Designisms

AIGA’s Five-Year Plan

Peter — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 16:50:29 +0000

Richard Grefé, the executive director of AIGA, has presented an overview of AIGA’s mandate “to meet the goals of chapters, individual members and the design profession as a whole.” Be sure to read the comments as they can sometimes be more relative than the original insight shared.

I urge current members to share your opinion with AIGA. If you’re not a member, I recommend joining. It is an invaluable organization and resource for design professionals. Read “What is AIGA’s mandate for 2014?” now and join the discussion.

Poll: The Necessity of a Graphic Design Degree

Peter — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 22:28:11 +0000

Tell me why in the comments below!

13 Amazing Time Lapse and Slow Motion Videos

Peter — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 17:17:28 +0000

I was browsing the Vimeo video channels when I came across the Slowmotion & Timelapse Theater channel. My night was over. I spent the next couple hours watching some amazing time lapse and slow motion videos while completely losing track of time. Below are my favorites and each are fully worth the time to watch. Some are simple experiments and some are short films, but all are beautiful in their own ways. Watch them after the jump.

1.

Bathtub IV

by Keith Loutit

timelapse

Win A Month of Lynda.com Creative Tutorials

Peter — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 18:03:15 +0000

I’d like to thank you, the readers of Designisms, for all of the great conversations you’ve started and content you’ve shared recently with me on Twitter. Your different points of views remind me to always consider alternatives to the obvious answer. So with that I’m offering one reader a free one-month subscription to the video tutorial site, Lynda.com. If you’re unfamiliar with the site, their Online Training Library® will help you learn new software skills and to sharpen your current skills.

“The lynda.com Online Training Library® provides anytime access to over 39,235 easy-to-use video tutorials from experts on Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, Flash, web design, digital video and audio, creative inspiration, and much more.”

Good deal, right? For a chance to win, all you need to do is jump on Twitter and retweet this. The end result should look like this:

RT @Designisms: Win a month of Lynda.com creative tutorials http://su.pr/1PVp6q

The more you retweet the better chance you have of winning, but hey, let’s not embarrass ourselves. I’ll be randomly choosing a winner on Wednesday, July 1 and will announce the winner on Twitter, so make sure you’re following @Designisms to find out if you’re the winner. Good Luck!

UPDATE: This contest is now closed. Congratulations to Tristan L’Abbé (@_Tristan) from Quebec!

Web Designers Furious Over Outlook 2010

Peter — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 14:38:36 +0000

I received an email in my inbox this morning from Campaign Monitor, the email marketing software company, regarding Outlook 2010. It explained that Microsoft has decided to use the Word rendering engine to display HTML emails in Outlook 2010. What exactly does this mean and how does it affect web designers?

This means for the next 5 years your email designs will need tables for layout, have no support for CSS like float and position and no background images. Not to mention the long list of bugs and quirks that break the simplest of layouts.

Some people might be asking, “what’s the big deal?” The problem is that it’s been a long road to get to where we are now. There are web standards that apply to email as well and Outlook 2010 would be abandoning these accepted standards. The Email Standards Project has written about the specific problems with the beta version of Outlook 2010 in their post, “Microsoft to ignore web standards in Outlook 2010 - enough is enough.”

In response, The Email Standards Project and Campaign Monitor have created FixOutlook.org. The site will serve as a call to action and they have chosen Twitter as the medium for your voice to be heard.

Outlook 2010 is still in beta and Microsoft have confirmed they want to hear your feedback on this decision. It’s time for the email marketing and design community to rally together and encourage Microsoft to embrace web standards before it’s too late.

What’s the best way to do that? Twitter of course.

If you feel strongly about this matter, join myself on Twitter in voicing your opinion to Microsoft.

Typefaces of the New York City Subway

Peter — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 17:00:34 +0000

As I was sweating it out in the unique climate of the New York City subway yesterday, I was admiring the tile mosaics on the wall. I had never really taken too much interest in the typefaces used before until Paul Shaw’s presentation at the Type Director’s Club this past February.

Helvetica is not the typeface Massimo Vignelli chose for the signage of the New York City subway. Massimo Vignelli did not design the signage for the New York City subway. Helvetica is the typeface of the signage of the New York City subway. Despite what Helvetica: The Film says or your eyes tell you as you take the subway to work—or for a leisurely tour of the depths of Brooklyn—these statements are all true. The contradictions are simply part of the convoluted history of introducing a rational, coherent, consistent and complete sign system to the world’s most complex subway system—and then trying to maintain it.

Now as I navigate the underground labyrinth I’m sure to compare each subway stop’s signage. Helvetica can easily be identified in the system’s modern signage (the official typeface of the MTA today), as pointed out in Gary Hustwit’s 2007 documentary about the typeface, but have you noticed other typefaces? How did the subway’s signage evolve over the years to eventually set on Helvetica?

Shaw summed up his presentation with a great essay on AIGA.org. Not only is it a very informative history lesson about the New York City subway system and the business behind it, but also a compelling story about how designers and typefaces can influence communication in a major way. I especially enjoyed reading that the Paris Métro was a mess of uncoordinated signage until 1971, when Métro, designed by Adrian Frutiger and based on his Univers typeface (one of my personal favorites), was introduced. I encourage you to read Shaw’s essay entitled, “The (Mostly) True Story of Helvetica and the New York City Subway,” in its entirety and then I would love to hear all, especially New Yorkers’, opinions on the subject.

Your Logo Makes Me Barf

Peter — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 15:57:10 +0000

You might get a few kicks out of the site, YourLogoMakesMeBarf.com, but I’d like to comment before you visit. The logos are horrendous, which more often than not means that no designer was involved at all. You’re going to see a lot of bad design these days because of the recession, but hopefully employers will begin to realize that the design department or the freelance designer is not the first thing that should be cut from the budget. OK, enough of the serious industry talk and onto the site.

Your Logo Makes Me Barf is a fun time killer, but is dangerously toeing the line of parody. It’s own logo is purposely designed with three different generic fonts and swooshes. I found this funny, but does it mean the entire site has to look poorly designed too? On the “about” page it says, “Good logos require time and involve great forethought.” So does good web design. The site should be either be “geocities“-bad to play along with the parody or some time and effort should be put into the graphics and css design. “So leave the designing to the designers.” Or web designers. Completely agreed. Now go have fun and enjoy these horrible logos.

22 Professional Photoshop Image Enhancing Tutorials

Peter — Thu, 28 May 2009 22:30:39 +0000

There is a great collection of photoshop tutorials that Six Revisions has put together over on their blog. All of the tutorials are worth a read, however I have only recently used Photoshop Frenzy’s Gritty Effect above and the HDR Photo Effect by Nill Photo FX. Hopefully these will make things a little more interesting for you next time you are assigned a photo project. For those of you coming from Twitter, you can follow Six Revisions founder Jacob Gube here: http://twitter.com/jggube.

Hi, A Real Human Interface

Peter — Thu, 21 May 2009 17:00:41 +0000

Multitouch Barcelona is an interaction design group who like to play with the communicative relationship between people and technology. This relationship has always interested me, whether told through a William Gibson novel or a Bill Viola video installation. Barcelona explains their work superbly in that they “design experiences that merge real and digital into a creative environment where people are invited to touch, play, move, feel as they do in the real world.”

Watch their piece, Hi [human interface], below to see what they mean.

Check out more of Multitouch Barcelona’s work on their website.

F is for Fail - Short Film

Peter — Wed, 06 May 2009 22:10:02 +0000

I’ll continue with the typographic topic briefly by sharing a short film by freelance media designer Brent Barson. F is for Fail is a typographic narrative about the creative process that solely uses letterforms to create new textures, graphic forms and environments.

Barson also teaches digital media, motion graphics, interactive design, and Flash at Brigham Young University. His portfolio consists mostly of motion, interactive and identity design, including the opening titles for the Typophile Film Festival.

Watch F is for Fail by clicking on your viewing choice below [via Veer.com].

We Love Typography Too #WLT

Peter — Mon, 04 May 2009 22:20:52 +0000

I’ve spent a lot of time searching the interwebs for great typography-related images and now the author behind I love Typography, John Boardley, has saved me a lot of time with his latest project. Welovetypography.com is a collaboration between Boardley and Kari Pätilä and it slowly becoming a good resource for type images and quotes.

One of the easiest ways to share or find new typ-related images is through Twitter by tagging your tweet with #WLT. You can follow what people are tagging at welovetypography.com/tweets.

Community Links - Submit Your Design Articles

Peter — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 20:18:20 +0000

I’ve added a community links section in the sidebar so that you can easily share and find relevant design links. Hopefully this will encourage even more conversation and sharing of ideas here on Designisms.