Lists for designers galore

The 50 things Every Graphic Designer Should Know
On Noisy Decent Graphics there was a link to a neat list of things that graphic designers should know. Each bit of advice has a fun illustration with it.

Jan would be happy to see this one. She has definitely prepared us to justify our decisions and not design just to decorate.

I've dealt with this one a lot. I have to learn not to pick too many battles with the words people.

Make sure to check out the full list. It's actually filled with great advice.

99 Sites All Designers Must Know About

On Just Creative Design I found a list of web resources for designers. I thought this might be useful for us to take with us as we enter the scary real world of design. It has everything from web design to video and even typography. And of course, it features sites we've all come to know well, such as colour lovers and dafont. Check it out!

Font songs & personal logos

Font Songs

 On Noisy Decent Graphics, I stumbled across a funny post on font songs. Essentially, people have taken song titles and somehow incorporated the name of a typeface. A few of my favorites include:

I shot the serif
Oops I Didot again
Wind beneath my Wingdings

I think they are so funny!



Personal Logos
One thing I've been struggling with is coming up with a personal logo to use for my online and mini portfolios. I wanted to try to somehow incorporate my name because I wanted potential employers to be able to remember it, but I haven't come up with a solution yet. This site definitely helps get the creative juices flowing. It's always fun to see what others have come up with. Here are a few of my favorites.

 

Penguin phone covers & Stress Tips

Penguin iPhone Case
My manager recently got the most adorable iPhone case I've ever seen. It turns her phone into a penguin!

I love it! It makes me wish I had an iPhone. If you do, and you love it as much as I do, you can get it on Amazon.

Stress Tips from Ben
I know we are in the home stretch, and with getting our print editions finalized, working on iPad designs and putting together our many portfolios, our lives can be pretty stressful. Ben from Noisy Decent Graphics has some pretty good advice on how to stay positive about your workload. Here are some highlights (directly from his post):

1. Work when you work best
I'm a morning person 100%. I could get up at 5am every day and be very happy. At the other end of the day by 10pm I'm ready for bed. I've fallen asleep in every pub and every house party I've ever been too.

So working late never works for me. Very quickly diminishing returns set in. If I have loads of work to do I go to bed early and set the alarm for 5am. And you know what? I get more done, at a quicker pace than I would have done in the evening. That's partly because of the ever approaching deadline of the day starting, but it's also because your brain is alert and you can make better decisions, faster.

3. Don't do everything on your to do list
A big moment came in my life about 5 years ago. I used to regularly write To Do lists for each day. I never managed to get to the bottom of the list. If there was 10 things to to I'd manage 7. But then I realised that was OK. Not everything gets done. That's life. And that was one of the most liberating experiences of my working life.

Now I write a To Do list with the most important at the top (note NOT the most urgent). They get done first. And if the stuff and the bottom doesn't get done. It doesn't get carried over. It doesn't get done. You soon find yourself putting all the silly 'nice to have' things in the bottom bit and that's like therapy, getting them all out of your head. But then you find yourself writing shorter and shorter to do lists. Which is kind of the goal.

Make sure to check out his blog for other tips!

Looking back & fun shipping graphic

Looking back
Lately I've had more fun rummaging through the archives of noisy decent graphics than just using the latest post, so I decide to stick with that for this week. I found a post about one of the first jobs Ben applied for as a graphic artist. Turns out it was a pornographic magazine. At the interview they made him design a page in an hour. These are some sketches he found of work he did to prepare before the interview:

"I didn't get the job and I was told that my layouts weren't, er, graphic enough (not the graphic you and I mean)," Ben wrote. Too funny!

Fragile!
On davidthedesigner I found this really neat post about a fragile shipping label. I think putting graphics like these on boxes that might travel different countries and be handled by people speaking different languages is much more effective than using words. I think that this image is much more universal and may even have more sway in convincing people to be more careful.

Found typography and tractors in the produce section

More Found Typography
Noisy Decent Graphics hasn't been updating as much lately, so I decided to go back to the archives. I actually found a posting that highlighted the found typography of Eric Tabuchi while traveling the highways from Los Angeles to Santa Barbara. I thought this was a fun example of what we did. I wonder how long it took him to find all the letters? Was it just one trip?

What is that tractor doing in the produce section?
While I was in Springfield, IL, I went to County Market and was surprised to see a tractor sitting right in the middle of the produce section. I just had to climb up on it and have my picture taken...it wasn't until I climbed off that I noticed the sign that said "please don't ride the tractor." Oops! Anyways, I thought it was a neat way to display that they are selling local farm fresh foods. Once again, design pops up everywhere.

Trench signs and Inspiration

Trench Signs
On noisy decent graphics this week I found a posting about trench signs at the Imperial War Museum. This one's my favorite:

I know that the holes aren't part of the original design, but it adds to the design–and the sign's warning!

Concept Inspiration
I was flipping through a textbook back from my graphic design class, Graphic Design Solutions and I came across the 1980 Volkswagen ad that inspired me to become a designer many years ago. I don't even remember where I first saw the ad, but after I saw how creative and clever it was, I knew that I wanted to be a designer of some kind. The concept is just brilliant to me, so I wanted to share and maybe help inspire others to continue to create beautiful designs!

Large scale crossword puzzles and tsunami coverage

Larger than life crossword puzzle

This is a fun way to use design to encourage tourism! Noisy decent graphics posted a link to a story that The Telegraph posted on the world's largest crossword puzzle. It's home is the Ukraine in a city called Lvov. Clues for the 100 ft high puzzle are scattered around the city's major landmarks, and tourists are encouraged to see the city and collect clues as they go.

Once the clues are collected, they can begin to guess the answers to the puzzle and come back to the building where the answered are lit by fluorescent lights to see if they were correct. Not only does this puzzle look fun but it also encourages people to visit the city, or for those who already live there, it gives a fun reason to go exercise for the day to find the clues.

Coverage of Japanese Tsunami
I am so saddened by the devastation that this earthquake and Tsunami have caused over the last couple of days, and I can't imagine how I would feel if my loved ones were there when it happened.

Tsunamis are natural disasters that are hard for many people to understand. I am one of those people who were confused by what exactly causes Tsunamis to take place. CNN had a pretty neat animation on their site that illustrated what happens when a tsunami takes place. It is really simple, but I think it really helped me to understand the process from the earthquake to the tsunami. There's also a basic definition of a tsunami and an infographic showing where and when some of the worst recorded ones took place. I can't seem to figure out how to post the animation directly onto my blog, but make sure you check out the link!