Designworthy

Helvetica cookie cutters by Beverly Hsu

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew Twigg) — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 03:30:00 +0000

Beveryl Hsu was an intern of mine over the summer of 2008 and graduated from CMU in 2009.

About a year ago she created some Helvetica cookie cutters which are all over the design blogs right now.

Congrats, Beverly, on the coverage! Now get those cookie cutters into production and make some, uh, dough, while the getting's good.

You can see Beverly's Helvetica cookie cutters here.

'What Matters Now' by Seth Godin

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew Twigg) — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 14:45:00 +0000

'What Matters Now' is a new ebook organized by Seth Godin and contains ideas from a bunch of authors/thinkers about what needs to happen in the world: to change the way we think and act; to be productive and positive, open and sharing.

I downloaded the PDF this morning and it's a worthy read. Get it here.

Packaging Design annoyances

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew Twigg) — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 20:29:00 +0000

Just a few thoughts:

Laminating paper makes it hard (and by hard I mean impossible, because who is going to have the time to peel laminate from chipboard) to recycle.
Why would a non-recyclable plastic or plastic without a recyclable content indicator be used when recyclable content plastic is no more expensive?
Did you really choose foamcore as part of your packaging plan?
Have you considered the environmental implication of every single piece of packaging involved in your custom mold-injected plastic and polystyrene clamshell?

A few weeks ago a bought a candle at Target and was disappointed that the box the candle came in, though about 99% paper, had some kind of plastic - something like transparent tape - holding together the corners. The problem was that this was inside the layers of paper used to build the box, so it wasn't on the surface and could not be easily removed.

This leaves the consumer with few options: do they recycle the paper & chipboard with the plastic in place, do they throw out the box? For me, it makes me wonder about the choices that were made in creating this box. Did Target even know this was involved in the production of the box? Did they spec it?

I feel constant disappointment with big business that make bad decisions in these respects. I feel like "being green" is commonplace enough that I would expect businesses like Target and others that are progressive with respect to other social issues to be progressive on the environmental front.

What also annoys me is that I thought I was buying a item packaged in a 100% paper carton. I'm not sure if this is a case of "fool me once, shame on you" or "fool me twice, shame on me". Either way, it serves as a reminder that a little skepticism or cynicism may have prevented this experience.

Recently Launched

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew Twigg) — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 16:13:00 +0000

Just launched three new sites in the past few weeks. Two of these actually use Blogger (yes, Blogger) as a Content Management System.

Go check out:
Pavement Shoes

Lauren Zurchin Studios

Susan Caplan

Sustainability in print design

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew Twigg) — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 13:50:00 +0000

The concept of sustainability is thrown around a lot. Especially in the design professions, we read and hear a lot about how to make our designs sustainable.

There are some really obvious decisions one can make when planning print collateral including whether or not the paper we print on is recycled or is sourced through environmentally friendly means, or inks and finishes are low impact (water or soy based). We can look at the print vendor we're using: are they located thousands of miles from our door and is the shipping from the plant to our threshold offsetting any benefit we might have gained through using other sustainable resources?

I've encountered a number of projects recently where the long-term viability of print media is challenged by many factors; changing information is a constant factor in these situations. Companies merge or a rebranding makes collateral obsolete. Hours of operation change, or a major product category is introduced or eliminated.

One of the big things I try to get my clients to consider is sustainability beyond their paper and ink choices. What can we do as a team to help create pieces that will result in little waste, have flexible use, and long-term viability? What are ways that we can make sure that we're not sending 100 or 1,000 or 100,000 pieces to the recycling bin?

Case in point: One client of mine recently launched a new brand. We had their business cards printed on make-ready stock which actually intervened before scrap was sent to the recycling bin: their job was ganged up on press with another unrelated job. This was an extra step and wasn't the cheapest option but reduced waste on another company's project. This was something small that could be applied on a master scale, without a lot of effort, that over thousands or hundreds of thousands of companies could make a really big impact. Virgin stock wasn't sacrificed in the name of vanity.

It makes me wonder: what other ideas are there for reducing the environmental impact of print pieces and what can be done to improve the sustainability of the pieces that are produced? Ideas, anyone?

Keep Calm and Carry On

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew Twigg) — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 01:10:00 +0000

I‘ve seen this popping up all over the place; turns out it's in the public domain and many people are producing and trying to profit. But now there are other responses, some of which are better executed - visually and verbally - than others.

Here‘s a little article from the New York Times on the topic.

Web Type - advancements coming soon?

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew Twigg) — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 05:34:00 +0000

Firefox 3.5 is out and that means support for the CSS rule @font-face.

What does this mean? That a designer can specify the use of a typeface not on the viewer’s machine!

This has been done before (albeit unreliably) with some technology that Microsoft developed, but this is within a CSS specification which means it's not a hack! And eventually (at least in theory, even if it's 5 or 10 years from now), it will work across the board in future browsers.

A few good reads on the topic:
http://hacks.mozilla.org/2009/06/beautiful-fonts-with-font-face/
and
http://craigmod.com/journal/font-face/
(Pardon the dumb punctuation in this 2nd one. While it really doesn’t bother me too much in web typefaces, when I see it in another face it doesn’t look so hot.)

I wonder how long it will take to get all of this working

Thanks to Mike Essl for the links and the info that FF 3.5 is out.

(BTW, Turns out Safari has supported this for a while, since v 3.1. How didn’t I know this?)

Good SEO Advice from Seth Godin

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew Twigg) — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 01:15:00 +0000

I only started reading Seth Godin's blog a month or so ago; I really like his approach and happen to think he really know's what he's talking about almost all of the time.

I was reading through some entries of his from before I added his RSS feed to my reader and came across his entry 'How to make money with SEO'.

This is exactly the kind of advice I give people when they want to hire me to help them with SEO. I do not offer smoke, mirrors, red pills or blue pills, special effects or any other magic to help a client's website perform better in search engines.

What I do is make sure we're using the right technologies (that don't impede search engines from understanding content) and covering our bases while looking into ways to be findable. I didn't invent the term findability, but when I had a conversation with a prospect who wanted to be #1 for their industry even though their market share did not make this a likely situation, I had a moment of clarity that helped me to clearly communicate what I could help them with: I would help them make their business findable so that someone who caught wind of their company - even if they didn't recall all of the specifics - could find them online quickly and easily.

It is rare that a business creates a new market in a region but it does happen. When we opened Dozen Cupcakes nearly 3 years ago, there was another cupcake bakery opening at the same time. I knew that it was unlikely that people would, upon hearing that the cupcake craze had come to Pittsburgh, remember the name of the bakery their friend/coworker/newspaper told them about. But I was confident that many people would go online and search for "pittsburgh cupcakes" or some variation.

We set forth creating a network of inbound links to the site, built our site using properly structured code with the right semantic mechanisms, and crossed our fingers that our competitors would not have the same savvy. They did not. I am confident that this was one of many factors leading to our success: within the next month or two we will have two more stores opening for a total of four locations.

For a business the opportunity to be in this kind of situation is rare. But even so, it was findability that put us at the top. I took an educated guess at people's searching behavior and it paid off. People found us because we made ourselves available.

When I work with a client, I remind them to think about how their constituents will find them (sometimes the result is that we don't need to do anything to their website because their constituents won't be using it). But if their target is online, I help them keep it simple and do their best to speak to the customer in a way that will _help_ them be found and be understood. Successful search engine optimization sets the stage for better things.

Ecoxera launches their new website & blog

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew Twigg) — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 14:16:00 +0000

Ecoxera, a client of mine who specializes in green business strategy for the retail industry, has launched their new website and a new blog.

The team that makes up Ecoxera includes industry leaders for green practices, with an expert for each of four major channels to help improve the environmental practices of organizations in the retail industry (from banks to hospitality to superstores; including manufacturers, suppliers, builders and the retail organization itself).

Ecoxera's unique take - that being green can also be good for the bottom line - helps an organization evaluate the opportunities to improve their practices in a way that will also make them more profitable.

They focus on Operations, Materials, Building/Design, and Communication... to check out the business, go to ecoxera.com and visit ecoxera.com/blog for their growing collection of resources for those in the retail industry.

Seth Godin on designer/client work

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew Twigg) — Wed, 20 May 2009 17:37:00 +0000

Seth Godin has a great blog with a lot of well written entries on all topics.

His latest post talks about two different kinds of designer/client working modes and I think is a great, short read for clients and for designers alike.

Check out the article here.

Design Matters turns 100

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew Twigg) — Tue, 19 May 2009 18:41:00 +0000

This is a little late but nonetheless Designworthy:

Design Matters with Debbie Millman hit 100 episodes last week. What an awesome milestone for a great show and a wonderful person!

You can download the Design Matters podcasts here.

William Drenttel lecture, Tuesday April 21

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew Twigg) — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 14:24:00 +0000

This is happening tomorrow. Don't miss it!

6:30 pm doors, 7:00 start at the Warhol. Full details here.

Design-LESS

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew Twigg) — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 03:06:00 +0000

Design-LESS is the theme of this year's DesignInquiry, a conference alternative event I've attended a few times.

I now sit on the board and was asked by design writer/editor/educator Peter Hall to write an article about this year's theme. The piece was accepted to be published in AIGA Voice and it went live a little over a week ago.

Go check it out!

Context: AIGA Pittsburgh's annual juried show

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew Twigg) — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 01:08:00 +0000

This Thursday, March 26, 2009
Doors open at 6:00 p.m.
Awards ceremony at 8:00 p.m.

937 Liberty Avenue (Third Floor)
Pittsburgh, PA 15222

Admission: $20
AIGA members: $15
Students: $10
Student AIGA members: $5

Context is AIGA Pittsburgh's annual juried show, a celebration of design excellence and effectiveness resulting from creativity, inspiration, skill, experience, intuition and discipline.

This year's show is juried by Elliott Earls, Mike Essl and Nancy Skolos.

More information at pittsburgh.aiga.org.

Finally! One charger for (most?) mobile devices

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew Twigg) — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 19:21:00 +0000

At last, many cell phone makers have agreed to use a common standard for the charging of their mobile devices. By 2012 (really, can't we do better considering how quickly companies turn around their designs these days? Three years???>) companies including Samsung, LG, Nokia, Motorola and Sony Ericsson will be joined by telecoms T-mobile, AT&T, and Vodaphone to adhere to a standard universal device charging standard. What that means is that when you forget, lose or otherwise misplace your cell phone charger somewhere, you should be able to borrow a friend or family member's charger so you don't run out of juice.

I'd like to see this taken even further. I have a BlackBerry and a GPS unit that both can charge from the same charger, but my iPod nano doesn't get enough of a charge from the same unit. Why shouldn't most or all of the portable devices manufactured use the same standard? Imagine being able to check into a hotel and borrow a universal charger that works for your cell phone, portable media player, GPS unit, or other decide. Better yet, why not just allow all items to be charged off of said cord type plugged directly into your computer's USB port? Road warriors rejoice!

I keep two different cell phones (one personal, one business) and this would make a big difference in the way I do things.

This is a little design decision that could have a big impact. Imagine now, that when you buy a new device, the cable and charger are sold separately because you probably already have one at home? Less packaging, less junk to ship with every single item sold, less waste, etc. And you won't need to keep a million chargers around!

Here's the original article, and here's to 2012!

Red State, Blue State

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew Twigg) — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 02:53:00 +0000

It's not what you think.

The New York Times recently posted an article concerning the effects of color, specifically red and blue, on cognitive tasks.

In the study cited in the article, participants performed tasks with words and images shown on a computer screen against fields of a red, blue, or neutral background. Red correlated with better performance in attention-related tasks while blue correlated with better performance in creative tasks.

There's another neat study cited involving room color and its affect on how partygoers chose a room, whether or not they stayed a long time, and how thirsty or hungry they were while in the room.

The New York Times article is a good read and if you're really intrigued, check out some of the studies and detailed articles:

Blue or Red study

Spatial Color Study

Steeler Ladies (interrupting our regularly scheduled programming)

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew Twigg) — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 04:12:00 +0000

Ok, so this isn't exactly design related, but...

My sister recorded a parody of Beyoncé's "Single Ladies" named "Steeler Ladies" which she co-wrote with Christine Nangle. This was recorded and produced by Sean G. Donaldson.

Check it out.

Steeler Ladies.

LaCie flat cables

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew Twigg) — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 04:30:00 +0000

LaCie has introduced a series of 7 different computer cables designed to help minimize cable clutter and make your life more colorful.

The cables roll up neatly and can be stacked on top of each other, nicely banded together, and even come with 24 labels so you can keep track of which device you're plugging in while maintaining total order of your desktop.

LaCie lists the cables at $13 a pieces. That's a bit more expensive than your run of the mill cables. And they're just under 4' long so don't plan on running one of these across the room. But until everything is completely wireless...

via Core77

For the mobile designer - really time for mobile CSS?

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew Twigg) — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 01:24:00 +0000

I try to build all of my websites without contingent code* unless the case calls for it. I actually don't think I've built a site with contingent code since some time early in the 2000's (well, early in the first decade of the 2000's; aren't we still early in them otherwise?). Those were the days of emerging (and diverging) browsers, Netscape's death, AOL and all the other things that made designing for the interwebs challenging in their own way.

To over-simplify, cascading style sheets - CSS - can be used to control the appearance (and some light behavior) of websites. They provide form to the content on many websites and I use them all the time in my web development process to do just that. One of the options for web designers is to set up different style sheets for different browsing platforms.

A good application of this could be telling a website to use a different style sheet for displaying a website when it's viewed on a desktop machine vs a mobile device such as a cell phone, blackberry, or iphone. This is technology I know about and choose to ignore frequently enough because I set up the site to degrade "gracefully" when browsing technology isn't quite what I had in mind, such as a slow connection, no flash, or maybe -ahem- a cell phone.

With mobile computing emerging as a serious platform it might be time for me to rethink my strategy for some sites. It might be time for me to set up a mobile CSS for websites so when someone browses a site with a mobile device they get a design tailored for them, rather than sloppy seconds... or in my case, at least thoughtfully considered leftovers.

A List Apart, one of my favorite web design reads, features an article on this topic. If you design for the web a lot, this is a decent read: Return of the Mobile Style Sheet

*by contingent code I mean setting up code that will do thing in one environment (such as firefox) but a separate piece of code that will do the same thing or something gracefully equivalent in another (such as internet explorer). this is required frequently when using javascript, as an example, but can also be done in CSS. That's oversimplified but should be adequate explanation of what I mean.

Recently Launched: Bea2b.com

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew Twigg) — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 01:41:00 +0000

I recently launched Bea2B.com.

This is one of several sites I should be making live within the first two months of 2009.

Beatrice Weiss, who runs Bea2B, is a wonderful business process consultant who worked with one of the business I was first employed at as a designer in Chicago. She worked closely with our president and bookkeeper to help us improve our accounting practices, among other things. She is a wonderful person and if you ever need services she provides, drop her a line

Back from the holiday

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew Twigg) — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 01:34:00 +0000

Ok, it's been a while. What, about two weeks?

I return today with not as exciting posts for some but I found a new website I really dig.

I came across MetaEfficient while I was reading another blog. You should check it out if you're interested in efficient ways of doing things, if you consider yourself environmentally friendly (or wanting to be), or you're interested in emerging, more efficient technologies. Check it out!

Safer, Better product design

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew Twigg) — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 02:59:00 +0000

This is a little late but I figure if I just heard about it, it might be news to you as well.

First, the not-new part: many non-stick pans have been made with PTFE which is a known carcinogen.

The new part: Martha Stewart introduced a new line of ceramic non-stick pans that are more energy efficient to manufacture than other non-stick and don't use harmful PTFEs. The pans are really reasonably priced (which has been my impression of other items the Martha Stewart line at Macy's - which I couldn't say always say about her K-mart products). The line of fry pans has been out for a few months now.

Makes me wonder what other innovations can lead to inexpensive but more environmentally-friendly manufacturing.

Via The Kitchn. Image Macy's.

A good blog on the topic of color

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew Twigg) — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 02:50:00 +0000

hueconsulting is a blog I keep on my short list. Rachel Perls, the author, covers a broad range of color-related topics, from colored appliances to makeup and communication.

Go check it out!

Local winners in City Paper "Best Of"

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew Twigg) — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 13:57:00 +0000

The Pittsburgh City Paper just announced its 2008 "Best of". Many of the winners are in Lawrenceville, just a few blocks from where I live and include our bakery. James got #3 for "Best Chef" which I think is an impressive feat considering that we've only been serving soup and sandwiches during the week and brunch on weekends.

Check out the list of Lawrenceville winners:

Divertido: Editor's choice, "Best hipster alternative to The Sharper Image"
Sugar Boutique: 1st place, "Best Boutique"
Pavement: 3rd place, "Best Shoe Store"
Piccolo Forno, 1st place, "Best BYOB Dining" and 2nd place, "Best Italian Restaurant"
Coca Cafe, 3rd place, "Best Brunch";
Dozen Bake Shop, #2 "Best Bakery", #3 "Best Desserts", #3, "Best Chef" James Gray

Thanks to all the readers who think we are the best in Pittsburgh!

CMU Senior Studio Pieces Show

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew Twigg) — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 00:56:00 +0000

From Ash Huang, a student in CMU's School of Design:

See the work of some of Carnegie Mellon's senior studio! Based on the idea of individual pieces making a cohesive whole, students created work ranging from furniture to wallpaper, from toys to guitars. There is sure to be something for everyone!

Be sure to check out the show at UnSmoke Gallery this Friday at 7pm. Based on the poster I can't wait to see the face off in person.