My Favorite Things: March 22

Spring has sprung. We have a new time change in place. Colorado has experienced 60 and 70 degree days and even had our first rain (not snow) storm! I’m in a jolly mood and ready to share more of my favorite things with you. This week, my favorite things are all free things on the interwebs!

Design Matters Podcast

Graphic designer, AIGA president, brand expert and overall lady with an amazing voice for radio, Debbie Millman, does a free weekly podcast through Design Observer called Design Matters. I am completely addicted to this and listen to it and the archived episodes several times a week on my drive into work. For 10 years, Debbie has interviewed prominent people in the design industry including graphic designers, web designers, magazine editors, typographers and brand experts. She conducts thorough, engaging interviews, asks unusual questions and has the absolute best way of guiding her interviewees through an amazing journey. I’ve completely enjoyed every single one of I’ve listened to, but for starters check out Liz Danzico (creative director at NPR), Jessica Hische (my lettering idol), Aaron Draplin (he’s hilarious), Hoefler & Frere-Jones (on the archives since they broke up this past year), and Massimo Vignelli. Available on iTunes or SoundCloud.

Humans of New York Blog

Sometimes I wonder if all this technology and social media is a bad thing. I feel like we’ve lost our connection with mankind and it’s promoting anti-social behavior at times. However, then something amazing like Humans of New York comes along, which is one of the best things on the internet. The creator, Brandon, was a stock trader who lost his job and decided he wanted to spend his time photographing and micro-interviewing the amazing citizens of New York City instead. Every day, he posts several photos of random New Yorkers with a snippet about them. It may be an amusing quote, a touching story, an in-depth anecdote on their life. Whether it’s a few words or many, each person he features touches you and provides a strong emotional connection. Recently, Brandon raised a million dollars for inner-city New York kids to get to go to Harvard and realize they can pursue their dreams. Each day on HONY is amazing and well worth reading.

99u Blog

99u is an amazing online blog produced by the folks over at Behance, which is the online design portfolio site by Adobe. How’s that for 6 degrees of separation? It is a great online resource for designers and offers anything from design inspiration to useful articles on running your own business to improving your work. 99u has grown into an annual design conference, magazine and books, but just checking their blog several times a week yields great content.

Small Bites: March 2

Ugh, someone is having a case of the Mondays. After a frigid, snowy weekend with more snow on the way, I’m a cranky cheetah and desperately need some cheering up. Luckily these creative bites are just the thing to bring a smile to my face on a gloomy Monday.

Photographer Jason Travis is doing a project called “Persona” where he is photographing people and the essential things they carry on themselves. It’s a great way to tell the personalities of people and see just what people haul around in their purses or messenger bags all day. My personal favorite is the guy carrying around the American Tourister flight bag and trademarks book. Reminds me of designer Aaron Draplin.

The predictions are in! Check out the predicted top 10 web design trends of 2015 by The Next Web. I’m glad to see that scrolling sites are still on the cutting-edge, since I just learned how to code those. I’m a little bummed the large background images may be on their way out, but I like that typography is taking a step forward.

The Creative Bloq does a daily post of “font of the day” where sometimes the featured font is free. This week was Fabfelt Script, a delightful retro script perfect for Throwback Thursday.

More free stuff! Designer and photographer Jim Krause, is giving away 10 free wallpapers for your computer and tablet. This HOW Design speaker gives away bright, cheery and a little bit quirky illustrations to grace your next device and bring in a pop of color to your digital screen.

And, finally, the “FYI: I’m a Graphic Designer” video that was making the social media rounds this week. Sadly, our profession is misunderstood by those not in it—it’s thought of as fun, coloring pictures, cute, easy, anyone with a copy of Word and some clipart can do it. Unfortunately, these misconceptions are perpetuated by movies and TV. Someone put all of these clips together to show how designers are portrayed in the media. Made me laugh until I realized how true it is and how hard we have to work for client respect.

Express Yourself: Alternative Creative Outlets

As designers, I think we tend to be generally creative people who branch out into other arenas besides graphic design to express ourselves creatively. I also think it’s a good thing when a designer has a lot of other creative hobbies and interests, because those things tend to carry over into ideas for design projects. In this digital age, we’re glued to our screens and sometimes forget the world around us.

When I’m not designing or spending hours on social media reading tweets and posts about design, I like to cook, bake, dabble in photography, decorate my house, and now learn hand lettering. I love coming home after work and cooking a nice meal after sitting at my desk all day. It’s very therapeutic to put on music and get creative in the kitchen. My favorite thing to cook is what I call elevated comfort foods. I like to take old favorites like grilled cheese, a burger, a BLT and add a creative, gourmet spin to them. I make a Sriracha garlic mayo to put on my BLT, and it makes all the difference. I put a Parmesan garlic butter crust on the outside of my grilled cheese sandwich. I stuff my burgers with smoked gouda and bacon. I hate following recipes and usually the food isn’t nearly as good if I do. I look at recipes to get ideas for what flavors are combined and then do my own creative spin to it. It’s a great outlet for being creative, but it’s away from the computer.

Living in Colorado and my chronic case of wanderlust has spurred an interest in photography with me. I really enjoy taking pictures, and thanks to some great instruction from a guide I had in Kenya, I’m finally learning to get away from the hated “auto mode” and learning how to shoot real photos. I’m not a photographer anymore than I’m a chef, but it’s an awesome creative outlet for me. It gets me outside, looking at light and working on my composition skills as a I frame a shot.

The chalkboard wall in my kitchen is one of my creative outlets. During Christmas, I changed it to a Chinese food menu for fun.

The back wall of my kitchen is painted with chalkboard paint. Now that I’m learning hand lettering, it’s a great place to practice. Definitely not producing the results of Dana Tanamachi, but it’s fun and whimsical and it’s a nice way to relax. I liked changing up my designs, and it’s always a fun conversation piece when guests come over.

What are your creative hobbies to get the juices flowing, but away from work?

Small Bites: February 16, 2015

And, it’s another Monday…thankfully I’m off today for President’s Day, but I still want to share my favorite small design bites from the previous week with you all.

HOW Magazine is accepting submissions for their Promotional and Marketing Design contest. In honor of this, they published their 10 best winners from past awards. There are some really, really creative ideas out there. I think my personal favorites are the camping kit, urban bear kit and the deck of type cards. I always wonder how companies get budgets to produce such epic packages of designer fun, given that I work for a non-profit where we can’t even do spot color printing.

The Dieline blew me away this week with this edible Japanese zen rock garden packaging and product design. You get to rake the sand AND eat the candy rocks! This is fantastic work.

IKEA has released a set of emoticons. This makes me joyously happy and there’s really nothing else to say about this momentous event.

The Great Discontent is doing an awesome project, starting April 6. It is 100 days of making, the brain child of Elle Luna. For 100 days in a row, make something—try 100 recipes, do 100 sketches, learn 100 fonts. It promotes creativity and consistency. Sign up and get your ideas flowing! As of now, I think I’m going to do 100 days of lettering, but we shall see.

Fuel your wanderlust with the 2014 National Geographic Travel Photos of the year. These are absolutely stunning, mind blowing photographs. It made me want to pack up my suitcase, grab my passport and head out into this amazing world.