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Join Andrew Shalat (Contributor to MacWeek, Inside Mac Radio, MacCentral, and MacWorld) and Gordon Drummond (Chief Learning Officer, Sessions College for Professional Design) in a Live discussion on the merits of teaching design online.
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Graphic, Web, Multimedia Design and Game Art are increasingly available to be learned online, both with and without instructors. One school has been doing it the longest: Sessions College for Professional Design.
Sessions College was the first fully-online school of design having opened its doors in 1999. The depth of curriculum has grown as it continues to challenge the limits of teaching in what is still a relatively new medium.
The college also manages to appeal to an amazing faculty of instructors, many of whom have published best selling book in their respective fields of design and have taught at other more traditional and renowned brink and mortar colleges.
One such instructor is Andrew Shalat, and on Tuesday, August 10th Scott Chappell of NoD will ask both Andrew Shalat and Sessions College Chief Learning Office Gordon Drummond to demystify the process of learning design online.
The details of this live online conversation are available here. Reserve your spot for the tour and you might also win one of Andrews books which include
A good friend of NoD and Flash guru Chris Georgenes has just authored another of the super popular “How to Cheat” series. We are giving away a copy of his new book How To Cheat In Adobe Flash CS5. To win the book, post a link below to your favorite example of flash animation. The animation does not have to be yours, just one you like.
We’ll pick a winner on Monday and announce it here.
Next weekend “Take-Less,” an eco-art installation designed to bring awareness to society’s mass consumption of plastic take-out food containers, will be unveiled in NYC.
As the popularity of take-out meals increases, so does its waste. New York design firm, MSLK is dedicated to raising awareness on the rampant consumption of single-use plastic that has become an unfortunate societal norm in the US. None of the plastic waste from take-out containers is currently being recycled and only a few options are biodegradable. They are building the number “2629” out of plastic take-out containers to demonstrate the number of take-out meals consumed in the US each second and the ramifications of that waste. Plastic is polluting our oceans, filling our landfills, and compromising our health.
“Take-less” will be displayed at the Figment Art Festival on Governors Island in New York City from June 11th-13th.
MSLK presents the following facts:
- 2629 take-out meals are consumed in the U.S. every second
- In 1 second the U.S. produces enough take-out waste to cover half of a football field
- Plastic is made from oil, a non-renewable resource
- Plastic does not biodegrade
- Take-out plastics are currently not recyclable
- Paper, metal, and reusable containers are better for the environment
For more information, please call me at 718-545-0075 or sheri@mslk.com
NoD interviewee Rob Gonzalez of Sawdust shares his NoD Creative Countdown below. Creative Countdowns are the favorite websites, movies, bands, magazines and books that top designers turn to for inspiration.
We interviewed Flash animator Chris Georgenes at his home studio in Wellesley, Massachusetts. Chris is self-taught as an animator and his clients include Pileated Pictures, Lucas Arts, Universal Records, Plot Developers, AOL and others. He is currently working for Acclain on their web game RockFree, is a Flash instructor at Sessions College for Professional Design, and is the author of How to Cheat in Flash by Focal Press. We talked with Chris about how his career path has gone from airbrushing streetscapes to the stage at FlashForward, and how his techniques for using Flash can best be expressed as…in Chris’ words:
“The devil’s in the details, and that’s where I love to be.”
I’ve written about using LinkedIn to find design jobs here and here, but I’ve yet to suggest ways to use Twitter or Facebook as part of a design career search.
Needless to say, it is an obligation today that during the application process for a new job you take a moment to see if the company offering a position to which you might apply maintains a Facebook page or Twitter account. If so, Fan and Follow them, read some of their social media content, and then tailor your application / cover letter based upon the insights you have gained by doing this little bit of homework on the company. I know all seems obvious, but it is still worth illustrating because each experience using social media for this purpose is different.
For example, I’ll go look at Coroflot’s Twitter feed right now and check the most recent job announcement to see if this whole application process using social media works… Read the rest of this entry »
BNE Was Here sticker -- Photo taken in Sukhumvit, Bangkok by Nat Wein
Thanks to Mother I recently interviewed, via email, a graffiti artist known as BNE.
Mother is big ad agency with big clients (like Coca-Cola and Stella Artois), that does interesting and creative work. They are opening a huge New York office (36,250 sq. ft.) at 11th avenue and 44th street in Hell’s Kitchen and across the street from Ogilvy. I was there last Thursday to attend a party they threw in celebration of their new office that was also promoted / co-sponsored by New York culture magazine ANIMAL. The guest of honor was BNE, but he/she/they was not present…as far as I know.
BNE has a secret identity and is prolific in the sense that the stickers and painted stencils that say “BNE” are in major cities all over the world. Enough to get print, tv, and web media coverage by major and minor outlets including a recent New York Times article. Coverage garnered, I suspect, thanks to a little help from trend / cool hunters representing agencies that tell the media what is cool and news worthy. There is no other logical explanation, because prolific tagging is not new.
BNE at Mother -- Photo courtesy of Mother, New York
The party was also billed as BNE’s first art show. The art at the opening included the big BNE initials/acronym that have provided the attention to date, and then some pieces where the BNE acronym were placed on top of brand icons like Bart Simpson and Spiderman obscuring the iconic characters as though the brand of BNE is so large, and aggressive, that it is stealing the exposure, the real estate, the consumers’ attention from the long established brands that play by the old rules of branding. Read the rest of this entry »
Have you ever seen a beautiful design and been curious who created it? Would you like to not only learn who the designer is but also interview them? Me too. And so, I thought I’d try something new and invite NoD readers to site beautiful designs that they have seen, past or present. And then NoD editors (or perhaps other NoD readers) will help us find the designers behind the designs we love. A great ad, an amazing animation, a beautiful package design, a perfect font…anything goes.
So, post a comment to this entry below and we’ll start investigating. When we find out who the designer is we’ll share their name with you and may even try to get a Q&A published with them, and YOU can be the interviewer. Also, feel free to suggest designers whose names you know and whom you would like to interview.
