NoD is a curated online design magazine authored by professional designers, writers, and educators who write to inspire creativity and promote engaged thinking about today’s most pressing design topics. Subscribe to NoD and receive a biweekly newsletter recapping the most recent posts, interviews and reviews from our featured authors.
We interviewed Mike Pandolfo at Elias Arts in SOHO, New York where he is Creative Director, Composer, General Manager. Mike is also an instructor at Sessions Online Schools of Art and Design where he teaches Music Production Using Logic. Watch Mike talk about how he broke into a career in music production.
Born in Sweden, Camilla Meijer is a London-based pattern designer specializing in wallpaper and textiles. Camilla’s technical training in Graphic Design has taken her on an unexpected, botanical path of pattern design. She elegantly draws upon her journeys through London’s greenery to relate stories of her past and present into her Camilla Meijer Design brand. Staying true to her mission to spread the beauty of nature to others, Camilla’s use of texture and color has gained her appearances in Design Week, Fashion Extras magazine, Home Décor & Furnishings, and the Essential Kitchen Bathroom Bedroom. In 2007, Camilla won the “New Designers One Year On Award” at New Designers Show in Islington, London. She is represented by textile agencies in New York, Paris, and Tokyo.
In this interview, Kerri Besse talks with Camilla about her creative print design process. From a stroll in the park to note-worthy design, she shows us that a career path less traveled can be surprisingly rewarding. Read the rest of this entry »
Michael Cina is the cofounder of the renowned design studio YouWorkForThem and currently runs the Minneapolis, MN studio. He has experimented with many forms of design and is well known for his remarkable typographic work that can be found at youworkforthem.com With a current client list including EA Sports, Victoria’s Secret, Pepsi, and MTV, Michael’s passion for custom typography is changing the design landscape in which we all live.
In this interview, Michael gives us a peek into the dynamics of a successful design studio. He also explains why he works under a clay manufacturing building and reveals what, and who, inspires his work.
Notes on Design: Can you describe your studio?
Michael Cina: We work in the basement of a clay manufacturing building in NE Minneapolis. It is very industrial and no frills. It has a service elevator, room to grow, a loading dock and high ceilings. These were all the things we were looking for. Functionality plays more of a role than aesthetics. Read the rest of this entry »
A warm welcome to new NoD Editor Sieda Johnson. Sieda is a native New Yorker that has worked in design, photography and editing for firm’s including MSLK design agency and she is a recent winner of the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum’s “I (heart) Design” competition benefiting the Target National Design Education Center.
Rebecca works her magic with a soup can arrangement in her favorite space in the studio: a harvest table that doubles as workspace and office desk.
Rebecca Cole thrives on creating unique floral, garden and interior designs with a rustic, natural aesthetic. She’s best known to the public as co-host of all 200 episodes of Discovery Channel’s “Surprise By Design” with fellow designer and studio neighbor, Robert Verdi. She continues to educate on a national and global scale through a weekly radio show, “On the House,” regular appearances on shows such as “The Today Show,” as a “guru” on Howdini.com, and as the author of 3 books. From her studio in Manhattan’s flower district, Rebecca Cole Design delivers her unique style to a growing clientele of New York area celebrities and aficionados. Wall-to-wall windows lend an airy greenhouse feel to the space overlooking W. 30th Street.
We stepped into the middle of the proceedings to find out what makes her space so inviting. Read the rest of this entry »
Renee Rupcich is the assistant art director of Men’s Vogue. Though her career has focused on graphic design and publishing (she was also senior designer at fashion/design magazine Surface), she also studied photography and worked as an assistant in photography studios in San Francisco. Lately Renee has cultivated an interest in handcrafts and knitting as well as in socially and environmentally responsible design, and she contributes to the online community DESIGN 21: Social Design Network. Read the rest of this entry »
Note: This is part 1 in an 8 part series by design instructor and NoD author Dave Holston. To view Dave’s previous entries please click here.
Design is a commodity
A few years back I attended a design management seminar in San Francisco. The seminar was held on a refurbished ferry-boat docked at Pier 3 and featured a notable design speaker. The view of the bay was fantastic, and the information presented at the session was compelling. But as I look back, the most remarkable thing about that seminar was lunch.
I had the good fortune to be seated at the same table as the speaker. Others at the table included business owners and designers from a wide variety of areas, all looking to harness the power of design. Our conversation ran the gamut from design leadership, research, ethnography and our own personal design war stories. I tried to think of an insightful question to ask the speaker, but the best I could come up with was, “So, do you have any designers on your staff?” Jeez, could I have asked a more banal question? But his answer left me speechless. “No.” he responded off-handedly, “Design is a commodity.” Read the rest of this entry »
When MoMA opened its current exhibition of George Lois’ Esquire covers last spring, the legendary ad man (”I want my MTV”, anyone?) enjoyed a second wave of fame and acclaim. As a new generation discovered the powerful and provocative images he created for Esquire between 1962-1972, even the supremely confident Lois was a little taken back by the response: “In the first month of the show, my web site got 1 million 700 000 hits. Who would have imagined that a graphic design show would have that kind of impact?” he says. But maybe it’s not surprising at all. In today’s climate of impossibly bland magazine art, Lois’ fearless statements offer a refreshing reminder that success does not always equal pandering. “I do stuff that punch you in the mouth sometimes,” he says. However, the fact that his 40-year-old covers are still considered so radical is also a little discouraging. How come not much else has happened since then? To ponder that question, and to revisit the stories behind his most iconic pictures, we sat down with the irrepressibly charming and outspoken 77-year-old native New Yorker in the beautiful West Village apartment he’s lived in for the past four decades. Read the rest of this entry »
The following post is the second part of an ongoing conversation between guest authors Rick Bennett and Andy Polaine, friends and partners in Omnium – a research group of academics, designers, artists, programmers and writers who work collaboratively (and from different countries) to explore the potential the Internet allows for what they term – online collaborative creativity (OCC). We asked Rick and Andy to explore the topic of online collaboration through a collaborative online conversation. Stay tuned over the next few weeks (or months?) as this unique meeting of minds unfolds:
ANDY: Rick, I hope my mocking hasn’t wounded you too deeply! I think you probably underestimate how au fait you are with new technologies and I think this brings us onto a couple of points that refer back to what you asked me about in your final questions. Read the rest of this entry »
The following post is the first part of an ongoing conversation between guest authors Rick Bennett and Andy Polaine, friends and partners in Omnium – a research group of academics, designers, artists, programmers and writers who work collaboratively (and from different countries) to explore the potential the Internet allows for what they term – online collaborative creativity (OCC). We asked Rick and Andy to explore the topic of online collaboration through a collaborative online conversation. Stay tuned over the next few weeks (or months?) as this unique meeting of minds unfolds:
In 1998, on a grey autumn afternoon in London’s Soho, Omnium’s founder, Rick Bennett, came to visit me at Antirom’s studios to tell me about a project he was developing called Omnium – The Virtual Design Studio. Antirom was a new media collective that I co-founded along with several other designers, developers and artists and was based on the collaborative, non-hierarchical structure used by the über-creative collective Tomato, our friends and landlords. Read the rest of this entry »
