Born in Marseille, and trained at the public Art schools of Paris, Delphine Perrot is a Graphic Designer specializing in print and creative realisations. She has produced an array of artistic installations for the likes of Design Week, The Affluenza Exhibition, and The New Economics Foundation’s ‘Bigger Picture’ Festival of Interdependence. With her experience in producing work for arts, cultural and educational output, Delphine is currently working in London for the multi-award winning Studio Myerscough. Notes on Design caught up with Delphine to find out all about her practice and motivations.

Notes On Design: Can you give us an insight into your background?

Delphine: I successfully completed a BA and MA in Graphic Design in my native France. My studies were a very important phase for me, where I explored the freedom of self-initiated projects. I was taught by inspiring teachers, especially my MA tutor David Poullard who really gave me the confidence to push my personal work.

Since my MA final project, which took inspiration from the Parisian flea markets, I have researched and catalogued an extensive collection of advertising slogans, in French and English, that I feel encompass the 20th century. These form a strong thread that can be found, at least in part, in many of my installations and artwork.
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Todd Weinberger is the creative director of Inked, a luxury tattoo magazine that he redesigned and re-launched in 2007. Notes on Design caught up with Todd this month to find out more about his creative journey.

Notes on Design: Can you tell us a little about your career so far?

Todd: After graduating, I moved to Boulder Colorado and spent some time as a freelance designer working for different kinds of clients: bands, snowboard companies, celestial seasonings tea, etc. I moved back to Philadelphia and worked at The Bailey Group as a designer for a few years doing mainly corporate branding and packaging design. I decided to try my hand at advertising and moved on to Gyro Worldwide (now Quaker City Mercantile) and was a Senior Art Director there for about 3.5 years working on Camel, Salem, Winston, Puma, Glenfiddich, Hendricks Gin, and a bunch of other random clients. I used to get this magazine called Philadelphia Style, and would rip apart the horrible design and brag about how I would take the Creative Director job if they ever fired the CD at the time. So one day we got a press release that she was fired, and all the other art directors called me out on it, I interviewed and took the job. I redesigned the magazine and realized how much I loved magazine design. After 6 years doing Philadelphia Style and DC Style, I moved to NYC when I was offered to job to relaunch Inked magazine. The president of Nylon magazine met me in Philadelphia and brought me to NYC to utilize my fashion and advertising background to make a beautiful high-end fashion and entertainment magazine for people with tattoos. I absolutely love it.
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Zara Arshad is a British designer currently based in Beijing, China. Having also lived in the UK, Syria and Indonesia, she continually promotes internationalism as well as the potential of design to solve social, economic and political issues. Previous experience includes working with the British Council, and Don’t Panic and Icon magazines; she is also a persistent volunteer for Architecture for Humanity, which she represented at 100% Design, London. As well as practicing as a freelance, multi-disciplinary designer, Zara is now working as Greening and Environmental Support Officer for the British Embassy in Beijing. Zara is joining the Notes on Design team this month, to bring us design news from China, so we caught up with her journey to date to welcome her to the team!

Notes on Design: Where are you originally from?

Zara: Good question! My family are originally from Pakistan, but I was born and raised in London. Over the years though, I’ve also been fortunate enough to live in Jakarta, Damascus, and Beijing where I am currently living.

Notes on Design: How and why did you choose a career in Graphic Design?

Zara: This was actually an accident. I’ve always been creative; from a young age, I was constantly producing drawings. My family are fairly traditional and were not very keen for me to engage in a creative career, however, when it came to picking potential courses for university (I was schooling in Indonesia at the time), the only thing that I could think of that I really wanted to do was Design. This was set to be a basis for a career in Advertising – well, that was the plan then!
 I accepted a position on the BA (Hons) Design course at Goldsmiths College, University of London. Coming from a strong academic background, with a limited knowledge of design, the first year was quite a struggle. I had to do quite a lot of catch-up reading on things that everyone else already appeared to know from undertaking specialised design and/or foundation courses, and every project was a new learning experience.

This struggle, however, also helped me to find focus quickly. I soon realized that Advertising was not the right choice for me Read the rest of this entry »

By Kate Andrews

Over the past week, I had the pleasure of meeting the multi-talented Graphic Designer Alex Ostrowski. Alex, a 2008 UK Graphic Design graduate from Bristol’s University of West England, recently won the RSA Design Directions and NESTA’s competition ‘Engage!’.

Tagged to “catalyse social change through design-led citizen participation”, the Engage! project, aimed to encourage social responsibility in young designers. The 2008 RSA Design Directions brief asked student designers to consider how they could best use design to bring about positive change within a community and instigate a project solution of this nature. Read the rest of this entry »

By Kate Andrews

Scanning the pages of GDi08, the graduate graphic design and illustration showcase from Brighton University (UK), I found a number of design projects that intelligently approach the world’s ecological crisis.

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By Kate Andrews

It is continually inspiring to watch the growing wealth of social design initiatives springing up across the planet, however this week I came across a project that I feel deserves huge creative and social credit. Founded and directed by Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee, The Global Oneness Project offers a remarkable insight in to the creative intelligence of human nature. This web-based video initiative aims to explore “how the notion of oneness can be lived in our increasingly complex world”. Read the rest of this entry »

Back in February, amidst the feline army, I curled up to finally finish reading Lucienne Roberts’ book GOOD: An Introduction to Ethics in Graphic Design.” This is possibly the only book I have found and read that directly discusses ethics in Contemporary Graphic Design. Gathering a selection of opinions, from the likes of Ken Garland, Thomas Matthews, Deborah Szebeko, Sheila Levrant de Bretteville and Daniel Eatock, the book starts at the beginning of ‘Early Civilisation’ (p.21), and later discusses aspects of History, Philosophy (p.34), Law (p.44) and Politics (p.58). In conclusion the book presents a series of discussions with a collection of credible designers (p.113-192) – ultimately asking what it means to be a “good” designer. Read the rest of this entry »

The concept of “green” typography may seem ridiculous to non-type-nerds and, yes OK, perhaps typography can’t conquer climate change, but it can certainly help communicate it! With these thoughts in mind, I thought it would be interesting to share some recent examples I’ve found of contemporary typography that truly redefine those terrifying visions of green (and tree-shaped) logos! Read the rest of this entry »

When I was first asked to contribute a piece on design ethics to Notes, I wondered how I could credibly comment on such a complex and highly academic topic. Whilst sitting at the early stages of my creative career, I wondered how many of us really understand what it means to be a “good” designer, and asked myself, if and how, I am a “good” (socially-responsible) designer? Read the rest of this entry »

I recently came across the great work of Finnish photographer Ilkka Halso. His photographic series the ‘Museum of Nature’ wonderfully challenges the natural environment from its current state into a future world where it is something we have to visit to experience. The collection of compelling images pictures a series of man-made structures that enclose nature, protecting it from pollution. Using images of nature and 3D digital manipulation, this photographic collection captures a future vision of nature as a museum display. Challenging the audience’s interaction with the endangered artifact of the natural environment, Halso manages to truly visualize a future we so desperately do not want to see a reality. Read the rest of this entry »