.Hey everyone, I thought I would come by to let everyone know that if your looking for a graphic design job or internship, a great web site is http://detroit.craigslist.org/med/, one of the best sites that I’ve found for GD jobs and interenships  to date! They have jobs postings almost everyday LITTERALLY!!!!! hopefully its not a scam lol

I picked up this book a while ago. I usually don’t have the money in my budget for these kinds of purchases but I couldn’t resist. Fingerprint, The Art of Using Handmade Elements in Graphic Design by Chen Design Associates is filled with really great photos and ideas for getting off of the computer to create design. I fnd this book really interesting and inspiring because I’m interested in doing more handmade stuff but I usually resort to the computer. You can have everything you need around you to create really awesome design, but it takes a lot more thought and creativity sometimes. The book includes anything from posters, web design, to product design from all sorts of designers and a little blurb about their work. It’s worth checking out.

I know most people are inspired by music. They work to music, listen to it for ideas, etc. But what about the music videos. Some of them are just amazing. So here are three of my favorite music videos that constantly inspire my creativity. (more…)

I went to the Droog Design lecture on Thursday- like getting a guided tour through the history of their company(based in Amsterdam) and many examples of their coolest projects.  He really emphasized the conceptual aspects of design whether its product design, architecture, etc.  My favorite was a building that had been a pretty trashed brothel, was in a terrible area of the city (of Amsterdam?? not sure) and was going to be renovated as a hotel, albeit an extremely cheap one.  A group of designers were chosen and each was given a separate room to work on.  The results were truly inspired:  instead of a gym, they printed (in the lobby and the steps up to the rooms) the amount of calories expended on going up each stair and one of the rooms was outfitted with a bullet-proof sleeping bag (this is a PERFECT idea for some hotels like the Pallister in downtown Detroit).  Rather than trying to hide the fact that this was in a bad part of town and very cheap, they made the most of it.  Another great concept was the “Go Slow” restaurant (done in Germany I think) where the concept was basically the anti-fast food place.  Again, the results were awesome:  they brought in a bunch of senior citizen to crochet the menu on a board, the teabags were each embroidered, and all service was done at a snails pace.  There were other features in the architecture and design of the room- but you’d have to see the pictures.  They do have a book out of their projects which is either called Droog Design or something close to that.  What was most impressive to me was the intense focus on taking a concept and really working with its essence to come up with creative solutions that were very functional, interesting, funny and also looked good.  If anyone has their book, please let me know- I’d like to look at it.      

So this semester at school, I feel really lost in my projects. They seem more experimental than anything else. It’s not like I’m going to put most of it in my portfoilo. So instead of doing all this experimental stuff, I think that it should be mandatory to have a web design class or at least we should have to build our own website. Now that’s something that would really help me out in the real world.

The group that has the Renaissence and Detroit City Posters up, I love your posters and I see them everywhere I go on campus. I love the contrast on the Renaissence poster and I love the way the paper gives the poster this kind of woren look for the Detroit City poster Great job!!

http://www.wefeelfine.org/

This site can be found through the Processing.org exhibitions… It’s an exploration of human emotion on a global scale using data gathered from blogs. You can pick what kind of emtion you want to track, the weather for that day, male or female, locations around the world, and it will create will like emotional map of dots that you can click on and see that exerpt from the blog… It’s pretty freakin cool… and also pretty freaky that people are writing blogs that they think they know who their audience is and yet there could be people all around the world reading intimate details of their lives… It kind of makes you question how far, ethically, would you be willing to push things for your design? Maybe if you were browsing that site and saw something you, yourself, posted in a blog just hours before, would that change how you feel about it?

Hey, has anyone heard of ijustine…. this girl literally broadcasts her whole life… There is a ongoing chat too between people watching.  I find it facinating that people are so interested in some strangers life and not there own that they actually sit there and try to predict what she might to next…talk about weird!

http://www.justin.tv/ijustine 

I found this article on the pros and cons of blogging. This article opened me up to blogging and showed how important it is to communicate with your clients and other designers!

all the people who rolled their eyes at me when I brought my PC laptop to school the other day.  :P haha