Armit Vit

Our favorite WebVisions speaker was the last one on Friday: Armin Vit. He’s the eloquent man behind BrandNew, Quipsologies, SpeakUp, the new FPO, UnderConsideration and DesignEncyclopedia. After we got used to his strong accent and he talked his way out of his initial nervousness, he really got on a roll.

Formerly a designer for Pentagram in NYC, he recently relocated to Austin, Texas, has a new baby girl, keeps up with five different blogs a day, and freelances with his wife, Bryony.

He broke down blogs into interesting categories:

Philosophy: Inclusive (Coudal Partners) or Exclusive (zefrank)

Page Structure: 2 or 3 column grid, sidebar and content fields

Topics: broad or specific; work (HouseIndustries) or play (Tolleson Design)

Voice: multiple contributors (DesignObserver) or single contributor (NubbyTwiglet)

Design Approach: is it consciously designed or not

To have a successful blog, he offered the following tips:

Be obsessive about your content (ilovetypography or Bibliodyssey)

Go the extra mile. Read Armin’s post from July 17, 2007 called Dark and Fleshy: The Color of Top Grossing Movies to understand what he mean by “extra mile”.

Go where no one else has gone.

Respect your audience by writing well. (Use complete sentences, no typos, etc.) He actually said “don’t treat your readers like a douchebag”.

MIT’s Revolving Homepage

Did you know that every day, the home page for MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) changes? Students contribute background images and CSS and they’re swopped out daily. Check it out by viewing the gallery of previous pages, or bookmarking the site and checking back once in a while.
From their info page: The image and background colors on the MIT home page change daily to call attention to each new spotlight. The MIT logo shown above is the graphical key to the background designs on the second-level pages. These pages use an enlarged and cropped logo as a background to bring together the categories of life at MIT.

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Barb’s Blog

One year later

You’ve all seen or heard me reference 2008 graduate Shauna Haider’s work (AKA Nubby Twiglet) from time to time. After a year interning and then working full time for Nemo HQ in Portland, she and a dozen colleagues were  cut loose because of downsizing. She’s been busy retooling her portfolio to drum up freelance work and/or a new position.

You can download her new 2009 portfolio here. And take a look at how it looked in June 2008. (scroll to the bottom). You’ll see student work in both versions, but note how she describes the pieces (MercyCorps, Penguin Books cover, 2008 Calendar).

She’s got 10 pages of tightly edited work, (including a logo page of 9 wordmarks) that shows her range and unique perspective. It’s a strong, simple layout that uses a system of typographic labels and rules.

Art-O-Mat

I just spent the day at Lane Community College in Eugene,  meeting with my fellow GD program directors from across the state. We try to do this several times a year (for the past 18 years) and it’s a great way to share ideas, hear how other schools deal with similar issues, and generally scope out the competition!

One of my favorite things at Lane is the Art Department’s Art-O-Mat machine which is in their gallery.

What is an Art-o-mat?
Art-o-mat machines are retired cigarette vending machines that have been converted to vend art. There are 82 active machines in various locations throughout the country.
What do you get from an Art-o-mat?
The experience of pulling the knob alone is quite a thrill, but you also walk away with an original work of art. What an easy way to become an art collector.

I bummed $5 from our host (which I repaid at lunch) and then made my selection. I’m now the proud owner of a diminuitive print from John D. Gall.

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