1. Start Locally
Don’t think that you have to immediately take on the world’s worst problems. Start locally and see what needs are immediately around you and tackle them. Contact the non-profits in your local area and see if they need help with their web site or print collateral.
2. After School Art Programs
If you live anywhere near a metro area chances are there are going to be alot of kids hanging around with nothing to do, especially in the summer. If you are a designer with a passion for the fine arts getting involved in or even starting an after school art program can be a great way to get involved in a child’s life and mentor them. Art is also very therapeutic, it helps us express ourselves in a positive and constructive way.
3. Donate Time to Non-Profits
There are plenty of non-profit organizations that need design or web help. Don’t be afraid to email or call and just offer your services, chances are they’re covered but you could just be the answer to someone’s prayer. If you think about most non-profits and the amount of time they have and what they spend it on, finding a designer is probably last on their list. I’ve also found that people doing non-profit work don’t even have a clue to even know where to begin to look for a designer.
4. Work Some Freelance & Donate The Profits
This is probably the easiest and quickest way of helping out. Find a cause that you are passionate about. Find some extra work and donate the all the money.
5. Raise Awareness
Use your site, social media, online communities to raise awareness about the issues you are passionate about. Video, posters and online media can shed light to an issue. Use the world wide web to it’s fullest potential and challenge yourself to create a visual message that rises above the noise and really makes someone stop and think about what they are seeing.
These are just a handful of ideas, but hopefully this post has inspired you to think a little differently about the skills you have and what you can do for others locally and globablly. Yes we can lend a hand regardless of what we’re doing but if you can use what you love to do and help others at the same time, this is one of the greatest things in the world. If you’ve used your skills to help others I would love to hear about it in the comments.
Blueprint has me thinking about CSS frameworks and why there aren’t more out there floating around. I suppose there could be alot of reasons for this, positioning in CSS has a few options and everyone seems to have their opinions. Some people think all layouts should be fluid, some don’t, I believe it depends on the site you’re building and how you generally feel about the audience viewing your site. I’m going to be digging through Blueprint this week, I have the feeling that the code is going to be pretty tight so we’ll see, maybe this could spark a new trend.
Finding the design you’re happy with can sometimes be a struggle. You sit down at your desk, grab a pen and start sketching or you jump into Photoshop and start playing with colors and type a few hours later you’re getting something close to what you think you’re happy with, the following day you sit down at your desk, you look at what you’ve done and you can’t stand to look at it, so you start the process again, again and again, getting stuck in a vicious cycle.
Design flip flopping most often happens when you’re working on something personal, for some reason you don’t have a problem working on creative for clients, but when it comes to designing for yourself you just can’t seem to nail down a design that you’re happy with. This most likely occurs from a lack of constraints or direction. Here are some tips on finding direction with your design, which will hopefully help you stick to a design you’re going to be able to live with after the day is done.
Stick to your sketches.
This is a pretty basic rule in planning out a design, but I bet you’d be surprised how many designers don’t use sketches, myself included. I think we often tend to think that sketching is just an added step that isn’t needed and something that will add time to a project that is already on a tight deadline. If you can discipline yourself to stick to a sketch from the beginning you’re going to find guidance when you obey the columns.
Never design without a color palette.
Finding a color palette is part of creating constraints for yourself. Shooting from the hip when it comes to colors can be a dangerous thing that often leads to inconsistency with colors. Consistent color within a desing really provides a subtle sense of assurance that everything you’re going to read or see has a sense of purpose.
Pick 2 typefaces and stick to them.
Pick a typeface you want to use for your HTML text and a typeface that you can use for headers through sIFR or image replacement. If you’re working on an identity/logo one more typeface is allowed.
Grids, columns or whatever you want to call them.
Designing with grids is important because we simply don’t have the innate ability to place blocks of content in a consistent rhythm or fashion. There has been alot of talk and discusion regarding grids in web design lately and for good reason, grids were something that really talked about much and now people are starting to see the advantages of using grid systems within their designs.
I believe finding a design you’re happy with is really all about creating constraints for yourself, you’ll just be chasing your tail forever if you don’t.
This story has been out for awhile. São Paulo’s mayor was fed up with the outdoor advertsing that was running wild all over the city so he has banned all outdoor advertising. Viewing photos of the city as it stands now reminds me of cold-war era Russian or even current era Pyongyang. Yes, there is such a thing as visual pollution but this answer just doesn’t seem to work. While advertising can be abused, there is something about outdoor advertising inside of a city that just works. Living here in South Florida, there was a famous billboard as you entered Miami, from Coppertone of a little girl at the beach and her dog. Everytime you drove down south to Miami, when you saw that sign you knew Miami was only a few minutes away, depending on the traffic, it became so familiar it was part of the experience of driving down there. I would bet that this happens in alot of major cities all over the U.S, so I guess what I’m getting at is… a city just isn’t a city without it’s billboards and signs, even as loud and obnoxious as alot of them are.
Anyone interested in screen printed posters or poster art in general, should head down to this exhibit at the ArtCenter on Miami Beach. The show runs up until the 19th of November. If you can’t make it out to Flatstock this is a good chance to see some of the great work and artists that have been represented there, including Orlando’s Jeff Matz, who did the artwork for Lakota’s Hope For The Haunted CD.
I was recently on the Honda site and happened to have noticed their “Environmentology” logo. I’m beginning to realize that “Going Green” should no longer be part of a companies corporate responsibility, but it should be an important part of their marketing strategy. Consumers want to purchase products and services that are “environmentally friendly” and Honda knows this.
IdentityWorks has a great review on the Cisco logo redesign. They make some great points about Cisco dropping the word “systems” from their logo. Not only making the logo easier to work with , it’s a good move on their part as they start to move in to other areas besides networking.
Read article
We’re starting to see some things changing in the aesthetics of web design specifically in the blogging space. With Shaun Inman’s redesign and the recent posts from Doug Bowman, I believe we’re starting to turn a corner and I’m glad we have talented people like Shaun and Doug to lead the way.
Designers are becoming understandably frustrated with the templated look of most sites that are out today. I want to say that I think Projectionist has contributed much towards this shift. We’re definetly seeing that “fisher price” look Cameron Moll wrote about, but I think we’ll probably see even more in 2007.
It should be interesting to see what happens in the new year.