May I ask you a question of mere curiosity? I don't find a lot of folks who like using Adobe Illustrator. Do you use it? Like it? Why or why not?
It makes me wonder how many people use what mix of Adobe programs and what they use them for.
Be well. Chuck
The email design guide
My son Jeff knows one hundred times more about the design and development of broadcast email than I ever will. So I took particular notice when he pointed me to MailChimp's Email Design Guide web page. It is smart, simple, and concise-everything you want an email to be.
And that got me looking for other similar sources of information and inspiration about email design and coding. Here's a sampling...
From Mail Chimp: The Email Design Guide...
Some examples of Really Good Emails...
From AWeber: A History of Email Changes...
Mail Chimp's own email newsletter: The UX Newsletter...
The Constant Contact blog...
The Emma blog...
The AWeber blog...
The ExactTarget blog...
USA Today launched this day in 1982.
At the time is was groundbreaking stuff...
Meet illustrator and designer Martijn Rijven
Martijn Rijven is Bolt Graphics in Amsterdam. I was struck by the energy in his wonderful drawings of the Mozilla FireFox. Here's the story of the project...
The Fox Unleashed...
The work was done for Wolff Olins...
Design firm Dress Code created an animated version of the images...
An interview with the designer...
Hugh Mangum's turn of the century photography of common folk seem infinitely more interesting than those of the famous...
Thanks to Jim Green for pointing us to it.
The comprehensive collection of fonts from the world's top type foundries.
The mother lode of vintage signs
Cory Miller has photographed and shared hundreds of vintage signs under the name Too Much Fire. He's done the future a favor by preserving these grand designs on film before they, inevitably, pass away...
The sign mother lode...
Example 1...
Example 2...
Example 3...
A breakdown of the sets...
Photography is not Corey Miller's day job, he is a TV writer...
So many marketing and design experts preach about one's willingness to fail,
I sometimes wonder if people who don't fail at something big feel somehow incomplete.
The workflow of the future: Part designer, part client
The design firm IDEO, it is reported, did the design thinking on a PillPack in return for an equity stake in the business. PillPack is a next-generation pharmacy that "...pre-sorts prescriptions, over-the-counter medications, and vitamins into personalized packets, organized by date and time. This makes it easy to take the right meds at the right hour."
I point you to it for a couple of reasons, first because of the elegance and (seeming) simplicity of the concept and its execution. And secondly, to emphasize that more and more design firms are trading their services for a piece of the action.
It is a particularly elegant combination of an idea, branding, systems, packaging, and a web presence.
The PillPack website...
IDEO's case study...
Coverage from Wired Magazine...
I'm reminded today of InDesign Magazine--just received their "InDesign Tip of the Week" email. (Nope, not getting paid for this.)
InDesign Magazine really is an excellent publication--not a bunch of fluff, but real, insightful, in depth analysis of issues for a regular user of Adobe InDesign. Full disclosure: I've written a couple of articles for them but haven't in quite a while. I mention that because I guess that means I know a fair amount about InDesign yet I always find several new, useful pieces of information every time I read it.
If you haven't seen it lately, here's a link to their free sample issue...
When we were reliant on handwriting, handwriting was hugely important
I don't know about you but my penmanship is awful. A decade or so ago, my brother bought me a beautiful fountain pen that, lately, I'm almost embarrassed to use. Early in my career I wrote and sketched daily, now handwriting is a secondary skill.
As an devotee of good penmanship, my jaw dropped when I started going through the The Zaner-Bloser, Inc. / Sonya Bloser Monroe Collection at The Weinberg Memorial Library at The University of Scranton-it documents the history of American penmanship in the late 19th and early 20th centuries through a company that, "...prepared students for careers as penmen. Penmen often worked in business, preparing ledgers, writing correspondence and creating documents before the invention of the typewriter."
Example 1...
Example 2...
Example 3...
The Zaner-Bloser Collection is housed at The Weinberg Memorial Library at The University of Scranton ...
Zaner-Bloser is still around in 2014 teaching, among other things, handwriting...
An earlier post, What we can learn through the relationship between penmanship and typography...
Nice idea...
Want an original piece of weird?
Illustrator Colin Johnson has some of his work on sale here for $100 each...
Laugh, cry, think. The best of advertising, design, and communications circa 2014...
The Clio Awards have been around since the 1960s (and through many incarnations). But they're generally viewed as a legitimately prestigious award these days so it's interesting to see what a "jury of our peers" think are the best of the best for 2014.
Here, in each of 33 media categories...
Use "Select a Medium" to choose a category...
Before the Clio Awards re-attained their current prestige, they a rough spot in 1991-read John Follis' The Most Bizarre Evening In Advertising History...
If you ever what to claim to be "award winning" you'll need an award of some kind (a hapless distinction anymore). But do advertising awards really matter?
Remember DRW, PIC, PCX, BMP, WMF, PICT, CGM? Freelance? Storyboard? MacDraw? Harvard Graphics?
I spent some time today addressing issues regarding file formats and it reminded me of some of the now obscure draw/vector and paint/bitmap formats that got us where we are today. I used to follow such things religiously, now, wow, we are light years ahead.
If you use InDesign (or QuarkXPress), you might find this useful
The idea is simple. Modifying a well-designed template is far easier than starting from scratch. My InDesign Ideabook includes 315 researched, designed, and meticulously formatted documents in a clean, simple style that it easy to build on.
For Adobe InDesign
For QuarkXPress
So much of what I read about design is opinion stated as fact.
