Although the sites are all fairly well-known, I thought I’d take a different approach this week and instead share several blogs rather than fun things that turned up in my reader. Of course, the blogrolls to the right have just a handful of the many I’m currently reading, but the ones I’m sharing below stand out mainly because they tend to focus on Eye Candy. Every morning I like to jump-start my creative juices by feasting my eyes at one or more of the below.
ShareSomeCandy
ShareSomeCandy is a new site that I came across over the past couple of weeks that showcases just images. No captions, no explainations, just the image and a link to it’s source. The images run the full gamut of great design, new packaging, odd things, photos…you name it.
NOTCOT
NOTCOT.org showcases the same types of images/links as SSC, only with a short blurb and in a cute polaroid-esque layout. The headlines make it easy to find things too…
Print & Pattern
Although I don’t check it regularly (for some reason the rss-feed doesn’t work), P&P has a Wealth of inspiration for me and is one of my favorite sites. I don’t know why, but looking at pattern design never fails to get my creative wheels turning.
BibliOdyssey
BibliOdyssey is also a recent discovery and I’m loving it! Each update highlights rare bookart spanning scientific illustration to engravings to maps, etc and follows up each collection of images with great background information. Design For Mankind
And last, but certainly not least, Erin of Design for Mankind does an excellent job of scouting out the latest in photography, illustration, design, and fine art. Never fails to inspire…
Well, Randy posted a comment today on my first post about this event announcing that the photos were up on our flickr page. His questions reminded me that I had originally intended a follow-up post with more info on the event, so I thought I’d answer his questions here. Unfortunately, since it’s been a while since the event, I’m forgetting a lot of the little details, but will share the Big Things that I took away that night.
For those not familiar with Meet the Jurors, we began the evening with a happy hour and followed it up with short presentations by each of our Jurors. This year, they included Pum Lefebure, Alan Leusink, and Stanley Hainsworth. Each one gave a short presentation on their background which was followed by a general Q&A session with the audience.
For the most part, the event was purely eye-candy. Each juror showed a sampling of their best and often award-winning work. I can’t say that I personally found anything inspiring about their experiences working in each place, however seeing the work was in itself highly inspiring for me. Aside from just enjoying listening to why a project turned out the way it did or hearing funny anecdotes about clients, I also really enjoyed hearing each one’s philosophy.
Stanley opened the event discussing his work for Nike, Lego, Starbucks, and more recently his own studio, Tether. His approach to client relationships (whether he was working in-house or beginning his own start-up) is that it’s not so much about design or the brand, as it is the brand’s story. You, the Designer, have to find what story it is that the client has to say and manifest that throughout the visual language of company. In essence, we are all storytellers–no matter what medium we work in. He discussed the recent throw-back to Starbucks’ old logo and explained that for a promotion, they were reliving the company’s start with the release of the new brew that debuted at the same time (…just to paraphrase: it made more sense when he told it than I do here). He also discussed the company histories of Nike and Lego and how those impacted each brand’s look while he worked there. This led me to think about the clients that I’ve been working on lately, and I discovered that the projects I’m most proud of with my current job have been the ones where I was subconsciously doing just that. (I say subconsciously because I hadn’t thought about treating the role of the Designer this way in those terms.)
From Pum’s presentation, I mainly gained a lot of inspiration on how to carry a clean aesthetic across a wide variety of clients and still ensure that you are tailoring your work for each one. Design Army just has a ton of really awesome work. But it was also interesting to hear about her transition from working in a fast-paced ad agency to deciding to start up her own studio in partnership with her husband. Her story caused me to think a little more about the different places that I have worked and what did and didn’t fit with my personality at each place. So that invoked some good reflection.
Alan’s presentation seemed to focus more on the work culture at Duffy & Partners. Two big things really stood out to me in his presentation: 1) their concepting phase for each project and 2) their collaborative culture. I don’t want this to sound as if I’m coming down on where I work, because I’m not, but one thing that we really lack in my department is the time to really develop a concept before beginning work on a particular project. Again, I realized that the projects I’m most proud of allowed time and research into developing a solid concept, but for the most part, it seems we’re usually too fast-paced to allow for that. In any case, I really loved hearing how Duffy begins each project with research into each project/client and uses that research to develop a mood board (I think they had a special name for them) to present to the client. Sometimes, clients were invited to participate in this stage, but in any case the boards are presented before any design options to gauge if they are on the right track. In the examples he showed, a direct link could be seen between each board and the final project.
As for the collaborative culture, Alan talked about how only after all of the designers at Duffy stopped trying to compete internally and began working collaboratively and openly did the firm begin to reap success. I think this is especially telling. Often, as designers, I think we get too caught up in keeping our ideas to ourselves. Our profession is so competitive that we start to self-destruct our studios/departments by closing ourselves off to our co-workers. On a related note, Andy Rutledge wrote an excellent article discussing the pitfalls of this approach entitled My Precious. In it, he compares an Idea to Gollum’s lust for the One Ring. I think that this protectiveness to an Idea coupled with our competitive nature sets up huge roadblocks to creative advancement. So it was nice to hear how one firm was able to turn that around.
This past weekend, through my job, I was able to see a touring performance of Alvin Ailey’s American Dance Theater. I must admit that I was a little hesitant about going. Don’t get me wrong: I love dance (both watching and performing), but am just not that into modern dance. Ballet? Beautiful. Tap? Absolutely love it. Swing/ballroom? Sign me up! Perhaps one of the reasons why I just can’t get into Modern dance is because I had a hard time learning it myself…that, and a lot of the time, while I can appreciate the movement and art behind it, I have a hard time appreciating the musicality of it.
In any case, I was pleasantly surprised. The Ailey performance was a great blend of modern and classical ballet with even some influences at times from salsa/ballroom and even a bit of hip hop. The three acts ranged from classical music to scat to pop with the choreography ranging from the early 70’s until today. (I believe they are celebrating an anniversary and therefore pulling from their performance archives for each show.) The costuming was superb for each number and really enhanced the experience. (Who knew that they made a ballet-salsa combo shoe??) Add in that our seats were in the 6th row, and it made for an excellent evening. I highly recommend it to anyone who has the chance to go.
Last week, after 3 albums and numerous missed opportunities, I finally had the pleasure of seeing Coldplay in concert. Talk about being well-worth the wait! While some may not care for their music, I think most critics are in agreement that Viva La Vida is one of (if not the) best of their albums to date. The concert definitely lived up to the excellence of the album in my book. The set effects were grand in scale without coming off as over-done (fantastic lighting, some great camera effects, and even confetti), and really seemed to enhance the music rather than trying to dazzle. The music was a nice mix of their current album, a few new songs, and past favorites.
Plus, Coldplay as a band are such cordial people. They don’t come off as rock-star divas on stage, but rather 4 buddies inviting you to listen in on their jam session. They don’t visit with the crowd much, instead wanting to pack as much music in for the ticket price as possible. They make a point of playing to the whole arena–giving everyone a chance to see as much as possible. (They even played in the aisle…right next to our section! Score!)
Moral of story? If you enjoy their music and have the chance, GO see them in concert. And as an aside, it was really just majestic to see Liberty Leading the People blown up to such a huge scale to serve as their backdrop. Wouldn’t it be great if more bands performed in front of huge masterpieces of art?
I’m all mixed up on my day’s tonight. I started to write another post before it hit me that it was Wednesday already! Eep. So I scoured my shared items for some goodies to share. Once again, this week’s don’t seem to have any rhyme or reason, but hopefully are fun nonetheless.
Excellent Light Doodles Animation Tricia’s comment on my last post lead me to the Pika Pika site: what fun!
Stickers and Donuts shared the news of Penguin’s new Book Series + Poster Sets I’ve since seen that the Shepard Fairey George Orwell sets have already sold out…bummer. But I’m loving the Roald Dahl Collection. Pictured below is the Arabian Nights edition.
Vote for Jesse! I know him! (sort of…we went to the same school)
Jesse Kuhn is an illustrator living in NYC. I just saw on his blog this sweet shirt design he submitted to Threadless. Go Vote!
And Finally
Steven Heller sheds some light on the studio behind Obama’s O logo. Regardless of your political allegiance, you have to admit that was some Excellent branding…especially for a political campaign.
I feel like every other post has been about Linden lately. Ha! But I simply can’t hold off on posting this any longer. This past weekend, Linden launched her full site at LindenAMueller.com! So a HUGE congrats goes out to her for not only finishing the site, but doing an excellent job of it…if I do say so myself…
I confess that I’m just a little biased as to how it turned out…you see, when Linden asked if I could somehow incorporate her name into the header, I couldn’t resist such a fun project. Since the theme and color scheme she used have such a nice aurora borealis-esque look, I thought it was the perfect chance to set her name in lights. (Besides, I know she’s just as fond of light painting as I am…) So after some long-distance discussions between the two of us on what she needed, some photoshop fun on my part, (throw in some critiquing from Rob) and some CSS Magic on her part, voilá:
Since I didn’t get around to posting last night (-2 on NaBloPoMo now), I thought I’d post a quick one this morning. Imagine my surprise to see my former Web-design/Flash professor on Design You Trust this morning! Qian Qian is a new media designer who also does some (really cute) vector-illustration work.
Formerly from China, he studied (and got married!) in the UK, taught graphic design for a few years in the States, and is currently working in NYC. He has been featured on Apple’s website, published a book on design (Plugzine), and worked for clients such as Nike and Coca-Cola. A quick visit to his site this morning revealed that he’s now blogging. (I’ve also added his blog to the People I Know blogroll on the right.)
Well, as I mentioned earlier, this past week was our Meet the Jurors event–an annual part of our chapter’s local design competition. I was on hand to photograph the event which was held at HOK down in the City Market area of downtown. The space was great, although a little hard to photograph, and the presentations by our 3 jurors (Pum Lefebure, Alan Leusink, and Stanley Hainsworth) were incredible. I always love hearing the stories behind all of the great work out there, so it was a real treat to hear more about the inner workings of places such as Starbucks, Nike, Lego, Duffy & Partners, and Design Army. Below is a slideshow of the event from the photos I uploaded to our Flickr page. Enjoy!
Well, so far I haven’t been too successful at posting once a day for National Blog Post Month. But, on the upside, I did get a couple of extra features working today. You’ll notice that you now have the option to be emailed follow-up comments when you leave a comment yourself. I’ve also finally gotten around to setting up Feedburner for my RSS feed. So please let me know if you experience trouble with either the feed or the comments email subscription. Also, I have to thank Sarah of Blogger’s Guide for her excellent series on setting up Feedburner (and Linden for the recommendation, of course).
Well, here I am, 3 days into my commitment to NaBloPoMo, and I’ve already missed a day! Last night, our AIGA chapter had our Meet the Judges event for the local design competition. I was on hand to photograph, and once the photos are up, I’ll be sure to post a link. The event was great, but unfortunately (fortunately?) ran later than usual. As such, I didn’t make it home in time to post.
So to make up for it, I thought I’d direct you all to Linden’s Pensieve where Linden’s latest NaBloPoMo post is an excellent read. How to Go from Computer Confused to Software Savvy in 5 Easy Steps is her latest topic and has some great tips on how she’s gotten to be such a tech guru. I’ll get back to daily posting later tonight.
Ha! But I simply can’t hold off on posting this any longer. This past weekend, Linden 
