I’m excited to share with you a just completed project: the Laguna Foundation’s first 5-year Strategic Plan. Staff and board members met many times with stakeholders, partners and volunteers to develop and refine their goals. Then they brought me on board to create the brochure — I provided writing, editing, design, illustration and project management […]
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The Tech Museum of Innovation, San Jose, CA
In 2012, I visited “The Tech” museum in downtown San Jose. I particularly enjoyed The Tech Awards Gallery, “Technology Benefiting Humanity” — it’s the only permanent museum exhibition on the West Coast that links social responsibility with technology in the areas of health, education, equality, economic development and the environment. Here are a few pictures […]
Good Design: The Safety Pin
The best design isn’t necessarily the latest or the most high-tech. Seen on the BBC’s website this morning (“London 2012: 20 more Olympic Oddities“) “Given the huge amount of money spent on sports wear and team outfits, why has no one come up with a better solution for attaching the competitor’s numbers to their vests […]
2012 REFB Barrel Wrap Project
A barrel wrap project calls for a highly visible design: after all, they have to stand out in a sea of visual data. But they can’t be so strong that they put people off – after all, we’re trying to encourage food donations, and also create visibility about ending hunger in our community . It’s […]
The Secret to a Great Info-Graphic
I’ve been noticing a trend in info-graphics recently – a huge collection of facts, done in a certain style. They’re usually very tall – 500 x 2000 pixels, and colorful/dramatic. So what’s wrong with this picture? Well, they’re ineffective. There’s a lot of data, and it’s all pretty hard to read. They don’t tell a […]
Book/Walking Tour of Sebastopol & Iota Press (letterpress shop)
What a fun idea the Sebastopol Center for the Arts and Copperfields Books came up with — a walking tour of several local book-related venues, as part of their Celebrate Book Arts! program. Usually book related stuff involves a lot of sitting around — so combining books with walking is really rather brilliant. Here’s a […]
“The Art of Explaining Stuff”
I read an article* today on The Art of Explaining Stuff. Explaining is what people in the communication fields do for a living, and we always like to learn how to do it better. The techniques listed in the article tied in well with what I’ve learned – and I thought back to where I […]
The 8 Hallmarks of Professional Graphic Designers
Today, almost everyone can and does call themselves a designer – it seems that anyone who has ever fiddled around with Photoshop says, “Oh, I can design.” Not true. Graphic design is about organizing and presenting visual information: to inform, educate, or persuade. The principles are simple — however, simple is not to be confused […]
Be a Trim Tab – ‘greening’ your business
Buckminster Fuller, renowned author, designer, engineer, futurist and inventor, wrote: “Something hit me very hard once, thinking about what one little man could do. Think of the Queen Mary – the whole ship goes by and then comes the rudder. And there’s a tiny thing at the edge of the rudder called a trim tab. […]
Good Design
I recently watched the movie “Objectified” about what goes into “good design” and found these quotes by Dieter Rams (Former Design Director, Braun Kronberg, Germany) to be valuable and timeless. They point the way to designing something of value. “Users react very positively when things are clear and understandable. What particularly bothers me today is […]
