Author Archives: ayanaairakanmance

graphic designer photographer educator techfemme

Cross Promoting v. Cross Posting Social Media Posts

I was excited to find this article via the Elegant Themes Blog, 5 Ways to Cross Promote Social Media Posts. Here is the article link: http://goo.gl/OBT5JR. It discusses the value of cross promoting posts as opposed to cross posting. Cross promoting gives more value to your posts. Learn the difference between “cross promote” and “cross post”…More

Professional Practice

I’m teaching the Professional Practice class this term at City College of San Francisco and would like to get some input from my graphic design and digital media production friends and colleagues on how you run your businesses. Please share your input here on the blog. The textbook is the Graphic Artists Guild’s Pricing &…More

Learning to Design a Cherokee Syllabary with Mark Jamra

I just caught this very interesting talk on TypeCulture’s Facebook page on designing an indigenous American syllabary via the Cherokee language whose written language is almost 200 years old. Fascinated as my mother’s maternal grandfather was Cherokee. I love looking at writing systems outside of the Western cultures. For this talk, Mark Jamra references the…More

Looking at process in User Experience

In my last post, I talked about my quest into the world of User Experience (UX). Process is at the core of any endeavor, and most certainly UX. As a graphic designer, I’ve been intrigued to see how process looks in this area. As users, when we encounter interfaces, we often are left to our…More

Learning UX

  I’m finally learning the world of User Experience (UX), an area of the design field that is critical today, especially in the San Francisco Bay and Silicon Valley areas. I’ve audited a wonderful UX class taught by City College of San Francisco colleague Beth Cataldo. These are the two books I will be using…More

Thanking Mary Thorsby and Nikki May

Thanking the wonderful content strategist and writer Mary Thorsby and  great graphic designer and creative Nikki May for their incredible talk with the Portfolio class today on how to present oneself professionally online and offline.    They covered writing the critical content for the portfolio and resume well and distinctively, and presenting ones best work.…More