Something funny for you on a Monday: This video by the New York-based sketch comedy group Free Love Forum is a much-needed parody of the smug, wonder-filled Apple product launch videos. Listen as they extol the virtues of the year’s hottest design application: Microsoft Paint!

Chocolate promos?

Besides business card and letterhead, have you ever created any kind of promotional mailer piece for yourself as a designer? So much emphasis has been placed on the online portfolio of late that I feel physical, tangible methods of self-promotion have fallen by the wayside among designers entering the industry today. But that’s exactly why a well-done mailer can catch people’s attention. (more…)

(images via BBC) Before and after: a pesky rooftop removed and some boats on a pristine bay added with the help of this algorithm.

Speaking, as I was last week, of photo retouching, BBC news has just reported on a new tool that takes image doctoring much further than a little dodge and burn. Developed by James Hays and Alexei Efros from Carnegie Mellon University, this new algorithm replaces unwanted bits of photos with preferable scenery cherry-picked from other images. (more…)

Redbook cover of Faith Hill; image via Jezebel

In case you’ve ever wondered what’s in a day’s work for professional photo retouchers, the folks at fashion blog Jezebel.com have something they’d like you to see. In an effort to debunk fashion editorial mags’ unrealistic standards of feminine beauty, they offered a $10,000.00 reward for the person who could submit the most egregious example of Photoshop-generated perfection used on a magazine cover. The winner was an astonishing, but totally typical, Redbook magazine cover featuring country singing star Faith Hill. The 39 year-old mother of three is genetically blessed to begin with, but in order to be considered cover-ready, a photo retouching whiz had quite a project of it. (more…)

Josh Chen

We met San Francisco-based Graphic Designer Josh Chen at the HOW design conference, where he made a presentation about using handwork in graphic design. Josh is the founder of Chen Design Associates, and has over twenty years of experience in design, broadcasting, journalism and music. Named one of the “50 People to Watch” by GraphicDesignUSA, Josh is also the author of three design books and numerous articles for HOW magazine. He recently released a book entitled Fingerprint: The Art of Using Handmade Elements in Graphic Design.

Fingerprint:The Art of Using Handmade Elements in Graphic Design

The book showcases projects from an impressive roster of designers, using handwork techniques that range from lettering, illustration, mixed media and surface embellishments, to printing methods such as letterpress and silk screening. It is an inspiration and a call-to-arms for all designers to step back from the computer and reconnect with our repertoire of non-digital tools, especially the brain. Josh and his team of designers shared with us their collective thoughts and philosophies about handmade design. Afterwards, Josh mentioned he was struck by the synchronicities in his team members’ approaches. “Personally,” he said, “this reminds me again what a special group of talented, intelligent designers I get to work with day in and day out, and how thankful I am to have them be part of the CDA team. I wouldn’t be able to do half the things we’ve done as a design studio without these guys.”

CDA team members who participated in this interview include:

Josh Chen, Principal & Creative Director, Chen Design Associates

Max Spector, Senior Designer

Jennifer Tolo Pierce, Senior Designer

Kathrin Blatter, Designer

Shadi Kashefizadeh, Junior Designer

Q. Your presentation at the HOW design conference was called “Perfect Imperfection: The Art of the Handmade in Design.” Do you think adding handmade elements to design connects the process more with art, rather than feeling like a strictly commercial endeavor?

Josh Chen: I guess it’s not so much just a connection to art that’s the most important thing to me, as it is how it adds to the human connection that we all are craving for. After all, the basic motivation behind all the work we do as designers is to communicate an idea, a thought, or a message from sender to receiver. That might be accomplished completely with computer-generated art, or it might be completely handmade, or somewhere in between. I cringe when designers come up to me and ask whether handmade is the new “trend.” When they ask that, my assumption is they are just concerned about aesthetics once again. Isn’t the challenge we already face as designers, in order to be taken seriously by clients, to show that design is about more than just aesthetics? (more…)

In the midst of pressure for designers to keep technical skills and software repertoire fresh, it is just as important to keep feeding your creativity, and challenging the part of your brain that makes your work unique. However, it can be hard to create projects for yourself and produce them in a vacuum. That’s where a site like Illustration Friday fits in perfectly. (more…)

I recently came across a fun portrait exchange site by Los Angeles-based illustrator and teacher Rama Hughes via Danny Gregory’s blog. It’s called The Portrait Party, and its purpose is simple and excellent: to get people drawing and sharing their artwork. You and a fellow artist pair up, either in person or using photographs, to draw each other’s portraits. You then share your portraits by posting a comment to the Portrait Party site that includes your and your partner’s name, contact info, and any comments you’d like to share. If you don’t have a face-to-face drawing buddy, the site offers a list of people who are game and have posted their contact info, some even linking to flickr accounts offering photos from which they’d like their portraits made. (more…)

Don’t let criticism fall-out hold you back.

It’s hard enough to take negative feedback, but as a designer you have the even more difficult task of making sure a client’s criticism comes in a form you can use to produce a revision that hits the mark. We’ve all heard clients use hazy negative statements like “I hate it,” “It’s not working,” “That color is all wrong.” Amid the pain and letdown of not hearing words of praise, we actually have to try to elicit some useful information. It would be great if every client could be a great communicator, able to articulate why the design isn’t working, offer insights pegged to the target audience, and give suggestions on specific areas for change. But you can do a lot to steer the conversation towards the most intelligent, useful critique possible, so that you get to turn in a winning design. (more…)

I just got back from attending the HOW design conference in Atlanta, GA and I’m excited to report back on what it was all about. Many designers consider conferences indispensable opportunities to network, get inspired, recharged and invigorated with new ideas. The HOW conference is one of the largest of its kind, drawing over 3,000 designers from all over the country. It costs a pretty penny: about a thousand bucks for the conference itself, plus the cost of airfare and hotel. But if you can swing it (or get your employer to send you), there is much to be gained. I went down with Scott Chappell and Anjula Duggal to drink in the action. There’s so much to cover from the conference, so get ready for an epic post.

Gazing up at speaker Chip Kidd

The first morning at HOW felt like we were back at the start of a college semester: a sea of colorfully-clad designers making their way to the registration lines and pouring into the opening events. Though staged in massive hotel ballrooms, attendance at some sessions was so high that there were still several of us sitting on the floor, heightening the sense of college nostalgia. The first session we attended was a witty walk through the work process of famed book designer Chip Kidd, who is known for churning out almost one book cover a week in his post at Knopf publishing house. He shared some hilarious stories and visuals of designing everything from comic book treatments to a Paul Simon CD cover, letting all the characters from his life inform his designs.

The design for Paul Simon’s album made Kidd’s young pal Jet a star

Bookended by the conceit of a crossword puzzle clue that has to be viewed in an unexpected way in order to be solved, Kidd’s session showed us how to approach and solve design problems in ways that make the familiar feel new. Kidd’s session set the tone for the highlights of the conference: entertaining visuals with threads that tied the whole presentation together, whether the focus was on artwork, studio management, portfolio building, or creative inspiration. The only problem was that there were so many tempting sessions happening in the same timeslots, it was painful to choose which to attend. (more…)

View the full-sized version and click the links to watch some fun ads.

History tells us that advertising originated in a pre-competitive state, seeking simply to inform about a product: what it is, what it does, what it costs, where you get it. That was a long, long time ago. Ever since supply has exceeded demand, products have been using branding and advertising to create desire and set themselves apart from the pack. I came of age in the days of cheeky chefs replacing customers’ ordinary coffee with Folger’s Crystals, and big-haired models purring “Don’t hate me because I’m beautiful.” Advertising was about practical jokes and the promise of attaining transformation via a product.

These days, advertising bears little relationship to product information, and sometimes nearly eschews branding altogether in favor of pure entertainment. When I want to get information about a product that feels complete, reliable, intuitively ordered and clear, I go to Wikipedia. When I want to get subjected to a bunch of marketing blather within a tightly commercially-contrived order I go to the product’s corporate Web site. And increasingly, when I want to be entertained, I watch commercials.

Funny to describe watching commercials as a voluntary pastime, but the only commercials people ever sit through nowadays are the ones we watch by choice. It’s knocking the costly 30-second TV spot model on its ear, and making way for some inventive ways to engage with viewers through alternative media and a focus on entertainment. A surprising player in this movement is… (more…)