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We resisted the urge to add the permanent starburst award icon to our site, but thought you might like to know that Be A Design Group earned Bronze in AIGA Nebraska’s annual competition. Congratulations and thanks to all our authors! When we win Best of Show, watch out for the award icon…
On March 14, Be A Design Group quietly turned one year old. Our graphic design blog has come a long way in that year. In case you missed it, here is a list of some of the highlights of our first year of blogging:
The Cheese Monkeys Controversy
The Makeover Maven Makes Things Worse
Design Observer’s Political Agenda
Design Isn’t Inferior to Architecture
What is the Value of Graphic Design Blogs?
Jake is Recognized on Macromedia’s Site of the Day
What Were They Thinking When They Designed Those Ribbons?
Design Urban Legend Comes True
Michael Wolf, Architecture Photography
Speculation on the Next Pentagram Partner
It has been a pretty good year for us. We have grown from 2 authors to 14. Our traffic has increased dramatically thanks in part to mentions on Design Observer, The New York Times, Veer and elsewhere on the blogosphere. Thanks for everyone’s support, and we look forward to continued growth in the years to come.
We would like to announce a partnership with the 2005 HOW Conference. Be A Design Group will be posting live reviews from our laptops at this year’s Conference (June 11-14). Adrian and I will attend as many varied sessions as we can and post reviews ASAP. We have created an entirely separate section of our blog just for this event. www.beadesigngroup.com/how2005.html You will be able to post comments freely during the conference and when you return home. If you can’t make it this year, you can even check in and see what you are missing.
Adrian and I won’t be posting reviews as conference experts, but as two designers experiencing our first design conference. It will be interesting to compare these conference presentations to the many local AIGA presentations that I have attended. I am really excited to hear some of the speakers that they have lined up. We will even have a chance to blog about a session discussing blogs. We will get to see if Armin and Bill Drenttel are as sharp on stage as they are online.
For now, we just have a general discussion post on our HOW Conference blog. This should be a great place to share information about anything related to the HOW Conference and preparations. I’m sure we will be making additional posts when June 11 draws closer.
The early bird deadline (April 15) is fast approaching; so don’t procrastinate any longer. It would be great to get as many bloggers to attend as possible.
I wanted to congratulate our authors for just a few of the outstanding awards they have garnered over the last six months.
Paul Berkbigler’s work that he and Kelli Cavanaugh did on the Tyler School of Art catalog was recognized and included in this year’s Print Regional Annual.
Drew Davies, our resident Communication Arts judge, made it into AIGA 365: 25.
David Kadavy made it into Communication Arts’ Design Annual 45.
Jeremy Pruitt (AKA Mr. Mule) Made it into Logo Lounge II a whopping number of fourteen times.
Jill Rizzo is the winner of the prestigious Webby award for her work on the Rows at SoMa Web site. She also received the Annual Report 100 and the “Best Use of Paper” in the Black Book Awards (among others).
Jake Stutzman: Visual Reserve’s work was featured in the Jan/Feb issues of STEP Inside Design Magazine.
Adrian and I will be joining Debbie Millman on her internet radio talk show, Design Matters on Friday from 3-4 eastern time. We will be joining the esteemed guests Armin and Bryony (Speak Up), Rick Poyner (Design Observer) and Jen Bekman (was Unbeige, now Personism). We will of course be talking about blogging and our respective design blogs. It should be a great time. Adrian and I had the pleasure of meeting Debbie, Armin and Byrony at this years HOW Conference. They are all incredible people and it should be a revealing conversation.
If you would like to submit a question for Debbie to ask any of the guests, just leave it here. Debbie will be checking the site before the show. If you would rather be a “first time caller”, here is the number for the show. 1-866-233-7861.
You can listen on either Windows Media Player or Real Player. I have had more luck using RealPlayer to listen live.
Adrian and I were interviewed for the Sept/Oct issue of STEP Inside Design magazine's article on blogging, Oz Speaks. It was a great honor to be included with the likes of Design Observer and Speak Up, and to have some of our site design featured as well. Adrian and I were asked a few questions by the author, Jude Stewart, and we gave her far more information than could be included in a cohesive article. We thought we would share the answers to Jude's questions (unedited). We will let you decide if Jude's selection made us sound smarter than we actually are.
J: What makes a great design blog?
A: I think it is the same thing that makes a great designer. Good designers are good communicators. Graphic designers have many unique passions that they draw from, but they also have and have the ability to communicate creatively. When you make a post on a blog, you have to care about what you are writing and be able to filter through the complexities to get to the core of an issue. That part of blogging is very similar to the design process.
B: Honesty. This is something I picked up from listening to Marshall Arisman's session at the HOW Conference. He emphasized writing what you know about. If you know and care about what you are writing, it is going to be obvious to the reader. Everyone was blogging about Cristo's gates a while back and it would have been phony if I would have done the same. I don't live in New York, so I have to write about what I see.
Of course you have to have the obvious elements: Good content, regular updates and it does not hurt to ruffle some feathers every once in a while. Adrian is better at that than I am.
Catherine Morley (a.k.a. Cat) does a regular feature on Creative Latitude about Designers who Blog. This month she is featuring group blogs. She interviewed some of the most preeminent design industry group blogs, including Be A Design Group. There are some there that you will definitely recognize, but a few you might not. Speak Up is the first on the list (rightfully so), and of course Armin has something interesting to say. It is fascinating to read some of the background and insight from other blogs as well. It is great to be included in with all of the featured group blogs. We will do our best to keep it up. Stay tuned.
We have a bit of exciting news to share with you. Be A Design Group and its authors will be designing the next cover for STEP Inside Design magazine. This will work in much the same way as the Design Off. We will be posting initial concepts and revisions all the way up to the approved design. We welcome your feedback and participation — making BADG even more of a collaborative effort. Check back after the new year for more information. The initial concepts will be posted on January 4.
After a long wait (and a brush with the law), we have finally updated the BA photos at the top of the page. If some of the newer visitors are not aware of our ever changing identity, here are a few posts that explain it a little more in depth (Feedback on our BA collection, Our updated photos, Photo pool on Flickr) and here is the entire collection. .
Fellow BADG author Drew Davies took most of these new BA photos on a trip to the Cayman Islands, but we also have some submissions from Adrian, Kyle Heinemann, Clint Carlson, John Sanders, Gregory Golem and I. As always, feel free to upload your own BA photos to our Flickr pool and we will eventually add them to the collection.
And now, on with the story of my run in with “the law” for this very blog.
We want to make it as easy as possible for you to be able to stay up to date with everything that is happening on BADG. For those of you who don’t take advantage of our RSS feeds (To learn how to use our RSS feeds, click here.) you now have the option to be notified of new posts on BADG by email. Enter your email in the box below to receive an email every time BADG is updated. You will receive an email asking you to confirm your subscription. Click on the link provided in the email and you will be notified every time we make a new post!
You will also notice a new box in the comments section that you can click to be notified by email every time a comment is added to that particular post. It is the perfect way to stay on top of those hot conversations.
If you couldn’t tell already, we rolled out a few upgrades to the site this weekend. Here are some of the enhancements we have made followed by a few more to watch for in the near future…
New About Us Page We haven’t really updated our About Us page since we started the site, so it was overdue. The new page doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but hopefully it tells our story a little better.
New Author Page Our author page now shows the most recent entries from each of our authors. It also has links to the sites of past contributors.
Comment RSS Feed We now have a new feed that contains recent comments on the blog. It is great for tracking what is happening on BADG. Here is a link to the comment feed.
Most Commented On List If comments are a measurement of a posts popularity then consider this a “Best Of BADG” if you will. You can see the top ten entries in the sidebar.
Top Commenters You can see the top ten commenters in the sidebar, or visit this post to track the top 100.
Email Notification Now you can sign up to have new posts delivered straight to your email. Similarly If there is a hot conversation on a post that you would like to follow, you can also sign up for email notifications on specific posts.
Tighter Spam Filters In the recent months you may have noticed that a few spam comments have snuck past our filters and appeared on the site. Thanks to a couple new plugins and minor tweaks our site should be spam free. The only downside is that there is a chance that your comment might not appear right away. I apologize in advance if this happens to you.
If you think that is impressive, check out what we will be implementing in the near future:
New Podcasts There are some great episodes of Be A Design cast in the works with some amazing guests. I heard a rumor that September is Pentagram month.
A New Blog Exclusively For BADG Readers I don’t want to give away too much on this one, but if you are interested in being a BetA tester for this, send us an email and I will see what I can do.
BADG T-shirts We have a T-shirt design ready for production and are just trying to figure out how we are going to print and distribute them.
New Author Search Soon we will be making a worldwide search for a couple more amazing authors. Again, if you are interested, send us an email.
Sponsorship We haven’t sold out yet, but we are exploring the option of sponsorship. Apple? Adobe? Probably not, but we definitely want to find a sponsor that fits who we are. If you can connect us with a worthy sponsor, don’t hesitate to send them our way.
It has been a good six months since eight of us BADG authors put it all out on the line and designed a cover in real time for the world to watch (and rip apart). While the process was both rewarding and trying, we all learned a great deal.
We recently received word from STEP Inside Design’s new editor, Tom Biederbeck, that the March/April 2006 issue has officially become the Best-selling STEP cover in the magazine’s history!
Thank you to everyone (the readers, commenters, the STEP staff and the BADG design teams) for making this experiment a huge success. We also want to give a big thank you to Emily Potts for making our crazy idea a reality, and we wish her luck in her future endeavors!
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.
Have you ever had an idea and said to yourself, “This would make a great post on Be A Design Group?” Have you ever wanted to leave a comment, but restrained yourself because you didn’t want everyone to know how you really feel? Have you ever wished you could get instant feedback on your design work from other designers? Do you dream about a place where you can complain about your clients with other sympathetic designers? Maybe you just want to get to know the designers in our group better. Well, I am proud to introduce a new feature to our site that strives to be all those things and more. The feature is called BetA, and it is a private blog that can only be accessed by members of Be A Design Group.
Probably the most exciting part of BetA is that you will be leading the conversation. As a member, you have the ability to make a post and address the group about whatever you feel like. After your first post, you will see your name in the author section along with all the other BetA members. Your name will link to your very own profile page which you will be able to update and manage yourself. You will also be able assign yourself an avatar that will appear next to comments you make anywhere on BetA.
A side benefit to us is that we hope to harvest some of the more fruitful content for use publicly on Be A Design Group. This will be done with your permission, of course, and if we see an especially active member we may ask them to make the jump to BADG as an official author with all the fame, glory and wealth (cough) that goes with that prestigious title.
In addition to giving you a place to share your ideas, and the possibility of super stardom, BetA is also a place where the BADG team can experiment with ideas and get feedback from our most dedicated readers. You will be the first to know about new features that will be added to the site, potential podcast guests, and all kinds of insider knowledge. Heck, we may even have a yearly campout for members so we can get to meet you in person.
Registration will always be free, but membership will be by invitation only. How do you get an invitation? Good news. Until November 15, 2006, membership will be open to anyone and everyone who reads Be A Design Group. After that, simply send us an email and ask for an invitation. If you have left a comment on the site, we will most likely give you a green light.
I would like to thank the following “BetA testers” for their suggestions and involvement! Shout outs to: GCRaya, Jason, PixelHustler, Simanek, Ben Swift, JonSel, lostbercub, outerwear4, Donovan, Nate, Bennett, and Sam Sampson. You guys rock!
My hope is that BetA lets us to get to know each other better and allows us to help one another grow as designers. Hopefully soon BetA will be filled with conversations and personalities. Sign up, log in, and start kicking the tires. BetA is waiting for you.
I have been doing some upgrades to the site this weekend, and wanted to bring your attention to the fact that the address of our RSS feeds have changed. We will no longer be promoting our feedburner feed, but it will still work if that is what you have been using. All the other feeds are no longer active. I apologize for any inconvenience. If you haven’t used RSS in the past, get on the boat!
Atom
http://www.beadesigngroup.com/atom.php
RSS 2.0
http://www.beadesigngroup.com/rss2.php
Comments RSS Feed
http://www.beadesigngroup.com/comments.php
Podcast RSS Feed
http://www.beadesigngroup.com/podcast.php
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.
We have had a redesign in the works for quite a while and this weekend I finally got the nerve to pull the trigger and set it free. If you have any comments on our new look or are interested in the geeky design details then keep reading…
Continue reading "The Redesign and Other Be A Design Group Updates" »
The joke (via Penny Arcade):
The sad, sad reality (via a sad, sad reality):
Well, as a few of you might have noticed, I have been really absent from BADG over the last year. I made a job and location move and the motivation to blog seemed to have been left behind. I’m not sure if I just needed a break, I no longer need the creative outlet, I was too busy with home renovation, my desire to be a famous designer has faded or my temporary home studio isn’t conducive to long hours of blogging, but I’ve only posted a few times in the last 12 months. Somewhere in that long list is the answer, and one of these days I will figure it out. With Adrian retiring as an author, my practical retirement, several others dropping out of author circulation and then Donovan and Nate striking out on their own, it is time to put Be A Design Group into retirement. It has been an amazing four years! We will definitely keep the site up as an archive and Adrian and I plan to develop it into something new and fresh in the future, but for now BADG wants to take a nap from its stint of discussions, reviews, rants and critiques of the last few years.
While we are sad to say goodbye, we also thought it would be fun to bring BADG back to its heyday for the next couple weeks. We’ve invited a gaggle of our past authors to write original essays that we will post over the next couple of weeks. We will start posting on Monday and make a new post live every other day. Look for new insight from Drew, Paul, Kyle, Clint, Adrian and I.
You can keep up with many of us from the past by following these links.
The other day I received a letter in the mail informing me that I had something in the newly released Best of Business Card Design 8. It wasn’t until I got the book in the mail this week, that I found out which pieces made the cut. Kind of strange timing to get a two-page spread in a design book in the same month that you are shutting the featured website down (i.e. this site).
I was also pleased to find out that the business cards I did for my wife made it in.
After 4+ years Be A Design Group would like to say thank you and good bye. We couldn’t have done it with out everyone’s input and support. We are putting BADG into cryogenic freeze, but unlike Walt Disney, there is the technology to reanimate us.
If you missed the retirement announcement, read here. We will make one more post on this site that we will update with news of our plans, announcements and updates. Look for something big from Adrian in the next month. He won’t even tell me what it is about.
6-30-08 Like Colors! Former BADG author Drew Davies and his company (Oxide Design) are creating a book chock full of amazing t-shirt designs. Submit yours today!
5-19-08 Adrian has just launched Font Burner. It’s the easiest way to add great fonts to your website.
