In this design primer, Lupton and Phillips represent graphic design basics for 2008 with profundity and clarity. The text reconsiders principles from the Bauhaus legacy, but in tune with current digital tools and culture. The approach is systematic, rigorous and brimming with postmodern inspirational examples from professionals and students. Finally! I’ve been waiting for the celebratory return of formal language to design dialogue. (more…)

Sustainable ink and the graphic designer

“Sustainable design gives an authentic value to the consumer.”– Katarina Graffman (Ethnographer)

In the second portion of this continuing essay, I turn my focus to another integral component to the graphic designer’s daily language: ink. Ink was developed, for commercial purposes, by the Chinese thousands of years ago and was constructed of various mixtures of pine soot, lamp oil and animal gelatin. Color was added through combining berries, minerals and a variety of plants/roots. As commercial printing (as we now know it) grew in demand from economic expansion fueled by the Industrial Revolution, the work of Johannes Gutenberg (moveable type printing in 1439) was continued by Friedrich Gottlob Koenig (flatbed cylinder printing press in 1810) and by Heidelberg’s “Tiegel” press (1914) which allowed for printing on a mass production scale. Ink for printing was typically made from burned rosin (pine/plant resin) suspended in linseed and other vegetable oils. This variety of agro-based ink dominated the market until the early 1960s when cheaper and better performing petroleum-based inks were introduced to the printing arena.
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It’s time for the prestigious Red Dot Communications Awards again! The competition, which is organized by the renowned German design institute Design Zentrum Nordrhein Westfalen in Essen, is calling for designers, advertising agencies and clients of communication designers from all over the world to submit their entries. The communication award was launched in 1993 and the winners are awarded for outstanding achievements in the fields of corporate design, advertising, interactive media or sound design. However, competition is fierce: in 2007 there were over 3800 submissions from 60 countries and 336 winning entries. (more…)

Building Findable Websites
Web Standards, SEO, and Beyond by Aarron Walter

I just read the excellent book, Building Findable Websites, and it truly is the book I’ve been searching for over the last couple of years. I’ve been interested in search engines and how they work for a long time and I’ve been dismayed with the emphasis on Search Engine Optimization over other methods of building findability. This book serves as a great introduction to findability and is chock full of how-to’s and how-not-to’s. (more…)

Eye Saw

Last week, 40 international graffiti artists and lots of enthusiastic amateurs proved that a little paint and color really can cheer up the dreariest place. (more…)

In recent years, Yves Béhar has emerged as one of the most important industrial designers on the contemporary scene. Through his San Francisco-based design and branding company fuseproject, the Swiss-born Béhar has shown that a futuristic, hi-tech approach to design can be deeply humane. The fluid forms and innovative function of his products are impressive enough, but it’s Béhar’s interest in the human experience and positive social change that give his objects real meaning. In this interview, Béhar chats with Kevin Kelly about his recent work for the safe sex campaign NYC Condom and other acclaimed projects, and shares his vision for how design can help shape our future. (more…)

I have been asked this question on several occasions: “Where is the best place to work: at an ad agency or an in-house design department?” So, I though it might be helpful to give a breakdown of what are generally considered benefits and drawbacks of both. For the sake of a broad comparison, I include design studios along with “Agency” because they have many similarities. (more…)

Beth Dillon at our sister blog Notes on Game Dev wrote a very personal post yesterday about her frustration with the subtly chauvinist attitudes in the game industry and issued a call for other women in her business to share their experiences. Beth recounted how, again and again, she would hear the same line from by recruiters at industry events: “You should come work for us, we could really use a woman on the team”.

“They don’t care what I actually do, what my credentials are, what genres I’d like to work in or what audiences I know best.” Beth writes, “I’m a woman, therefore I know what all women want, and I can give them the secret key into awhole new market of money. Oh, that and it looks good for them to have a woman on the team if they’re going to make games for women.

If we’re so precious and have some special knowledge, why aren’t we getting paid as much as men? On average, we get about 10k less per salary, although this changes relative to the position.”

The post immediately elicited a slew of passionate and eloquent responses. Which made us think that women in the game industry are probably not the only ones that feel stereotyped by a male-dominated tech industry. So we would love to hear what women
in the web design and design business have to say. Please join the game dev women and post your comments here

Inspired by Kate Andrews’ recent related post on sustainable typography

In my typography course project at Maryland Institute College of Art, sophomore students are designing packages for eco-friendly compact fluorescent light bulbs. Not surprisingly, eco-asethetics have inspired their work and became active parts of class discussion. We debated hotly the role that design plays in creating expectations for the quality of the product.

Many “green” products are relatively under-designed with simple typography and color palettes. This tissue box for Seventh Generation downplays the use of packaging to sell the product, but rather emphasizes the integrity of the product’s manufacturing process. Other pared-down samples utilized hand generated-typography, visuals lacking uniformity, recycled paper, low-saturation colors, broken typographic rules, outdated typefaces. (more…)

Findability and Search Engine Optimization have been on my mind lately (and on everyone else’s I suppose). Some SEO experts seem to look at the whole thing as a game that you win by getting your page ranked number one on a search result with particular keywords.

I do appreciate that search engine ranking is a concrete result (for that moment in time, at least) and it’s easy to point to (look, we rank number 2 for this keyword). I feel a certain satisfaction when a client’s site ranks high on the keywords we are targeting.

But it seems like the SEO experts (and their clients) often see the search engine (most usually Google) as the enemy, something to beat or trick.

There’s one big problem with this view. (more…)