Artist Geneviève Godbout is 22 years old and orginally from Canada. She graduated in the traditional animation of Vieux-Montreal and then the Gobelins in Paris. These days she’s a freelance artist, based in London.

We came across this great illustration of her’s by way of Veerle’s blog and just had to share it with you all.

HAPPY HUMP DAY!

I sometimes think of myself as the ‘Johnny Appleseed’ of web design. I go forth and plant seeds of knowledge with potential clients and I do it not because I want to seem like a know-it-all but because it helps them down the road, which in turn can help me.

Sometimes as web designers we forget that we’re working with people who don’t know what we know and it’s important for us to educate our clients on the process. Potential clients often need help in communicating what it is they want and that’s part of the job of being a web designer. So remember when working with clients to take a step back and look at the project from their perspective and remember that you need to teach as well as do.

When I get tired of leafing through current award books, it’s often more productive to reach deeper into the past for ideas to steal inspiration. That said, here are some classic advertising and design archives.

Key things to think about as you browse the archives are:
• the graphic history of iconic brands
• the evolution of the relationship between advertising and its audience
• the ebb and flow of design trends, including typography, illustrative styles and proportions, and color.

The first three are from Duke University; tomorrow I’ll show some more from all over the web.

The Emergence of Advertising in America. About 9,000 categorized, searchable ads from 1850-1920. It’s also worth looking at the timeline, to see how far back the roots of viral and buzz-marketing concepts go.
http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/eaa/

Ad*Access. This picks up roughly where the previous collection leaves off. There are about 7,000 categorized, searchable print ads from 1911 to 1957.
http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/adaccess/

Medicine and Madison Avenue. This specialized collection has about 600 categorized, searchable drug and health-related ads from the 1910s through the 1950s, and a timeline that runs from the 1840s to the 1990s.
http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/mma/

To have continued success as a web designer, you must diversify your skill set. Not only do you need to know how to create a web site but you should also know how to create and edit themes for various content management systems, know how to design blog templates and possibly even design Myspace pages. This sometimes means downloading and installing different web applications and working with them so if a project comes up, you’ll have knowledge, even only if it’s vague, of what you’re talking about and working with. The more you’re able to offer to potential clients if you’re freelancing or potential employers if entering the workforce only helps to increase your worth in the field.

Kermit told us that it wasn’t easy bein’ green, where green obviously stood in for many aspects of identity, including race/color. Green was the new black, at the time.

So what to make of this ad for Mucinex?

“Mucus is beautiful” echoes the famous Black Is Beautiful slogan, but while Kermit was our hero in his fight for equality, Mr. Mucus as he is known is effectively a villain. Maybe this is too much subtext, or maybe this could be the booger that sets race relationships back a generation.

The New York Times writes about Andy Warhol’s grave located in quiet Bethel Park, PA. Imagining the design of memorial marker for any famous artist seems like a worthy conceptual activity (or at least a feature in MAD Magazine), but something about Warhol’s work itself seems to almost demand he be given an parodic (at worst) or referential (at best) headstone. Although Warhol did arrange for his grave to be maintained, if he designed his own headstone, it’s certainly unlike his other work. Fans, however, evolve and build upon the headstone, by adding items such as soup cans and (inexplicably) pocket change. More on his grave here

Holly Becker, décor8

As a freelance writer and interior design consultant, Holly Becker has created a very loyal readership to her blog, décor8. Holly is an Interior Design Consultant practicing in New Hampshire, Boston and the surrounding areas. She’s also a published freelance writer, having 10 years of combined writing and design experience, working for Fortune 500 companies and smaller companies in both the U.S. and Canada, including designers, salon owners and artists.

Q. Holly, on décor8 you point out that you look to reach out to others who share your passion for design and the need for creative living. Can you tell us what you mean by “Creative Living?”

Holly: Yes, I’d be happy to expound on this. Creativity is expressing yourself, being original, imaginative, authentic, and productive. We are all alive, but there is a difference between being alive and living. A person who works a job they dislike, comes home to chaos, and has few deep and meaningful interactions in their life, is not really living. At least in my opinion. To really live, you need to tap into your true self first and figure out what your passions and dreams really are. Not the ones you think you should do, or what your friends are telling you to do, or what your parents expect of you. It may not even be the career you’ve been doing for the last 15 years.

You need to be comfortable with who you are and you need to like yourself. And once you have that down, you will start to take better care of yourself - your health, your home, everything will fall into place once you realize your worth, passions, and goals. Layers will start to unfold as you continue to examine who you are, listen to your inner voice, and do things you’ve always wanted to do. Take a long vacation to that exotic locale you’ve always wanted to visit, just because. Once you’ve tapped into what makes your heart feel warm and your outlook bright (whether it is cooking, sewing, taking classes to learn about something that fascinates you…whatever), start doing those things and see where each experience leads you—One step at a time. Don’t wait for the perfect moment. Live for today. This is creative living. (more…)

If you’re considering a career in special effects for film, it may be news that fire-breathing dragons and futuristic fight-scenes aren’t all that lie in store for you. More and more directors are relying on digital editing to add drama to the telling details of actors’ onscreen performances. Though actors have traditionally been paid the big bucks to cry on command, you could find yourself earning big bucks to generate that crystalline tear in post-production. According to the UK Times, Oscar-Nominated drama Blood Diamond utilized just such effects to put an extra dollop of emotion in Jennifer Connelly’s performance…

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AdAge named the VW “Think Small” advertising campaign (1959) as the #1 campaign of last century. It’s interesting to see how they’ve continued to reference the original work in their advertising for the new Beetle and even other lines.

It’s almost revisionist, though, with today’s car image being prominent, and the messages directly opposite the original, which saluted economizing. Now the trend to obesity is being sold back to us as an advertising message. It’s okay to be fat, everyone, our cars are fat and you are too! Is this a betrayal of the legacy, or a frank acknowledgement that times have really really changed?

The 20th annual HOW Promotion Design Awards is now accepting entries.

The recently re-tooled HOW’s Self-Promotion Design Awards, has been given a new name — (the Promotion Design Awards) and better-defined categories to make it easier to enter your work!

Winners will be featured in the October 2007 issue of HOW magazine and one Best of Show winner will receive a trip to the 2008 HOW Design Conference.

MORE ON THE COMPETITION