Lots of you, like me, freelance. Being a freelancer comes with all sorts of special perks, like working in your pajamas (don’t do this), having the freedom to pick up your dry cleaning during the work day (don’t do this either), and not paying taxes (if I have to say it, you don’t deserve the warning). Another totally not awesome thing about freelancing is the endless time logged alone at your desk without the daily motivating support of others in your field (unless you’ve done a very smart thing and invested in a shared office space, in which case you don’t need my tips about wearing pajamas).

Luckily, the Freelancer’s Union—responsible for other near Herculean feats, such as health care provision—has come up with a brilliant solution to the lonely freelancer’s dilemma. (more…)

Students, independent designers and design teams from around the globe are currently invited to create their own variations of the HC2 logo. No, they aren’t about to replace their trademark symbol; rather, this contest seeks to give artists an opportunity to breath new life into the existing HC2 logo. All work must be submitted in Photoshop or Illustrator formats. The top three designers will be awarded with free web hosting packages for two years. There is no entry fee.

Deadline: August 10, 2007

For more details, click here.

The trend of glass-like or glossy design effects comes and goes, and right now it’s definitely in, at least if you go by folks like Nintendo, Apple, and Adobe.

A glossy effect can easily be achieved on any solid shape, photograph, or icon with a simple selection marquee and a white-to-transparent gradient. But if you create the effect using selection marquees, you limit your ability to resize and reuse it later. I like to go a step further when I make glossy buttons for the web by using versatile vector shapes…

1) Start things off on a new layer with a bright foreground color chosen and a slightly lighter background color chosen. Use any vector shape tool to draw your button. I’m using the Rounded Rectangle tool. Make sure that the first button in the options bar, “Shape layers,” is selected so you’re drawing a simple vector shape. The shape will show an outline, but this won’t show in your final output. (By the way, even if you’re not into these glossy buttons, learning to use vector shapes is still smart!) (more…)

Legal, copyright, trademark, or intellectual property rights confusion? Notes guest author and legal expert Jean S. Perwin is taking questions.

Jean is a Miami-based lawyer specializing in Intellectual Property Law, Entertainment and General Corporate Law for a wide range of clients, including graphic design firms, advertising agencies, visual artists and photographers. Her firm handles copyright and trademark registration, copyright, trademark and patent licensing, entertainment, computer, internet and general business contracts, partnerships, and corporate matters. She is co-author of The Artist’s Friendly Legal Guide, a columnist for HOW magazine, and has a forthcoming featured industry interview on the Notes on Design blog.

If you have questions for Jean, go ahead and post them as comments below. Jean will reply to questions frequently under the “Legal, Copyright & Trademark” Category of Notes on Design.

Brian Edlefson

Brian Edlefson strives for more graphic thought and less visual clutter. As a lead designer in Whirlpool Corporation’s multi-disciplinary Global Consumer Design studio, Edlefson is responsible for infusing household brands like Whirlpool, Maytag, Kenmore, and Amana with smart graphic design strategies. Prior to moving to Michigan, Brian developed design solutions at Target, The Museum of Modern Art in New York, Herman Miller, and McDougal-Littell Publishing. He earned his BFA from Western Michigan University (1996), studied color in Bali, Indonesia with Ohio University (2000), and achieved an MFA from Yale University (2005). Edlefson’s work has been recognized in many national and international creative competitions (New York Art Director’s Club, Communication Arts, Creativity, Graphis, HOW, Print, STEP Inside Design) and chosen for inclusion in the National Design Archive at the Library of Congress. Recently, Brian was a featured speaker at the 2007 HOW Design Conference in Atlanta.

A limited edition poster commemorating Charles and Ray Eames. 24×36in, hexachrome offset

I’m curious about your current position at Whirlpool. What are you doing now that you’ve left Target? I heard you’re no longer in Minneapolis- is that true?

Brian: Yes, I left Target and Minneapolis to accept a position with Whirlpool. Although I love Minneapolis-and my time at Target was rewarding-this new role offered the unique opportunity to help lead a multidisciplinary design team. It has been a very natural professional evolution. My most rewarding design experiences have involved collaborations with colleagues outside typical graphic design practices: architects and interior designers at Herman Miller, curators and historians at MoMA, marketing strategists and interior architects at Target, and now consumer product designers at Whirlpool. My current role also builds on my interest in defining and differentiating a collection of brands. Whirlpool is a big, global company with many household brand names (Whirlpool, Maytag, Amana, Kitchen Aid, Jenn-Air, Magic Chef, etc.). Making compelling design solutions-in collaboration with product designers—on a collection of ‘un-sexy’ products—offers a lot of challenges. In some ways it is different than Target because the ‘bullseye’ caché is almost universally appealing. Target uses design as a powerful marketing tool-whereas Whirlpool uses design to make tedious tasks like laundry and food preparation more pleasurable, easier. (more…)

The Sensate wearable female condom, Tonita Abeyta, 2001

Skin: Surface, Substance + Design was originally published to accompany the 2002 exhibition of the same name at the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum in New York. The recent reissue includes a new introduction, ‘2nd Skin,’ by the show’s curator, Ellen Lupton. This updated prologue takes into account new work that’s in the traveling redux of Skin, called Second Skin and being produced in conjunction with Vitra Design Museum. I wasn’t able to go to the initial exhibit, so can’t vouch for the experience, but if the catalog is any indication of the show, then I am probably justified in being peeved at missing it. However, in the manner of other exhibition publications with Lupton at the helm, Skin is worthy of consideration as its own self-sustaining entity, not quite replacing the exhibition, but at least offering something substantial in its stead. (more…)

In the midst of pressure for designers to keep technical skills and software repertoire fresh, it is just as important to keep feeding your creativity, and challenging the part of your brain that makes your work unique. However, it can be hard to create projects for yourself and produce them in a vacuum. That’s where a site like Illustration Friday fits in perfectly. (more…)

Is the Master Collection Right for You?

Big box, big value?

We all know that earlier this year Adobe released most of its Creative Suite 3 products (Photoshop, Illustrator, etc), but it wasn’t until this month that certain pieces of the CS3 lineup finally were released as well. This includes ever-popular After Effects and Premiere, as well as new family members Soundbooth and Encore.

All those final pieces of the puzzle make up the Master Collection: all of the major Adobe products (and a bunch of minor ones too) in one bundle for your print design, web design, and audio/video production needs. If you actually use the majority of these apps, buying the Master Collection can be quite a value over the other available collections. But do you really know what they all do and if you actually need them? Let’s look at each main piece, and you can decide if you really need this monster… I mean master… collection: (more…)

I was just telling fellow blogger Nomi Altabef how I love textbooks-like books: classic, structured, almost cold, getting right to the point, and highlighting the importance of the topic. That’s what Typographic Systems is all about—rules, structure, organization. We’re not talking beach reading here, but that’s why I love it.

Following up on her books Grid Systems and Geometry of Design, Kimberly Elam walks us through eight geometric systems, frameworks for typography design that are far less rigid than they sound. In fact, they’re often downright approachable, flowing, and spontaneous. (more…)

This blog has seen a rash of posts addressing the issue of design snobbery, from typography to magazine readership. I always find this an interesting topic because design is ostensibly art put to marketable use ‘for the people’, yet often tows a pretty snooty line when it comes to defending itself against aesthetic and professional impurities. (Several terrific fights in the design world that have erupted over this issue immediately come to mind: 2006’s spectacular James Dyson vs. Alice Rawsthorn blow-out over her inclusion of ‘fluffy’ exhibitions at the Design Museum in London, and of course the ongoing battle of type designers against comic sans discussed recently by Tara McKay).

Everyday design—not the trendy DIY kind produced by professional designers, or the kitschy vintage graphics theorized as ‘vernacular’ forms of pop communication, but the self-styled websites, signage, and branding created and consumed daily by millions of Americans—isn’t always OK in the design world. This might be because while vintage kitsch now appears charming, contemporary kitsch seems just, well, ugly.

I present to you the cult sensation www.dottisweightlosszone.com. (more…)