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.
Timoni Grone is the senior visual designer at Scribd where she creates websites that blend responsible web practices with classic design & typographical philosophies. She also co-founded the monthly design MeetUp and work session Chromatic where Bay area designers meet to network share ideas and design challenges. It’s part of her effort to expand the reach of user-centric design and make your web experience just a little bit better. Timoni is interviewed here by Emily Goligoski.
Notes on Design: How did you get your start?
Timoni Grone: I was an English major in college but talked about art and design enough that a friend encouraged me to take an art class, and I’ve been making sites and designing for friends since 1999. I’m largely self-taught—I looked at course syllabi and taught myself design fundamentals.
My second job was as a web editor for the State Department creating mockups for sites to expand dialogue with the Arabic world. I didn’t expect that I’d ever work on security and public diplomacy, and it was eye-opening.
NoD: Wow! Not your typical design gig. Where did you go from there?
Timoni Grone: I ultimately left to work at a DC branding agency in the research sphere before moving to San Francisco, where I’d wanted to be since I was using early social media tools in Nebraska while still in college.
NoD: And in San Francisco you began working at Scribd where you are now the Senior Visual Designer and have been largely responsible for their redesign effort. What other sites that you frequent are you itching to redesign?
Timoni Grone: Twitter, no doubt about it, so that people wouldn’t have to use third party applications to have a good experience. I’d improve the leading on Facebook, but on Tumblr I wouldn’t change much beyond the implementation.
NoD: Can you expand on your comment regarding third party apps and how Twitter could improve if it did not require them? Isn’t Twitter improving because of third party apps..and is that built-in flexibility not what makes it, in part, so hugely popular?Read the rest of this entry »
Jeff Hamada is a self-described small Japanese artist working out of Vancouver, BC. He was recently selected as one of 100 artists to collaborate with Converse and Product(RED) to celebrate Converse’s 100th year anniversary.
He currently freelances as a graphic designer, and runs the hugely popular art / design site Booooooom.com. I asked Jeff a few questions about his design work, both personal and professional. How does one guy manage a hugely populate design site yet also complete very high-profile and beautiful design projects. Maybe this answers the question —
“Even if I don’t know how to do something I’ll tell people that I’m the person to get the job done because I’m just willing to spend all night learning how to do it.” — Jeff Hamada Read the rest of this entry »
Q: When I presented Marc Schiller of the Wooster Collective with your painting he immediately knew that it was your work. After visiting your Web site it became clear you’re a prolific and talented artist. What motivates you to create art and, even more intriguing, give it away by placing it on the street for people like me lucky enough to happen by?
Adam: I paint purely for the love and enjoyment I get from the feeling of creating something, be it a doodle on a piece of cardboard or a 6ft wall. After the process of creating something I lose interest in the final end product. I no longer want to see it. The egotist thrives on completing an acceptable painting. He will stand for hours looking at his own achievment. The egotist will call himself an “artist”… I just paint on stuff. The walls of my home are bare. For me art is not for hanging, but more for experiencing oneself. Read the rest of this entry »
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 »
