It’s been awhile

So, it’s been awhile since I’ve posted, but I’ve been busy.

At the beginning of the summer I took a study abroad trip to Greece and Italy. What an amazing experience! Not only did I get to see a lot of the great works of art I’ve been studying my past three years here at Ferris, but I also got so much inspiration from the everyday life and day to day exposure to another culture’s graphic design. The first thing I noticed when arriving at the airport in Athens, Greece was an advertisement, although I has and still have no idea what it is for, I think that it will be a great source of inspiration, especially for the upcoming Fifth River Bank Run campaign. I love the hand drawn, fun feeling the advertisement portrays.

Advertisement in Athens Airport

Of course there was so many more interesting things that I experienced and saw while abroad I just don’t have the time to talk about it all.

The week after returning I started a sort of internship at the HRCC (House Republican Campaign Committee) in Lansing. Next week is my last week there, and although it wasn’t what I expected, a little boring, and in a way disappointing, I’m happy I was able to get the experience in the “real world”. When it’s all said and done, I know that I don’t want a career in the political field, but knowing what you don’t want is just as important as knowing what you do want.

what must graphic designers know?

Today I read an article called: Graphic Designers, What Must They Know

In the article the author talks about having to listen to prepress people complain about graphic designers not checking their files before sending them off to the printer. He tells that most of their complaints are font, color management, and transparency issues. His reasoning for this happening is that maybe the graphic designers don’t care enough about the output and don’t want to take advantage of having the ability to take full control of what the final image looks like.

When I finished reading the article, I has a new appreciation for my production classes. I always knew they we’re important, but the article made me want to continue learning about production processes so that I can produce the best possible product and be one of those designers who gets talked about and accused of not caring about their work.

Helvetica the Film

I want to own it, Helvetica the Film. A couple of weeks ago I watched it with some people from the AIGA student group at Ferris and now I want it!

This may sound silly, but I never knew that some people hate Helvetica. Maybe I’m blinded by love or maybe I’m just ignorant. Either way I thought the interviews in the movie really shed a lot of light on the typeface and how it has became so well known. I really enjoyed Micheal Bierut and Erik Spiekermann’s commentary through out the film, they made me chuckle. But I also like what Lar Muller had to say about Helvetica.

“And I think I’m right calling Helvetica the perfume of the city. It is just something we don’t notice usually but we would miss very much if it wouldn’t be there.” –Lars Müller

It’s so true! We would miss Helvetica if it just one day disappeared, its EVERYWHERE!!

Pantone Inspired

If you share a love for Pantone colors you should check out this blog entry. It has some pretty cool examples of products that are inspired by Pantone colors. I think that is so cool that there are Pantone paints now. But my personal favorite is the coffee mugs, I want them really bad!

Collaboration.

Tonight I became an Aunt! But, while I was sitting here on my couch waiting to hear if I was going to have a niece or nephew, I stumbled across this interview with Ned Cannon, creative director at Cypress Consulting. His advice to designers just entering the design profession, “No matter how talented you are, if you can’t collaborate you’re on your own.” resonated with me because I’m seeing it being applied in my interactive design class. The class is set up like a design studio, so we are constantly collaborating. Personally, I love the atmosphere, and it makes me excited to hear from so many places, professors, speakers at conferences, interviews, and articles I’ve read, that collaboration really is such a huge part of our profession. Collaboration is great, two heads are better than one, and one person’s weaknesses are another person’s strengths.

TheDieLine

Tonight while taking a break from color matching and prototyping, I was reading my friend Megan’s blog. One of her posts referenced the website TheDieLine.com, she had mentioned this site to me before, but I never checked it out until tonight. Wow was I missing out! The site is full of great design and needless to say, I bookmarked it and it will be a great source for inspiration for future projects.

I especially liked the SEI Water bottle design. The simplicity marvelous. Sorry, there isn’t a picture . . . technical difficulties.

“The structure resembles a hip flask, with one side slightly curved to fit in pockets or bags with greater comfort than typical round bottles. The only branding is the debossed logo. It is stunning in it’s simplicity. Considering it is water, you really don’t need to clutter the packaging with much more information. The product speaks for itself.”

BTW: If you love the art of hip-hop . . . you should check out the T.V show, America’s Best Dance Crew. I recently started watching it and am watching it now, the dancing is amazing!

The Apple Evolution.

As I was logging into my blog, I stumbled upon this pictorial of an Apple store front in another blog. And I just wanted to share it. I think that it’s cool to see the evolution that the Apple brand has undergone.

Web Typography . . . it’s not what it used to be!

It is becoming easier for web designers to create sites with good typography and that makes me happy! I Love Typography, has some really good examples of good typography being applied in web design. As technology improves, so does the designer’s ability to chose the perfect typeface and arrangement of elements on the page, we are starting to see the grid being applied (i.e A List Apart). The grid is also used on The Big Noob, another site that I found through I Love Typography. Besides applying a grid and having good typography, I really like the writing style and the changing banner. I think that entire look and feel of this site would possibly work for the GRDE site that we are redesigning in my Interactive Design Studio class. It is fun and young, but still looks professional. And the changing banner picture, would be a great way to display featured work.

Group Techies: Update

In Interactive Design Studio, my group is exploring options for building photo galleries and a forum for the GRDE site. We are really excited about the possibility of creating a gallery using javascript because it would eliminate the need for viewers to have a FlashPlayer, make it possible for a lighter out put, plus it’s all standards compliant. As we are doing more research on the idea of a javascript gallery and when it is time to produce it resources like jQuery are going to be so helpful.

Having a forum that is open to future, current, and graduated, FSU design students is also something we are looking into. Currently, we have three functional prototypes powered by, punBB, phpBB, and vanilla, they each have there pros and cons, but right now I think that we are leaning towards using vanilla. It has intuitive navigation and it is easy to administrate and moderate.

We know that producing this new GRDE site is going to take a lot of time and will probably be quite a challenge, but me and my fellow group members are excited and ready to take on the challenge.

Letting Go.

The other night while checking out Veer’s website, I found a desktop wallpaper that really inspired me.

“You don’t have to be an artist to know there’s magic in letting go and throwing down lines, letting you subconscious drive for awhile. It’s an ideal way to discover ideas, be playful, and quash that inner critic.”

So many times I find my self editing my ideas before I even get them down on paper. And that is NOT how it should be, it actually hinders the creative process. Every idea has the potential to either become a viable solution to the problem at hand or at the vary least spark a new idea. I made this my wallpaper on my laptop, so that every time I’m on it (which is A LOT!) I will be reminded to quash my inner critic by letting losing.