Just to prepare the students for the working world…

One of my projects this week at work is to design a couple widgets, specifically to be used on a touch screen monitor, iPod touch, and/or Zune. I didn’t take any web or motion graphics classes while at EMU, so most of what I learned was design for print. Right now, I’d say about 1/3 of the projects I do are for touch screens…anything from interactive video graphics to website design to icons for computer applications…meaning I spend a lot of time doing research.

In researching widget design today, I came across a really neat one (above) that has a lot of information about the impact of different papers, inks, etc. on the environment. It’s called theSustainable Graphic Design Widget. I can’t say I’ve ever spent a whole lot of time thinking about all that, until recently, as I was designing some stuff for a couple of our Chemical Engineering interns.

Anyway, back to widget design…I found this website, which has a lot of basic, yet useful information. Does anyone know of any other good websites by chance? Fortunately, I have a software architect to do all the back end stuff, so it’s basically the “look and feel” that I have to come up with.

Friend of EMU graphic design, Floor Wesseling, had this nice write up on Design Boom about his Blood in Blood out project of recombined football (soccer) jerseys. The project remixes jerseys based on historical events and cultural identity. It is simple in its idea and execution, and I would love to get my hands on one of those jerseys as well. Read more about it here: http://www.designboom.com/

This guy does some pretty amazing and diverse work from “paintings” created with gun-powder to this installation, which, addresses car bombings.

http://www.caiguoqiang.com/

Who uses it? Maybe I can get those friends of mine
who still send me bulk Christmas messages on my
cell phone to use this instead?

a friend told me about this site – gigposters.com.  i thought it would be nice to share since i made 754,392, 383 posters while at emu.  its has an amazing directory of artists and bands ranging from the pros like jay ryan to amateurs like shitty the shit looker.  the reason shitty is on there is because you can upload your work onto the site and share with the rest of us.  the forums also include lots of tips on printing, technique, materials and all that jazz so check it out… or be dumb, its entirely up to you.

I am looking for someone to redesign the look and feel of this site. This is an opportunity for anyone who wants another project to put in their portfolio. It won’t pay, but lots of people get to see your work and it is for a good cause, and it is a professional project. This also gives anyone the opportunity who wants to create new features on the site (we can add sections, featured alum, featured work, etc.) to do so.

The site uses WordPress as its content management system (as many of you know), which is PHP, HTML, and CSS driven. And if you don’t want to mess with the functionality of things, you just need to know basic HTML and CSS.

If anyone (former or current student) is interested please let me know (I can give someone the “keys to the castle”). After all we can’t let Creative Writing look cooler than us (http://bhjournal.com/, way to go Nick at making us look bad).

This is an article worth reading.

http://www.aiga.org/content.cfm/smears-and-straight-talk

I thought that everyone who has experienced the Kerouac assignment would appreciate this. Penguin apparently used Kerouac’s On The Road for their competition title this year. It’s interesting to see the approach taken by others.

You can see the winners and shortlist here