- 3 years ago
- 4726
The Jeff Goldblum Scale of Anxiety
via @catapultstory
By: me!
Love!
(via mydrunkkitchen)
Source: kategavino- 6 years ago
- 6
Source: ewmfanblogWhoever does the social media monitoring for Taco Bell is apparently the coolest person ever.
- 6 years ago
- 1
As a designer about to enter the job market, naturally I hope that everyone will just a hire a really good designer to do their work. Realistically I know this will not happen. If someone wants a designer, they will hire one, but if you are going to DIY, then please consider a few tips.
Typefaces:
- Make it legible.
- Don’t use Comic Sans, even ironically.
- Use less typefaces rather than more. Information can be divided through formatting rather than a different typeface. Consider hierarchy rather than fourteen different fonts, or you will lose your audience.
- If you are a restaurant, think about using a type other than Papyrus. I don’t know why people connect that typeface with food, but it makes me lose my appetite.
Layout:
- Keep it simple
- Keep it streamlined and easy to understand
- Eliminate tightly bunched bodies of text, in fact, try to eliminate large bodies of text if you are making a poster or advertisement.
- Try for an instant read, make the most important information the first thing you see (once again, consider hierarchy).
Color
- Try using complementary colors (blue/orange, yellow/purple)
- Consider what people bring to the experience, while red/green are a complementary set, people also tend to think of Christmas when they think of those. Understanding this is a big part of the battle in designing on your own.
Simple tips, now go have fun with them!
For the past two weeks we’ve been discussing sustainability in our class. Not only that, but for the past six weeks or so I have been doing research, freewrites, thinking, mindmapping, considering, sketching, ruminating, obsessing and feeling frustrated with the idea of sustainability in a field where our job is to make things. Or to make people want to buy things so more things can be made. One question I keep asking myself is, should we as designers feel guilty about our impact on the world? In a word, no, I don’t think we should. I think instead of miring in guilt and moaning about the complicated world we straddle between eco-consciousness and a desire to make beautiful things, we should instead focus on innovating. Does that mean thinking of something brand new that would mean making even more stuff? Once again, no. To me it means thinking more about what we are already making, thinking about the choices, researching what things actually mean. Upcycling is a huge trend, taking things and making them into something else, like recycling plastic bottles into fleece or carpeting, but now we are finding out that process is causing off-gassing that is slowly killing us. If more research would have been done instead of our usual tendency to jump on a pretty bandwagon, maybe this result would have been different. Innovation without research to support it is useless.
This is where the shame spiral can begin if we allow it to. Instead I think we need to consider our place in the process. As a designer I am compelled to want to make beautiful things that make sense. To me that can be a poster, a package, an infographic, a website. I am also in love with product design. I want to make things, but I don’t want to make crap. I want to make things that last, things you would want to own for a long time. To me that is what makes sense. Make things, make them well, make them beautiful, make them matter, make them make sense, and make them last. I am so tired of the planned death of products. Why should you have to buy a new toaster every few years when your grandma’s toaster lasted for 25+? I understand that aesthetics change, but why are we okay with making things that are shoddy? Why have we become a culture that doesn’t question the idea of it being easier/cheaper/faster to buy a new item than to repair it? Why are there no repairmen anymore? Not only have we sent our manufacturing jobs overseas, but we have moved to a process where dispose-ability is more important because we are all so “busy” in our media driven lives that we don’t have the time to try to fix something when we can easily just buy a new one. So we are losing jobs in manufacturing and losing more jobs in repair if you think about it.
The horrible irony is that my thinking about “innovation” is really more of a return to the way we used to do things. Perhaps it is the economy feeling like a return to the depression era consciousness of the early part of the mid-1900s, but I think we need to pay more attention to how things are made and how we consume them. You can think of utilitarian products this way, food, clothing, it applies across the board. Do you really need the “bright maker” products (The Persuaders), or can you be happy with what you already have?
I am trying to stop worrying about keeping up with the Joneses. I am trying to realize that the Gudges, with our smaller house and our garden, our crazy full lives with beautiful children, and our hectic and mostly happy schedules are pretty amazing. Do I have an iPhone? Yes, a bunch of other gadgets as well, but maybe the next time something new comes out I will say no, I’m happy with what I have. If given the choice would I design the next new iPhone? Yes, I would, but I hope I would design it with the people working at Foxconn, the consumer, the shipping, and the earth in mind. There must be a place we can live in where we can create new things, innovate better things, and retain what makes older things great. I hope we get there.
Evans, Poppy. The Complete Guide to Eco-Friendly Design. Ed. Dawn Korth. Cincinnati: North Light Books, 1997. Print.
This book gives a solid surface level overview of what designers can do to try to be more eco-friendly. It includes some solid case studies and information on paper alternatives and green printing solutions.
Kanani, Rahim. “An Interview with Dell’s Procurement Director on Environmental Sustainability.” Forbes (2011): n. pag. Web. 20 Jan. 2012. <http://www.forbes.com/sites/rahimkanani/2011/12/08/an-interview-with-dells-procurement-director-on-environmental-sustainability/>.
This interview talks about Oliver Campbell’s position with Dell and how he was given latitude to innovate and collaborate to create new solutions to improve the green quality of Dell as well as to save the company money.
Knoerzer, Tony. “Tony Knoerzer from PepsiCo on next steps in sustainability.” PIRA (2012): n. pag. Web. 20 Jan. 2012. <http://www.pira-international.com/tony-knoerzer-from-pepsico-on-next-steps-in-sustainability.aspx>.
In this interview Tony Knoerzer discusses the upcoming changes to Pepsi’s stance on sustainability (while avoiding any real details, of course). He talks about using agricultural waste as a possible solution in the future of sustainable design.
Sherin, Aaris. SustainAble: A Handbook of Materials and Applications for Graphic Designers and Their Clients. Beverly, MA: Rockport Publishers, 2008. Print.
I have ordered this book, but have not yet received it. Here is one of the online reviews that I read that lead me to believe this book would be appropriate for my research.
“This book is a masterpiece in both design and content. It is timely and applicable to all designers, but especially those studying in a university and/or art school environment. Each spread is a gem as is the cover. All aspects of the book are visually intriguing and the book teaches visually about good design while the content combines the need for quality design to be integrated with environmental ethics. It is a must read for all designers, or those who hope to enlist in the field in the years ahead. I will be recommending it to all of my students.”
McDonough, William, and Michael Braungart. Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things. New York: North Point Press, 2002. Print.
This book is about rethinking how things are made, what they are made of, and how we can change the negative aspects of these processes.