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AIGA Design Archives - Endless Design

People I Admire:

Rodrigo Corral
I enjoy the book cover designs in the AIGA archives. I especially enjoyed the 31 Days: The Crisis That Gave Us the Government We Have Today cover, A Million Little Pieces cover, Ace of Spades: A Memoir cover, the Breathless package design, Diary cover design for Chuck Palahniuk, and Him Her Him Again The End of Him cover design to name a few.

Paprika
I enjoy the work of paprika such as the Babiche Poster, Baronet Spring 2006 Showroom, Baronet Stationery, Commissaires Poster, Frontières Floues Poster, and the Identity of David Sanders.

Salamander Hill Design
They also have nice book cover designs among other things. I enjoy Bamboo Church book design, Dead Man’s Float book design, Kidney for Sale by Owner book design, Nationalism from the Margins: Italians in Alberta and British Columbia cover, The Fate of the Nation State book design, The Rent Collector book design, and the Wet Apples, White Blood book design

Duffy & Partners
I especially like the Basin White logo, the Duffy & Partners 2007 Holiday Wine Bottle, and the Good Day Café logo.

People I Know:

Linda Powell
Linda worked at Herman Miller for quite awhile before becoming a professor at Ferris State University. She also recently went on sabbatical to do work for Herman Miller once again. She is a great professor and mentor.

Alison Popp
Alison spent time working at BBK Studio which is now People Design in Grand Rapids, Michigan. She focuses on web design, and has a true passion for it that is hard to not catch yourself. She was our professor and leader in the student redesign of the FSU Graphic Design Website.

Barb Loveland
Barb was nice enough to volunteer to help us with a specific project this semester. She made trips to Big Rapids in order to meet with us, and was an incredible help in reviving and re-loving many of our Smithsonian Poster Series designs. It has been great getting to know her.

People I Had Heard Of:

Marian Bantjes
I have been a fan of Bantjes’ work since freshman year when we were instructed to find a designer and work on poster about that designer. I love the intricacy of her work, but also the messages that it brings. I will always enjoy checking up and looking at what she is working on.

Liska & Associates
I was able to be a part of a tour through Liska & Associates in Chicago, Illinois. It was my first AIGA trip, and it was basically amazing to see a working design agency who was so serious and enthusiastic about what they do.

Walker Art Center
We learned about the Walker Art Center redesign at a conference during our chicago trip through AIGA. The redesign of the expanded brand was actually incredibly technical, and produced wonderful fun results. They developed a system where typing keys would actually create words instead of letters with different colors and patterns. 
 

Designing Brand Identity Part 3: Brand Identity Practice

PANTONE®

PROFILE:

Lawrence Herbert is Pantone’s founder who created the innovative system of identifying, matching, and communicating colors in order to solve the problems that were associated with being color accurate. He understood that the spectrum is interpreted differently by everyone. PANTONE® is a worldwide system used for color communication from designer to manufacturer to retailer to customer. 

PANTONE® has been striving to expand its color matching system to other industries including digital technology, textiles, plastics, architecture, and contract interiors, and paint. It is continuing to develop color communication tools in many industries and is aggressive in its adoption of new technologies to benefit the design industry.

PANTONE, Inc. has been the most used color authority for more than forty years, and provide design professionals with products and services in color management and matching. PANTONE considers itself a creative source for color inspiration. 

PROJECT GOALS:

PANTONE® needed to match how the company’s business has evolved from professional tools to also include inspirational and forward thinking products. They had to maintain their worldwide recognition for accuracy and reliability and the logo had to continue to be a symbol of their commitment to the design industries. 

PROCESS STRATEGY:

The brand had to convey the company’s transformation and expansion into new products. They strived to keep the existing brand value with sophisticated urban audience members, these people are cultural frontliners or creative professionals. They worked with PANTONE® products as an integral part of their creative process. Attracting new consumers across all walks of life was important. People who are interested in sophisticated color and design were an important target.

CREATIVE SOLUTION:

The new brand identity debuted on November 6, 2006. It is a contemporary interpretation of the iconic PANTONE® color chip. The imagery is a known and recognized symbol for (color) consistency. The new brand is a departure form the image of a solid color chip, and it evokes an “open window” or lens into creativity. It signifies PANTONE’s role - the source of inspiration in the creative process. The new tagline is “the color of ideas”.

RESULTS:

The launch of the two new products - award winning Huey, a consumer level monitor calibration solution, and PANTONE® PAINTS - a luxury paint line of pantone colored wall paints have been extremely successful. The new brand direction has updated a integral part of the design process.

Linda Powell’s Sabbatical Work

One thing that Linda worked on during her sabbatical was a holiday card for Herman Miller

In general I like the thought of one of our professors working on something very similar to what I just worked on. I know that they have done everything that we do, but I enjoyed hearing about her thought process that began with the holiday card because I just went through the same thing this semester.

Obviously it had to be politically correct and carefully avoid any religious connotations, and she did a lot of brainstorming about different topics that she could work with.

The budget was also limited so she kept that in mind and tried to keep the colors down and also keep printing to one side of the paper

I also really enjoyed hearing about how she deals with people’s suggestions even if she is not crazy about the idea.

The card that she designed is interesting and simple, and I really enjoyed seeing what her thought process was and how it all came together.

The amount of different pieces, and work that went into working on developing the mark and brand of Herman Miller was astounding. It was overwhelming for me to think of all the different pieces that needed attention, but I liked how Linda described that aspect of it as exciting.

Richard Avedon at the GRAM

While visiting the GRAM for the first time, we wandered around enjoying all of the pieces, especially Toulouse-Lautrec until we walked into the room with the Richard Avedon pieces. 

I love photography. It has to be one of my favorite things to see in an art museum, and these portraits were wonderful. I really loved the playfulness and candidacy that they captured. It was interesting to see stars from before my time in such a manner. We have all heard of the people (Marilyn Monroe to name one) but to see their portraits so simply shot was to understand them a little more.

When I got to the photography of regular everyday people often photographed in old age and often people who were affected by horrible things like bombings, they were incredibly interesting. You felt like you could understand the people and some of their pain.

GRAM Gold Certified LEED Art Museum

I was proud to find out that Grand Rapids has been among the leading cities in being environmentally friendly. For awhile, Grand Rapids even surpassed cities such as Chicago, San Francisco, New York, and Washington DC in the amount of LEED certified buildings.

The GRAM became the first newly constructed LEED certified art museum in the country. One of the reasons which might have led to the GRAM being the first LEED certified art museum is that art museums usually need very precise levels of temperature and humidity control to protect the artwork. Art Museums also need extensive lighting. The GRAM was able to do this

I can personally say that when walking through and around the GRAM there is no indication that it is an incredibly green and sustainable building. It is beautiful and interesting, and to know that it is LEED gold certified is also exciting

Some of the buidings green elements include:

AIR

The building’s air conditioning system and air filtration system include:

passive air conditioning via vapor misting

no Hydrochlorofluorocarbon (HCFC) emissions

strict CO2 emissions monitoring

LIGHTING 

The buildings lighting systems include:

interior shading system to diffuse natural light through the museum

lantern skylight systems in the galleries

built in skylight louvers in galleries which are adjustable to accommodate different exhibitions

WATER

Recycled rainwater is used in systems throughout the facility, including:

toilet flushes

planting irrigation

fountain

INSULATION

The building’s insulation systems include:

light-colored concrete walls

three layer UV filter glass in windows

insulation Argon gas between glass window panels

low-emission coatings on all components

RECYCLING

The museum operates a strict recycling policy to decrease day-to-day environmental impact

Green elements information found at http://www.artmuseumgr.org/uploads/assets/GRAM_Fact_SheetJan14.pdf

Let’s Design for T-shirts!

General Rule of Design:
Just remember to design for the constraints of how the object is going to be printed

There are different ways to print on t-shirts:

• Direct printing - ink is printed onto the shirt directly
  
  • Direct printing is more cost efficient when the quantity is large enough
  • If printing on a dark shirt, you may need to indicate that you need them to underprint white, and after that is dry, print the colors over the top (Obviously keep in mind that it would add to the price)
• Transfer Printing - printed onto something backwards which is then transferred to the t-shirt.
  
  • Transfers have come a long way in quality
  • Inks tend to be more opaque
  • Can be done in small quantity, or can be done as needed which can be cost-efficient
• Also be aware of: puff printing  - it is screened on and rises when heat is applied (much like thermomgraphy) - can be horrible and you might see it all over t-shirt places in the summer. Use it limitedly, or for a specific reason

All of the cost in the printing is in the set up, so if you might need more later it might be smart to print a larger quantity

Where can you print on T-shirts?
sleeves, backs, bottom of shirts, around the collar, sides, and on the front but anything out of the ordinary would cost more because of difficult set up.

General T-shirt design and production advice:

Be wary of printing halftones and blends even if the printer says they can do these. Some printers may take more care than others with them.

Get test prints if it is necessary, or if you really want to attempt halftones and blends

Bleeds are a special, very expensive route to go

Keep in mind that you are probably printing many different sizes of shirts

The amount of setups (if you are printing on 4 sides of the shirt or something) needs to be taken into account as far as budget

Try to get one image size to fit all the sizes of the shirts you have to print

If you are printing kid size shirts, up to adults you may not be able to escape the extra screen and set up

L and XL are probably to most common sizes

Make testing prototypes and have someone wear the shirts because it is not the same to look at it laying flat on the table

T-shirt Brands:

you really want to specify a quality name because you can get some very low-quality shirts if you don’t

Work on talking your client into getting a quality shirt - you need to make the decision with the client.

Try and get samples to show to your client, or get a swatch book where they will show you the colors and fabrics, and what is available (short-sleeve / long sleeve)

Shirts change, so you can’t look at old swatch books to try and find a product

Be sure to check the availability charts

Cost: can be a deciding factor for a job

White shirts cost the least

Pastels and grays are a little more, and dark colors cost the most

Fruit of the Loom runs narrow

100% cotton - shirt, nicer, weight to them

50/50 cotton blend - don’t shrink, thinner in weight, sometimes they pill

Prepress:

Check with the printer to see what platform they use. Many of them seem to love the windows and corel draw combination

Just keep communication open

Ask them if you can send a certain file, in a certain version

Color-matching:

Screen printing inks do not conform to the PMS, so give them a nice big color swatch to match to

Rename the swatches in the file so that they make sense to the file

Keep in mind that inks are not totally opaque

Prototypes for clients should how it looks on a shirt, and also a full-size image of the design

Possibly wear the prototype t-shirt in the presentation

File specifications:

Looking at the separations, and printing them off is incredibly important

Tiny shapes and hairlines will not print effectively