Thoughts & Deeds

I don’t know about you, but I often find responding to Request for Proposals unsatisfying. Either you’ve received it as a preferred vendor on a short-list, it’s a blind RFP, or it’s sent to you and 20 other agencies. The description of the needs and goals are either A) unbelievably vague or B) unbelievably specific, followed by a list of required features, tools, and canned objectives such as “improve search engine ranking” and “increase sales and traffic.” … more

Today’s Portland design community buzz on Twitter is the City of Portland’s decision to make a design contest out of the Portland Online website. Many of us reviewed the RFP released for project last month and found the budget lacking ($10-20k for a 140,000 page site? Right.), which may explain why they’re moving forward with a design contest. No agency worth its salt wanted to reply to such a poorly proposed project with so little funding.* I know we looked at it and decided to pass. … more

When I think of coal used for energy, I think of China, filthy air, dire situations, under-developed nations, the iron-grip of Communism. Coal is the fuel of Tolstoy and World War I and the Eastern Block, a phantom from the early 20th century, a black spot on our environmental history. Coal is up there with nuclear energy and reliance on oil; something shameful that we’re trying to give up. … more

These are trying times. The economy is in a downturn, the war in Iraq lingers on, gas costs over $4 a gallon, and large businesses in America are losing money. At times like this, I think back to WWII and the efforts of the government and businesses to bolster the economy, how they encouraged thrift, recycling, reusing old materials, growing Victory gardens, tightening the belt a little. (Of course, the flip side to this was a series of posters villianizing Germans and Japanese.) I think of the heroic posters that helped shape graphic design as a profession and of the designers who created these posters. … more

When I decided I wanted to be a designer, I was going out on a limb. The year was 1997, and I’d just completed my bachelor’s degree in English, had no design experience, and had only created one (very hideous) web site. Back then, Amazon.com was still in its infancy and I wasn’t even sure there would be a job for me in this “new media” field. What I did know is that visual communication was exciting, I enjoyed tinkering around with HTML, and I was pretty good at learning new technologies. … more

In 1999, Emigre reprinted Ken Garland’s 1964 First Things First Manifesto in issue 49. It was a call to arms for designers to stop whoring ourselves and start waking up to the social, environmental, and financial responsibilities we face in our work. Then came First Things First 2000 in issue 51, with a simultaneous printing in Adbusters. This was back when I was just getting started in my design career, and to see such a bold statement from vaunted designers and design educators was pretty amazing. I frankly didn’t know what to do with what I was reading. … more

Have you ever been asked to explain how your design skills are better than those of a high school kid with some HTML skills and Photoshop? Or maybe you had a client who wasn’t willing to pay you a fair market rate for your expertise because “anyone” can design a web site? How do you explain that design is more than software? How do you talk about the value of good design? … more

I can’t count the number of times I’ve gotten in to an argument with fellow designers about “design” versus “art” and how they are/aren’t the same thing. My stance is pretty clear: Design is not art. Design can be visually appealing, attractive, interesting, exciting, controversial, but it is not art. The goal of design is to communicate. Art is personal expression. Design is communication, use, information — which can be wrapped in an attractive package. … more

I always wanted to be a teacher. Ok, not always, since I also wanted to be a ninja or a breakdancer. But starting in high school and going in to college, the plan was to be an English teacher. Since turning into a designer, I’ve either wanted to go to graduate school or teach. I only want to go to grad school when work stops being challenging and fun, but the idea of teaching sticks with me even when work is busy and exciting. … more

Over the years, I’ve heard plenty of coworkers and colleagues complain that the design projects they’re working on aren’t very creative. They want inspiration, they want to cut loose from the corporate brand guidelines and do something wacky, they want to do the kind of work we all see in award shows. Sure, those kinds of projects are really cool, but they aren’t the bread and butter of most agencies. We’re so heavily socialized to want to be rockstar designers who redefine visual communication that we lose track of what it is we are paid to do every day. … more