I’ve been designing posters in an academic setting for a number of years now, and I can tell you that creating promotional materials to reach a campus community is an erratically moving target. Trends that were hot last week may be total turn-offs this week. Catch phrases are like passwords: use the right one and you’re in, but use the wrong one a few times and you’re locked out. And even tasteful humor will unearth a critic or two. Finding the sweet spot takes some practice. Continue reading
Wrong solutions, whether or not they ever get presented to the client, are a big part of design. You have to wade through a whole lot of them to get to the right solution. So if you’re inclined to share intermediate sketches and thoughts with your client, as I sometimes like to do, then there’s a more than casual chance that you’ll be presenting a wrong solution. And sometimes doing so reveals the most direct path to the right solution. Continue reading
Terra Mountain has a vast network of hiking and horseback riding trails, scenic overlooks, rock amphitheaters, wildlife encounters galore, a Native American medicine wheel, tons of great spots to build cordwood houses or other environmentally friendly living structures, open areas for gardening, and the list goes on. But time and again, when I begin to enumerate to people all of the assets to which this place can lay claim, the response I get is, “Yeah, yeah, yeah…so, can you take us to see the waterfalls?” Continue reading
Hilldale is the umbrella company for all the various business endeavors of a husband and wife team, Doug and Nicole (Daley) Hill, and the name is obviously a mashup of the two last names suggesting a sense of balance, equality and collaboration in all aspects of the operation. My challenge was to underscore that balance with an unaggressive, almost non-branded identity system that could function across an organization with potentially numerous subsidiary enterprises. The solution needed to be simple and unobtrusive yet strong and credible. Continue reading
As a designer and a philanthropist, I’m always on the lookout for projects that will allow me to stretch my creativity and help the world at the same time. So when I was approached about the possibility of redesigning the web presence for karuna.us, an online charity auction platform, I was beyond excited. The concept behind Karuna was simple. The site hosted ongoing auctions for a broad range of things, much like eBay, but for every completed transaction a portion of the sale went to a charity of the purchaser’s choosing. It offered people everywhere the chance to become philanthropists while doing something they do every day: buy things. Continue reading
Okay, show of hands. Who among us, if given the chance, would NOT be able to identify him or herself as a hedonist, at least some of the time? There are a few of you, I’m sure, but I specifically threw the “NOT” in there because I’m betting that it’s easier to count the nays than the yeahs on this. I really think I’m right, here. And this is what I told Deb Hillman when she first came to me in need of graphics for her fledgling start-up jewelry business, Pebbles and Pearls. Continue reading
