Sheila Levrant de Bretteville

Sheila Levrant de Bretteville, the head of the Graduate Program in Graphic Design at Yale since 1990, is also a practicing designer, public artist and Feminist.

In 1971, de Bretteville founded the Woman’s Design program at Cal Arts, and later co-founded the historic public space ‘The Woman’s Building’ with Judy Chicago and Arlene Raven 1973, and the Communication Design program at the Otis Art Institute of the Parsons School of Design in LA in 1981. Her many public works reflect a deep commitment to social activism through the engagement of community voices and respect for collected local memories. In 2004, she was awarded an AIGA medal for outstanding contribution to the field of design. (more…)

Scott Kelby is one of the top names in Photoshop, educating millions of users about everyone’s favorite digital imaging app. He’s the president of the National Association of Photoshop Professionals (NAPP), editor-in-chief of Layers magazine, author of dozens of books about Photoshop, and a nominee for the 2007 Photoshop Hall of Fame. We’re getting his take on the latest version of Photoshop, the Photoshop phenomenon, and more…

Q: I think many of us follow this timeline when we upgrade to the latest version of Photoshop: Get psyched for the new features, order the program the second it’s available, install it the second it arrives, and instantly fall back into the same old tools and workflow we’ve used for years. What’s a new feature of Photoshop CS3 that everyone should try right now and make part of their daily toolset?

Scott: If you’re a photographer, without a doubt it would be the new Camera Raw 4.1 in Photoshop CS3. It adds new features and tools that take raw editing to a whole new level, and honestly, it’s worth the entire upgrade price all by itself. (more…)

Emily Cohen, Doyenne of the Creative Brief

Emily is a creative consultant with an expertise in the creative development process. Emily has spoken at: How’s “InHOWse” Design Conference, AIGA/Chicago, (Discussion Panel: “The Path to Profitable Growth”), Apple Store in New York City, (Presentation: “Winning Strategies for Creative Professionals.”

Q: What issues do creative professionals face over and over again? Can you recommend any alleviation for these issues?

Emily: While I find designers incredibly smart, many often have little or no experience running and managing a business or a creative services department. They often leap before planning in many areas of their business, from how they market their firm to their hiring strategies. This organic growth strategy ultimately has its limitations. At some point, designers realize they want more from their business: higher fees, better clients, more respect, and more staff. This is when the common issues become apparent: How can I charge more money?

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Sara Horowitz is the founder of Working Today / Freelancers Union

In 1995, Sara Horowitz founded Working Today to meet the needs of the new, independent workforce. In 2001, Working Today launched the Portable Benefits Network (PBN), (later renamed the Freelancers Union), to deliver benefits to independent workers in New York City’s Silicon Alley.

Currently serving as executive director, Sara takes an entrepreneurial approach, pursuing creative, market-based solutions to pressing social problems. The organization seeks to update the nation’s social safety net, developing systems so that all working people (especially freelancers) can access affordable benefits, regardless of their job situation.

Sessions.edu’s own Scott Chappell spoke with Sara Horowitz about the ties between employers and employees and membership in the Freelancers Union.

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Lew Baldwin

Lew Baldwin is a creative art director for web, film, sound, broadcast and motion graphic design projects. He works out of his Los Angeles-based studio team agency, which just recently located from New York.

Lew recently shot and directed a series of video for Nike Soccer, including a music video starring Clint Dempsey from the U.S. National Team. He is also a musician and created the musical score for the Sony feature film “November” (sonyclassics.com/November) starring Courteney Cox.
He has exhibited artwork at The Whitney Museum of American Art, The New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York, Foundation Polar in Caracas, Venezuela and is recognized internationally for his videos, visual art and installations.

Lew currently resides in Los Angeles.

Margaret Penney has known much of Lew’s work since he launched one of the first online interactive narrative art projects at Redsmoke.com.  Lew’s style is distinctive, as it moves across a variety of mediums from new media to film, television, theater, and music.

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Andrew Clemente, Creator of Devlounge.net

Andrew Clemente is an award-winning site designer / developer and creator of Devlounge.net, a well-known design and developer resource. Devlounge provides original content covering web design standard and usability. Most people that have been in design and development for 7 years are not in high school, but Andrew is. He is 17 years old. We had to talk with Andrew to find out how he founded a successful design resource site with a larger international following before he moved away from home.

Devlounge - Homepage

Q: Andrew, I recently heard that one of your “first-ever” design projects was when you created a site close to 7 years ago for your Little League team in 2000. Can you tell us a bit about the project? (How long did it take? Is the site still up? Was this when you first started thinking about design as a “career”)?

Andrew: The site (if you can call it that) was nothing amazing. I had created a Homestead account (free at the time) and laid out a site using a WYSIWYG editor and various images from around the web. At the time I was so young and I didn’t even think what I had just figured out would be worth something some day. I was really just a kid having fun.

The site is no longer up, as Homestead went the paid road (more…)

Alex Wipperfurth, brand marketing consultant and accessory to hijack.

Alex Wipperfurth is a San-Francisco-based marketing consultant who traffics in radical ideas. Through his agency Plan B, Wipperfurth has elevated grassroots marketing into something of an artform. Brands as diverse as Napster, Dr Marten’s, Pabst Blue Ribbon, and Barbie have all benefited from Wipperfurth’s methodology, which often times flies in the face of big budget, mass media, focus group tested marketing. Wipperfurth creates a cult following for most of his brands through a creative, low-budget, person-to-person strategy that "seeds" the product with a target audience of trend-setters. The customer in effect "hijacks" the brand, sparking an authentic buzz that makes the brand cool.

Prior to the release of his new book Brand Hijack, we interviewsed Alex about what his ideas mean for visual designers. After all, marketers and designers do face the same challenges: How do we reach our target audience without placing an ad on Fox? How do we make a design "cool" without trying too hard?

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Holly Becker, décor8

As a freelance writer and interior design consultant, Holly Becker has created a very loyal readership to her blog, décor8. Holly is an Interior Design Consultant practicing in New Hampshire, Boston and the surrounding areas. She’s also a published freelance writer, having 10 years of combined writing and design experience, working for Fortune 500 companies and smaller companies in both the U.S. and Canada, including designers, salon owners and artists.

Q. Holly, on décor8 you point out that you look to reach out to others who share your passion for design and the need for creative living. Can you tell us what you mean by “Creative Living?”

Holly: Yes, I’d be happy to expound on this. Creativity is expressing yourself, being original, imaginative, authentic, and productive. We are all alive, but there is a difference between being alive and living. A person who works a job they dislike, comes home to chaos, and has few deep and meaningful interactions in their life, is not really living. At least in my opinion. To really live, you need to tap into your true self first and figure out what your passions and dreams really are. Not the ones you think you should do, or what your friends are telling you to do, or what your parents expect of you. It may not even be the career you’ve been doing for the last 15 years.

You need to be comfortable with who you are and you need to like yourself. And once you have that down, you will start to take better care of yourself - your health, your home, everything will fall into place once you realize your worth, passions, and goals. Layers will start to unfold as you continue to examine who you are, listen to your inner voice, and do things you’ve always wanted to do. Take a long vacation to that exotic locale you’ve always wanted to visit, just because. Once you’ve tapped into what makes your heart feel warm and your outlook bright (whether it is cooking, sewing, taking classes to learn about something that fascinates you…whatever), start doing those things and see where each experience leads you—One step at a time. Don’t wait for the perfect moment. Live for today. This is creative living. (more…)

Bruce Livingstone, Founder, President, CEO, iStockPhoto

Bruce Livingstone, 35, is founder, President and CEO of iStockphoto, an innovative marketplace for imagery. Bruce started his design career in 1994, as a clerk in the mail room of Image Club Graphics, a Calgary company credited with being the first to put RF images on CD-ROMs. After a piece of software essentially eliminated his job, Bruce’s manager authorized him to spend $2,000 to create a plan for a potential new venture for the company. The experiment was a strong foreshadowing of Bruce’s future career at the helm of a powerful and profitable Internet company. Bruce then moved on to work as a designer at various places including the Idea Machine, where he was a graphic designer for the Web, helping to create Web sites for Air Canada and others.

During these years, Bruce sharpened his skills as a photographer, and eventually decided to try to market 1,600 stock images of his own on CD-ROM. He calls iStockphoto a "true example of success born from failure." After deciding he was not going to make it in the traditional stock photography business, Bruce created a free Web site to share his images with a network of designer and photographer friends, and iStockphoto was born. Initially a trading site, iStockphoto introduced the micropayment model in 2000, where buyers purchase credits in blocks starting at $10 each. iStockphoto filled a need in the industry for great images at affordable prices, and is now the leader in the value segment of the imagery industry, selling images from $1-$40 depending on usage. Today, iStockphoto is rapidly approaching one million members and a collection of images from thousands of artists around the globe.

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Lara Modjeski

Lara is the Vice-President, Creative, at Tom Ford Beauty. She held previous design positions at Ralph Lauren Fragrances, where she was also senior art director, and at L’Oreal USA, where she was a junior and senior designer for their European Designer Fragrances.

While at Ralph Lauren, Lara was responsible for concept, design, and project management of RL Fragrances worldwide. Individual brands under her leadership included Pure Turquoise, Polo Black, Purple Label, Lauren Style, Polo Blue, Ralph Lauren Blue, Romance, Romance men, Romance Silver, Ralph, Ralph Cool, Polo Sport, Polo, Safari, and Lauren.

Q: Tell me a bit about yourself and your current position.

Lara: After leaving Providence College after my freshman year, to "explore my interests" (a.k.a: Find a major!), I moved to Memphis with my parents. By luck, I linked up with a wonderful professor who let me attend a couple of junior/senior level graphic design classes at Memphis State University before taking basic 101 classes.  I just needed to see if I was really meant to take this path. Luckily, it clicked immediately and before I knew it, I had graduated, moved back to New York, and landed my first "career job" as a junior designer in the Designer Fragrance Division of L’Oreal. I spent 15+ years there until I was offered my current position as creative head for Tom Ford Beauty. 

Q: What is the most important aspect of the creative process? Planning, design, or implementation?

Lara: Being free of perimeters and guides. Allowing yourself to just be open. To just throw out those ideas without judgment. To make a space for the creativity in your mind—keeping it a safe, free space for idea-generating. Then the planning, the implementation, comes in to play, as you fine-tune and work with any must-haves, company guides, cost constraints, and so on.

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