Save The Date: AIGA Baltimore Design Week 2018

Posted on by AIGA Baltimore

Celebrate & examine design beyond the margins

What boundaries does design face in Baltimore? What boundaries have we overcome? How could we do better?

This year’s AIGA Baltimore Design Week is an exploration of these and other topics related to the boundaries – real and artificial – that constrain, separate, protect, and define us. As designers, as Baltimoreans, and as people.

Join us, along with luminaries from Baltimore’s academic and design communities, for a series of events and discussions as we look back at developments that shaped Baltimore design over the last year, and look ahead to what’s next.

Stay tuned for full event details, and join the discussion on social media with #BMOREDW18

Event Lineup Preview

From Reviewee to Reviewer: Ink & Pixels From the Other Side of the Table

Posted on by AIGA Baltimore

I began attending Ink & Pixels in my junior year at Towson University. At the time, I was preparing to screen into the design program in order to complete my BFA in Graphic Design. The screening requires a phenomenal portfolio from all candidates to secure a spot, and as I walked into Ink & Pixels I thought I had one. I remember thinking how blown away the reviewers were going to be with my awesome portfolio and design skills. So I sat down across from my first reviewer and introduced myself.

Shockingly, the reviewer was appalled by my lack of professionalism. Despite my best efforts to enhance my appearance that day—I wore a shirt tucked in with a tie to match my personal brand colors—my work and portfolio presentation just didn’t stand up to the test. Looking back, it wasn’t much better put together than a wet rat. But I was stupidly cocky.

After a few questions in, I warmed up to the reviewer and we found our level ground. She complimented my work where it was deserved while detailing every nook and cranny that I needed to change in order to create a quality portfolio. My reviewer took the time to ask me about where I wanted to be professionally after graduating. She asked what designers influenced me and gave me tips to make my goals easier to obtain.

In the weeks to follow, when I was accepted into TU’s BFA program, I decided that my reviewer’s tough love was the best advice I could have gotten. I appreciated the feedback so much that I decided to return to Ink & Pixels the following year, too.

The review sessions from both Ink and Pixels ‘13 and ‘14 allowed me the opportunity to talk with professional designers, some of whom were hiring managers and many of whom I am still in touch with. They told me exactly what I needed to hear and didn’t sugarcoat it. No one held my hand nor did I receive a lollipop at the end. These professionals were there to make a real difference in the way I think and create as a designer, and the advice they gave me extended beyond just presenting my work.

In December 2014, I graduated with my BFA in Graphic Design from Towson University. Before graduation, I put together a fantastic portfolio using everything I had gained from Ink & Pixels. I also used the connections I made with my reviewers to get invited to 10 different interviews. Yes, 10! Those connections got me a full-time job.

So, now it’s my turn to dish out advice: if you’re a student thinking about attending an Ink & Pixels conference in the future, don’t think; DO. It will change your future.

For Ink & Pixels 2015, I knew it was time for me to give back as a portfolio reviewer. I helped several students take a look at their portfolios from a new perspective, guided them on their work and their portfolio presentation, and dished out all the advice and lessons I had learned over the past couple of years.

I reached out to each student I was fortunate to meet, and have even been able to pass on a resumé here and there to hiring managers who may have a fit for the graduating student. It feels fantastic knowing that I am now able to help make a difference in their careers.

A few more words of advice: if you’re a student who has passed through Ink & Pixels and working as a professional, please give back. We can continue to make sure great design is being ushered out on to the world, especially in Baltimore.

Register for Ink & Pixels Portfolio Review!

Liam Clisham, an AIGA member since 2012, owns and operates Five31, completing motion and graphic design for a variety of large and small business, including Exelon/BGE, Keller Williams, and recently Discovery Communications.

How to Give and Receive a Good Design Critique

Posted on by AIGA Baltimore

Why is critique so important?

As designers, we don’t design in a vacuum. A good designer will need to learn to take the feedback from their peers, clients, and bosses to solve a particular design problem. Critiques will also help you broaden your communication skills as a designer, as there is always the opportunity to articulate why you did what you did or to better explain your idea to the reviewer if they don’t see it as clearly as you do.

A good critique can involve both positive and negative feedback, which can be tricky to navigate. Here are some quick tips on how to give–and receive–good design feedback during a critique.

How to give a good critique:

The Love Sandwich
The best way to approach critiquing someone else’s work is to sandwich the feedback with love. If you think of your critique as the sandwich, the bread would be what you “love” about the work and the middle—the fillings—would be what you didn’t like as much.

First, tell your fellow designer what aspects you like about the piece, whatever they may be. Be descriptive. Instead of just saying “I like it” explain why you like it while using specific examples from the design whenever possible.

Next, move onto the constructive criticism. If you think certain aspects of a design aren’t working, try to explain why or offer suggestions on how they can be improved. Asking the designer questions may help them to see problems in the execution of the design that they may not have seen on their own.

You may also want to limit your use of personal pronouns, like “you,” to make sure your critique is about the design work and not about the designer. We all feel personally about our work, but during a critique it’s best to separate the person from the piece. For example, say you have a critique about a line intersection. You may want to say, “The way this line intersects with that line…” instead of “The way you intersected this line with that line…”. This will help reassure the designer that the criticism is about the work and not about them, as designers.

You don’t have to agree or like the decisions of the designer but their work deserves honest feedback. Put yourself in their shoes. If they are brave enough to share their work and ask for feedback, then they deserve to get that, both the good and the bad.

Finally, don’t forget to repeat or elaborate on what you liked about the piece so that the critique ends on a positive note. This way, the designer knows the piece may need some reworking, but also that there are aspects of the design that work as-is, too.

How to receive critique well:

A Grain of Salt
Hopefully, your fellow designer will follow the Love Sandwich guidelines and give you a great, honest critique. During a critique, It’s important that when you hear the good and the bad feedback to take it with stride. Design isn’t math. There are no right and wrong answers; only subjective opinions that may differ from one designer to another.

That being said, remember that a critique is about your work and making it the best it can be; it shouldn’t be about you. If you disagree with specific feedback, explain your decisions thoughtfully but also listen to what’s being said. Remember, those who are giving critiques generally do so because they want to help you grow as a designer, so try not to get defensive or take their criticisms personally.

And, if you don’t agree with specific comments you receive during a critique, it’s okay to ask for other opinions, too. Baltimore is filled with great designers who are willing to help and who love to give a good critique. There are also online resources like Dribbble or Behance that you can log into and share your work with others around the globe. Anyone, even a non-designer friend or coworker whom you trust to give honest and constructive feedback, can be a good resource. And, a good round of feedback is always better than no feedback at all.

Students and recent graduates! Want to have your work critiqued by Baltimore area design professionals? Register for Ink & Pixels, AIGA Baltimore’s Student Design Conference, before it is too late.

What’s the best or worse feedback you have ever gotten during a critique? What advice would you give to someone taking part in a design critique for the first time?

Related Articles:

The 4 essentials of a design critique

The Art of the Design Critique

Design Criticism and the Creative Process

Photo by Jeremy Drey for AIGA Central PA

Kate Lawless often daydreams about how she can make a full-time job out of what she does for AIGA Baltimore. When her head isn’t in the clouds, you can find her designing communications, digital signs, documentation, and online software demonstrations and interactive elearning for the operations department of a large healthcare company in Baltimore. Tweet her at @katereeez

Shannon Crabill is a New Media Specialist at T. Rowe Price. She has a love for social media, tech, all things do-it-yourself, baking, coffee and the occasional cringe-worthy pun. 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

The Value of Design: MICA’s Social Design Fellowship Program

Posted on by AIGA Baltimore

Traditionally the designer’s role was to communicate someone else’s vision, however as the practice has evolved designers are now using their well honed design thinking skills to provide solutions to problems that affect our society on a larger scale. You may know it as Social Design, yet when asking people what the definition of social design is, you tend to receive a varying number of answers.

In April, AIGA Baltimore joined Maryland Institute College of Art’s Robert W. Deutsch Foundation Social Design Fellows to hear from Director for Design Practice and MICA Master of Arts Social Design (MASD) program Mike Weikert and MASD fellows; Mira Azarm, Briony Evans Hynson, Jonathan Erwin and Becky Slogeris. Providing insight into what effective social design is, why designers deserve a seat at the table in social initiatives and, more specifically, how MICA’s Social Design program and Robert W. Deutsch Foundation Social Design Fellowship cultivated and propelled their passion for social intervention.

After a brief introduction by AIGA Baltimore’s Jami Dodson and Jennifer Marin, Mike Weikert opened the presentation by giving us an idea behind the thought process that brought about the MASD program and the Robert W. Deutsch Foundation Social Design Fellowship. The impetus for this fellowship came as Weikert realized that upon completing the intensive 1-year MASD graduate program, students were ready to translate the knowledge they had gained into real world applications. With this understanding, Mike decided it was time for the students to get out in the community and start utilizing those skills.

The Robert W. Deutsch Social Design Fellowship

Working with Jane Brown and Neil Didriksen from the Robert W. Deutsch Foundation, Weikert built a fellowship that provides two graduates a stipend, accommodations, and support to stay an additional year continuing the research and implementation of their project.

The program emphasizes four key components: (1) Keep innovative ideas and talent in Baltimore. (2) Demonstrate the value of design in addressing social problems (a core objective of MASD). (3) Focus on significant real world challenges facing our communities. (4) Provide a foundation to generate additional support and a sustainable context for the program’s work and its graduates. The fellows are also encouraged to build their own social design practice and context by creating new work, networks, funding resources as well as advocating for the discipline and practice of design.

And build their practice they did, as we heard from multiple fellows who shared the impact they made and continue to have, in part due to the MASD program and Robert W. Deutsch Fellowship. They also expressed just how important a role design plays in spurring social change, using design thinking to create sustainable solutions to communities of need.

Mira Azarm

The first MASD fellow of the evening was Mira Azarm, AIGA DC President, who revealed that after spending over 10 years as a communications designer her knack for getting involved behind the scenes and constant hunger for professional change led her to the MASD program where she began to “unlearn everything I had learned up until that point”.

With her focus in the fellowship pertaining to food access, Mira worked with Gather Baltimore (a group that collects unused and unsold food to distribute it to those around Baltimore) in an effort to help them expand their outreach efforts. This experience led her to one of the most resonant lessons of the evening: the design shouldn’t be bigger than the problem you’re attempting to solve. Or, as Mira so aptly put it, “Maybe your design is not that important,” a sentiment echoed in the fellows’ presentations.

In her post-fellowship work with Gather Baltimore, she continues to attack food access issues around the area, currently working to reduce food waste in DC schools. She also teaches in the MASD program and advocates the value of design thinking teaching the creative process to students in “non-creative” disciplines through the UMD Academy for Innovation and Entrepreneurship. Mira wrapped her presentation with 4 keys learned in the fellowship, “Change whenever you can. Grow wherever you can. View design as a change maker. Facilitate innovation.”

Briony Evans Hynson

Briony shared her social design initiatives and insights from the past ten years, whether at MASD or otherwise. In speaking of her experiences she emphasized the need for collaboration in social design, allowing for personal expertise of the people involved and possession, or lack thereof, of a college degree shouldn’t limit one’s input.

Striving to work across disciplines and focused on directly impacting people, Briony believes that the creative process can provide new avenues for intervention. With her knowledge of sculpture and 3D media, she takes a hands-on approach to many of her projects, including teaching carpentry in Anacostia. This ultimately led to the development of a community arts center that acts as an international artist exchange program and community arts hub. She credits this experience with opening her eyes to the broader needs of underserved communities.

Several social initiatives later and Briony found herself in a similar spot as Mira described, looking for a way to change her perspective, which led her to the MASD program. At MICA she jumped right in and got hands on, working to provide kids in low-income areas of Baltimore with access to the basic human right of play. While her thesis work provided a design strategy and theory to transform a vacant lot into a place for kids of the neighborhood to play, being awarded with the Deutsch Fellowship grant allowed her to successfully implement her plan: turning an eyesore into a point of pride within the community.

Jonathan Erwin

The next speaker, Jonathan Erwin, stressed the need for collaboration and transparency throughout the social design process. Driving the point deeper, Jonathan shared an early initiative to remove a community garden that had degraded into a neighborhood dumpsite, impacting residents’ health and community pride. He showed how poor collaboration from a previous initiative becoming a blot on the community, a social-design-gone-bad scenario, and resulted in him undoing what should have been someone else’s social good. “On the bright side” he said, “I got a nice home-cooked breakfast from appreciative residents.”

With the belief that it’s the people that matter, Jonathan sought to further improve social capital of residents in the McElderry Park neighborhood in Baltimore. He demonstrated the power of design by creating a community newsletter that works to open dialogue amongst residents and restore a sense of ownership to the people living in the area.

Becky Slogeris

Wrapping up the lecture portion of the evening was Becky Slogeris whose roots in education and art run deep, providing a primary focus area for her social design practice, centering on changing apathy in school children and the backlog of teachers. Researching deeper into the issue, she found that students didn’t see a real-world connection to their schoolwork and teachers were concentrating on curriculums with no time to focus on the students themselves.

She worked with Franklin High School in Baltimore to develop a plan where the lessons were relevant and useful to the students. Using a service learning program, students revitalized a vacant lot, taking stock in their community while seeing real-world uses for math and science. During her fellowship she did curriculum design, providing professional development tools to save teachers time in their workday. Since the fellowship Becky remains active in a host of other social design causes, including developing behavioral management tools using movement to calm students in moments of conflict and energize them to learn.

Each fellow demonstrated how design instincts and an understanding of the creative process are invaluable assets in social design. Complex social issues require meaning to have impact and designers are, at the core, developers of meaning.

Following the presentation, attendees went into the main lobby to see thesis presentations from current MASD students.

Joseph Anthony Brown is AIGA Baltimore’s Programming Chair and is a partner/designer at Rogue Squirrel, Inc. Check out his portfolio at www.behance.net/abcreates.

Jennifer Marin is Co-President for AIGA Baltimore. Follow her @hungry4design.

Nominate your favorite Baltimore Logo Designer!

Posted on by AIGA Baltimore

This November, to highlight the contributions made by the many designers in Charm City, Edwin Gold, professor of Communications Design and director of Ampersand Institute for Words & Images, is curating a special exhibition featuring the very best logo designs by Baltimore creatives to be displayed in the UB Student Center Gallery.

The exhibit, which is to be on display for three months, opens with a reception for the designers and friends. Further information, including the panel of judges and instructions for mounting are to be finalized in coming weeks.

To nominate your favorite local designer (or yourself), contact Ed: egold@ubalt.edu and include name, contact information, and samples of your favorite logo designs.

DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSIONS: September 20, 2013.

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.

Ink/Pixels 2012

Posted on by AIGA Baltimore

We had a great time at Ink/Pixels 2012! For those of you that missed it, this was our first student conference. Students had their portfolios reviewed by professionals in the morning, and then in the afternoon, folks got to hear presentations from working professionals and students. The day was capped off by a talk titled Heart, Mind & Gut by Todd Harvey of Mission.

We are considering making this a regular event, so look out for it in Spring 2013!

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Ink/Pixels registration is open!

Posted on by AIGA Baltimore

Ink/Pixels registration is open and spots are filling up fast!

What is it?
A design conference for students

What can you do at it?

  • Have your portfolio reviewed
  • Listen to professional designers share their wisdom
  • Hear from your peers talk about design (there is still time for you to be a speaker!)
  • See Todd Harvey of Mission give a good talk

Where is it?
MICA Brown Center, Baltimore, MD

How much is it?
$10 for AIGA members
$25 for non-members

How can I go to the conference for free?
We have 10 spots open for volunteers, so if I you don’t mind working for an hour before and an hour afterward, email our volunteer chair, Meghan Marx

Visit here for all of the details and to register
http://www.etouches.com/inkpixels2012

And the winning poster design is…

Posted on by AIGA Baltimore

Ink/Pixels winning poster design

This design is by Emilee Hunt, a senior from Millersville University. This poster will be printed and distributed to the local universities in the Baltimore area. Thank you Emilee for your hard work!

When asked about the design, Emilee had this to say:

This design expresses the relationship that ink and pixels has in design. I used a process of printing and scanning techniques to distort a print of my original graphic. This way it passed through a series of steps from print, to screen, and back to print. We live in an exciting time when ink and pixels can have a beautiful co-dependence.

After Emilee finishes her degree, she plans to move to the Baltimore area and pursue a career in Graphic Design and Illustration.