it’s another week in july, which means another park for a park a day on LAist. here are some photos from my favorite lunchtime getaway parks when i worked in pasadena. read more on LAist!
it’s july, which is national parks & recreation month, and i’m writing 4 different pieces for LAist about parks around LA. the first one is about echo park, so i thought i’d collect some of my favorite photos of the park. enjoy!
it’s the start of another week, only this one’s different. for one thing, i’m heading off to the creative freelancer conference in chicago for a few days of networking, re-engaging and connecting with a great group of people. for another, i’ve been feeling ready to change things up around here, and while i’m not sure about how and where to transition, i think it’s best to take the week, get the takeaways from the conference and come out on the other side ready to rock.
other than wrapping up tasks, i’ll be cleaning my office, which has fallen into some level of neglect, since i somehow decided that i needed to overhaul my reference archives, and couldn’t do one single other thing until that daunting task was finished. so i’m doing a big “okay, FINE!” on myself, taking the day, sorting through the archives, streamlining them and then cleaning the office. that way, it will be all refreshed for my return, ready to figure out the next steps.
in the meantime, i’m packing up the camera, favorite pens and notepads, going to soak up what i can of chicago between sessions and dive into CFC, updating daily along the way. i wrote about last year here [day 1] and here [day 2], so i’m looking forward to another year of development and discovery on the veteran designer session track. see you next week!
Stuxnet: Anatomy of a Computer Virus from Patrick Clair on Vimeo.
the content, design and execution of this motion graphic video is absolutely jaw-dropping. thanks iso50.com! happy friday!
Pendulum sound machine from kyoueidesign on Vimeo.
hey designers, there’s a lovely new book, i heart design, out by steven heller! see the whole profile on the designer’s review of books.
hey clients, if you’re thinking about developing a new web site, there’s this great planning guide that can help you understand what you’re in for and how to prepare!
and hey, both designers and clients, if you’ve ever been confused about how copyright law works, or what are the specifics of licensing, smashing magazine is ready to break it down for you!
and while you’re still here, there’s this great piece on fastcodesign.com about putting entrepreneurial designers in a position to bring their great design energy to the leadership and inception of the company, and connecting them with the money to make it happen:
“What we’re hoping to do is shift the paradigm of what design is. Design encompasses systems now, not just ‘making things look pretty,'” Allen continues. “Designers have traditionally been paid a lot of money to make what people want; meanwhile, most startups fail because they make things that people don’t actually want! But designers are trained in methods of getting to these ‘aha’ moments about customers, products, and use cases. And that’s a great opportunity for designers to make a foundational contribution in a startup venture.”
in the world of seasonal eating, we’re moving from spring to summer this week, so enjoy some of the best of both seasons. last week’s seasonal eats was about spring peas while this week, we’re talking heirloom tomatoes!
since calendar days and dates repeat every 2, 6, and 11 years, cranky pressman designed a faux 1966 calendar to be reused this year, 2011, with the encouragement to use it again in 2022. cool concept, and super-cool looking! see the whole profile at under consideration.
more for the print’s not dead files, felix ng has started up an arts and culture journal, bracket, and the boyle heights neighborhood of LA just got a new bilingual paper—the boyle heights beat / pulso de boyle heights—reported by teens and funded by the california endowment as a joint collaboration between usc annenberg and la opinión.
for more in print on design, the elements of graphic design by alex w. white is out in 2nd edition.
take a spin through the typography of miami with 8 hour day!
here’s a lovely little illustration of our burg of echo park, circa 1909. more on the big map blog.
LA observed has a video of the newly-reopened angeles crest highway, which has been closed for the past 18 months following the station fire. looks like the restoration included lots of newly-topped road.
if you’re looking for an out-of-the-way tour of los angeles, 7 days in LA has a great selection of indie tours that go beyond the generic hollywood tour and give different perspectives on our rich history.
i have been so buried with work, i actually had to stop blogging. this is a sad thing, because i like blogging, but just can’t spare the time and energy. perhaps next week i’ll be able to return with the highlights of all the cool stuff waiting for me in google reader over the last 3 weeks, but in the meantime, i’ll leave you with this nice article, good for clients and designers alike:
The goal of any information design task is to communicate a specific message to the end user in a way that is clear, accessible, and easy to understand. Even an elementary review of educational theory, how we learn, can provide the designer with crucial insight into the needs of the end user (and make a big difference in the way aesthetic decisions are made). This overview of learning styles has immediate implications for visual communication.
this invitation to the natural history museum’s halloween event “haunted museum” brings together retro thriller movie design with vintage travel posters. see the entire profile at fpo.
thanks to fastcodesign.com for sharing the comfy cargo chair, which can be stuffed with anything you’d like to display while sitting in it. i only hope there’s a suggestion to add a cushion to the seat.
H&FJ has just announced a new typeface, ideal sans, a clean, highly-versatile sans-serif that tinkers with space and proportion while maintaining high readability.
the 2011 brand new conference is open for registration.
for those of you following trends in logo design, logo lounge’s logo trends for 2011 is out.
i recently watched this “talking funny” show on hbo as well, but michael beirut was able to grab from it 7 things graphic designers can learn from stand up comics.
if you’re a designer working with a developer when it comes to web development, maybe your relationship could use some guidance. smashing magazine offers two cats in a sack: designer-developer discord.
it’s never too early to incorporate design into a development process, so why not revisit your research process and integrate it wherever you can. parse can help you get started: design-research process.
this week in food, we’re talking all about cherries over at LAist: seasonal eats: cherry season is upon us!
this past saturday, i got in on a trial run of a night shift workshop at the international print museum in torrance. we have one of the best-kept secrets of print archive legend right here in los angeles, but much of it just sits in drawers, waiting for use. luckily, there’s an avid group of late-night printers who have been reviving the art & trade using the invaluable resources at the museum. they recently opened their doors to a few excited designers on the kernspiracy list and i got to go!
i’m probably going to get this wrong, but to say the least, the international print museum is home to many retired and donated old presses, including one of the oldest operating linotype machines. there are rooms full of equipment, including countless drawers of letterpress type, leading and kerning materials. it’s overwhelming!
we were encouraged to play around with a central theme of getting people excited to join in on the night shift, but mostly to get a rudimentary feel for setting up a galley and going through the process of rolling out ink and pulling proofs. i looked through all kinds of cool collections of graphics and type, waffling between cool stuff and a loose concept, and ultimately i chose a type setup.
once we set up our gallies, the veterans in the group helped the noobs get everything lined up, support any loose spaces with leading, center the page, roll out the ink, load paper, and crank it over the galley. this process can take awhile, since you’re essentially testing your setup and working out kinks, but it’s also a valuable learning process. what we can do with one click now was a process of measuring, finding pieces, trying things out, and pulling proof after proof.
i didn’t want to fuss too much with kerning [surprising, i know!] so mine is a little off, but it was really fun making this print. i can’t wait to go back and try out more configurations, different type styles and papers.
parlato design studio 