Alright guys! This Wednesday is the second quarterly meeting for all Graphic Design Students. It’s 1pm–3pm in rooms p111 and p113. Lots of good information will come out of there, along with answering questions you may have. Let people know when and where it is! We also have our weekly meeting on thursday, p113 at 1pm again. Bring your weekly competition

Weekly Inspiration

When you’re searching for inspirational websites, check out siteInspire. This website allows you to browse through websites by style, theme and type, or if you’re feeling lucky, it can choose a random one for you. Great resource and easy browsing.

This link is going to be a twofer!
Stefan Sagmiester recently did a lecture at Ted.com on the topic of “Time Off”. He talks about a few of his sabbaticals and how they improved his work. Instead of giving you the link I have to youtube, I’ll give you this instead. Stefan Sagmiester. The website called quietube takes all of the noise around the video, and gets ride of it, leaving a clean, refreshing window. It also provides you with a shortened URL, which is great for those of you who use twitter.

If you’re curious about the whole multi-touch thing starting to catch fire at Apple and other places, check out this (beautifully laid out) article. I’m honestly just psyched that the page is using Futura Bold for headers—and not as a png.

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Hope your quarters are going well. We look forward to seeing you Wednesday for the GD Meeting, and then again on Thursday.

Things to come. Weekly meeting tomorrow at 1pm, p113. We’ll be looking over this weeks weekly designs and choose a winner. The word was “AiGD”. Size of the document is 2.5″x3.5″. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, come tomorrow, and we’ll get you in on the next one! Lots of fun and candy.

Weekly Inspiration

If you have no idea where to begin on the color scheme for a project, check out the Color Scheme Designer. Easy way to pull out your favorite tetrad of hues.

Here’s a portfolio website for the designer-illustrator Luis Vazquez. He has a solid, spooky/retro illustrative style, as if you brought The Nightmare Before Christmas to the 50/60s. If nothing else, you can leave the window open and listen to the cool jazzy music while you facebook around.

Here’s another way of looking at Tufte’s “ink usage” principle. Save Pens, Use Garamond.

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Sorry about getting this out late. See you tomorrow!

We have a date and time set! Our weekly meetings will again be on Thursdays between 1 and 2pm, room p113 as Jelena said end of last week. Join us this Thursday to discuss an upcoming mixer event, weekly competitions with sweet swag, AiGD t-shirts, guest speakers, group website, and Portfolio 1 on 1! We are also talking about having more than one meeting a week for those of you who can’t make it Thursdays at 1. BE THERE THIS WEEK TO HELP GET YOUR WORD IN.

Weekly Inspiration

There are a lot of chemicals that go into printing on a can of soda. In that vein, a few designers have come up with a way to express the CocaCola can in a way that doesn’t need printing. COLORLESS CANS. What do you think? Will this catch on?

On a separate note, if you’re looking for a website with a lot of really good design inspiration, check out Cargo. It’s a new web publishing company (in other words, a CMS) powering a variety of creative communities in the fields of Education, Design, Research, and Conceptual Art. Check out their featured websites page.

Finally, if you’re tired of looking through pages and pages of terrible, free fonts, check out Hoefler & Frere-Jones for a bit of a refresher in good typography. Though you will have to cough up a bit of dough for a good family, it’s still fun to look through for inspiration!

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We’re all excited about the things that are starting to form, and hope you guys are ready for some Design Awesomeness!

I’d like to first apologize to everyone for not having our weekly meetings set up and running yet, but please believe we are working on getting some exciting things going that will be well worth the wait! We’ll have competitions, discussions and places/events to show off your skills. I know we’re excited, and hope you will be too!I now also have an updated emailing list, so there will be a lot of new recipients of this weekly inspiration gig we have going. Please, if you have anything interesting you’d like to share, let us know! The more we all share, the more time we can blow in lecture classes looking at these great design links.

Weekly Inspiration

So you’re sick of writing your name, phone number and email address on paper for people you’ve just met? If only there were some way you could design a uniform card you could leave with these strangers. Perhaps small enough to fit in someone’s wallet? Here are 36 Cool Business Cards you might not have seen before.

If you like subliminal messages, or just like hiding bits of information in obvious places, you should check out these logo designs. Here’s a list of 23 Logos with Hidden Messages, perfect for all you propagandists out there.

Here’s a bunch of crazy type posters. Check it. Post Typography

Or if you like one-of-a-kind screen printed art, and have never heard of Aesthetic Apparatus, then you NEED to check them out here. Read their “unofficial” bio for yourselves.
“Often considered Minneapolis’ best totally unknown design super team, Aesthetic Apparatus was founded around 1999 in Madison, Wisconsin by Dan Ibarra and Michael Byzewski as a fun side project from their “real” jobs. Over the years their limited edition, screen printed concert posters have secretly snuck into the hearts and minds of a small, rather silent group of socially awkward music and design nerds. Now, Aesthetic Apparatus is a full time, full-fledged, insanely unstoppable, and occasionally award winning design mega-studio. They will break your heart and drink your blood.“

If you’re into crazy, trippy, flash based sites, check out Neave. It’s crazy. And trippy.

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Again, come to the org fair Thursday between 12 and 1:30 to let us know when you’ll be available for weekly meetings, hear about the events we have coming up, or just chill. We like to chill.

Aloha. We’re still working on a weekly date for our meetings, but we’ll get it out to you as soon as we can! In the meantime, check this stuff out.

Weekly Inspiration

The first link takes a look at the current (and horrid) Delta Boarding Pass. Read the article and see Tyler Thompson’s beautiful redesign here.

Next is a design firm from here in the cities, just a few blocks away from Minnehaha Park. Check out the Spunk Design Machine, and their plethora of incredible work. (I’m especially digging the galactic pizza myself) spkdm.com

If you haven’t already, we highly recommend checking out the legend that is Milton Glaser. Incredible work. miltonglaser.com

and just for the hell of it, here’s DUCK HUNT

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I hope you like duck hunt… and some of the other stuff too.

It’s game time. Welcome back, and we hope your holidays were great (or at the very least, interesting). We’re working on getting a time set up for our weekly meetings, so let us know what/when works best for you! (Now’s your chance!) We should have a time hammered out by next week.

Weekly Inspiration

By now you have probably heard of Veer.com. They provide one of the best resources for visual elements used in professional work, including fonts, illustrations, photographs, etc. They also, however, provide an incredible resource for inspiration (and more) on their “ideas” page. They have everything from portfolios, to desktop wallpapers, competitions, and even a listing of jobs. Checkity check check.

Off of that page you’ll find the 50 best comic book covers of 2009, and whether you’re a fan of comic books or not, these covers are incredibly well designed, both typographically and artistically. Check here.

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Again, we will be working on getting a weekly time together. Let us know what’s available to you, and we’ll get things set.

With peace, love, and rock & roll.

Hey guys, hope your quarters are ending well. We had a great meeting last week with Seth, Lisa and Kolean who had very good arguments for Joining AIGA, (along with some sweet swag, which in itself could be reason enough to join). Thanks guys!

On a side note, we are thinking of doing a tour of some of the local design firms. If anyone is interested and has any ideas on where we should go, let us know! We’ll do some talking about it on Thursday, so if you want some more input, try and be there!

Weekly Inspiration

If you guys are interested in illustration and/or screen printed art, check this site out! Withremote is a Minnesota based design company started by Nate Nolting. Their intense graphic pallet focuses on bringing high quality design to the masses. Check that shit.

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If you guys have ever seen a font online or in a book, wondered what it was, and was never able to find it, than these two sites are for you. WhatTheFont is a website that takes your uploaded png or jpg of a font, and discerns what typeface it is. Incredibly useful when you are browsing the web. If you’re using a magazine or a book however, then Identifont is for you. You find a large body of text of whatever typeface you’re looking for, then Identifont will ask you a series of questions about this typeface (ex., if the lowercase “g” is one story or two, “g“). Once it has narrowed it down for you, it will produce the top matching fonts. Again, incredibly usefull.

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We hope you guys have a fantastic Christmas vacation, and don’t stop exploring type/design.
This weeks meeting is again in P113, Thursday Dec17th at 1pm

We had some great discussion last week. We watched and talked about Lawrence Weiner’s opinion on art and design, and his thoughts on Helvetica. We watched a bit of Milton Glaser, Ellen Lupton, and a few others. We also got an “inside look” at Pentagram, and learned about the way they operate. Come to our next meeting and share your opinions!

Weekly Inspiration

Last week we watched a video from Ellen Lupton on her thoughts of where the future of design is going. The sight itself is called “Thirty Coversations on Design,” and has many other influential designers included.

“… we’ve collected the thoughts of 30 of the world’s most inspired creative professionals. Architects, designers, authors and leaders of iconic brands. We asked them two questions: “What single example of design inspires you most?” and “What problem should design solve next?” Their answers might surprise you. But hopefully, they’ll all inspire you. Discover what they have to say. Then share your thoughts. After all, this is a conversation. We’d love for you to join.”

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If you’re searching for gifts for your designer friends/family, (or looking for a cheap deal for yourself) check out these great holiday gift guides at Design Work Life. It has a great list of everything from screen printed art (around $20) to T-shirts, holiday decorations, and “whiskey paraphernalia”.

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Just a reminder that this week the AIGA Board of Education is coming, during our regular AiGD meeting hour/place, Thursday, December 10, 2009, 1pm-3pm in P109 & 113. We most definitely will still have a meeting next week, so bring ideas and your talk!

Alright guys! This week we’ve got a few design articles We’d like to read and discuss. Feel free to read other articles on the site, or bring in your own. Discussion leads to learning.

Weekly Inspiration

First I’d like to direct you to Stuart Thursbys blog, “Design Thoughts“. He has a great article on the “invisibility of typography.” This basically states that the more invisible the type is, the better designed it is. Check it out and bring your thoughts!

The next is an interesting article on the Bauhaus. Read and learn.

A Way Out of the Bauhaus

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Hope you had a great thanksgiving break, and look forward to seeing you guys again coming up this Thursday. (1pm, room 113Pence)

Thanksgiving week! What’s up guys? Time for a bit of Inspirationo.

Weekly Inspiration

First off I’d like to show you guys our very own Tim Armato’s website. He runs a small letterpress outfit out of his home, creating unique invitations. Great design, and great process!

Find his profile and more on our AiGD Facebook Group! Lots of good inspiration.

Lastly is a design blog called Design Sponge. They have a collection of  inspirational sights and designs well worth checking out — on a weekly basis. The sight itself looks incredible, and is great for referring to when you have designers block.

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Hope you guys are have a great Thanksgiving, and look forward to seeing you back at the meeting next week!