If you were given a choice when first taking your “brick and mortar” business online to develop a website or set up a Page on Facebook, and you weren’t allowed to do the other which would you choose? Would you build a website and give up marketing through Facebook or would you set up a Facebook page and give up having your own website?

Think about the questions as you read through this post @ vanseodesign.

Nico & myself will be speaking to the Graphic Design student intake at Cambrian College on Tuesday, August 31st, 2PM, Rm. 3503.

See you all there.

Vintage Technology has an enormous array of 1970′s era calculators on display. I’m into it because I love numbers, but if you want to know how many diodes and capacitors there were in a Caltronic 812, you are in luck. Each comes with a photo and an extraordinarily detailed reference page. There are 128 identified brands, and 583 calculators in total!

As an aside, I used to love calculators with an on/off button. I hated the kind that would turn off in a minute or two when unused. I mean I get it, but I like the power of having an on/off.

via ISO50
via Core77

“Justify color selections by pairing them with similarly hued images from the destination.” – Clinton Duncan, a contributor over on Brand New.

via Logo Design Love

From the extraordinary visual dexterity of Alan Fletcher to Jan Tschichold’s experiments with typography, Patrick Cramsie picks the books that have shaped our visual culture.

Read more @ Guardian.co.uk

Anonymous asked: What advice would you give to a graphic design student?

From the office of Frank Chimero.

Design does not equal client work.

It’s hard to make purple work in a design. The things your teachers tell you in class are not gospel. You will get conflicting information. It means that both are wrong. Or both are true. This never stops. Most decisions are gray, and everything lives on a spectrum of correctness and suitability.

Look people in the eyes when you are talking or listening to them. The best teachers are the ones who treat their classrooms like a workplace, and the worst ones are the ones who treat their classroom like a classroom as we’ve come to expect it. Eat breakfast. Realize that you are learning a trade, so craft matters more than most say. Realize that design is also a liberal art. Quiet is always an option, even if everyone is yelling. Libraries are a good place. The books are free there, and it smells great.

If you can’t draw as well as someone, or use the software as well, or if you do not have as much money to buy supplies, or if you do not have access to the tools they have, beat them by being more thoughtful. Thoughtfulness is free and burns on time and empathy.

The best communicators are gift-givers.

Don’t become dependent on having other people pull it out of you while you’re in school. If you do, you’re hosed once you graduate. Keep two books on your nightstand at all times: one fiction, one non-fiction.

Buy lightly used. Patina is a pretty word, and a beautiful concept.

Develop a point of view. Think about what experiences you have that many others do not. Then, think of what experiences you have that almost everyone else has. Then, mix those two things and try to make someone cry or laugh or feel understood.

Design doesn’t have to sell. Although, that’s usually its job.

Think of every project as an opportunity to learn, but also an opportunity to teach. Univers is a great typeface and white usually works and grids are nice and usually necessary, but they’re not a style. Helvetica is nice too, but it won’t turn water to wine.

Take things away until you cry. Accept most things, and reject most of your initial ideas. Print it out, chop it up, put it back together. When you’re aimlessly pushing things around on a computer screen, print it out and push it around in real space. Change contexts when you’re stuck. Draw wrong-handed and upside down and backwards. Find a good seat outside.

Design is just a language, it’s not a message. If you say “retro” too much you will get hives and maybe die. Learn your design history. Know that design changes when technology changes, and its been that way since the 1400s. Adobe software never stops being frustrating. Learn to write, and not school-style writing. A text editor is a perfectly viable design tool. Graphic design has just as much to do with words as it does with pictures, and a lot of my favorite designers come to design from the world of words instead of the world of pictures.

If you meet a person who cares about the same obscure things you do, hold on to them for dear life. Sympathy is medicine.

Scissors are good, music is better, and mixed drinks with friends are best. Start brave and brash: you can always make things more conservative, but it’s hard to make things more radical. Edit yourself, but let someone else censor you. When you ride the bus, imagine that you are looking at everything from the point of view of someone else on the ride. If you walk, look up on the way there and down on the way back. Aesthetics are fleeting, the only things with longevity are ideas. Read Bringhurst and one of those novels they made you read in high school cover to cover every few years. (Of Mice and Men, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Great Gatsby.)

Stop trying to be cool: it is stifling.

Most important things happen at a table. Food, friends, discussion, ideas, work, peace talks, and war plans. It is okay to romanticize things a little bit every now and then: it gives you hope.

Everything is interesting to someone. That thing that you think is bad is probably just not for you. Be wary of minimalism as an aesthetic decision without cause. Simple is almost a dirty word now. Almost. Tools don’t matter very much, all you need is a sharp knife, but everyone has their own mise en place. If you need an analogy, use an animal. If you see a ladder in a piece of design or illustration, it means the deadline was short. Red, white, black, and gray always go together. Negative space. Size contrast. Directional contrast. Compositional foundations.

Success is generating an emotion. Failure is a million different things. Second-person writing is usually heavy-handed, like all of this.

Seeking advice is addicting and can become a proxy for action. Giving it can also be addicting in a potentially pretentious, soul-rotting sort of way, and can replace experimenting because you think you know how things work. Be suspicious of lists, advice, and lists of advice.

Everyone is just making it up as they go along.

This about sums up everything I know.

A new “tea bag” uses nano-fibers to suck contaminants and bacteria out of water, providing a desperately-needed, cheap solution for the billions of people without clean drinking water.

via Science and Development Network.

Misplaced your cellphone? We’ll help you find it.

We designed the visuals for this cool and handy web application. Where’s My Cellphone is a web app that rings your phone when you input your number, aiding you in finding your phone, wherever it may be.

As part of The Dollar ReDe$ign Project, design studio Dowling Duncan has come up with an ultra-modern look for the classic greenback.

The most startling change is the notes’ vertical orientation that replaces the traditional horizontal one. Citing its own research that showed people tend to handle and deal money vertically, the studio said a vertical note “makes more sense”.

Six notes in total have been revamped, each with its own unique character. Standouts include the one-dollar note, featuring the US’ first African-American president, Barack Obama; and the $20 note that has all sorts of technological and scientific apparatus on its face.

They probably won’t be admitted into real use anytime soon, but it would be interesting to have a currency with a contemporary, non-traditional look.

Here’s a closer look at the notes:

via design taxi

The DBA Pen is the only 98% biodegradable pen in the world. It’s also the only pen to use ink composed of simple, environmentally responsible ingredients. Produced at a wind-powered facility in the United States, it was designed as a responsible alternative to the wasteful and often toxic pens we use almost every day. And with its straightforward design and rollerball tip, the DBA Pen looks good and writes well too.