frascara, Communication Design: principles, methods and practice. Allworth Press, 2004.

Here is an interesting interview with Michael Bierut that appeared in Fast Company. It is great to see graphic designers getting some press time outside of our own industry publications.

Ends up that Nike really did get their logo from graphic design student Carolyn Davidson.

“Being fresh out of school with a design degree, and hungry for work, Davidson submitted her bill for $35 for the Swoosh design.” But to be fair, that’s gotta be over $50 in today’s dollars.

Normally that is where I hear the story ending, but to be fresh out of school with Nike as your client, things could be worse. Ends up Nike gave her some stock years later as a thanks as well.

Read the full story directly from Nike.

My favorite part of the story - “Knight was staring down a deadline. Shoe boxes in Mexico were waiting to be printed. He needed a logo. He needed a decision. So he grabbed her rendering of the Swoosh, telling Davidson, ‘I don’t love it, but it will grow on me.’ “

I had been pondering doing a post about the yellow magnetic ribbons that are stuck to so many people’s cars lately. When I saw Michael Bierut’s recent post on Design Observer about this very subject, I thought I still had something unique to share about these magnetic atrocities to design. What struck me most about these ribbons is the horrible planning that went into their making. I have rarely seen anyone display these in a consistent manner. The photos that I took in a small parking lot demonstrate this point. I will make a list of what is wrong.

1. Unless you have a SUV, you probably don’t have enough metal on your car to display them vertically.

2. The text “Support Our Troops” is slanted upward, so many people tip the ribbon on its side so the text is readable. What does it mean when you tip a symbol on its side?

3. They’re magnetic. Whatever happened to the permanence of the bumper sticker? Is this a reflection of how fickle we Americans are? Is it just a matter of convenience? Do we love our cars so much that we wouldn’t want to deface it with anything, even if it is something we deeply believe in?

4. & 5. The horrible illustration of the ribbon and the font used. Both of these were pointed out in Mr. Bierut’s post.

This really makes you wonder if the end user was even a consideration in the creators mind.

I’ve made a curious observation recently, and felt compelled to bring it up in this public forum. I’ve been noticing that some of the perennial design powerhouses are starting to push design back into a fascinating color palette choice: red and black.

We read The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell for club(red) earlier this year. It was a great book, so I was excited to see that he wrote a manifesto about talent for ChangeThis. The 22 pages contained several interesting tidbits, but overall I didn’t think it made a compelling enough argument that “Talented People Are Overrated.” It pretty much says that building an organization with as many talented people as you can find isn’t the way to make a successful business. It uses Enron as the example of a company that hired the most talented people and then collapsed. It makes for a good essay, but I think it is a stretch to call this a manifesto. I guess that’s what bothers me about the recent manifestos at ChangeThis. Gladwell and other big names like Mark Cuban aren’t really writing manifestos. They are just telling their life story or publishing the chapter that got cut from their last book. I am guessing it would be pretty hard to edit the big names papers, but come on. To get to the point, how much of a role does talent play in your success?

If you have never seen the short film, Powers of Ten by Ray and Charles Eames you can watch with the world via the internet on guess what day? That’s right. 10/10. It is The Fifth International Powers of 10 Day. So get comfy in front of your computer and watch this illustration on the power and importance of scale. You can watch this monumental short film with thousands of others in celebration of scale. The ironic thing about this film is that it is only nine minutes long.

The Eameses were revolutionary furniture designers, movie makers and the list goes on. If you don’t get a chance to watch this film on the web this Sunday, I would recommend purchasing the 5 DVD set or I know from experience that Netflix carries all five. The documentary of the cataloging of their studio was well worth that months Netflix subscription.

My graphic above is a screen capture at 10, 100 and 1000%. We even wield the power of scale in the little magnifying glass of our design programs. As graphic designers we deal with scale on a daily basis. In honor of this film, I challenge everyone to think of some unique ways that designers deal with scale.

I wanted to get this out in the open before I am accused of name dropping over my next couple of posts. I recently made the five hour trek to go see one of my design heroes, Michael Bierut, speak at an AIGA event in Des Moines, Iowa. There was never a doubt in my mind that it was worth the time and effort to get there. These types of events usually seem to pay off as well. Not with job offers or instant fame, but the opportunity to learn from someone who has done it longer and better than I.

Talking to different people over the last few years, I keep hearing people referring to events like this as celebrity worship. Older members of the AIGA that I have talked to mention that it is something that young people join the AIGA for. I wonder what the problem is with this.

So it’s taken me an E-ternity to get it in gear and finally post some digital version of my voice in the midst of these great dialogues, but I’m pleased as punch to finally speak a few words in digital Arial onto the site.

As I’ve seemed to discover among the multiple circles of designers that I’ve had the pleasure of knowing and talking with, NPR references have seemed to be just about as frequent as Print and CA references rear their delightful little heads into conversation. I openly confess to designing to NPR on many an afternoon when I decided to let the CDs cool off for the afternoon or gave my local public-access radio station a rest (88.1 KDHX for anyone in the St. Louis listening area - just a quick shout-out on that for great local radio that still plays music for the sake of the music itself).

NPR, of late, has featured some killer design bits that shouldn’t be missed if you happened to on first broadcast. Here’s a smattering of the ones that I’ve been able to catch, and I’m sure you’ll be able to produce a few more that I overlooked as well.

It is nice to see in the midst of the brutal presidential campaign that not everyone is taking a swing at the candidate they don’t endorse. The AIGA has a poster initiative where AIGA members can submit posters that encourage people to get out and vote. The design of the first batch of posters is alright, but they did do a pretty good job of not endorsing a candidate. The part that I find interesting is that at the bottom of each poster is the tag line, “Good design makes choices clear.” Does this strike anyone else as odd? I am not sure what that means. Are we supposed to vote for the candidate who has the better design? Or does it mean that without design, we couldn’t tell the difference between the candidates? Regardless of what they meant by the slogan, it does raise an important question. What role does design play in an election?

If you haven’t come across this yet, check out ChangeThis.com. The goal of the site is to “Spread important ideas and change minds.” They have several high profile names writing manifestos that will be distributed via email and blogs. I haven’t formed an opinion on the site yet because I am waiting to see what happens when they start distributing their manifestos. The danger is that the site will promote an ideology, and the last thing we need is another network set up just to promote someone’s own agenda. Fortunately, ChangeThis appears to be focused on creating a new method for distributing ideas rather than pushing their beliefs on people. They believe that the good manifestos will spread, and the bad ones won’t.

All the manifesto talk made me want to write a manifesto, so I decided to rewrite The First Things First Manifesto 2000.

We hope you like the updated design of our site. Thanks for your patience as we iron out the last few glitches of the change over.

I had an interesting talk with my boss the other day about the readability of serif vs. sans serif fonts. He confesses that he is "old-school" and prefers serifs. I find sans serifs easier to read. I am trying to hunt down some current statistics on the subject without success. I read people that say it all depends on what you are used to reading, but I can't find anybody who lists their sources. After reading Ogilvy, I am on a kick for finding statistics. Is there a source for credible statistics that counter Ogilvy's from 20 years ago?

I have a hard time getting motivated about designing PowerPoint templates. It always ends up getting included in the usual items in an identity system: business card, letterhead, envelope, and PowerPoint template. I think I dislike the projects because no matter how good I make the template look, I will never be able to control the final product. I think about all the lame presentations I have had to sit through, and I imagine the slides I designed being on screen while the audience is checking their watches, and doodling on their handouts. There is a pdf written by Seth Godin called "Really Bad Powerpoint (and how to avoid it)." As usual, Seth is on target, and gives a great assessment of the situation. He puts much of the blame on Microsoft, and explains how PowerPoint could be used more effectively. If you are interested in the subject, it is an interesting 8 page read that comes free with the purchase of "Free Prize Inside."

Ogilvy arrogantly says, "As a former door-to-door salesman, I shall go to my grave believing that, given two minutes on television, I could sell any product on the face of the earth." It is precisely that arrogance that made me think I was really going to hate this book. After reading the book, however, I am willing to bet that he would only need one minute on television to sell any product on Earth. He is a fantastic salesman, and I would describe this book as a fantastic salesman doing a great job of selling his philosophy on advertising. So what is that philosophy, and where does the sales pitch end, and truth begin?

For those of us not fortunate to have the dream job out of college, we sometimes have to find other ways to entertain ourselves at work. Most likely that is what led a designer to put the name Tyler Durden on labels that are sold at staples. (Thanks to seanbonner for the story. For those of you who may not know, Tyler Durden is one of the main characters in Fight Club.) Every once in a while you stumble across a hidden message, and its like you get an inside joke. It might not make for great design, but it could be the only thing keeping an unfortunate designer sane.

Recently, Yale created a font exclusively for their University. It was designed by Matthew Carter who has served at Yale for twenty-five years. Carter has designed many high profile fonts including Georgia and Verdana. My initial reaction is that I like Yale better than other fonts Carter has designed (I have never been a fan of Georgia and Verdana for some reason). The Yale font is available only to faculty and students.

I read a sad sidenote that said that most students couldn't tell the difference between Times and Yale. Yes, these are students at Yale, believe it or not. I guess that is to be expected. Before I knew anything about graphic design, I remember being overwhelmed by the 50 fonts that come on the machine. Like everybody else I would play it safe and stick with the default Times. When I felt creative, I would stumble through the other fonts. I think that probably describes the average person's experience with fonts. So why can't they leave it to the professionals? I am working on an identity system for a pretty large company that has Times as the font in their logo. Suggestions to update to a font with a personality are rebuked because of a copyright or registration legal thing. I gave up on that battle and pushed for a more personal sans serif font for their body copy. "Wait a minute. Did you say we would have to pay for a font? There isn't one font out of the 50 free fonts that would work just as well?" It is utterly ridiculous to have to argue with people about the importance of a unique font selection. I have had a top member of a company hand me a sheet of paper with their company's name on it in 20 typefaces, then ask me, because I am a designer, which font would make the best logo!

I can't convince people to use a font that isn't free, and Matthew Carter is able to convince Yale to have a font built exclusively for their University. Congratulations to Yale for realizing the value of having a distinct identity system.

(Taken from comment on Design Observer)
The idea that art is somehow not valid anymore is just ridiculous. Art has changed considerably since the 30s, but isn't that a major part of the definition of art. Maybe we should go back to the pre-Ren era when the only things that could be created were for the church or the wealthy. The fact is that art changes and just because people don't understand everything that is going on in the art world, doesn't make it out-dated. It's influence may not be on billboards or in 30 second segments in prime-time, but it is still there. The impact of a sub-culture can sometimes be more effective than any mass media campaign. Malcolm Gladwell makes some very convincing arguments concerning this in The Tipping Point.

Second of all, if we don't like where art has gone in the last 50 years, why would we want to display our work in its grand temple, the MoMA. It seems hypocritical to criticize art and then want to be in the very institution that has helped put it where it is today.

Will this renewed vigor of the Art Museums to beef up their design collection result in yet another distraction for designers trying to advance there careers or make an impact on history? Design periodicals, which I must admit I drool over, are already a distraction for designers. Will this be yet another venue that designers put before their intended audience or client?

Art has its place and so does design. They both affect culture in different ways. Design feeds off the art world and vice versa. They have completely different goals and ideals and I think it can only be dangerous to keep comparing our separate worlds. I may be repeating what Armin wrote, but I'll say it anyway. Saying design is the new art is like saying carpentry is the new plumbing. They are different and will keep on growing and changing regardless of your predictions of the future. Lets focus on elevating design to a new level while supporting our visual cousin, the Artist.

I was thinking today as I posted a comment on the Design Observer blog that I wished Cheese Monkey's was more like "The Fountainhead," by Ayn Rand. So I was surprised when I came across this review on cityofsound. It said "In Winter Sorbeck, graphic design now has its Howard Roark character - for better, for worse... Actually Sorbeck is a fallen Roark, eventually too principled to be in step with the modern world, his fervent idealism expressed in hilariously cruel, impatient bullying, but always through care for the craft of design." This comment really caught me by surprise, because I thought the integrity of a character like Roark and the intense conflict of The Fountainhead really showed how shallow Cheese Monkeys really is. By now you are probably tired of me talking about Cheese Monkeys, so I will keep it short.
One more thing: In the Design Observer article, Rick Poyner and our own B suggest that Cheese Monkeys could be made into a movie. Here is a link to Rick's review of the book.

I read an interesting interview with Chip Kidd today. It was good to hear him talk about design. I know I gave a pretty harch criticism of his book, "Cheese Monkeys," but in this interview, I didn't find much to disagree with him on. I am not saying I take back anything I wrote in my critique, but it is nice to see that Chip Kidd's design philosophy is probably not as whacked out as "Cheese Monkeys" lead me to believe.

Thanks to Travis Grey and Bennett Holzworth for bringing the interview to my attention.

I am thinking about trying to start posting some reviews (or maybe I can talk B into writing some) of books that I am reading for the book club we go to called club (red). Club (red) is sponsored by the AIGA and we read books that are either related to graphic design or are something that graphic designers would be interested in. B is the man responsible for starting club (red), and he even won an award for the logo design. If you are interested in joining the club, check out the site at nebraska.aiga.org. Currently we are reading Making Movies by Sidney Lumet.