Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Empathy and Design
--Ralph Caplan, in an article in AIGA Voice, The Empathetic Fallacy
A+GD Has a Friend in High Places!
This fall, we are starting CPCC's first student chapter of AIGA. More details to come.
Design Thinking for Innovation
"Part of a successful innovation is that people understand what something is and how it works. As a starting threshold, people must understand what you are offering and how to use it."
Read all about it here!
Tip o' the hat to InnovationConnection.com.
Marian Bantjes on Inspiration
"Inspiration is that unexpected moment of discovery when the mind leaps to a new place triggered by something interesting. That something interesting can be a thing you’ve read, or seen on the street, or in a book or gallery, or a piece of music, or something really great or something really awful. For me it is often unrelated to my work and is completely unpredictable.
"Influence is when you see something you like, usually work that is related to the work you do, and you absorb whatever it is you like about it and either consciously or subconsciously emulate it or somehow incorporate something of it into your own work.
"Reference material is when you look at something specific and try to make something like that."
Excerpted from Marian Bantjes: Student Questions
Thursday, June 18, 2009
CROP Hunger Walk 2009

Congratulations to Becky Kobsik! Her design was chosen for the 2009 Charlotte CROP Hunger Walk T-shirt. Charlotte has the largest CROP Walk on the planet and Becky's design will be seen on t-shirts worn by several thousand walkers.
Follow A+GD on Facebook
Sunday, June 7, 2009
Typekit Offers a New Approach to Fonts on the Web
Basically, Typekit will offer a way for designers to license fonts for use on web pages, which is a big deal because of a CSS feature that is soon to be supported in most major browsers that will allow designers to reference fonts installed on the server and render them as fonts (rather than Flash or images) for users.
In other words, the web is about to get a whole lot more accessible and indexable even while it gets prettier. The problem, says Veen, is that most web fonts aren’t licensed for CSS linking or use on web pages. Even free fonts are generally not licensed for that type of use. That’s where Typekit comes in.Read all about it here!
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
How to Be a Graphic Design Student Online
2. Blogging
3. Tumblr
4. Twitter
5. Facebook
6. Delicious
7. RSS Reader
Read all about it here!
Tip o' the hat to Noisy Decent Graphics.
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Be the Creative Director Sweepstakes
“Do you have what it takes to be a Creative Director? Find out now for your chance to win a Creative Director's Prize Package, including a $50,000 bonus check and an iMac computer.”
Check it out: bethecreativedirector.com
Saturday, March 28, 2009
The 10000 Year Clock
“The idea to build a monument scale, multi-millennial, all mechanical clock as an icon to long term thinking came from computer scientist Danny Hillis and was published in the form of an email to friends. Later it was followed up with an essay published in the 01995 Wired magazine scenarios issue. Danny reasoned that by actually building a remote monument, the discussions around long term thinking would be far more focused, and it would lend itself to good storytelling and myth. Two key requirements of anything lasting a long time.”
100 Great Resources for Design Inspiration
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
The Legendary Bill Bernbach Shares His Thoughts About Twitter
“Every few years I pick up the Bill Bernbach Book and re-read quotes from the inspirational founder of Doyle Dane Bernbach. For over 40 years Bill’s ideas have rung true and stayed relevant. In fact, take his exact thoughts, word for word and apply them to questions about Twitter, and they not only make perfect sense, they enlighten us with wisdom. Here then is an imaginary interview with Bill Bernbach. His words are exactly that. His words. Verbatim.”
Tip o’ of the hat to Creativity Unbound.
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Just What is Design Thinking
Friday, March 6, 2009
Quick, Henry, the Flit!
“Before Theodore Seuss Geisel found fame as a children's book author, the primary outlet for his creative efforts was magazines. His first steady job after he left Oxford was as a cartoonist for Judge, a New York City publication. In 1927 one of these cartoons opened the way to a more profitable career, as well as greater public exposure, as an advertising illustrator.”
Tip o’ the hat to University of California at San Diego. UC San Diego’s Mandeville Special Collections Library is the main repository in the nation for the original works of Dr. Seuss. The approximately 10,000 items in the Dr. Seuss collection, which includes original drawings, manuscript drafts, books, notebooks, photographs and memorabilia, document the full range of Geisel’s creative achievements, beginning in 1919 in high school and ending with his death in 1991.
Thursday, March 5, 2009
Two Elements of a Great Presenter
“1. Respect (from the audience)
“2. Love (to the audience)
“There are no doubt important evolutionary reasons why this is true, but in my experience, every great presenter earns the respect of the audience (through her appearance, reputation, posture, voice, slides, introduction, etc.) and captures the attention of the audience by sending them love.”
Tip o’ the hat to Seth Godin.
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Sunday, March 1, 2009
Branding Overload in Your (Clock) Face
“We’re bombarded with branding. No news there. But how bad is it, really? That’s what design student Tanner Woodford (Arizona State) wanted to figure out. During the course of 24 hours, he meticulously recorded all the brands that flitted past his line of vision. He then took his observations one step further, visualizing the results on a clock face.”
Tip o’ the hat to FastCompany.com.



