Ironically, the same week I received my AIGA email about the presentation by Scott Stowell (designer of the BRAVO logo), I also started my first 99designs crowdsourcing campaign.
Random Musings I
Over the last few weeks, at odd hours, I was thinking of a few things that I couldn’t quite categorize into a blog post, but wanted to get out of my head. SO I think 2010 will be the year that I begin a subcategory of Miscellaneous called Math.Random(). These will probably contain design-related thoughts, questions and micro-rants, as well as images of products, signage and brands that I felt were worth mentioning, but not weighty enough to merit their own post. Get a Tumblr, I’m sure you’re saying. And, you’re probably right. I have a Posterous (now defunct) account as well as a FFFFound (also defunct) and Dropular (yep, defunct as well) account, but I just can’t see myself committing enough time to using them regularly. I’m sure, others find them useful, but to me, it’s just one more thing. Y’know? Anyway, on with it.
tr.im returns
I was sad to see that tr.im was shut down, quite unprofessionally, back in early August. And since then, the world moved on without them and everyone forgot they ever existed in the first place. In fact, if it wasn’t for a random twitter post by them yesterday, I would’ve never learned that they apologized:
Everyone involved at Nambu would like to apologize again for the hastiness in which we acted last Sunday, announcing the shutdown of tr.im by the end of the year.
…they regrouped, and are now transitioning to being open source and community-owned.
…and you have Eric Woodward‘s personal guarantee that he’ll take care of shortfalls in funding to ensure that tr.im never goes offline again.
Kieron Williamson
Like these pieces? Me too. What’s even more impressive is that they were created by a 7-year-old, Kieron Williamson, have a 700 person waiting list to buy and START at $1,500.00 (£900). Hate him yet? Yeah, me too.
Handmade Fonts
If you haven’t gotten a chance to see the site, I suggest you do. Some amazing, creative and crafty work that puts the rest of us digital font designers to shame.
Here’s a great link from Finchie at We Love Noise.
AIGA New York – ERA404 gets a new barker!
Fig. 01: AIGA barker on the ERA404 site
A little while back, Tina Roth-Eisenberg (known far and wide under the blog moniker “SwissMiss”) tweeted about an extra ticket to see the AIGA NY event with Ji Lee speaking about inspiration and the nexxus between gratification from work and gratification from personal projects. For those that don’t know, Ji is one of a dozen or so creative directors at Google Creative Labs and the father of The Bubble Project.
The ticket, provided by the generous and inimitable Cameron Koczon, of Fictive Kin, opened up a world of creative thinkers, social drinkers and networking opportunities for design and development. We’ve had the honor of working with Ms. Roth-Eisenberg on various projects, including the MoMA staff site and I’ve followed SwissMiss‘s career for a half decade now, as well as the guest speaker and other participants in the event. And while many in the audience appeared to be students or those embarking on new careers, it was refreshing to see so many people passionate about design. Working in the vacuum that is ERA404 can sometimes feel devoid of creative ideas, especially when members of a project are on the other side of the globe.
So, part of this year’s resolution was to create a stronger bond with members of the creative community in NYC and, with four days to spare, we joined the AIGA. The last professional organization I’ve been a part of was back in college (the American Center for Design‘s “Students in Design” and our chapter’s “Design Works” student organization) as well as participating in the Grand Rapids Area Advertising Foundation (GRAAF)’s annual “Addy Awards“, in which a colleague and I won a Citation of Excellence.
It is my secondary hope that, just as being members of NYPHP as brought us design opportunities among the developer network, being a member of the AIGA will bring us development opportunities among the designer network. First and foremost, however, we’re glad to be part of such a prestigious and reputable organization that shares membership with some of my greatest heroes in the design world: Paula Scher, Michael Beirut, Stefan Sagmeister, to name a few.
What are your experiences with the AIGA, or other professional organizations? I’d love to hear your thoughts as well!
Joshua Ferris’s “The Unnamed”
A few weeks ago, I alluded to a web site ERA404 was creating for an author that involved original video footage from Grand Central Station (shot by the inimitable Greg Stadnik) and motion tracking movie clips with Flash video smoothing. I’m proud to say that the site for Joshua Ferris’s “The Unnamed“ (Reagan Arthur, 2010) is now live. Pop on by to see the final result. I think it came out pretty nicely…but maybe I’m biased. What do you think?
» Visit The Unnamed
» Visit ERA404’s Portfolio
Special Thanks to: Amanda Tobier, Greg Stadnik, Zeh Fernando and the author, himself, for all the original/beautiful content in the site.