Category Archives: Commentary

Macworld 2010 | Will I Attend 2011?

I made it to the second and third (final) days of Macworld 2010’s Expo here in San Francisco, and found myself feeling a bit melancholy upon seeing the sparseness of the crowd. I arrived just after 11:30 am, which meant I missed Guy Kawasaki’s talk, to my chagrin. The complete expo was in the North…More

Noted: Why We Should Teach Design Early | Blog | design mind

“Designers, through training and experience, develop a different lens through which to see the world. They move through spaces, environments, and systems, making observations and developing insights about what works well and what doesn’t. They then use those observations and insights to create innovative solutions for everyday problems. If design is the crossroads of beauty…More

Will Design Students Find Work After Completion of Studies?

GD Studio 1 students are doing great work. They’re really a good bunch. I’m starting to wonder, given the current state of the economy, what future in graphic design do they have. Most certainly, students must be great designers, demonstrating fully, their understanding of the design fundamentals and their application. They also must be well…More

“Value” Is Once Again Driving Design

In recent blog posts and articles designers and business people have been writing about garnering, what I call, “value” in what we create. This word value has finally come to the forefront again of many discussions, both within design, business, and design education communities. All this buzz around once again putting value in what designers…More

What Do Designers Think About The Concept of Personal Branding?

While at WordPress’s WordCampSF, I heard a really great talk by Dave Gray of Xplane | The visual thinking company. In that talk, he mentioned David Armano of Logic + Emotion. Last year David Armano did a presentation on the concept of personal branding at the Chicago Convergence Conference where he stated “The hallmark of…More

How Valuable Are Old-School/Traditional Design Skills Today?

Inspired by LinkedIn’s Communication Arts Group’s discussion forum post:”When you learned to work on a computer, did you take classes or teach yourself?”, I want to pose the question: How valuable are traditonal design skills like thumbnailing (preliminary sketches and verbalization), and marker and paper comping? Are they still being used today? Are they being…More

Designing Cross-Culturally

Oftentimes, I hear the need to design for a cross-cultural audience. Given that the world, has become a “small” place relatively speaking, and pop/current culture seems to manifest similary thoughout this world (example: jazz/hip hop/literature/fashion), I’m asking myself, what is a cross-cultural audience?More