Graphic Design, Sustainability, Design Center, Fine Art, Vacant Cities, Internet, Branding, Typography, Education, Photography, Speaking Engagement, Web Design, Printmaking, Tools, Interview

Last October, AIGA Baltimore sponsored Create Don’t Hate with Worldstudio. This was a mentoring program for high school students in the Baltimore area. Graphic designers were matched up with students interested in visual arts from Patapsco and Patterson high schools. The groups worked together to create posters that later on could become billboards throughout the city. The program lasted four weeks, with students and mentors meeting once a week.

Last week, I listened to Michael Bierut present “My Life as a Font” at a UMBC/AIGA Baltimore event. He worked his way through the alphabet, showcasing a project for each letter and discussing the typeface used. But what I really enjoyed hearing were all the lessons he seemed to pick up along the way.

Katie McKenna Daniels is trying to save the planet one sustainable design at a time. As the design director for Vermilion Design in Boulder, Colorado, she created logos for Noodles & Company, Bingham Hill and the CU Art Museum of the University of Colorado, and it was at Vermilion that she learned the importance of reducing her clients’ environmental impact. She recently relocated to Maryland and started her own business, McKenna Daniels Design.

I recently got a new iPod and realized there are some good and fun apps out there for design, so I thought I would share some that I came across in my search.

iBlueSky: $9.99
Use this app to map your brainstorming. Create a collection of ideas, thoughts, and suggestions and email them as a PDF or PNG.

I’ve been wanting a letterpress for a long time. I was checking eBay periodically, but the inexpensive ones need a lot of work and have a platen area (the printing area) not much bigger than a business card. The nicer presses are hundreds of dollars and still only have a platen around 6 x 8 inches.

The alphabet only has 26 forms, yet each shape can be interpreted in so many ways. Here are several examples of the letter A in serif and san-serif faces.

Everyday, I come home excited to check my email, searching for the one titled “Today” in the subject line. I am welcomed with inspirational images from Eric Baker of Eric Baker Design Associates and Design Observer. Eric’s “Today” series is a collection of images he has found on the web which he then emails to a large group of artists or posts to the Design Observer website. Sometimes there is an obvious theme, but most of the time they are random.

This past Wednesday at the Windup Space, Guy Arceneaux and I gave presentations for Aquent’s first roundtable discussion event. The evening was focused on a dilemma I think many print designers are finding. The print market is over saturated with designers, and the web market is in need for more designers. Based in print design, I have been transitioning more into web because of a need for my job and my own personal curiosity.

For a long time, I thought “sustainable” meant recycled paper, wind farms, solar energy and dollar signs. But now I’ve started thinking of it in another way.