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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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.”

Emily Pilloton

I’ve seen some designs come out of the poorest villages in Africa that trump anything coming out of any design firm in the US. — Emily Pilloton

Recent Colbert Report guest and Bay Area native and designer Emily Pilloton was underwhelmed with the home product decision-making that made up much of her working life when she started Project H, an organization of volunteer designers who work to connect design with communities most in need. Her work encouraging local Project H chapters to bring better products to schools, hospitals and shelters led to the book “Design Revolution: 100 Products that Empower
People.”

In February she’ll kick off the Design Revolution Road Show, a traveling exhibition and lecture series that will visit 25 high schools and university design programs nationwide across the nation via an Airstream trailer that highlights 40 humanitarian design solutions highlighted in the book. You can follow the cross-country tour, which will take Pilloton and partner Matthew Miller to schools from Austin to Baltimore, on the site’s itinerary and @DesRevRoadShow. Emily Pilliton is interviewed here by Emily Goligoski.

Notes On Design: What your initial motivation for starting Project H?

Emily Pilloton: I started Project H mostly out of frustration, but the kind of frustration that is laced with optimism: where you wake up one day and realize that you don’t like the way things are, but you think you know how to fix it.

I’m trained as an architect and a product designer, and grew up always taking things apart and putting things together, and came to design believing that it would be a great skill set for solving problems in a physical, creative, and critical manner.

A few years out of graduate school, when I found myself working as the store architect for a retail clothing company, where design was synonymous with choosing doorknobs and other such minutiae, I had had enough. Design had, in my own career (mostly because I had huge student loan bills), become so far removed from why I originally became a designer: to solve problems. I quit the doorknob job the next day, started writing and making up my own rules, and eventually started Project H as an avenue to apply design to the things that mattered.

The Design Revolution Roadshow Airstream

NoD: How did the idea for such a non-traditional book tour come about?

Emily Pilloton: As a natural contrarian, I tend to find the expected and the usual very boring. This was particularly true when I wrote “Design Revolution” and the time came to think about what kind of book tour I would embark on. The usual book signings and library talks seemed valuable, but not in keeping with the tone of the book, which is so much about a grassroots, bottom-up, “just do it” approach to design that really belongs at the doorsteps of designers who care, not in Barnes & Nobles. 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.
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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.

Scott

Celeste Prevost

After a stint in Colorado where she earned recognition for a clean, often humorous body of work now detailed on her newly redesigned site Designisfine, designer/illustrator Celeste Prevost has landed her creative talents in Minneapolis. In addition to working in-house at marketing firm Zeus Jones she takes on freelance projects that inspire her creatively. Here Celeste describes her career path, shows us the mood boards she creates for inspiration, and let’s us have a look at her design space at Zeus Jones where she and husband (Rob Angermuller of www.lifterbaron.com and designer for ARTCRANK) spend their weekends being creative at their adjacent desks. Celeste is interviewed here by Emily Goligoski.

NoD: You sometimes make your designs available for little or no payment. What are your thoughts around arguments for creative and media work being shared for free online?

Celeste Prevost: A typeface I created and posted for free download, Hand of God, is kind of gimmicky and I made it to be used publicly. I’m not a professional typographer, but I was happy when a small Boulder company called Humanoid Wake approached me obout using it on one of their wakeboards soon. It will stay free for them.

Hand of God Typeface by Celeste Prevost.

I love to share my work and give back — sharing in our community is very important as long as it’s not abused. It’s empowering Read the rest of this entry »

As a follow to my post on Using LinkedIn to Find Design Jobs, here is a slightly different technique to go after the design business that you want.

If you decide that your ideal client type is a travel-oriented company because your aesthetic is a match or because you already have some experience in that space, then search for travel companies within LinkedIn. You search companies using the search feature in the upper right-hand corner of the page, pulling down the menu to change the search from “people” to “companies.” I just did a search for “travel” and got 4772 results. Now you have an idea of the volume of possible new client contacts on LinkedIn, but that’s a global and really broad search so let’s narrow it using better search techniques.

Follow this link:
http://www.linkedin.com/companies

The page at the link above also lets you browse by industries. Here I have started browsing “Philanthropies”:
http://www.linkedin.com/companyDir?results=&sik=1251911248496

…where I can then focus the results by country, zip, company size and even if they are hiring by using the search features on the right of the page. Read the rest of this entry »

In my last post about Using LinkedIn to Get Design Jobs I introduced the idea of “Client Types” and that a designer’s natural aesthetic helps determine their ideal client, or the type most likely to hire them.

I thought I’d pursue this idea further and invite you, the NoD readers, to submit your portfolio for review. I’ll pass your portfolio by a selected group of NoD authors and they will provide feedback and recommend what industries might include your most ideal clients to target for jobs, and why. I’ll publish it all here on NoD.

So please email me [ scott (at) notesondesign.net ] a link to your portfolio and we’ll share our opinion on your ideal clients. We’ll do this first come first served since I can’t predict volume of submissions. Thanks!

UPDATE TO THIS POST: DUE TO HEAVY RESPONSE WE ARE NO LONGER TAKING PORTFOLIO SUBMISSIONS. WE’LL POST RESULTS ASAP.

What is your design aesthetic? It’s hard to be objective, but important to know. It helps determine who you are likely to land as a client. And who you are likely to land as a client are your “Client Types.”

So with your aesthetic in mind, what are your “Client Types”, and do you know any / have connections to any of them? To connect with your Client Types use your network — or start building one — and find them.

Join LinkedIn Groups comprised of those types of clients and do the soft-sell. Position yourself as a specialist. Suggest that you are doing contextual research Read the rest of this entry »

As a follow to an earlier post on Coroflot’s Design Salary Survey here is a design salary calculator published by AIGA this year. It only covers the US but is comprehensive in terms of covering fields of design as well as organization size and sector.