Remembering Graphic Designer Pierre Mendell (1929–2008)

Source: Die Neue Sammlung, The New Collection of Book Design exhibition, Switzerland, 1994

Graphic designer Chris Ro invited me to contribute to his collective blog GraphicHug. I invite you to check out the piece I wrote concerning this former teacher of mine whose direct posters made a lasting impression at first sight.

Optimized for Energy Conversation: Utility Statements Adjusted toward Green

Image credit: Max Whittaker for The New York Times

California’s experiment with redesigned statements, issued to Sacramento residents, is aimed at helping to change minds about energy. A positive byproduct of the effort has proven to be neighborly competition: Who can lower energy consumption the most? Find out more at my latest piece for the Green Printer blog.

Previous post: Designer Scott Ballum’s Consume®econnection Project

Substance plus Style: Speaking at Design Conferences

Interaction designer Cameron Moll of the blog Authentic Boredom shares a relevant list of do’s and don’ts concerning presentation creation and delivery. For those, like myself, who are not born presenters, presenting a topic in a legato manner requires artistic levels of skill.

Cameron’s emphasis on striving for “meaty content” resulting in a “more advanced” presentation takes a lot of time, matched by an investment of effort. Design writer and critic Rick Poynor would agree: “Unlike just turning up on the day with a ready-made PowerBook slide show of greatest hits, thematic talks require extensive research and hours of hard work putting it together. Speakers who don’t have something fresh to deliver and the writing or presentational skills to make it interesting shouldn’t be up there on stage taxing our patience.” Content is often deemed the king, or queen, and its rule is empathy.

Having worked in litigation, I observed attorneys manically prepare their presentations before jury, judge and—though not direct participants—the gallery. Every exhibit, whether as a digital slide or fragment of video, was mined and massaged in detail. Every transition seamless. The lead legal presenter, typically the partner, had a team of diligent associates to generate compelling content and braid a persuasive string of dots. The task is necessarily more difficult with a single presenter who acts as a team of one (i.e., writer, editor, typographer, orator, and subject matter expert). Ensuring a generous amount of lead-time (a few months before arrival) makes the final presentation material better, and not a turnkey version.

Among his tips for Equipment, Cameron exclusively promotes Keynote. Though I’m not an avid user of Apple’s presentation tool, my few impressions are that it handles presentations with elegance. I respect the dogma about using a specific tool, but I’ve always been preaching the dogma of “Use whatever tool is comfortable with you.” I mean other software, like PowerPoint (yes, PowerPoint) or InDesign. Granted that each software application has their constraints concerning typographic layout and control, the presenter ultimately controls the aesthetics of their content.

Cameron’s tips on presenting good content can help design gatherings move forward, as mentioned in a previous posting. I’ll be referring to them for my upcoming small talk.

As a new conference year begins, have a good presentation if you’re a speaker. And if you’re attending a conference, have a good presentation.

Related:

• The Art of Presenting—An Interview with Debbie Millman
• Now That We Have Your Complete Attention ... by Eric Matson, Fast Company magazine
• Beyond Bullet Points by Cliff Atkinson

[Design Fetish] Calendars

Like the grid, the calendar is a vehicle well-suited for imaginative visual play. In particular, layering in a dimension of time can be communicated in diverse ways, as these examples demonstrate:



2009 Rare Book Calendar by digital publication services company 42-line



Napkins Calendar 2009 by designer Stas Aki



Offset Printed and Letterpress Printed 2009 Calendars by Egg Press



MalotaProjects Calendar 2009

It’s never too late to find the right calendar that will help—and maybe even inspire—you to plan activities and celebrate your milestones for the year.

Blogger’s Quest(ionnaire): Interactive, graphic and motion designer Zeke Shore

The Blogger’s Quest(ionnaire) is a Design Feast Initiative. In contrast to the Designer’s Quest(ionnaire), the focus is on those who are taking on the blog medium, why they do it and what tools they use. This second release is by currently New York-based Zeke Shore, whose preferred work tools are Adobe CS3, his MacbookPro and his trusted sketchbook and pen. What he shares about the making and sustaining of his blog may inform your entrance into the blagosphere:

Why did you create a Website of regular entries?
“I started a blog as part of a portfolio and self promotion overhaul that I did last November. It seemed like a good opportunity to hopefully give something back to the online design community which I have always relied on as an invaluable resource.”

What Web-based solution did you select and why?
“I have fallen in love with Wordpress. After using Wordpress as a platform on web design projects for a few clients, I learned how powerful and versatile it is. Combined with such an active online community of designers and developers sharing Wordpress tips, tricks, tutorials, and plugins, it’s really hard to beat, and continues to get better.”

What is your definition of a good blog 
and what are three good blogs that you frequently visit?
“I am mostly engaged by blogs that either teach me things (like user experience design blog UX Booth), inspire me (like the stunning package design blog The Dieline), or inform me (like the voice of the Tech Industry, TechCrunch).”

How do you create content for your blog?
“I learn a lot by looking at what other creatives are doing, so a good starting place for my blog was simply documenting my projects and my creative and technical process. Now I am starting to do a lot more posts on the things that I find inspiring, and hopefully can start getting some tutorials up as well. In general, my blog is mostly about sharing the things I know, the things I do, and the things I see.”

How do you stay organized and motivated to contribute to your blog?
“Setting informal deadlines has been helpful (mainly trying to post once a week). Seeing the reader base and the number of comments grow from one post to the next is a huge source of motivation as well.

I am also an avid del.icio.us user, which is great for organizing anything I find online. I usually have two or three post ideas on queue, so I can spend a couple weeks pulling things together before I actually write the post and put it up.”

For those aspiring to make a Website composed of 
regular thoughts and/or images, what is your advice?
“Try and establish who you want your audience to be, and put yourself in their shoes. If your writing for your peers or your own industry, think about what you get the most out of seeing and reading in blogs.

Save things. Whenever you come across something intriguing, hold onto it. Again, I recommend using del.icio.us since it has such a comprehensive tagging system. Even if not everything turns into a post, it’s better to have a huge collection of things to potentially draw from. Its also good to remember that lots of things actually do exist in the physical world, too (only half joking, I feel bloggers often forget that after seeing so many posts on ‘10 great Photoshop tutorials’). So it’s a good idea to carry a camera around with you.”

What is your quest in blogging?
“I hope to just spread some inspiration, and whatever knowledge I might have. Since blogging is such an immediate and democratic medium (hopefully the cream rises to the top), we can really all participate in effectively evolving collective human knowledge. In the design community especially, the more we all share, critique, and engage in dialog, the better we all become.”

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Photograph courtesy of Zeke Shore.

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Read more of the Design Feast series Blogger’s Quest(ionnaire).

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In total agreement: “Hold on to a good web developer!”

Tina Roth Eisenberg, a.k.a. swissmiss, most recently re-launched her popular eclectic design blog. The latest incarnation looks and feels simple, smoothly simple, especially with regards to the filter-by-category and search features sensibly placed within a strong sense of grid. Developer John Ford’s handiwork is clearly instrumental in helping to transform Tina’s former Typepad blog into a Wordpress version. His considerable contributions, along with the work-intensive content migration to a new platform, make Eisenberg’s kudos to her developer quite justified. But it underscores a recurrent scenario:

It’s easy to be captivated by a site’s interface and interaction, to the point of not reflecting on who and what connects the two. A site, in whatever form, can be broken down into the major functions that feel finite when the URL displays its suite of screens. There’s a lot going on behind the scenes that make the front a seamless and working facade.

This is second nature to user experience designers, web developers and web-savvy surfers. And these are not the only groups to whom Tina serves content. The reminder applies to everyone curious about what’s beneath the surface and not indifferent to what makes the front end possible, with every interaction.

Furthermore, Tina notes Ford’s ambition in making the site better: “Come’on, make it a little harder for me. We can do more than that!” A good web developer doesn’t only remain heads-down, without submerging, from code mechanics. Being a soundboard for a designer’s (and anybody else’s) ideas is an advantage and one worth nurturing, in a client-server-back-to-client kind of way.

Beyond the refresh of swissmiss, it’s refreshing to read Tina’s tenet of sticking to a good web developer once you find him or her—namely by working hard and having fun as a natural by-product. As Ford put it, “It’s so much fun building beautiful sites!”

For those, be they designer or developer, seeking to share creative reality, access CollabFinder as one of your steps. I did, and found a developer worth holding on to (details arriving in due time).

[Design Portfolio Spotting] Jussi Gamache of Freezepop

This Design Portfolio Spotting post came with a bonus: An addition to my list of music appreciation for the Boston-based synth-pop band Freezepop. You may have heard of them via video games. The lead vocalist is Liz Enthusiasm, the pseudonym of Justinne (“Jussi”) Gamache who, much to my delight, is a graphic designer.

Her online portfolio is simple and compact. One-screen sites (as reported by 37signals and Web Designer Wall) are admirable. Jussi’s portfolio requires no scrolling—a trend I thought had passed in web design—so it was refreshing to see it here.

The contour of the collage-esque shape housing her content adds a contrast of texture and edge, especially the ripped notebook form. At the same time, this technique visually chunks the content with a spot for the navigation, caption and lightbox area (without being lightboxed, no relation to Rick-rolled). The end result showcases the design work, all resting on one screen, without leaving it.

Jussi’s online design portfolio makes for “frozen music” (pun intended).

Design Feast webliography and Design Feaster blog in the news of Behance

Big thanks to the Behance Team, responsible for products and services geared toward achieving “creative productivity,” for including the posting about the Action Book, one of their tools for the “creative outfitter.”

Taking Advantage of Behance’s Action Book notebook by Marketing Strategist Seijen

In a previous posting, Notebooks were highlighted as a Design Fetish. A colleague of mine, Seijen, has been using a particular notebook for his work and anything else he needs to jot down and act on. Here’s his view on the Action Book made by Behance, a maker of products and services to “help creative professionals and organizations make ideas happen.”

What do you do for a living?

Currently, I work for the global design and technology consulting firm Sapient Corporation. At Sapient, I’m a member of the Research + Analytics team, and specialize in gathering/synthesizing consumer and industry research, mostly of secondary nature. I generally work with internal teams to help them ‘get smart, quick’ about various industries, as well as assist with the development or support of marketing strategies. In the evenings and weekends, I’m an aspiring professional foosball player.

How did you discover Behance’s Action Book?



I can’t remember exactly...I think I read about it on a blog like PSFK. I’ve always had a secret love for interesting notebooks and was a big fan of the Moleskine notepads throughout college. I secretly wanted to buy the Action Book during college but I could buy Moleskine at the bookstore, which was more convenient. Plus, I was using the Moleskine mostly as a repository for random thoughts and ideas, and the Action Book seemed more productivity-oriented, so I waited. Last summer, I was freelancing with Fallon in Minneapolis, and my co-worker had the notebook as well, so maybe that was what reminded me of it when I came to Chicago.

Why did you buy it?

When I started at Sapient and realized I was going to be working on a multitude of projects at the same time across many clients, I remembered that the Action Book had the built in to-do list. I knew that I was going to have to keep a singular list of projects, as my Post-It note methodology wasn’t really working too well. So I went for it. Plus, the Action Book is branded as the notebook for creative professionals, so I bought into the branding and said to myself, ‘I am a creative professional, I NEED this to do my job.’

How long have you been using it?

I’ve only been using it for about a month, but it has been the greatest month of notebook usage of my entire life.

How do you use it and what information do you put into it?



I mostly like it for the built in to-do list on the right side of the notebook, which seems kind of silly to say, since any notebook can do that without having to spend $20. But the list is nice because I can see at a quick glance all the projects I’m working on. And if I need to, I can flip backwards through the book to see what projects I worked on in previous weeks. There is something to be said aesthetically about not having to draw one’s own little compartments to create a to-do list.

So far, I haven’t had to use more than two pages a week, so that has kept a nicely organized record of all my projects. I also take notes that I think will be useful for that week’s work, or for projects in the future. For instance, we had a rep from one of our database services come in to give us a walk-through, and I kept notes from that in the Action Book because I thought they would come in handy later for other projects. If I’m dedicated to one or two big projects for a week, I keep a list of important contacts in the notebook as a reference so I don’t have to keep sifting through emails.

If I’m just taking notes or brainstorming, I’ll use a different plain notebook.

How many times do you use your Action Book,
whether to enter information or refer to it?

I add info into the Action Book pretty much every day. Whether it’s adding a project name and description, a job number (oh, that’s right, I also keep job numbers in my Action Book so I don’t have to sift through emails), notes about something important, or how I’ve allocated my time on each project. I use it more as a record-keeper of everything that I’ve done. I refer to it all the time to keep myself focused and aware of everything on my plate.

What did you use before the Action Book?

I was pretty much just using plain notebooks. The problem with that was that I would still make lists, but I would often just haphazardly scribble notes, to-do’s, reminders, etc., all over the page. Since there was no pre-designated segmentation, all of my information just got lost in a hodge-podge of scribbles. Now the Action Book definitely has a separate role from the plain notebook, which I still use to scribble random thoughts. Most of the important logistical stuff though, goes into the Action Book, which definitely helps keep me organized.

If a person interested in getting an Action Book,
what would be your response?

I like it quite a bit. I don’t think I use all the features of the Action Book for their designed intentions, but I’ve found that it has kept me organized and, hopefully, more productive. I think it is especially useful for people who are involved in many projects at once, or involved in a project with many defined steps. My one major critique is the cover... I think the cover could be stronger. I thought when I purchased that the cover was leather, like the Moleskine series, but it is a stronger cardboard which, needless to say, is still subject to the pitfalls of water.

Related: The Checklist by Atul Gawande, The New Yorker / Time on your side by Jack Cheng / 26 Years, 85 Notebooks by Michael Beirut, Design Observer / Verify your work with checklists by David Heinemeier, 37signals

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All images courtesy of Seijen Takamura.

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Read more from Design Feast Series of 100+ Interviews
with people who love making things.

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Designer’s Quest(ionnaire): Shawn Hazen of Hazen Creative

The Designer’s Quest(ionnaire) is a Design Feast initiative embracing the perspective of a designer in a succinct format. Shawn Hazen is a graphic designer and art director. Read about his insightful take on design and designing.

Related previous posting: Posters Designed to the Charge of Change

[Nifty Idea] Copyright From Then to Today

Blogger Shawn Blanc has a clever copyright in his blog footer:



I applied the format to design webliography Design Feast. Shawn’s version of the copyright speaks positively to an active web site. Not yesterday, nor last week or last year. Today.

The Quiet Designer of Typefaces: Adrian Frutiger

Image credit: jgb, Flickr

Before Helvetica (see The Cyclical Life of Helvetica: Revive, Resist, Rinse, Repeat), there was Univers. Designed by Adrian Frutiger in 1954, Univers will always remain a creation of its time and a distinct part of visul communication. Last May, Frutiger celebrated his 80th birthday. Another landmark moment of that month was the publication of Adrian Frutiger–Typefaces. The Complete Works. Its 400+ pages reveal the process behind Frutiger’s typographic designs. Though the title expresses finality, Mr. Univers is still sharpening his craft. From the little that I’ve read about him and his work, I realized that there isn’t much fanfare about Frutiger. This speaks to what I glean to be his quiet nature: industriously working and then working some more.