Today's Typographica nameplate
Check out this Flikr set of Typographica nameplates over the past 8 years (150 of them to be precise). View as a slide show. It’s an interesting study of the range of options readers submitted. Read (or subscribe to) the Typographica blog.
Egg Press
One of my favorite local creative businesses is Egg Press, a SE Portland letterpress company. You’ve probably seen their line of greeeting cards at Oblation or OfficePDX. They just posted a short video of the design and printing process that “captures the sense of fun and creative energy that make up the daily inner workings of Egg Press.” Check it out.
Krop is a Job Board and career resource website for creative professionals. It is free to join and you can post an online résumé, upload 10 images and customize how your profile page looks. Watch this short screencast on how to join and use Krop.
This video is created by Lee LeFever of Common Craft in Seattle and provides a simple explanation of this online networking service for professionals. I discussed this in Fall term, but it’s time to put services like this in to action! Start with the network of people you’ve met in this program and you may be surprised at the connections that spring forth from there. I’ve maintained connections with former students and colleagues going back as far as 1984 through LinkedIn.
BTW, Common Craft has dozens of short “Plain English” videos on topics ranging from Twitter to RSS to Phishing to Search Engine Optimizing. Worth a look.
(the following is excerpted from Why We Design: Before and After Magazine, April 21 written by John Wade)
“You might look again at what you do. You sit with a full tummy in your warm office at a blank screen with an ad to make, and you’re thinking, “Jeez, I have to come up with something original and clever and it better be soon.” That’s not how to think. As a designer you have a privilege, one that others do not. It is the privilege of making visible that which others can only imagine, feel or think. When you do this, you open a window through which your audience can see, know and understand.
Design is about communication.
To take a word or a thought and design it is to give it form and body, so others can see, too, and respond.
The more compelling the design, the deeper the response.
By more compelling, I don’t mean prettier, necessarily, or artsier. I mean richer, more complete, more efficient. The design I’m talking about isn’t about making something only look better, but actually function better. Design has to do with how a thing works.”
Read the full posting here.
Read the Tim Gough interview on GrainEdit . He’s a designer/illustrator from Philadelphia who uses texture and type really well.
There’s a great example of his creative process as he discusses the poster design for “Free Library Fesitval”.
Want more? Visti GigPoster.com (which houses gazillions of examples of great posters).
Read this article in today’s Oregonian about workspaces, an increasingly common way for start up companies and entrepreneurs to legitimize their businesses without going broke paying for office space.
“Portland’s unconventional work spaces range from shared desks to renovated office buildings aimed at small, creative companies.”
Watch orders placed on the Zappos website, from all over the United States, coming in and being mapped to the location the order is being shipped to, in real time.
FYI: A mashup is a web appication that combines data from one or more sources into a single integrated tool.
