merry christmas everyone (or whatever you celebrate)! here’s a lil gem from my childhood – i recommend you check out the entire special if you can. it’s “emmet otter’s jug-band christmas“. fans of the muppets should appreciate another masterpiece from jim henson and frank oz. the songs are amazing and the dvd includes a sing-along to “brothers” – my personal fave. hopefully it will make it to the second edition of rock band.

If I stay up another 4 hours, that will make 48 hours straight. I only got 3-4 hours of sleep the night before that. Somehow I made the 3 1/2 hr drive home without falling asleep behind the wheel (I think). Now I’m finally home, finally eating supper at 3:30 am. Oh, the bad habits we learn in art school : )

This is a really strange feeling. I don’t have any more projects due. I don’t have homework. I finally have time to work on all those ideas I have had over the past few years that never really fit the next project assignment. No more 24 hours of classes each week. I don’t have to pack up all my stuff and move between states 4 times a year. I started kindergarden in 1991, so the last….(good thing I’m not a math major)…16ish years I’ve had school every day (minus this last semester when I didn’t have classes on Wednesdays). No more of that. Now it’s off to look for a job. I am a graphic designer.

Last night was graduation and today I have my last final in Image Making. I just wanted to say a quick goodbye.

Nick, Erica, Shawn and Erica 2, thanks for kicking my butt into order every semester. You guys are all so inspiring and I know that you’ll be successful. I wouldn’t have graduated and gotten through it without you guys. I don’t have anyone to remind me of the things I have to do anymore, what am I going to do?! I don’t really have anyone outside of Eastern GD to talk about graphic design with so, I really think that we should get together at least once a month and just, talk. We’ll all chip in for gas money for Nick :). Bye Nick, I didn’t get to say goodbye because you didn’t go to graduation, but bye! I’ll miss you!

Goodbye to Ryan, Andy and Leslie. Thanks for putting up me. :) I feel that I’ve learned a lot and I think that I prepared for this. (Well, I hope…) I know that I am not the most inspired design student, but I do think that I have gained a great skill and talent for design while here. I’m young, the inspiration and drive will come. Anyway, just Thanks, you’re amazing.

Oh yeah, I like the design room messy. Not dirty, I mean pick up your old coffee! But I always liked walking around and picking up other peoples projects or scraps of paper. It was always entertaining. So don’t clean it too much, thats just boring.

GOOD LUCK EVERYONE!

iloveyou!

Kari

I’m sure most of you who are planning to graduate today already know that commencements have been postponed until 6pm tomorrow. It’s kind of a bummer since many of us have plans tomorrow to work on projects or take finals. Damn snow! Anyway, hope to still see those of you graduating tomorrow.

I was inspired by this current post on Speak Up about landmark posters. http://www.underconsideration.com/speakup/archives/004208.html. Several of these have been shown at one point in time in one of my classes as I introduced an assignment. But, in case you were absent that day and/or missed design history. Or if you are just looking to learn and see some things. These two sites are quite amazing.

Dutch Graphic Design

and Alki1’s flickr sets of historical design.

I was inspired by this current post on Speak Up about landmark posters. http://www.underconsideration.com/speakup/archives/004208.html.

It is amazing how much stuff is out the on the web. A great deal of people are now using Flickr as a way to archive historical works such as these. (PS Flickr is also a good way to create an oline portfolio, and free).

http://www.charliewhite.info/sub/work/2001.html 

This guy is nuts

I just wanted to say thank you to those of you who have shown support for the AIGA this semester. I want to let everyone know that they are welcome to get involved at any time, whether you’ve been in contact with the group up until now or not.

I am happy that there were plenty of people at the weekly meetings, and I saw several familiar faces traveling to the different area events whenever I had the chance to attend.

Just so everyone knows joining the AIGA as a paid member is great for you and for us, but it is not required for you to be involved with the group on campus. We do need a certain number of paid members to keep our status as a student chapter, but coming out and seeing what it’s like to attend events and meet the professionals in the area for a while before getting a paid membership is perfectly reasonable. Just remember though that unless you keep a close eye on the detroit.aiga.org website, the only way you’ll find out about those events is talking to the members that get the regular emails and stay in touch with those professionals.

I wish everyone luck in finishing up their finals. Congratulations to those of you who are graduating this weekend! I know a lot of others can see the light at the end of April. Everyone else, just keep on working and you’ll be up for that degree soon.

I also wanted to thank the professors for caring about how this all works out and giving their time for us.

Travel safe if you’re headed out of here for the holidays, and have a great New Year’s!

- Alan & Sarah

istockphoto.com is a good, not too expensive resource for stock photography, but more importantly you can start an account for free and upload illustrations and photographs to sell.  Lots of people use this site, and I’m not sure how much money you can get for your images, but if nothing else it gives you credits to get other photos for your own projects.  Let’s post some other ideas on how designers can make a bit of extra money on the side with freelance!
If people are concerned about jobs, there are several job boards that are helpful if you are flexible on where you can live.  www.krop.com, www.aigadesignjobs.com (have to be a member!), www.craigslist.org (this one is also helpful for finding other musicians and artists and people selling things for cheap), of course www.monster.com, www.hotjobs.com

Does anybody know of other job boards?  Post them here and we’ll start a list…

sometimes i struggle to find the right colors to use – whether its painting, color pencils, photoshop, etc so here’s a tip – go to a paint store and steal (or ask for one) a swatch book. i prefer pittsburgh paints, they have a very nice collection and they also have a lil color game online that tries to pick a palette according to your responses. and i also found this on the digg blog….

Getting people to write about design is often a difficult task, especially in a studio class. It is problematic because often students don’t understand that writing is directly linked to our abilities to communicate. If we cannot communicate our influences, our ideas about our work, our process, and even thought on our profession to our peers, how then can we communicate with clients who don’t speak the same language. It is also difficult because all too often designers think that writing is a separate task from making, which is what a studio is all about supposedly. 

I recently read a few passages from a book I saw in an office of a fellow designer. I don’t remember the books name but it included the communication between designers and their clients. It was basically a book of rants about how frustrating clients can be. But the question came to me, is it always our clients fault? is there a way to inform my client about design, my ideas, etc. in a manner in which they would understand. Sure there is, its writing (or really eloquent clear speech).

As a designer/design educator, I constantly write. I write ideas about my work, my decisions while making things (I even write about how I structure a course, after all that too is design). I constantly write about what it is I do. It is a practice I learned in architecture school (and a practice that I think somewhat is both what separates architecture from graphic design, as well as fuels architecture’s constant naval gazing). At some point I realized that all of the architects I found inspiring wrote. They wrote criticism, theory, about their work, about other architects. They wrote. As students we had to write a thesis which majority of it had to have some theoretical grounding applied to architecture, we spent a semester doing this, then the following semester designing it (all the while rewriting the original document). Prior to that we wrote reviews about our work, our peers, responses to articles, etc. All of this occurred in our studio classes. 

When I established this blog the hope was to create a second community for students (since Eastern is a commuter school). Forcing the hand of students to write seemed like the easiest way to make it happen. Now as the semester comes to an end and I sit here taking inventory of who made the required amount of posts or comments, I find the numbers quite shocking. Very few people have made enough posts/comments to get the full 10 percent of the grade. Most below 5%, many 0-1%. An easy task, not much required here, and for many this will mean the difference between and A and a B. 

I am admittedly an easy grader, so as I start to set up my excel spreadsheet that will give the final grades for everyone, I am shocked that this semester will be one of the semesters when very few people get an A, largely because of this blog. So perhaps this post will get people talking as I pose some questions at this late hour.

 Knowing that this is 10% of your grade, why not put the effort in making the posts? 

Do grades matter? or what would be better incentive to get people to write?  What do I do about grades for the blog assignment?

Do I make another project worth more? and is that fair to those that put in the effort to begin with?

Or do I stick to everyone (you get what you gave)?  

Or do I assign an alternate assignment to give people a last minute chance to get that 10%? 

PS there is still time to make posts and comments, I won’t be turning in grades until Wednesday of next week.