The Art Directors Club (a professional organization for designers, typographers and art directors in the advertising and design business) hosts an annual "Young Guns" competition for working professionals under 30. It's a great organization and this intense competition has highlighted work from some of the most talented members of the design and advertising community. Unfortunately, [...]

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The tragedy of this past weekend's earthquake and tsunami in Japan has touched us all. Almost immediately email traffic increased, not just inquiring about the safety of family and friends, but offering imagery in support of the victims. While few images are more vividly moving than the color video and stills captured throughout the Web, [...]

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You've heard of Dead Heads (followers of the Grateful Dead), well now there are Letter Heads (grateful followers of letterhead designs). I don't think there are as many of the latter as there are of the former, but I heard a rumor that Jerry Garcia might have collected letterheads (but then again, it is just [...]

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The Little Rascals in Our Gang Comedies taught me to hate even the thought of mush: Mush is a thick cornmeal pudding (or porridge) usually boiled in water or milk . . .Usage is especially common in the eastern and southeastern United States. It is also customary for those in the Midwestern US to eat [...]

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Should designers’ business cards be “designed?” I’m frequently asked this question by design students, and cut short by the paradox. In today’s digital age, designers have a plethora of ways to get their names out into the world: personal websites, design blogs, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, etc. The idea of the business card has certainly become [...]

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If anyone wants to dispute the power of graphic glyphs, symbols and marks, just check out Sarah Palin's Pac-site with the map of the U.S. and the cross-hair (or bullseye) sights used to pinpoint Democrat Congress persons targeted for defeat. From the Huffington Post: "Palin's Facebook page now carries a map featuring 20 gun sights, [...]

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Despite the similarity of their surnames, Ayn Rand (born Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum)? was not related to Paul Rand (born Peretz Rosenbaum). I learned about Ayn before I even heard of Paul. When I was a young teen, I was taken by my best friend's mom to The Nathaniel Branden Institute (NBI) in NYC (the real [...]

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Yesterday a new anti-political party was announced called "No Labels." The graphic scheme is arguably an overt copy of artwork produced by designer Thomas Porostocky, originally made in 2004 and titled “We Need More Party Animals,” produced when he was an SVA MFA Design grad student. It was later selected by Milton Glaser and Mirko [...]

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Can there be too much of a good thing? Like, totes? There may not yet be an environmental impact survey on the proliferation of canvas or polypropylene tote bags, but the sheer number of them according to the Daily Heller Data Research Institute has increased one-hundred fold over the past year. In fact, they've been [...]

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Every few months, I get an email request from a graphic design student asking me to chime in on the concept of the accreditation of graphic design professionals. It is one of those perennial hot-button topics. Canada, where accreditation is practiced and monitored by The Association of Registered Graphic Designers of Ontario (RGD), is often [...]

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