Anyone w/ some fashion and/or illustration experience, drop me a PM.

It looks like I'll have some money to throw at you in the very near future.

i've run into this to, and it's so frustrating.
i want to grab their professors by the neck and shake them.

graphis = stellar.

tibor kalman = god.
dude was a genius and i followed his career, read everything he wrote and heard him speak several times. one of his main philosophies is that we shouldn't use design as a reference for creating design. we should look to the outside world for reference: writing, film, aspects of other cultures, the world around us.

that's why i think a liberal arts education is one of the strongest tools to prepare one for life. for anything.

tibor was working at a difffernet time though. there was more of an apprentice attitude then. he's older than me (or he was) but when i decided to check out a saturday design class it was taught by an art director at an agency and the first thing he said was to get a job at an agency--doing anything. even emptying waste baskets. i got a summer job sorting out thousands of photos of high school students for the publication who's who in amercian high achools. it was boring but eventually i was asked to tissue and flap artwork (dating myself) and then the designers and illustrators let me hang out and on and on. i worked in any capacity i could in the business and by the time i graduated i was a art director for a men's fashion design firm. i don't know if those opportunities are available for people without a degree as they used to be. i hope so.

your logo in lego is cool. i wrote a fan letter to the woman in charge of hiring lego engineers once. she was cool. it still didn't get me a tour though.

man, jewels. we need to meet for drinks after work sometime. you too, juice.

i would love to have a drink, ayah.

i've been meaning to book a show (music) in the boston area.
is that near you?

less than 2 hours away and completely doable.
that pushy stacey might have to join us, though

i've thought about getting an intern, but then i would have to put on pants when i work.

tell me.

I'd love too as well. You guys spring for the airfare from Houston and I'm there.

lucky!

"I'm not wearing any pants....film at 11."

a few design legends to check out

Saul Bass and Paul Rand

both used simple design in amazin and beatiful ways.
the two of them did 70% of the best logos ever.

thanks for the advice, err'body.

i figured it wouldn't be an easy task for me but i've got some thinkin' to do.

Damn,

I am always late to the party here.

I have been working at my current agency postion of Art Director/Designer for just under 3 years. I have yet to do a CD cover, but look forward to doing one in the future. I take out that creative on my Mixes.

I have done work for companies in all aspect of advertising. From non-profits, to large consumer product companies to B2B.

In those categories, I have done, Corporate Identity and Branding, Annual Reports, Brochures, magazine Ads, Banners, A trade Show booth, T-Shirts, spec and sell sheets, Conference materials, web site design, but not elaborate coding.... whoosh...

Basically all aspects of design.

At times, I am swamped, at other times, i am bored surfing.

Wooho!

my son finally woke up.
here's a little of what i do:





but this is what i love to do:



it's a bad photo. the drawing is 4 1/2 ft high.

those are cool ayah. and the drawing looks great.

nice work ayah...that kind of work is also what I love to do...I'll post some stuff later on.

I work in the printing industryright now...which ins't really graphic design, but I mostly do color correction right now. We do a lot of fine art reproduction, which is pretty cool to see artists work coming in all the time.

I'd like to do my own design eventually, I just gotta find my niche.

Here's another . . . I do pretty boring education "interactive" crap, you know, the kind of soul-sucking stuff that takes design from being something fun I used to love to do to now just "my job." Meaning, I rarely design outside of the 8 hours I do so at work, including for my two websites (the beautiful lull and unproducitivity.) I don't even have a portfolio online but I will put some stuff up tonight for y'all to look at - illustrations that I've done for work that I'm actually fairly happy with, illustrations having strangely become my "thing" at work, apparently.

While I took quite a few graphic design courses, I didn't graduate with a design degree - it was just studio art, because I simply couldn't fathom dedicating myself to one thing, and ASU's graphic design program at the time (1995 or so) wasn't even using computers, which seemed ridiculously short-sighted. I guess because of that art-background, I tend to like to make abstract art in Photoshop, most often from a completely blank canvas (meaning no source.) People have said it's nice stuff, but I've never done anything with it, unfortunately, other than providing some artwork for a musician friend's CDs. Yeah, yeah, I've gotta put up a portfolio site sometime soon . . .

Damn. I had to go meet some clients and missed all the good stuff. Let's see how I can attack this.

spizzle: It's not glamorous at all, but look into newspapers. Pay won't be great, but you'll get a good place to cut your teeth. Newspapers are everywhere and probably easier to break into, especially smaller dailies or weeklies.

Some tools it gives you:
Fast paced environment: You have to think fast, then shit or get off the pot; can make your creative process more efficient, even though can hinder some larger scale ideas depending on the corporate culture.
Lots and lots of different advertisers: You get a feel for different clients and what they want & expect, different markets use different techniques, e.g. Auto dealers, Real Estate, Dept. Stores, Restaurants
Room for Mistakes: They don't like to admit it, but newspapers fuck up all the time, and it's not the end of the world because you have the next deadline to meet.
Introduction to Printing: Newspaper advertsing is pretty limited, mostly black and white, sometimes color but not much, which allows you to concentrate on learning a handful of concepts that will come in handy and you can build on later. For example: Dot Gain, Resolution and Line Screens, Color Separations or Overlays, Negatives, Cutting Rubylith (If anyone still does that), RIPs and the simple fact that WYSIWYG ain't entirely reliable.
Lots of Opportunity to Build a Portfolio: Even if you only do one knock 'em dead ad a month, you can bolster that with more mundane output. It's not out of the realm of possibility to do 200+ ads per month at a medium sized daily. If you love the work and put your head & heart into it, you can build a better portfolio pretty quickly.

Jewels had good suggestions on the magazines, but there's another easy one. Spend a buck and pick up a Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, or New York Times. Look at the ads and observe what and why it grabbed your attention. Do the same with your favorite magazines. If you find yourself looking at something. Ask yourself why it caught your eye.

Design is everywhere, like ayah said. I once hopped over to the Ikea in CP cause I had an irritating mental block. Just looking at some of the odder pieces of furniture or color schemes and arrangements worked me out of the funk. I don't know if you are staying in CP or not, but DC is full of art museums of all different flavors, architecture and statues. Most of them are enjoyable to look at. Dig deeper and find out why. Go to Hains Point and hang around "The Awakening" for a couple hours.

Color schemes are easy to find as well. Look to nature. If you mimic color patterns you see on birds or flowers or trees or rocks or the sky, chances are they will have a nice harmony between them, since we are used to looking at those same colors together.

+++++++++++++++++++++

ayah, jewels: Dammit, I wanted to go out for drinks too. Also, I've often said that writers aren't made, they are born. Sure, you can augment and hone talent, and you can make a poor writer a functional and grammatically correct one, but you can't take an everyday writer and make them great. To what extent do you believe that applies to design?

+++++++++++++++++++++

Also, I think it would be fun to show off some of our work around here. I need to update my site anyway, so I may throw some shit up here this weekend.

i think in some ways this is true, if were are talking in terms of brilliant design. But you can certainly make a career of doing solid work that helps people and not be a genius.

i like to think i lead a creative life full of exploration and try to be a fan and participant of as much of art as i can. So what if i can't write fiction very well? i still do (and my brother likes it). And i think that has helped when the copywriter was stuck and i was able to come up with the headline. Just like his little scribbles and stick figures helped me when i was stuck on a visual idea. Painting has helped me understand how colors work. Writing songs have helped me know how to comunicate with people. I think being in the habit of creating makes creating easier.

there isn't a well that dries up. creativity begats creativity.
sometimes you need to pause and NOT create to get the juices going. but in a way it's creativity that lets you know you need to change your scenery for a new perspective.

and i don't think you can teach someone to be creative, but i think you can learn habbits that make it a natural part of your life.

I think my words came across a little harsh, which wasn't intentional.

I agree with what you just posted. Where my question came from is experience with a fair number of people who label themselves designers--or even artists--but have no concept of compostion or typography. Sure, it could be rendered down to an argument on taste, but some I've seen is akin to calling Tom Arico's singing voice velvety.

Maybe Annapolis is just a hotbed of wannabe designers. It's sure full of wannabes in almost every other aspect of life.

Alright, so then, since we were on the topic of food/bev, I own a restaurant and my website is soo out of date(ok, it BLOWS,always has, and I hope the designer-a friend- will not see this post), someone want free food/drink/a house on an island in Belize for a few days to a week in trade for some great Java sitework and shooting of food and restaurant environs? Hmmm? Free summer vacation for new website....anyone?**

**airfare not included, what am I, nuts?

edit: we're to were

i lay out pages for a newspaper.
does that count?


yeah. i didn't think so.

i didn't take any of your words as harsh.

setting good type is an art.

I re-read it and just felt I sounded like an arrogant douche. I can be an arrogant douche, sure, but I wasn't trying this time.

I have my own style which suits me fine, but I love other styles. You can't learn from people who are just like you.