Commentary – Ayana Airakan-Mance

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

Rise of Graphics for Social Justice Issues in the US

Though the production of graphics for social justice issues, primarily as posters or street art has not diminished much in Europe, Latin America, and Africa, it has lost its prominence in the US. Given this fact, it was nice to read today’s The Daily Heller: Triggering Concern About Guns. To see a full array of…More

Design is About Solving Problems | Design Informer

One of my Twitter colleagues, Jan Jursa of Information Architecture Television (@IATV on Twitter) shared this interesting post by James Young on Design Informer (See link below) and I thought I would share it. It is always good to step back and reassess where one is in respect to the design process. This is a…More

Wim Crouwel in conversation

“I’m a little afraid of design as art, of moving away from the client and creating your own content. Rarely people are good at both. Design and art are in the same neighbourhood, but they should not be in bed together. But, I am also curious about this border crossing.” Sharing an interview with one…More

Nice pre-#w2e talk with Maria Giudice (@mgiudice) and Kaitlin Pike (@kcpike), sharing an overview of Maria’s 3/29 Web 2.0 Expo session.

It’s my second day at the Web 2.0 Expo here is San Francisco, and while on break, I listened to a pre-Web 2.0 Expo interview by Web 2.0’s K. C. Pike of Hot Studio’s CEO and founder, Maria Giudice who is talking about her Web 2.0 Expo session called: Don’t Go It Alone: Using Collaboration…More

Macworld SF Expo 2011: Disappointing, but . . . #apple #macworld #in

Yes, it was that time of the year again, and I made it to the Macworld 2011 Expo here in San Francisco, albeit the very last day. I have yet to attend any of the conferences. Here are my thoughts and highlights of the Expo. My compatriots were Cherie Carter and Jeanne Hendrickson. And I…More

Addendum: Gap Bows to Outcry – Nixes New Logo and Crowdsourcing. Design Still May Have Lost Out.

It was wonderful to see the outpouring of concern over the Gap’s brand redesign and the impact it had in ultimately getting the company to back away from the poorly designed new mark, and ultimately, it seems the practice of crowd-sourcing. (Please see link at the bottom of this post for the article concerning this.)…More

Is The Design Process (Strategic Design) Going The Way Of The Dinosaur?

Tom’s of Maine new logo: In my last post, I added the newly designed Tom’s of Maine logo and packaging to the discussion of poorly designed branding speared by the newly designed GAP logo. In both cases, I sincerely feel the design process, and strategic design have completely been left out of the equation in…More

Tom’s Of Maine Changes Their Brand Also | Filed Under #disappointing.

So about a month or so before all this hoopla about GAP changing is classic, modern brand to, what I consider a mundane, nondescript one, I needed to buy toothpaste. Off I went to Trader Joe’s to purchase my Tom’s of Maine Natural Antiplaque & Whitening Gel. To my surprise and chagrin, I noticed that…More