2009 AIGA Design Conf. Discount

Registration for the 2009 AIGA Design Conference in Memphis, TN, is $500 before the end of the year. After that, it will probably cost more. Anyone going?

Link: http://www.aiga.org/content.cfm/design-conference-2009

Flush.

Road Trip October 2009?

I think I’m going to combine my cross-country road trip dream (inspired by The Motorcycle Diaries) with my post-graduation trip dream, with going to my first biennial AIGA Design Conference dream in October 2009, as I could spend a week or two and drive to Memphis for the conference and then go all the way to the East Coast and take a different route back.

I thought about naming my cross-country road trip journey “The Prius Diaries,” although that might sound too marketing-y. And I certainly don’t want my car to have the same fate as the motorcycle. And seeing how there’s an environmental concern with flying to places these days, intersected with rising oil prices, driving would be a slightly less harmful and more interesting alternative. (Of course, taking Amtrak or something would be easier and less tiring, but it’s also less fun.)

Just ideas for now.

Flush.

Sagmeister Lecture—Things I Have Learned in My Life So Far

So here’s my “review” of the Sagmeister lecture last night.

Summary:

This was my first AIGA design lecture and my second AIGA event (I went to the 50 Books/50 Covers opening at Chronicle Books last fall), and overall, I’m pleased with the event (good job putting the event together, Amy et al!). The reception was nice with good appetizer things and a fine selection of refreshments. Sagmeister was wonderful, and that’s probably still true sans my huge-fan bias towards his work.

The Rest

I should, though, advise those who haven’t gone to a lot of these events to bring at least one friend to these things, especially if you’re shy like me. I was so excited about Sagmeister speaking in SF that I immediately bought a ticket without thinking about bringing someone or asking any of my designer friends to go with me (partly because almost none of my designer friends knew of Stefan Sagmeister and his work, which was sad in and of itself).

While I think Stefan’s work is always brilliant and inspiring, I thought that the presentation was “normal” and expected, but only probably because I’m already familiar with many pieces of his “Things I Have Learned in My Life So Far ” project through the design blogs and a lot of his transcribed and video interviews online. Watching him and his work on stage was almost just like watching those video interviews and reading the blogs, which was why his presentation felt “normal” and “expected,” except for that part in the beginning when he suddenly started smelling urine on stage and assured us that it wasn’t him and said that “I don’t pee in my pants.” That pretty much effectively broke the ice from the start!

In any case, even if I’m not a fan and don’t know much about Sagmeister, I still think I would be fascinated by how extremely creative and outside-the-box this designer is. I mean, the lady who sat next to me and said she didn’t know much about Sagmeister except for the body-cutting mailer was teary after the presentation and said that it was inspiring.

I was confused as to why only the side projectors showed the images but the middle one did not. I figured it might have to do with wanting to show the name of the lecture series since it was being recorded, but the entire middle section (where I was) had to look around the wooden columns to see the images on the screen.

Personally, I wish there was more time for questions after his presentation, but I understand that the presentation had already gone over the allotted time and he still had to sign a long line of books before ending the evening. Speaking of his book, I also wish I had gotten up immediately after the presentation to get his book at the table when he was answering questions so I could get him to sign it afterwards. Maybe I will do that next time, whenever that is, because I know this won’t be the last time I watch him speak in person.

Lecture Review Main Points and Advice:

• The event was good and enjoyable.
• Go with friends (at least one) and socialize.
• Buy the book if you already knew you want it, and then get it signed.

Flush.

“Not My Type,” The Designer’s Dating Game Show

This is just a random idea, mainly to play on the title. What if there’s a dating game show called Not My Type where a designer picks among three contestants by having them describe their favorite typeface and associate their personalities to the typefaces?

This is totally nerdy and will never make it on TV (unless there’s a TV network for graphic designers), but it could be a mini-skit/improv thing, something similar to Command X, which was a program at last year’s AIGA Design Conference in Denver, except Not My Type would be much less productive and more for entertainment.

Flush.

Voting and Polling (Places Photo Project)

It’s probably annoyingly tiring to hear people say, “I voted!” today, so I won’t say it, even though you know what I did.

For the past few days, I wondered if I should participate in the Polling Places Photo Project, organized this time by the New York Times and AIGA. The main reason for not doing it was that I was scared, scared that the poll workers would yell at me and kick me out, or that the other voters would feel uncomfortable with someone taking photos. But fortunately, that didn’t happen. The poll workers were very nice.

At first, there was some confusion about where I was in their roster since I registered “late.” But it got all cleared up and I painlessly cast my ballot on the fancy electronic ballot. Turns out that supposed iPod-like thing that I saw in the sample ballot was huge; I thought it was going to look like a BlackBerry and whatnot.

Anyway, I didn’t take the photos of the space, but just the machines, because I was scared that other voters were uncomfortable, and I didn’t want to ask them personally for permission. I did ask for permission from the poll workers to take photographs, and I said that it was for a “national project” called the Polling Places Photo Project by the New York Times, but they didn’t seem to know about it. I mentioned “national” and “New York Times” just to gain some credibility that I’m not doing this just for myself or as some sort of partisan spy.

I took a few pics of the machines and quickly left the polling place to take photos of the signage outside, which I believe are as important as the inside. (I guess I should mention now that (for the locals), I voted at Westborough Rec Building on Galway Place in South San Francisco. I looked up the city on the NYTimes site and they don’t have any photos from SSF posted, so I’ll see mine up there soon and hopefully, someone else will post theirs, too, especially someone who had the guts to photograph the space inside.)

Here’s the farthest sign I found from the entrance. The cones were leading towards the alley-like path to the venue. Notice the yellow sign temporarily slipped between the rock things to let you know where to go.

Here’s a more official, intentional sign for the event. (Same sign as the one off-right on the previous photo.)

Here’s the alley that leads you to the entrance. It kinda made voting a shady thing where you go to the back of some building to do it.

Here’s a Photomerged composition of the end of the alley and the entrance (Click here for the entire image). Lots of blue painter’s tape with information in three languages. I didn’t bother to read them; I don’t know who does/did. Nice touch with the American flag, with the blue painter’s tape.

So that concludes my voting experience for the presidential primary. I want to thank my old roommate Mike for informing me that citizens vote for the primaries, too, and making me register, because I probably would’ve been apathetic about it and wait for the candidates battle it out before I do it for sure in November.

Flush.

365: AIGA Year in Design 28

A few days ago, I received the 365: AIGA Year in Design 28 in the mail. It said that they had shrunk it down from previous years, but I don’t have any other editions to compare it to, since I didn’t get anything like this last year, even though I was already an AIGA member then (maybe it’s because I had a student membership.) It’s hard to see the scale from the photo, but the page size is 5" x 7".

So this book had design work from two competitions: 365: AIGA Annual Design Competitions, and 50 Books/50 Covers, which I had talked about in a really early Flush post. The section dividers, eight of them for the 365: AIGA Annual Design Competitions, and only one for the 50 Books/50 Covers, were cleverly designed (by Thirst/3st, directed by Rick Valicenti). Each divider spans two spreads, but the left page of the first spread and the right page of the second spread actually make one composition. And the concept of the dividers basically had to do with “me,” where the identity design section divider says “It’s Me,” for example, and the information design section divider says, “Believe Me,” and so on.

What’s also cool is the cardboard packaging was intentionally minimized to go with being green, and, they even spelled out “Recycle Me” (which I just realized right now relates to the section dividers) with teeny holes. I wish they had made that more obvious, though, because I almost missed it before I recycled it.

Visually, I’m not really a fan of the blue-grid sphere motif (see first photo). The sphere/globe reminded me of some cliché 80’s AT&T commercial where it’s all mysterious with the black background and light type or lines. I don’t know what the idea behind the globe thing is.

Flush.

X’s and O’s

The X’s

A few weeks ago I read a post on AIGA’s web site regarding the abundant amount of uses of “X” in our culture yet that wealth of usage reflects extremely poorly in the dictionary. I couldn’t believe how many ways the X is used. The common, traditional “X marks the spot” and the roman numeral for 10 were easily mentioned in the post, while the all-too-frequent substitutions for “ex-” words in marketing culture like “X-treme” were not left out, either.

What I didn’t realize was that X was also used to indicate “experiment” in aerospace: NASA’s X-33 Program and X-15 aircraft. Come to think of it, the letter X just adds some sort of futuristic mysteriousness to new technology that gets your imagination going. Even cars, a modern-era technology, can have names with “X” in it, suddenly making it more “cool”: “Xterra,” “Turbo X,” and “X-Type” (Jaguar has the most amount of cars that I’ve seen with X-names)

If we were to talk about the amount of unique, stand out, unusual uses for a character, I think “X” is the most used character in our culture, after “O,” of course.

And the O’s

As we cruises along the last month of 2007, I couldn’t help but to start thinking about what to do on New Year’s Eve. Then I remember watching people in Times Square on TV, celebrating with their goofy, unoriginal glasses where the two middle zeroes of Two-Thousand-Whatever for the past seven years circled (no pun intended) the eyes. And then it hit me. Next year (or in less than a month), there will be two more circular frames on those glasses, not that they’ll be used to see through, but they are circles nonetheless, zeroes nonetheless, O’s nonetheless.

I’m actually surprised that I haven’t seen any 2008 calendars where they hungrily took advantage of those two extra circles to make some sort of bubbles galore. I mean, that’s where I would go first for design ideas, but I know that as a freshie designer learning the craft, I must resist the most obvious and therefore most unoriginal solution. Still, that shouldn’t stop the amateur calendar designers to get someone to turn that 8 into a designer’s eyesore. I mean, so many people did it for 2000, and they had only three circles! Think of what you can do with four!

As we get past the New Year’s celebration and the calendar buying frenzy, there are still occasions where the number 2008 will be typographically manipulated to death throughout the year. Think of all the special annual events and conferences and awards shows that will have to incorporate 2008 into the logo. Most people will have thousands of variations of one circle concept, where one or two look decent, while some just don’t even try to dignify that trend with any typographic solution. But there will be that one or two pieces where the circular forms of “2008” will escape expectations and display a composition that no one has thought of, and design will win another battle.

So watch out for the O’s next year; you’ll get tired of round design and then everything will be flat and sharp.

Flush.

AIGA 2009

I want to go. Since I won’t be going to Beijing for the Olympics next year, I’m going to plan my next trip around going to Memphis, Tennessee. I’m kind of scared going to the South; I’ve never been. Hopefully, it’ll all work out just fine.

Flush.

100 Pieces and a Star

Last night was probably the first time where I went to an AIGA event without any of my design friends. I went to the 50 Books/50 Covers Opening Reception at Chronicle Books in SF. I went with my friends from home because I don’t think I’m confident enough yet to go by myself to an event which I don’t know anyone. And besides, it’s always nice to just go to an event with someone you know.

The reception was nice; there weren’t any exceptionally great pieces on display. But there was this one children’s book called Art by Patrick McDonnell (who does the comic Mutts) that I really like. It was about a boy named Art and he does many different kinds of art. It was sweet and rhyme-y and I think it’s a good introduction into the arts for kids. And that made me realize that it’s really simple ideas like this that just gets the message across and touches people’s hearts. It’s nice sometimes, I think, to bring out the inner child of the designer and the audience when appropriate.

The reception last night made me realize that 1) there’s so much out there in the design community that I don’t know about and 2) I need to get out there and start learning about it and find out what being a designer means, socially. And the event gave me that chance to get a feel of what it’s like to be in the “design community.”

And I definitely felt that when I saw Eric Heiman from Volume Inc. at the reception. I learned/heard about Eric a year ago in Davis when he came to talk about his work and design in general. His suggestion for design students to work on non-class projects together sparked the formation of The Collab, started by my friend Milan, and a bunch of us Davis kids put together a week-long design/art show last May. So Eric’s probably the first “design stars” whom I’ve seen in person. (More about my wish to see/meet “design stars” in a later entry.) And while he may not be as well known as Michael Bierut or Paula Scher, he is special on my list as one of the people that was there as an influence from the beginning of my design career.

Flush.