TexasDesign

The American Ad Federation has released a really cool tool called the “Addy Atlas” which is a mash up of the Addy Awards laid out on a Google Map. Texas won 100 addys. Take a look and see where your competition is.

As a follow up to the HOW Design Conference, graphic designer Armin Vit posted a great article on “Unloved Logos.” As Armin states:

As a respite from the pristine show and tells of finished work sprinkled with anecdotes that support the fabulous work on screen I wanted to focus on the unglamorous side of graphic design. The endless revisions, the variations, the changes, the odd requests — “I like turtles, can my logo have a turtle?” — and the inevitable doom of much of the work we do as bezier- and pixel-based compost for piles of archived CDs, DVDs and 200-gigabyte hard drives.

Read the complete article entitled “100 Unused Logos and What they Reveal about my Design Inclinations“

Arial v Helvetica- think you know your typography? Take the test at the Arial v Helvetica test. Also some interesting info at http://www.engagestudio.com/helvetica/

Enojoy!

This is the second part of the interview with Jennifer Champberlain of WebMD. You ca read the first part of the HOW Design Conference Wrap up here.

TDc: Was there an overall theme that you’ve kind of gotten a vibe from for the overall conference not just his. Was there, any kind, of you walked away thinking, “Well, this was really about x.”

Jennifer Chamberlain: You know what, I didn’t. I didn’t get into any real theme because they did this year. I think they usually do it. There is creativity and inspiration, list of seminars you can take, design disciplines, business and management, in-house issues. I think I like the creativity and inspiration the most.

For me, I went to a lot of the in-house issues because I lead our in-house group at Web MD. They had good speakers. They had this guy from MTV. His name is Scott Wadler. He was really nice. He addressed a lot of things. I think he really spoke to my co-workers who were there, my team was there and they really enjoyed.

I kind of felt like I heard it all before. They had the woman that leads the Xbox in-house design team for Microsoft. I didn’t find them motivating. I felt like I was kind of mislead because her speech was titled. “Was it Staying Creative?” Yeah, it was called Staying Creative. Her name was Shelley Armstrong. Super smart woman.

They’re doing great work over there but, I don’t know, it wasn’t really about staying creative. I think it was more like, how to be the best in-house designer you can be and I feel like we’ve all heard it. Maybe I’ve just been to too many of these things and there’s nothing left to say.

I don’t know but even this woman that works for me turned to me and said, “You know we tried all that stuff or we do all that stuff. I haven’t really heard anything new.” So I don’t know if there’s nothing left to do in in-house. [Laughs].

TDc: Well, you do have different problems than working at it as an outsider with an agency. Let’s talk about, well, one thing people talk about how busy they are. You work at an agency you think, “Wow, we’re really busy.” You work at an in-house well you think, “Wow, we’re really busy.”

Jennifer Chamberlain: Yeah.

TDc: How busy is busy?

Jennifer Chamberlain: That is all I try and figure out because we work in a super busy company where everyday is like things are due and every time you get a time line — no timeline is ever a realistic timeline but somehow you make it happen. Do you know what I mean?

Every speaker was like, “You know, we’re all busy but you got to blah, blah, blah.” Or, “Things have gotten so busy.” And I want to be like, “How busy is your busy?” Because my busy is 10 hours a day and you’re constantly nervous, you sit down — you can’t really think.

Everybody thinks they have ADD because we’re doing so much. You know, that kind of thing? I couldn’t really figure it out. Like some people are like, “Yeah, we’re really busy.” Then they tell you all the cool things they have time to do and I’m like, “There’s not a way they could really be that busy.”

TDc: Yeah, if your busy, you don’t have time for that.

Jennifer Chamberlain: And the only thing I could think of is, I guess we are all busy but if you love what you do at least 50% of the time you’re happy with the work you’re making and the people you work for appreciate you then it’s okay. I like being busy as long I get the pay back.

TDc: Right.

Jennifer Chamberlain: I guess that’s part of design these days. I guess if you’re not busy you can’t afford to go to the conference, I don’t know. [Laughs].

TDc: Or you’re in trouble.

Jennifer Chamberlain: [Laughs] Exactly!

TDc: Well, how would you relate or equate the How conference versus let’s say, an AIGA conference?

Jennifer Chamberlain: You know what? I feel really stupid because I belong to AIGA. I’m very involved in the AIGA in Atlanta. We’ve got a great group and we get great speakers. We even had Chip Kidd come and speak so seeing him at the How conference was a second time that I’ve seen him but I’ve never been to the big AIGA conference.

TDc: Okay.

Jennifer Chamberlain: However, I talked to a lot of people and the word on the streets and the people I talked to at the How conference is they felt that AIGA got better speakers. That’s just what I’d heard and I’m curious to go the AIGA conference now but that’s what they felt. That was the word on the street.

TDc: The How conferences, you know, it’s big. There’s a lot of, I would guess, is bigger than the AIGA conference and I wonder if there is an intimacy issue there. There’s so many people that go to the How versus possibly go to the AIGA. If that plays into it.

Jennifer Chamberlain: I think it probably does. When I was at the big seminars, I couldn’t get over how big the rooms are and they had like 7 giant screens and you can even see where the speaker was which made like question and answer really difficult. Lucky, the Gary Baseman was in a really smaller venue and I was kind of like, “I cannot believe that more people are here.” Like, “This guys is amazing!”

I personally do prefer the intimate conferences. Next year if I’ve the opportunity I think I would try the AIGA conference.

TDc: And then what about the individual seminar titles themselves and descriptions had. You mentioned that you walked out of one but was that because it was mislabeled or were there others were pretty well-labeled? “I quite,” you thought when you got there. You know, this is what it is.

Jennifer Chamberlain: You know what, for the most of them, I thought they were mislabeled. I feel like the most interesting descriptions were the boring ones and the boring descriptions were the most amazing. [Laughs] Like Shelley Armstrong’s Staying Creative, I think she gave two tips on how to be creative out of her whole seminar.

It was really just like how to be the best in-house designer, how to be a successful in-house designer. That would be a more accurate description. I’m trying to think there was also one reinvent yourself strategies to having the career you want. I went to that and it might just be that I see what I want to see when I look at this quickly and decide where I’m going.

But, that one particularly, I stayed. I was a little disappointed because it could be at any conference. It could be at a conference for accountants. The woman was really smart and she’s a great speaker but there was nothing specific about design.

I think there’s a big opportunity for somebody who’s more focused on design to be like, well , if you are in print and you want to go into web or if you’ve always been interested in illustration, how to parlay your skill. That kind of thing is what I thought it was going to be.

TDc: Right.

Jennifer Chamberlain: So I was kind of disappointed in that. I’m just looking around at other things. Like, one was called English For Me is Greek. Like, what does that mean? I don’t know. [Laughter] So, it’s kind of hard sometimes where you want to go but I’ve become a big proponent of — I give them 5 minutes and if I don’t like it I go. I move on to the next on.

TDc: Well, how about accessibility. You mentioned several of the sessions where in the big rooms and then there were the small rooms. How was the accessibility to the speakers, not only while they were speaking, but throughout the conference?

Jennifer Chamberlain: You know after I saw Chip Kidd walk by but it wasn’t like he had mail, he was, like, off. He had somewhere to go kind-of-thing. I didn’t really see accessibility to them. I have to say, the guy from MTV, Scott Walder, was super nice and stayed forever answering people’s questions. But I didn’t see other people sticking around, making themselves available or approachable.

Gary Baseman, he was an exception. He came out before they were really to get going asking questions but, otherwise, I didn’t really see them around. Although, I have to say, a lot of times when I was in a conference there would be like, “Well, if you saw so-and-so speak yesterday, they mentioned blah, blah, blah.” So, I guess they were going to different seminars but I didn’t really see them around.

Maybe they have like an invisibility cloak. I don’t know. [Laughter]

TDc: Well, I’ve been to some conferences where they’ll sit in the back waiting, they’re in the next session. Then, all of a sudden after it’s gone, they’re out of there. Other people have this entourage around and you can never go over and say anything to them. So, interesting.

So, what did you find now that you’re away from the conference? What are you going to take with you? What is going to inspire you from this point on that was a result of the conference?

Jennifer Chamberlain: I think for the most part, it was remembering to look at other people’s work. I have a whole list of new people I didn’t realize that were out there that I want to go and constantly check what they are doing, to get inspired for myself. I think from seeing the Logo Notions speaker, how he was talking about with print identity to always keep it simple and to think about how you can really play with forms and keep them simple so they can evolve with time and be something that’s very trendy.

He showed, was it the Museum of Toledo, I think. A fantastic logo and he showed it’s evolved overtime. Really interesting. So that’s something. Because a lot of times, people, myself included, I’ll design a logo and you’re afraid to touch it or how it can be used. [Laughter] Do you know what I mean?

TDc: Right, yeah.

Jennifer Chamberlain: It’s like, we need to let our children grow, evolve but still be themselves. You know?

TDc: Yeah. Well good! Well, Jennifer, I think this has been incredible and really want to say thank you for telling us about the whole How conference and thank you very much.

Jennifer Chamberlain: Thank you! I love talking so I appreciate the opportunity. [Laughs] Talk to you soon, Dan.

TDc: Alright. Thank you. Bye.

Part 1 of 2 (to read part 2 of the How Design Conference Wrap Up click here)

Today we are talking to Jennifer Chamberlain from Web MD. She just recently went to the HowDesign conference in Atlanta. Here is a re-cap on the HOW Design web site. Let’s see how that went for her. How are you doing today, Jennifer?

Jennifer Chamberlain: The conference was great. I’m a little partial because I live in Atlanta. So, it was nice to have it in my own town and very convenient.

Dan: That’s good.

Jennifer Chamberlain: Yeah, it was great but the only thing I have to say about the location is I know Atlanta well and it was held in downtown Atlanta at the Hyatt. Downtown Atlanta is not the place to be in Atlanta. Like, there is so much going on in Atlanta, so much buildings, so many great shopping and restaurants and cool places to go for artists and that’s really midtown. Downtown is only about 2 miles or a mile away but it seems like eons away.

It’s kind of dark like when you go to a city where there’s not much going on. There’s nobody really around, that’s downtown Atlanta, sadly. I think, eventually the regentrification and all the life coming into Atlanta City will make Atlanta downtown cool again but right now it’s kind of like the dead spot for conferences. So it kind of felt like, to all those people that came to the “How” conference in Atlanta, like “this isn’t really Atlanta.” [Laughs]

Dan: You’d rather show off your city with some other venue.

Jennifer Chamberlain: Exactly, exactly. I think though last night they kind of got a good glimpse of Atlanta where they went to the aquarium. That’s a fantastic spot. We love to show that off, but, hopefully, the people that went to the conference got to get out a little bit. Unfortunately, the other downside of Atlanta is public transportation is really poor. It doesn’t go to very many places so, I was like,”Oh God, I hope these people rented cars.” [Laughs]

Dan: It’s like in Dallas. You have to have a car. The train system’s great but it doesn’t take you to where you want to go.

Jennifer Chamberlain: Exactly! We’ve the same problem. So, that’s the one thing about the location.

Dan: Tell me a little bit. What did you think about the speakers? What were some of the speakers that really stood out for you?

Jennifer Chamberlain: They had some fantastic speakers. They really did and when I go to a conference I kind of have my own personal rating system. The top being you are in awe the whole time and it’s just like, “Wow!” and when it comes to the question and answer, you should stay the whole time and you don’t want to leave when it’s over.

Dan: You wish it went on longer?

Jennifer Chamberlain: Yes. Completely! And then, there’s like, “Oh, it’s pretty good. I’ve learned a lot.” But by the end you’re ready for a snack or lunch or something. Then there is, “I should stay but you keep checking your watch.” [Laughs] Then, finally, “Forget it. I’m leaving.” And you actually walk out.

So, you know, I have to say, during the conference it ran the whole gamut. There was one I actually walked out on. It was on Copyrights and Trademarks on the Internet which I went to and I was like, “This will be really fantastic.” Because sometimes I put things on the web and we always have to be so careful of WebMD. It’s a huge web site and we have to be super careful legally. So I felt this will be fantastic for me to listen to and it was super technical and the speaker who is very smart and I think she even does a column for How Magazine but as a speaker she wasn’t resonating with me and got caught up with the technology and had trouble downloading a PDF and wanted to walk us through a PDF document. I was like, “I don’t want to.”

So I actually left and went and saw Gary Baseman. He is an illustrator most famous for — he did the design for the game Cranium. If you’re familiar with that and he does a lot paintings. He was amazing! He was like the opposite end of the spectrum. Had so much energy. Before he spoke he was outside with the people while they were waiting to get the room set up. “Does anybody have a question for me?” He had his dolls out there and he was showing people his dolls. He had beautiful post cards of his work, super glossy, perfectly printed, handing them out to people, samples of his work. He was amazing. So much fun.

Dan: Let’s talk about that a little bit. The criticism for one of the sessions you just mentioned was it was very technical and, I guess you could say it was very dry. Whereas this guy had a lot of energy. Is there a place at a conference like that where people do need to get exposed to, you know, you can’t get that excited about copyright law.

Jennifer Chamberlain: [Laughter] I agree! There’s definitely a space and I was talking to a co-worker afterwards and she we were like, “She wanted to go through that document which is really important. Have it printed out beforehand as a handout and people could follow along. I can’t see in a huge conference room each type and box. Do you know what I mean? That they’re projecting on a page.

Dan: Right.

Jennifer Chamberlain: So, I think there’s other ways to do it to make it a little more interesting. And for copyrights and trademarks, I wish she would have said, “If you want a copyright these kinds of things and this is why you would do it and this is why you wouldn’t do it.” And give some interesting examples.

Dan: Right. And things you might not think about immediately. There’s some quirky things about those issues. It’s always good to hear an antidote that ties that in and then talk about why that was important.

Jennifer Chamberlain: Absolutely. I even came with questions that I wanted to ask and I was like, “Forget it. I can’t even go there.” But it was, like, I remember talking to one designer who worked and did print for lingerie businesses. She was telling me, you could, sometimes if their rights with the model had ended, they will trim the model’s face at like the nose.

Then you can’t recognize who that person is. I wanted to be like, “Hey, is that really true? Can you really do that?” Where are our loopholes? How creative can you be? You know how some people are always like, “If you take a photo you change x % of the photo, then you can use that photo without paying for it.” Is that really true? I wanted to know all these kind of things.

So, I think, there were some things that, I don’t know, maybe I got her on a bad day.

Dan: Maybe. Let’s talk about some exciting people. Gary Baseman sounded like he was excited. Got the room going. Who else did you see that you really thought was a highlight.

Jennifer Chamberlain: Yeah, he was great. I’m going to hatch at these names. So, forgive me but Matteo Bologna? And Roberto… I can’t even say his name. Have you ever seen Bembo’s Zoo?

Jennifer Chamberlain: If you google Bembo’s Zoo there are these two guys. They’re phenomenal. Mateo is Italian and Roberto is Portuguese. I can send you the links to their work. They were phenomenal .They’ve been doing …they’re all obsessed…Oh, you found it! I can hear it.

[Laughs] They’re amazing at how they take typographic forms and really play with them. Bembo’s Zoo’s been around for a while and they did this short room book and if you Google Bamboo Zoo you’ll find their web site. It’s amazing how they just change these, just using these letter forms to create animals.

They just put out a new book called Words At Play and it’s wordsatplay.com and they use letter forms to create literary figures. Portraits of literary figures like William Shakespeare and it looks like him. It’s amazing! So, they were super inspiring. They also do a lot of restaurant design for big restaurants in New York like Balthazar and Pravda and Pastis. They were talking about all those projects and showcased those. So that was really interesting.

They were also just really entertaining people as well. I went and saw one conference, seminar, rather called Logo Notions. This guy is a real ID master. His name is Steff Geissbuhler. I don’t know how to say it. But his company is called C&G Partners and his web site is cgpartnersllc.com. Amazing logos and ID’s that they’ve done over the year.

Like the NBC peacock, Turner Cable. He showed us a logo study of a radio for Europe. Another amazing one they did for the national parks of New York Harbor which featured its own alphabet that they created. It’s amazing and it’s on their site. You can totally see that. I highly recommend it and he started his seminar with a 9 minute animation of the logos that they’ve created over the years.

Each logo would morph into the next logo by focusing on, maybe it was the letter E in the logo would turn and morph into the NBC peacock or something. It was just really interesting how they did that. He was really great. Something I took away from his speech was how he was talking about — when he creates logos, he does not show the client the logo on an 8 1/2 x 11 piece on paper or on a board.

He says he always shows it in an environment that he thinks is going to be used or that’s most important to the client. Here’s the example. If he is creating a logo for a lawyer, he would present it to them on their letterhead. Or, if he was doing a logo for an airline, he would show it superimposed on the tail of a plane and a mock-up so they can see how it would be used.

So I thought that was interesting. I usually don’t do that. For me these conferences are about just getting inspired and seeing what other people are doing, for the most part.

Dan: Right.

Jennifer Chamberlain: So, I’m torn that way. Then there was one final, really great conference that I really enjoyed and that was Chip Kidd. Heard a lot of people talking about him just as I would walk along the hallway. “Oh Chip Kidd, he was so funny. Blah, blah, blah.” Another guy who’s really super talented and just an amazing performer and entertainer in addition to what he was showing us and telling us.

So, Chip Kidd for people listening and don’t know is a big book cover designer and he works for Harper Collins, I want to say. I might be totally wrong. He showed lots of examples of his work and he is one of the most popular book designers.

Right now, today, he’s also done some movie posters. He did Paul Simon’s surprise CD that came out maybe 2 year ago. So he brought through that and he told us the whole experience working with Paul Simon which was really interesting. He was really great.

The other thing I really liked about his talk was he was also very human, in that, he talked about things like every designer worries about or concerns themselves about. Chip Kidd is dealing with this like he was talking about a poster he did for Adobe. They do a student competition each year and they asked him to design the poster for it.

The woman kept saying, “Blue sky, blue sky.” He was like, “What are you talking about?” She’s like, “You can do whatever you want.” He was like, “I became a graphic designer because I like an assignment. I read the book. I create something about the book.” He’s like, “Blue sky! I can’t do anything. I’m not a fine artist. I can’t think like immediately. I get artist block.”

So he explained how he dealt with this artist block and he just pulled out some random design that was horrible and he totally admitted it. I mean, everybody could relate to that because he has to made it sound fine. He said 2006, people think that I’m super successful and I do this work and everyone’s like, “Oh, it’s fantastic. Approved! Go to print.” But he is like …”2006 was a particularly difficult year for me. I thought I did a lot of good work. Here’s all the stuff that I did that got refused. And playing out that they went with someone else, like never got approved or whatever and went through and showed us so that was really fun.

He also talked about for designers, he really thinks it’s for designers he think it’s really important for inspiration and to keep our minds really sharp to do crossword puzzles, and just a way to think of words in different unexpected ways. That was kind of a theme through his wholes speech. That was really interesting. He had a really good way of working the crowd. He was just really entertaining and funny.

We will be posting part to soon…