Tall Tales From a Large Man at UMBC

Posted on by AIGA Baltimore

Using scientific proof and state-of-the-art multimedia techniques, Aaron James Draplin of the Draplin Design Codelivers a sucker punch of a talk that aims to provide bonafide proof of work, the highs and lows of a ferociously independent existence and a couple tall tales from his so-called career in the cutthroat world of contemporary graphic design.

Just a regular guy with a trajectory a little dirtier than yours, his talk is open to all oncomers brave enough to show up. If you are a youngster, you may find yourself inspired to attack your design future in a different way. If you are established, you may just leave feeling grateful you don’t have anything to do with him. Hard to say. Be there!

For more information visit Visual Arts UMBC

Date:
Thursday, April 9th
7:00 pm to 8:30 pm

Address:
University of Maryland, Baltimore County
First floor of the Albin O. Kuhn Library
1000 Hilltop Circle
Baltimore, MD 21250

Price:
Free and open to the public

Parking:
Top Floor of the Walker Avenue Garage. This is adjacent to the Library. For more information see the Parking Map.

  • Visitor parking is available in metered lots with either single space mechanical meters or a pay and display station.
  • Mechanical meters are enforced year round Monday-Friday from 7:30 am until 9:00 pm. Meter fees are $.25 for each 15 minutes, quarters only, maximum time of 5 hours. Parking Services does not guarantee that change will be available on campus. The mechanical meters are located at the Administration Drive Garage.
  • Pay and display visitor parking is $2.00 per hour and payable by MasterCard, Visa or exact currency (no change provided). Pay and display parking is enforced Monday-Friday from 7:00 am until 7:00 pm. Pay and display visitor parking is located at Lot 7, Lot 9, Commons Garage first level and Walker Ave Garage top level.
  • A visitor with a disabled plate/placard may park in a metered space on Administration Dr Garage without cost for a maximum of 5 hours. The Pay and Display visitor pay stations are ADA compliant and visitors with disabled plate/placard will need to pay when parking in these areas.

Human Rights Campaign: Designing for Equality

Posted on by AIGA Baltimore

During Design Week 2014, AIGA Baltimore was joined by Bob Villaflor, the Design Director for the Human Rights Campaign. Bob talked with us about his experiences with the organization and the importance of design in his work.

About the Human Rights Campaign (HRC)

The Human Rights Campaign (HRC) is the largest LGBT civil rights organization that is fighting for LGBT equality. They aim to spread the word about important LGBT issues by featuring and supporting high profile people who are behind their cause. If you know about the HRC, then Design Director Bob Villaflor is doing his job!

Bob joined the HRC eight years ago and is believed to be the first non-LGBT creative in the organization. His fresh perspective reflects on how far we have come and where it will take us.

What we do as Designers

To quote Bob, “Design plays a critical role in what we do.” With over two million supporters and members, the design team pushes to reach as many people as possible. HRC volunteers are knocking on doors, sharing educational materials, and gathering pledges, which are just some of the tasks the creative team has to support. Being responsible for the visual presence of the organization allows them to put a face to the goal of driving movement among the public.

The most easily recognizable visual aspect of the Human Rights Campaign is their logo. Until its current version, the logo didn’t really exist on a social level, so the design team aimed to consolidate the old version in a way that still reflected the company. The logo had to be simple, elegant, and honest—values inherent to the organization.

Formerly known as the Humans Rights Campaign Fund (HRCF), the HRC was founded in 1980 and went through several logo iterations (here’s just a few of them). In the most recent redesign, the HRC design team partnered with SYPartners of San Francisco in a yearlong rebranding effort. SYPartners helped to solidify the brand and eventually settled on the yellow equal sign on a navy blue square. This now iconic logo helped to give an identity to the movement by representing the HRC core values.

Bob explained, “The logo became something for people to rally around.”

A Tipping Point

In 2012, Chad Griffin joined HRC as the organization’s President, which marked the start of a growth point for the organization. Shortly thereafter, the Supreme Court announced that it would hear arguments on California’s Proposition 8, a ballot proposition that had been passed into law by California voters to deny rights for gay couples to marry. This announcement gave HRC the opportunity to brand the event for its supporters in Washington, DC. Realizing that Proposition 8 was a “court case about love,” Bob and his design team chose to make red the signature color of the campaign. In a bold move, the HRC logo was temporarily changed to muted pink on a red background to show its support for turning over Proposition 8 in early 2013.

In an unexpected turn of events, the campaign went viral, with celebrities and supporters like George Takei, Alicia Keys and Budweiser changing their Facebook and Twitter profile pictures in support. Fans took the campaign and ran with it, remixing and personalizing the logo. The reach was global to the point that it crashed the HRC website and to this day remains one of the most successful campaigns in Facebook history as well as one of the most retweeted of all time. HRC could not have planned for this one hesitant change to be so big, but it made people realize who supported who—which was a big thing to see.

To learn more about HRC, their logo and how it went viral, visit:
http://www.hrc.org/the-hrc-story/about-our-logo

Equality Magazine, Annual Report and Other Campaigns

In addition to their social media and campaign presence, the HRC design team is also responsible for the layout and design of Equality Magazine. At 250,000 copies distributed each quarter, Equality Magazine is the largest LGBT rights publication in the United States. The magazine helps bring attention to anti-LGBT organizations such as the National Organization for Marriage; it also endorses its supporters, recognizing their work in the movement.

The annual report serves as another opportunity to focus on both positive and negative world trends. For the 2013 annual report, HRC partnered with design agency Column Five to develop something that went beyond the standard data-heavy reports that can overwhelm readers. Research and data was compiled into a sharable, easily digestible infographic printed on the reverse side of a book jacket for the annual report. Doubling as a poster, the infographic was shared outside of the organization’s list of major donors.

The HRC design team tackles other campaigns, too, like the “Love Conquers Hate” campaign leading up to the 2014 winter Olympics in Sochi. Equality Magazine started this campaign to show support for the LGBT community in Russia. It was punishable to show LGBT support in Russia, so HRC encouraged Olympians and celebrities to share pictures of themselves with the Russian-language version of the “Love Conquers Hate” shirt across social media.

The Future

In the future, the Human Rights Campaign will continue to “fight for people’s lives” not only in the U.S., but also across the globe. Campaigns such as Project One America aim to share the stories of real LGBT people and their families in less-than-supportive areas such as Central Mississippi, Alabama and Arkansas. On the international front, HRC continues to share their materials, design, strategy, and knowledge with fellow supporters who are trying to raise awareness to audiences across the globe.

Q&A With Bob

What is the biggest hurdle to design around at HRC?
Joint projects. Other departments or agencies can be sensitive over their content.

What advice would you give to designers working with nonprofits who might be against riskier design moves?
Don’t be afraid to put something out there. Consolidating branding of HRC was a big move—so was changing the logo in support of Proposition 8—but it allowed the community to think, to interact with it. Design solutions do take a lot of buy in from senior management, but they do have to trust your decisions in this dynamic time for the organization and LGBT community.

How do you feel about living, working and making changes in Washington, DC—the political heart of the country?
Seeing change is incredible. My family and kids live in a city where lives are being validated—which is funny in a city like Washington, DC that at times can’t seem to get anything done. Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell was a recent win that was seventeen years in the making.

As a designer, how do you handle a bad stakeholder review?
Beer! Think less about the rejection and more about moving forward, about the mission. You are not going to win them all. Some days there is just no time to come up with something perfect and sometimes it’s junk. Other times, it’s about the longview. With HRC, there’s the luxury of not having to have tangible results like numbers, sales, revenue, but that’s not always the case.

Shannon Crabill is a New Media Specialist at T. Rowe Price. Outside of the Internet, you can find her dancing, riding her motorcycle and binge-watching home improvement shows on HGTV. Tweet her at @shannon_crabill.

Mitchell Cole is the web sales manager at Service Photo Supply. Most of his free time is spent indulging in some sort of gaming, controller or dice never far from reach. Find him on Twitter at @mc_mittens.

NPR: Design for a Non-Visual World

Posted on by AIGA Baltimore
One: Dissolve

The key to designing for listening is to realize that it is not quantitative. It is not about what it looks like, but about how long a user is listening. It is not about the type, the pixels, or the grids that we love so much, but about how the user feels when they are listening. Users want to be able to open a mobile or web app and start listening right away. Much like a high-quality, award-winning loudspeaker, it’s designed not to be seen and a user will often pay more for a seamless experience.

The challenge is that users are busy—they’re multi-taskers—and user interfaces can compete for their attention, so we need a different approach.

Two: Flow

In not designing a visual experience, the goal is to instead design a flow that will keep the user engaged. A ‘flow’ can be described as a structure or a language similar to what you would find in music. Just as verses, choruses, and bridges combine to create the flow of a song, the elements of good audio design combine to create an engaging listening experience. In that way, success is already programmed into the user experience.

“So much of what we know, and what we think, and what we feel, and what we remember is affiliated with how it all sounded.” — Colonel Chris Hadfield

An app designed as a listening experience should be extremely basic—only what’s necessary and without anything to distract the listener. It needs to be as easy as turning on the radio. For example, NPR’s app, NPR One, is responsive and is made to be tucked away behind another browser tab if you are listening to the radio while at work.

Three: Complement

The final concept to designing for listening is learning how to correctly read the audience. Like a good DJ, being able to read and to respond appropriately to the listener makes a better experience. People are busy and listening is often a parallel activity, so the challenge is to engage the listener by delivering the right programming all the time. Users’ habits—how or when they listen—are subtle signals that can help us deliver the best content.

The challenge is that NPR gives away their formula. The Application Program Interface (API) is available for free, which means anyone can take it, use it, remix it, and even make money off of it. A lot of people do the latter, but what they don’t have is the science or the algorithms behind the experience. Programs like Pandora use metadata to deliver a playlist, but not always in a way that equals what the user had in mind. The human element that NPR has created, of metadata and experience, is what makes a difference.

Q&A with Benjamin Dauer

What’s the Future of Public Radio?
In the future, public radio (especially NPR) will connect you to a handcrafted, personalized stream of local and national stories, both from shows you like and some we’ll surprise you with. You’ll be informed, entertained and connected to your community in a way that fits your life.

What is the biggest hurdle to design around?
NPR headquarters operates independently from local stations, but local stations do have needs that we try to address. For example, they want the functionality of listeners being able to donate money within the app while ensuring those funds stay local. A workaround hasn’t been figured out just yet, but little steps like linking to a donate page on website are a push in the right direction.

What advice would you give to designers working with nonprofits who might be against riskier design moves?
Educate the stakeholders. “Design is education.” Don’t show them how it looks, but how it will work. Show them a working example whenever possible to help support your reasoning.

As a designer, how do you handle a bad stakeholder review?
Beer! Take your ego out of it. It’s not really about you. In the case of NPR, it’s about the listener. I think about how I can give the listener that thing they want with all of these other crazy requirements.

Shannon Crabill is a New Media Specialist at T. Rowe Price. Outside of the Internet, you can find her dancing, riding her motorcycle and binge-watching home improvement shows on HGTV. Tweet her at @shannon_crabill.

Mitchell Cole is the web sales manager at Service Photo Supply. Most of his free time is spent indulging in some sort of gaming, controller or dice never far from reach. Find him on Twitter at @mc_mittens.

BMA’s Big Table Roundtable: A Conversation on Immersive Design

Posted on by AIGA Baltimore

On Saturday, October 18th, AIGA Baltimore opened its third annual Design Week at the Baltimore Museum of Art with a roundtable discussion on immersive spaces.

The Big Table is a project headed off by Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA) that strives to address questions and criticisms about art posed by visitors. Each year, a designer or a team of designers is chosen to address one question or idea. Bruce Willen and Nolan Strals from Post-Typography, Ellen Lupton and Abbott Miller from MICA and Cooper-Hewitt (respectively), and David Plunkert of Spur Design, have all designed for The Big Table over the past few years. They gathered together to discuss their concepts at the BMA in the Fall of 2014.

Gamynne Guillotte, Director of Interpretation & Public Engagement for the BMA, talks about the purpose and format of The Big Table.
Gamynne Guillotte, Director of Interpretation & Public Engagement for the BMA, talks about the purpose and format of The Big Table.
Words are Pictures are Words

How do contemporary artists use text in their work? Willen and Strals approached this question by considering language and how meaning changes depending on how it’s written. They created their immersive space, titled Words Are Pictures Are Words by using that same phrase in several contexts, including a room-sized infographic, showing how the meaning of the phrase changes depending on type, style, and arrangement.

Willen and Strals talk about their concept for Words Are Pictures Are Words.
Willen and Strals talk about their concept for Words Are Pictures Are Words.
Point, Line, Grid

“The idea becomes the machine that makes the art.” This quote by Sol Lewitt inspired Ellen Lupton and Abbott Miller to create the work Point, Line, Grid. They created a bulletin board-style grid that explores the way an artist thinks by inviting visitors to create and display their own artwork to dominate the room for the next year. The environment was created to point to the inspiring artwork while letting the visitors create something of their own.

Ellen Lupton talks about how they implemented the grid on the walls, and suddenly the room became an interactive experience for viewers...or shall we say, participants?
Ellen Lupton talks about how they implemented the grid on the walls, and suddenly the room became an interactive experience for viewers…or shall we say, participants?
Extra-Ordinary Objects

David Plunkett says that an object in a museum becomes something more important because it’s in a museum. He approached his Big Table project by studying the permanent exhibits in the contemporary wing and making a list of the common items he saw there and in an everyday environment. The resulting work, Extra-Ordinary Objects, is a room about objects one could find anywhere, remixed and displayed in ways that were unusual, presenting the viewer with a new, amusing way to see the relationships between those everyday objects. It will be on display in the Contemporary Wing until September 2015.

David Plunkert talks about a few of his extra-ordinary objects.
David Plunkert talks about a few of his extra-ordinary objects.

To see more photos from this event, check out the set on Flickr.

Greg Jericho spends an awful lot of time designing for clients that do not exist. Check out his work at gregoryjericho.prosite.com.

Kicking off with the Ravens Marketing Team

Posted on by AIGA Baltimore

Kicking off AIGA Baltimore’s Design Week 2014 at ADG Creative, the Ravens in-house marketing team sent in three of their best to talk about how Baltimore’s own NFL team thinks creatively about design and marketing. Bryan McDonough, Heather Blocher, and David Lang discussed how they target Baltimore football’s wide audience across print, digital, social media, and broadcasting in a fascinating presentation, all while showing off their flashy Ravens World Champion rings.

Marketing the Ravens

Emphasize consistency. That’s the team’s key secret for seamless collaboration. The Baltimore Ravens’ marketing team only joins forces with outside agencies occasionally. Almost all efforts take place in-house, even broadcasting. As a graphic designer for the Ravens, presenter Bryan McDonough described the group as being a “mini agency”.

The marketing team has to “churn and burn”—they’re ready to react. While most NFL creative teams ask “how does this help us sell tickets?”, the Ravens are always sold out, allowing more creative freedom. Each campaign piece still must work across all platforms, including print, digital, broadcast, and environmental. The organization also reaches a wide and inclusive audience of women, men, families, young fans, and seasoned fans.

If that wasn’t enough of a challenge, the NFL has strict geographical marketing regions when it comes to things like print collateral and tv ads. The Ravens are uniquely sandwiched between two neighboring teams: the Washington Redskins and the Philadelphia Eagles. Luckily, there are no borders on the digital front. Even with the NFL limiting Ravens from print and tv in areas geographically associated with other teams, the web provides ways to market beyond these borders without regional terms.

How an idea becomes a campaign

Each season’s new campaign begins after the playoffs. The success of the players on the field decides when to shift focus to the year ahead. At this point, the design team’s first deadline is printing the next season’s tickets by May. During the summer months, the team prioritizes working with Ravens sponsors.

Ravens' 2014 season tickets
Ravens’ 2014 season tickets

From the very beginning of each campaign, the marketing department’s creative process includes senior management, creative, marketing, and board representatives. Several concepts are narrowed down to the best two or three ideas. The public relations, digital, and print teams collaborate to select which concepts should move forward. Polished into solid presentations, the concepts must be clear to the point where the executives—who don’t necessarily have creative backgrounds—understand the direction and ideas.

In charge of overseeing these efforts, event presenter Heather Blocher serves as Senior Manager of Advertising & Branding. Heather started as an intern and officially joined the marketing group as her first job after college, a prime example of how team members are given opportunities for growth.

The one surefire way to win a campaign? Have Coach John Harbaugh buy in. If creative and marketing have his vote, then the players and fans approve. John can be tough, however. Even with free lunch in the cafeteria, Harbaugh recently put everyone on a diet. No more “Pizza Friday.” It’s just salad. At least everyone gets cake after a win, though. On the other hand, losses do affect morale. The next day everyone is bummed right along with the fans—and a lot goes into game day behind the scenes.

How to “Play Like a Raven”

Give it your all, 110%, on and off of the field. That’s what it means to “Play Like A Raven”—the team’s tagline and annual marketing campaign since 2009. Praised by coaches, players and fans, the phrase remains one of their most successful campaigns.

Focusing on the human element and illustrating the off-the-field “Play Like A Raven” concept, new photo shoots show players training and behind-the-scenes. Quotes from Coach John Harbaugh integrate into the final design to reflect this more personal tone. Landscape posters using this imagery portrayed the players as heroes and role models. The posters were envisioned as inspirational collectables distributed at stadium practice events leading up to the season opening.

Their 2014 marketing both hints back to the original “Play Like A Raven” campaign and pushes the idea to the next level. Fan shots became a major part of the previous campaign’s success. The logical next step uses these even more expansively. Updated photography showcases the vast Baltimore cityscape. A new style guide allows visuals to easily translate from print to web, mobile, and broadcast as the team continues to improve the level of consistency.

Taking the campaign online

Hashtags for the Baltimore Ravens were once inconsistent with mixed messages and sources. Fans generated some with others in the marketing department. For example, #relentless is not specifically related to the Ravens alone. Rather than join these existing and wider conversations, their own threads were started specifically for the Ravens’ team. David Lang, as the Ravens’ Senior Digital Media Manager, discussed how he oversees the website and digital presence, including social media and broadcasting.

David Lang, discussed how he oversees the Ravens' website and digital presence.
David Lang, discussed how he oversees the Ravens’ website and digital presence.

Tackling the confusion, the 2014 campaign includes just one hashtag: #playlikearaven. Since the Ravens are a newer team, creating an abbreviation like the Redskins hashtag—#HTTR for Hail To The Redskins—was deemed less meaningful and effective. Instead, #playlikearaven was trademarked. Beginning in 2014, posters and promotional materials added #playlikearaven, and this encouraged players and fans to share virally on social media.

The marketing team found creative ways to involve the players and the rest of the organization as the official hashtag gained popularity. The most positive and encouraging Facebook posts, tweets and photos were printed after sifting through thousands of social media posts. Displayed at the Ravens’ cafeteria entrance, these images help connect the staff and players with their fans. This interactive element that goes beyond an online “like” or “retweet” reinforces the idea that the Ravens marketing is not just a one-way conversation.

Outside of social media, President of the Baltimore Ravens Dick Cass is a driver for old school methods. Even though holiday cards are still printed, the marketing team did take to the streets late one night. With permission, the team stenciled graphics across the city using an environmentally safe paint from Germany to engage with their fans. But most often, the Baltimore Ravens leave street-level tactics to the fans themselves. They’re the ones who do guerrilla marketing best.

Photos by ADG Creative

Shannon Crabill is a New Media Specialist at T. Rowe Price. Outside of the Internet, you can find her dancing, riding her motorcycle and binge-watching home improvement shows on HGTV. Tweet her at @shannon_crabill.

Brian E. Young is an art director and magazine designer by day and artist by night. When not painting, he’s helping unlock imaginations via his blog and The Uncanny Creativity Podcast. Ask him anything: sketchee.com.

BLEND Recap: Tim Bojanowski at Zen West Road Side Cantina

Posted on by AIGA Baltimore

Last Tuesday, Tim Bojanowski spoke at AIGA Baltimore’s monthly Blend. Tim is the leading adviser and principal of Zest Social Media Solutions and to him and his team, brands concentrating only on increasing their number of followers are sweating the small stuff.

blendsm

He told us that online consumers are looking for information and that social media is as crucial to their search as Google. Brands that take of advantage of providing free information through their social media channels capitalize on an opportunity to build what he calls a “tribe.”

“A tribe of loyal followers is more likely to comment on, share, and read posts,” said Tim, “Each follower within the tribe subsequently possesses a higher potential to convert.”

To brands interested in building tribes over a massive following, Tim advises them to use storytelling. He said, “The best narratives follow a series of causality surrounding the brand’s niche in the market. They say, ‘I am good at these things, here’s how I do them and here’s why.’ Taking 20 minutes to create a post that tells a story about something your brand created will go farther to increase your social equity. More than relying on the grumpy cat.”

Joshua Uzzell is a Baltimore-based graphic artist who provides illustrative branding, web design and development services. Follow him @joshuzzell.

Touring through the National Parks Conservation Association’s Brand Journey

Posted on by AIGA Baltimore

When Scott Kirkwood joined the National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA), headquartered in Washington, DC, as the senior editor of National Parks magazine 9 years ago, he knew he had a lot of work to do. The magazine was in desperate need of a redesign, the annual report had been neglected, and the logo hadn’t been revised since dinosaurs roamed the planet. He could sum up the brand in one word: stale.

But he said “We can do better!” Scott buckled down and began making small tweaks to the design department’s production and nearly 10 years later he’s lived to tell the tale of the NPCA’s brand revitalization. His side-kick, Annie Riker (who came on as a designer at NPCA in 2006) joined him on Tuesday, January 28, 2014, to talk to a large audience of brand-hungry design lovers at Groove Commerce’s new digs in Harbor East.

Participants nodded in agreement as Scott and Annie revealed their views on cultivating client and partner relationships and what constitutes engaging content. Check out some of the highlights from our Twitter feed below and some great moments captured above.

Continue reading “Touring through the National Parks Conservation Association’s Brand Journey”

Free Event: Peter Corbett, CEO and Interactive Design Leader

Posted on by AIGA Baltimore

Peter Corbett, founder and CEO of iStrategyLabs, will speak Wednesday, September 18 at 7 p.m. at Stevenson University in a free event, open to the public.

A tireless champion of innovation, Peter Corbett is a globally sought-after speaker who generates unique and creative solutions, merging the virtual world with the physical.  He is a definitive leader among Washington D.C’s creative and technology scene, winning numerous industry awards, including 6 Addys for digital and experiential campaigns, two Living Labs Global Innovation Awards, as well as being named one of “The Most Influential Washingtonians Under 40” by Washington Life.

Peter’s interactive and marketing strategies have led to explosive, viral growth for his clients, including The Walt Disney Company, General Electric, Coca-Cola, and Volkswagen. He has also advised hundreds of early stage tech companies, founded the D.C. Tech Meetup, and created the DCWEEK festival.

“Peter Corbett helped put the D.C. tech sector on the map.” –Washington City Paper

Event Details

Peter Corbett
Wednesday, September 18 @ Stevenson University
Owings Mills Campus, Rockland Banquet Hall
100 Campus Circle
Owings Mills, MD

6pm: Reception
7pm: Lecture

This event is free and open to the public.

Peter Corbett is the Fall 2013 Artist-in-Residence for the Visual Communication Design program at Stevenson University. For more information about his work, visit http://istrategylabs.com

Enter the Designer

Posted on by AIGA Baltimore

Designers live in a world of challenges requiring unprecedented solutions, fostering the sort of individuals who want to lecture on or write about the details of their quests to teach those who will listen. These individuals who share their hard-earned secrets are, to other designers, what the Kung Fu master is to a student in a martial arts movie. Deke McClelland is known to practitioners of Illustrator and Chris Georgenes holds down the Flash animation dojo. Terry White is omnipresent in many areas of digital photography while digital painters follow Serge Birault.

This spring, AIGA Baltimore brought local design masters to the Ink & Pixels event at Towson University so they might impart their sage advice. Since the attendees reported hearing some very Zen-like wisdom that day, we couldn’t resist comparing their mastery to Kung Fu movies.

Our Design Masters were:

(For the sake of consistency, we’ll stick with the time-honored, generic title of “Kung Fu”, though the martial arts styles themselves vary according to the story being told.)

Your Style is Your Legend

“Your reputation precedes you,” says the lord to the old man, “You are said to be the Master of the Five-Element Fist. You believe you can defeat my oppressor?”

The old man’s style is what makes him worthy of the lord’s attention and has gotten him in for an interview. Were he not known for his mastery of the Five-Element Fist, a style explained to be an influence of the Ancestor System of Wuzuquan, the lord’s guards might have just locked down the fortress and lobbed fireballs at the old man until he went away.

Why do you design? Knowing the answer defines where you stand among other designers: understanding why you design is paramount to understanding how you design. Does your attitude towards what you do read like a technical manual, coldly stating, “I am a graphic designer”? Having a vague mantra represents a vague style, a style that is easily defeated by professionals who have a well-defined service to offer. Instead, consider  what it is you do, such as “I’m a print designer because I’m obsessed with color and its effect on everything” or “It’s 2013! Why do websites still look like this? That’s why I became a web designer: to make some decent sites”.  It’s the difference between saying “I know how to fight” or “I’m devoted to the Way of  the Thundering Mantis and will emerge victorious because of it”.

Presenting Worthiness

Before each Kung Fu movie challenge, the participants each give a preliminary demonstration, a quick succession of impressive moves which acts as a display of their respective knowledge of the art.

Demonstrating who you are and what you can do is vital to finding jobs. Effective networking is the ability to make meaningful connections with strangers combined with an online presence for your new connection to reference. Make yourself look good by creating a designer’s resume, using your tools of the trade instead of a Word template to create something that looks like experience. Have people look at it and give specific feedback. Choose appropriate typefaces and stay away from those free fonts: the measurements on those are often not professionally calculated. Bad type is the Egg Fist of the design world, a sure sign of an amateur.

In the movies, the Kung Fu student will face opponents possessing abilities the student is unaccustomed to. Upon defeating the opponent, an understanding of how to defeat a future adversary, through gain of skill, is achieved. In other words, the student learns something.

Apply for every job with an intention to learn a valuable lesson. Whether that lesson is a how to calculate web layout grids or why you should thoroughly explain your contract agreements, these experiences are necessary for achieving Design Mastery: no job is without merit. It’s important to step outside of known abilities in order to discover unknown ones, the ones that can only be resolved through battles fought with CTRL+Z and Google search dead-ends. Without accepting possibilities of conflict, there can be no understanding of resolution. And without an understanding of resolution, you will end up with disastrous image enlargement results.

The Non-Photo Blue Pencil is Mightier than the Sword

“Your weapons,” said Yoda with grim certainty, “you will not need them.”

Not heeding this advice, Luke hung onto them out of fear of being without. His weapons were a crutch. He didn’t need them to face his future that day (in fact, he freaked out a little), they didn’t help him later in Cloud City (when he got his hand cut off), and it wasn’t weapons that finally turned his father on the Emperor (that was the result of Vader’s heart growing three sizes that day).

Star Wars isn’t a Kung Fu movie proper, understood, but the point is similarly illustrated.

Build the use of tools into your workflow. Opt to draw out ideas on paper instead of in Sketchbook Pro. Choose to carefully light, arrange, and frame an image instead of spending time in Photoshop to achieve a similar effect. Sketch out or identify in writing the sort of typeface you would like to work with before searching your library. Spend as much of the process as possible without turning on your workstation, writing notes theorizing how something can be achieved, the steps involved, and exactly where to go for help.

Best Offense = Good Defense

The first thing Mr. Miyagi taught Danny was how to wash the car, paint the house, and sand the floor. These seemingly nonsense tasks turned out to be defensive maneuvers that kept Danny out of harm long enough to successfully execute the Crane Kick.

Creatively, to know why you are doing something prepares a defense for it. Reasons why you choose a typeface should be clear, concise, and straightforward, like an elevator pitch. The more words it takes to explain something in a disagreement, the more it sounds like an excuse.

Preparing for defense is also important on the business side for when an explanation is required as to why you will not be doing a complete revision for free. The design process shouldn’t be treated any different than any other journey: if there’s preventable backtracking involved, someone’s got to account for the resources used. Knowing the contract, discussing the process, and identifying the design stages are ways to keep both parties informed and attentive.

Most Honorable

We’re grateful to our Design Masters for sharing their wisdom. Also, many thanks to the legion of portfolio reviewers who came out to give the students an honest look at what worked and what they needed to improve.

After all, without a review, one is just breaking wooden boards and, as Bruce Lee will tell you, “Boards don’t hit back.”

Greg Jericho spends an awfully lot of time designing for clients that do not exist at his equally fake company, Myopic! Studio. Kate Lawless strategizes content for the web, develops e-learning, and designs digital signage by day. By night, she’s a freelance designer and socializer-extraordinaire.

Design Week 2012 RECAP!

Posted on by AIGA Baltimore

Complete and utter madness yields lovely, lavish design…GO BALTIMORE DESIGN WEEK!
– Seth Kaiser, Bmore Design Week attendee

Sarah's winning design

Aw, rats…

On October 15, we began our first annual Bmore Design Week: five days of celebrating design in Charm City. While there’s no shortage of art festivals year-round, Design Week gave us the opportunity to show how the celebration of our local pop culture can become great publicity work for the town and its people.

The opening event was the Out of My Hands Workshop where, Sharpies at the ready, designers got together to create a unique Baltimore alphabet inspired by this great city. Helen Armstrong and Zvezdana Stojmirovic, authors of the book Participate: Designing with User-Generated Content, kicked off our Design Week with a unique workshop where designers let go of control and allowed their visions to be built as a team. Each designer was given a sheet of paper with an outlined letter and asked to designate a rule or guideline inspired by Baltimore that would guide the next designer to fill the letter with images related to that rule. AIGA’s Jennifer Marin was intimidated by the thinly outlined letter and its theme at first. “Would I go abstract and choose a theme that would stifle the next person’s creativity? Or a more cliché concept like Baltimore Crabs?” she asked.

After a few minutes, she chose “Salty Like Old Bay” as the topic of her letter. Some of the other letter themes included the Ravens, Baltimore City Rats, Waterfront Living, Brick Row Homes, and the good old 695 Traffic Jam. In five minute intervals everyone passed their letter forms to the right and watched as a unique alphabet was born. It was great to see how each person interpreted the individual themes.

A special thank you to all who attended, Helen and Zvez, and MICA for donating the space. Stay tuned to see the final artwork.

Tuesday brought us to Mother’s in Federal Hill for Industry Trivia Night. As the teams entered the bar with names like “The Ringers” and “Winner Winner Chicken Dinner,” it was obvious we had assembled some creative people for this challenge. The questions covered design, the printing industry, advertising, marketing, photography, and Baltimore.

Our trivia host, Patrick Storck, asked 50 questions that got trickier with every round. Who designed the Nike Swoosh? What musical was based on a 1990 John Waters movie (not so fast: Hairspray was made in 1988)? Pantone mugs, camera lens shot glasses, and other design-related prizes awaited the victors.

Wednesday exploded into Creative Alliance with the Shutterstock-sponsored Pixels of Fury, an ‘art fight’ where the contestants are given 20 minutes to dream up, design, and finish a project, the subject of which is revealed at the beginning of the round. National President of AIGA, Doug Powell, and Bob Shelley, AIGA Baltimore’s first chapter president were on hand as a judges. The first round of designers were Dave Colson, Sarah Jennings and Dirk Torrijos, their task was to create something that inspires them about Baltimore.

Round Two saw Micah Piccirilli’s crab project and Bob Gillespie’s crab project fighting each other, while Jill Blum chose a Smalltimore theme. Each minute revealed something new and clever in each design, some added seconds before time was up. Judges and audience voted Micah into the Championship Round.

Sarah came into the round slowly, carefully choosing the right images for her Bmore Rat frame, while Micah ran with a representation of our friendly President Street windshield maintenance crew. Sarah won the judges, Micah won the audience, and everyone went out to John Davis’ photo set-up to act silly for the camera.

Sarah Jennings and her award

Sarah and the coveted Furious Pixel

Local design studio Post Typography gave a brilliant lecture on Thursday. In a beautifully rustic and open space at 2640 Saint Paul St., guests came and gathered round for local treats, pies from Dangerously Delicious Pies and coffee from Zeke’s Coffee. We settled down in our seats to enjoy custom lettering and hear stories of success, great misses, and ways to approach the same project differently each year.

Friday saw attendees visiting three of the city’s design studios. First up was Baltimore Print Studios, where Kyle and Kim invited us into their fully equipped letterpress and screen print shop in Station North. They explained the different presses in the studio, the history of printing, and led the attendees in a hands-on press demonstration.

Next was Fastspot, housed in a Butcher’s Hill rowhome, where Kurt showed the group around and explained the history of the firm and the type of work they do. He talked about their workflow and the culture of the studio: open-concept, no doors, and different types of work stations.

Our last tour was B. Creative Group, an inter-disciplinary studio in Woodberry. Described by the owner, Christian, as a creative agency, the studio does both print and web design for regional and national clients. During the tour, we got insight on how B. Creative Group develops within a collaborative environment while seeing examples of their award-winning design work and a recent proposal.

The first annual Baltimore Design: some were inspired, some were educated. Everyone definitely had a blast. Clear that calendar for October 2013 because as good as it was this year, it will be a do-not-miss event for sure as we’ll also be celebrating AIGA Baltimore’s 25th anniversary!

some of the AIGA Baltimore Board

AIGA Bmore. We’re a little… different.