Lots of you, like me, freelance. Being a freelancer comes with all sorts of special perks, like working in your pajamas (don’t do this), having the freedom to pick up your dry cleaning during the work day (don’t do this either), and not paying taxes (if I have to say it, you don’t deserve the warning). Another totally not...
The trend of glass-like or glossy design effects comes and goes, and right now it’s definitely in, at least if you go by folks like Nintendo, Apple, and Adobe. A glossy effect can easily be achieved on any solid shape, photograph, or icon with a simple selection marquee and a white-to-transparent gradient. But if you create the effect using...
Legal, copyright, trademark, or intellectual property rights confusion? Notes guest author and legal expert Jean S. Perwin is taking questions. Jean is a Miami-based lawyer specializing in Intellectual Property Law, Entertainment and General Corporate Law for a wide range of clients, including graphic design firms, advertising agencies, visual artists and photographers. Her firm handles copyright and trademark registration, copyright,...
Brian Edlefson Brian Edlefson strives for more graphic thought and less visual clutter. As a lead designer in Whirlpool Corporation’s multi-disciplinary Global Consumer Design studio, Edlefson is responsible for infusing household brands like Whirlpool, Maytag, Kenmore, and Amana with smart graphic design strategies. Prior to moving to Michigan, Brian developed design solutions at Target, The Museum of Modern Art...
The Sensate wearable female condom, Tonita Abeyta, 2001 Skin: Surface, Substance + Design was originally published to accompany the 2002 exhibition of the same name at the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum in New York. The recent reissue includes a new introduction, ‘2nd Skin,’ by the show’s curator, Ellen Lupton. This updated prologue takes into account new work that’s...
In the midst of pressure for designers to keep technical skills and software repertoire fresh, it is just as important to keep feeding your creativity, and challenging the part of your brain that makes your work unique. However, it can be hard to create projects for yourself and produce them in a vacuum. That’s where a site like Illustration...
Is the Master Collection Right for You? Big box, big value? We all know that earlier this year Adobe released most of its Creative Suite 3 products (Photoshop, Illustrator, etc), but it wasn’t until this month that certain pieces of the CS3 lineup finally were released as well. This includes ever-popular After Effects and Premiere, as well as new...
I was just telling fellow blogger Nomi Altabef how I love textbooks-like books: classic, structured, almost cold, getting right to the point, and highlighting the importance of the topic. That’s what Typographic Systems is all about—rules, structure, organization. We’re not talking beach reading here, but that’s why I love it. Following up on her books Grid Systems and Geometry...
This blog has seen a rash of posts addressing the issue of design snobbery, from typography to magazine readership. I always find this an interesting topic because design is ostensibly art put to marketable use ‘for the people’, yet often tows a pretty snooty line when it comes to defending itself against aesthetic and professional impurities. (Several terrific fights...
Every year, the New York Chapter of the AIGA stages a podium discussion of emerging designers as part of their Fresh Dialogue/New Voices in Graphic Design series; each event is subsequently recorded in a publication put out by Princeton Architectural Press. It’s a handy little paperback with big print, a running side margin documenting incidents of audience participation (sometimes...
