17 Designers Dish Their Best Advice Terry Lee Stone asks a group of seasoned design pros: If you could give young designers one piece of career advice what would it be? In other words: early in your career what do you wish someone had told you? Their thoughts may surprise you… 1. Sean Adamswww.adamsmorioka.com “What did I know? “What did I not know? 2. “Almost any situation gets better when you ask yourself this: How can I be most useful right now? Find More Advice: 29 Things That All Young Designers Need to Know. 3. “Emphasize your peculiar talents. “Also, think about your portfolio as a whole design statement and try to make the presentation format fit the work. 4. “Early on, if anyone had been able to tell me exactly the right thing, I would have dismissed it as preposterous because the world has just changed too much in unforeseen ways. “However, here’s my advice: get a second degree in something totally different— neuroscience, medicine, linguistics, or whatever feels right. 5. “Fortune demands being a professional. 6.
"Mobile Gardening," the Hottest New Trend? 6 Ways to Mash-Up Bikes and Gardens FriendOfHumanity/CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 Last year I participated in the installation of the Mobile Garden, a garden installed on a CTA train by Joe Baldwin of NoisiVelvet, which TreeHugger Jaymi wrote about here. Since then my interest in “mobile gardening” has led me to research ways people are creating mobile gardens of their own. Bicycle gardening is perhaps the most ingenious examples of mobile gardening I‘ve come across. 1. Instructables member, FriendOfHumanity, has a tutorial on how to create your own bike planter out of scrap wood, allowing you to take your herb garden for a spin. The blogger at A Year From Scratch created a bike planter out of a wire basket and some cheesecloth. 2. © Meg Meg’s example of a bicycle garden, at Upcycle Yourself, uses cheesecloth, old socks and burlap to create some mini gardens that she attaches to various parts of her bike. 1. You can see more photos of Meg’s bike gardens here and here. 3. © Colleen Jordan 4. Alastair Smith/CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 5. 6. It happens.
Who Will You Be? Dr. Theodor Seuss Geisel was a clever yet shy raconteur who created timeless work. For example; "Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind." It's one of my all-time favorite sayings and it's brilliant. It's not suggesting we disrespect those around us and for us to become unbearably arrogant. It points to the simple genius that says we need not worry so much about what others think about us. Don't Matter. Simon Sinek says leaders find others who believe in what they believe. Seldom does someone who fails to stand for something, find others who are interested in what they have to say or offer. Be who you are, and say what you mean, or someone else may try and make that decision for you. Kneale Mann image: dr. seuss
Tweet, Tweet, Go the Kindergartners – SchoolBook “Tweet, tweet, tweet!” chirped the kindergartners in Jennifer Aaron's class last week, as they settled onto the multicolored carpet and began to consider what they would like to send out into the Twitter universe that day. Three days a week, as the school day draws to a close, the children in Ms. Ms. First, Ms. "We had to add more stickers," began Lucy, who did not elaborate, so Ms. "We learned about time!" The memories of the preceding seven hours pile up. "There were no lame reflections," said another student, referring to the end-of-day pieces all the students write, which on this particular day were of exemplary quality. With a few edits to the message, cutting it down to size, Ms. Luke: "We added more days in school stickers. Ms. Class: "Yeah!"
The Portfolio of the Future Ignacio OreamunoPresident IHAVEANIDEA I know it makes me sound old but eleven years ago I was job-hunting for my first art director job. Since I’d decided to study web and art direction at the same time, I had a combination of interactive and print campaigns in my book. The advice I got from CD’s was always the same: “If you want to be a web developer, make a web portfolio. If you want to be an art director, make another one but don’t mix them up. Fast forward five years and suddenly traditional print portfolios began getting more interactive, as gutsy juniors added banners to their print campaigns. “How wrong he was,” I thought last year, as I looked at the juniors attending Portfolio Night 9 in Amsterdam, armed with all sorts of tablets, mobile applications and laptops. This is the first time since the days of the Mad Men that portfolios have truly transformed and it puts a lot more pressure on creatives trying to get that dream job. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
Swim Down Through a Sea of Trash With Dramatic, Eerily Beautiful Photos by Mandy Barker © Mandy BarkerSOUP: Bird's Nest. Ingredients: discarded fishing lines that have formed nest-like balls due to tidal and oceanic movement. Additives: other debris collected in its path. What would it be like to swim down through the estimated 100 million tons of trash swirling around in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch? Looking at the images in the U.K. © Mandy BarkerSOUP: Refused. "I have always been interested in collecting natural objects from the beach but began to notice that there was more and more man-made materials debris amongst them," Barker told TreeHugger in an email this week. Inspired By Photographer Chris JordanThe visually striking, even beautiful "SOUP" photographs were inspired, Barker says, by TreeHugger favorite Chris Jordan, who famously photographed the extensive collection of plastic pieces found inside albatross chicks after they died. © Mandy BarkerSOUP: Translucent.
Stop Working Hard to Remain Stupid Inexperience is under rated. Inexperienced people enjoy the courage of ignorance. They say, “Why not” rather than “we tried that.” Stupid and experienced: Benjamin Franklin said, “We are all born ignorant, but one must work hard to remain stupid.” I’ve enabled my stupidity by working hard at not changing. I’m the victim of perseverance gone wrong. Right experience: Thomas Edison wisely said, “Many of life’s failures are experienced by people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.” The wisdom of perseverance is adaptability. These days, I’m including inexperienced people in my circle of friends. Three Benefits of inexperience: Open minds.Quick to complain.Don’t know it can’t be done. Three Drawbacks of the inexperience: Talking too much.Neglecting relationships.Discounting ramifications. Six strategies for leveraging the inexperienced: Character matters more than experience. Stop working hard to remain stupid. Subscribe to Leadership Freak today. Like this:
Essay on why some colleges can't change Universities teach about the importance of societal and organizational change, but often have trouble changing themselves in any but the most superficial ways. As a psychology professor interested in both individual and organizational modifiability, I have studied organizations, including universities, and why it is so difficult for them to change. Meaningful organizational change requires five elements, and unless all five of them are present, the organization — whether a department, school, college, or university — remains static. 1. Ability to change. The organization needs to be able to change. Educational institutions may fail to change because they lack the material resources; but they also may fail to stay open because they lack the human resources. 2. Once when I was applying for an administrative position, I interviewed for a job at an institution that was not doing well financially and suffered from a structural deficit. 3. 4. 5.
6 Steps for Designers to Successfully Partner with an Illustrator Illustrators of work shown, clockwise starting at top left: Mark McGinnis, Edward McGowan, Daniel Krall, Kate Hindley and Susy Waters Pilgrim. (Editor’s note: This post was contributed by Hannah Fichandler with Connecticut-based, marketing and communications company Taylor Design. This post originally appeared on the company’s blog 247 Main.) I can’t draw. Well, that’s not entirely true. At least not the way I once could and certainly not the way an illustrator can. I’ve been fortunate to work with wide range of illustrators, not just in style or personality, but also locale. I’ve also been fortunate to have 99% of these collaborations work out really well. So, that got me pondering: What is it about my process of commissioning an illustration that is so successful and enjoyable? 1. 2. I have a collection of illustrators’ reps sites bookmarked, as well as an ever-evolving list of links to individual artists’ site. 3. I usually make initial contact with an illustrator by email. 4. 5. 6.
Scholten & Baijings Scholten & Baijings I have fallen in love with Scholten & Baijings textiles featuring fantastic plaids by by Thomas Eyck. They’re available for purchase at Gessato . Why Do You Need Charisma? On some level, we’d probably all like to be more charismatic. But for leaders, enhancing one’s charisma comes with a paradox: The best way to do it isn’t by focusing on your own needs and desires. It’s by determining how you can best advance the larger needs of your company In Understanding Charisma, the first installment in this series, I discussed a definition of charisma as a set of capabilities, or personal attributes. These include: the ability to project confidencean inner sense of purposethe capacity to engage othersskill in articulating ideas, vision, and goals While it may seem that certain people are born with these characteristics, they can also be learned, refined, and improved. There are four basic steps to becoming a more charismatic leader: 1) Decide which attributes of charisma you want to focus on, and why 2) Practice over time 3) Recognize that not all charisma is equally positive, and that leaders don’t always have to be charismatic 4) Practice over time.
Vlogging, Podcasting and More! Video: Five-Year-Old Girl Provides Insight on Popular Logos If the cute voice of the 5-year-old doing the voiceover on the video doesn’t make you smile, then certainly her opinions on popular logos will—either because of her lack of knowledge of some brands and obvious indoctrination from others. Adam Ladd, a graphic designer from Cincinnati, sat down with his 5-year-old daughter, Faith, and showed her more than two dozen logos, recording her reactions to them with a Phil Wickham song, aptly titled Eden, playing in the background. Faith obviously has no clue about some of them, and thus describes them as a typical 5-year-old might, comparing them to a marble, a shooting star or a parade elephant (sorry, Republican Party, you have your work cut out on this little one). Others, though, Faith knows quite well. She quickly points out the Disney logo (no surprise here) and equates the McDonald’s logo to a “‘M’ made out of fries.” PHOTOS: The Evolution of Corporate Logos