to the issue.

30 EXERCISES
TO FUEL YOUR
CREATIVITY
Berlin:
City of
Design
Award-Winning
Logos Revealed
3D Printing:
The Future of Design
Timothy Goodman:
From “Dead-End Kid”
to Dynamic Designer
3D Model by
Timothy Goodman
10
Summer
Projects
to Pump Up
Your Portfolio
Summer 2016 / HOWdesign.com
How to Thrive in the
New Creative Economy
thanks for reading
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and refocused HOW!
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Why Marketers Choose Print:
Reason #9:
PRINT
Is
Meaningful
“At our very core, we are a
tactile species,” declares
Daniel Dejan, Print & Creative
Manager at Sappi Etc. “Our
sense of touch is highly
developed, and we seek that
tactile experience. We need it.”
In fact, the neuroscience of
touch has proven that as soon
as we touch something – such
as a print piece – we begin to
feel differently about it. We
value it more.*
“If done well,” Dejan explains,
“such as with special effects
and excellent paper, print is
very meaningful to us. It can
even become a treasure.”
To get the facts about
PRINT
visit ChoosePrint.org.
To learn more about how print’s tactility affects us, scan the code or visit
http://tiny.cc/Meaningful .
*Eagleman, Dr. David, A Communicator’s Guide to the Neuro Science of Touch: Haptic Brain, Haptic
Brand, Sappi North America, 2015.
SUMMER 2016
42
THE CREATIVITY ISSUE
In my two years as HOW’s online editor, I’ve come to know its digital end intimately. Meanwhile, I’ve watched the magazine evolve from the authority on
creative career advice to a showcase of the design world’s best and brightest.
So when I found the magazine lovingly placed in my hands, I took a long
look at what HOW needed to become in order to best serve designers in the
digital present. What I learned—from the past, from my mentors, from the
staggeringly brilliant writers and artists who helped me create this issue—is
that HOW yearns to live up to its name, much in the same way I yearn to live
up to the daunting example of my predecessors.
It is my hope that you will glean from these stories even a morsel of what
curating them has taught me—that you will find the “how” in HOW.
—Jess Zafarris
30 EXERCISES
TO FUEL YOUR
CREATIVITY
Berlin:
City of
Design
Award-Winning
Logos Revealed
3D Printing:
The Future of Design
Timothy Goodman:
From “Dead-End Kid”
to Dynamic Designer
3D Model by
Timothy Goodman
Summer
10
Projects
to Pump Up
Your Portfolio
How to Thrive in the
New Creative Economy
Summer 2016 / HOWdesign.com
COVER AND SECTION OPENERS
by Timothy Goodman
HOW (ISSN 0886-0483, Summer 2016, Volume XXXI, No. 2) is
published quarterly, 4 issues per year, by F+W Media Inc., 10151
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3
CONTENTS
who
what
10 SO HAPPY TOGETHER
34 APPLES OF
YOUR EYES
Texas studio Spindletop brings
community and collaboration
to its design work.
Check out the Readers’ Choice
winners of the HOW Logo &
Poster Design Awards.
by Sarah Whitman
by Amanda Aszman
16 WHEELS4WATER
37 12 BASIC PRINCIPLES
OF ANIMATION IN
MOTION DESIGN
How creatives are bringing
safe drinking water
to thousands.
by Scott Kirkwood
10
22
TIMOTHY
GOODMAN:
THE [CREATIVE] KID
FROM CLEVELAND
Disney’s classic animation
principles can guide more
authentic motion graphics.
34
by James Pannafino
42
CLOSE
ENCOUNTERS
OF THE 3D KIND
by Ellen Shapiro
by Jason Tselentis
22
where
42
how
54 SURPRISING
U.S. CITIES FOR
GRAPHIC DESIGNERS
74 THE DESIGNER’S
SUMMER BUCKET LIST
Try out these 10 projects to
refresh your design portfolio.
These 10 unexpected cities
boast great job opportunities
and competitive salaries.
by Roberto Blake
by Callie Budrick
77 SOLVE THE PROBLEM
58 THE FUTURE
OF CREATIVITY
A step-by-step tutorial for
making low-quality images
work in editorial design.
Three key factors are shaping
the new creative economy and
the future design professional.
58
82
by Neil & Jen Baker Brown
64
by Jandos Rothstein
74
30 CREATIVITY
EXERCISES
curated by Jess Zafarris
BERLIN:
CITY OF DESIGN
by Nadja Sayej
64
4
Summer 2016 / HOW
82
LET’S GET
TO WORK
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2,000 INTERNATIONAL IDENTITIES
BY LEADING DESIGNERS
THE DEFINITIVE
LOGO RESOURCE
SUMMER 2016
VOLUME 31, ISSUE 2, HOWDESIGN.COM
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9
so happy together
Words Sarah Whitman
10
Summer 2016 / HOW
he first oil field on the U.S. Gulf Coast was
discovered in 1901. After two long, cashstrapped years of drilling, Captain Anthony
F. Lucas struck oil atop the Spindletop salt dome in
Texas, creating a geyser that blew 100 feet into the air
at a rate of 100,000 barrels per day. Lucas’ discovery
turned doubters into believers and the Gulf Coast into
a major oil region.
Almost a century later, when John Earles and Jennifer Blanco surveyed the Texas creative landscape
with an eye toward starting a branding and multidisciplinary design company, Lucas’ perseverance—and
the unrealized potential to cause paradigm shifts for
industry and culture—resonated with them. Thus,
T
PH OTO: PE TE M O L I CK
Learn how Texas creative studio
Spindletop brings community, culture
and collaboration to its design work.
OPPOSITE , FROM LEFT :
Spindletop’s Josh Higgins, Laura Thornock,
John Earles, Jennifer Blanco and Corbin Spring.
ABOVE : Inside Spindletop’s studio.
they adopted the Spindletop moniker for their new
Houston-based studio.
“The Spindletop story is a great parallel for the
creative process,” Earles says. “Anthony Lucas, who
was the driving force for exploration in the area, was
doubted and poured everything he had into a venture
that many thought would be fruitless. Ultimately, the
impacts were far larger than anyone could have imagined. I think we’ve taken the lessons of the Spindletop/
Lucas story to heart.
“Jennifer likes to state the goal of Spindletop Design
is to create a ‘Boomtown’ of ideas and cultural value,
and I would agree,” he continues. “It’s the idea that
we need to be true to our course and realize that even
the smallest, simplest idea or project can have large,
sweeping impacts. Everything is an opportunity.”
Drill down, and one thing you’ll find at the core of
all of Spindletop Design’s endeavors is a spirit of collaboration. Just as Lucas relied on a group of backers
to help fulfill his destiny, so too have Blanco and Earles often relied on teaming up with others to maximize
their projects’ potential—whether it’s working with
clients, with partners, with team members or with
the community.
CLIENT COLLABORATION
In keeping with its Texas roots and that collaborative spirit, Spindletop is perhaps best known for the
intricately styled and cohesive identities the firm has
helped establish for many restaurants and spaces in
Houston. “We live and work in Houston, and we have
a vested interest in making it an even more vibrant
place to be,” Blanco says. “We seek out and work with
clients that want to do the same.”
Take the firm’s approach to its four-year relationship with Amaya Roasting Co. and Catalina Coffee, for
example. “To think of design for a local coffee shop as
‘just a brand’ is missing the larger context,” Blanco says.
“With engaging design, that coffee shop can serve as an
www.howdesign.com
ad hoc community center or an anchor to reinvigorating the neighborhood. It’s an opportunity to help build
the place you aspire your city to become.”
Spindletop is also recognized for its print and
design advocacy around the city through collaborations with AIGA Houston, The Contemporary Arts
Museum Houston and independent bookshop Brazos
Bookstore. Each September, Brazos invites Spindletop
to invent something new to draw awareness to Banned
Books Week. “It is a unique situation in that we are
allowed by the store manager to come in and do nearly
anything desired inside and/or outside the store,” Earles says. “We always set up a Workhorse Printmakers
(our partnering company) press onsite with an item
visitors partake in producing with us during the event.
It’s been an excellent opportunity to experiment with
printing, interaction, branding and promotion for an
important cause around literacy and freedom.”
Brazos general manager Jeremy Ellis says the
bookstore’s partnership with Spindletop, which also
has included rebranding the store and redesigning the
website, has been a huge success. “It was amazing luck
to find designers with such passion and commitment
to books and design. We were lucky that they were
game to try something new and make something so
special,” Ellis says. “Each year since, they’ve returned
and brought new designs, variations on the theme.
And each year they’ve made something special and
unexpected that our customers love.”
TEAM SPIRIT
Everything may be bigger in Texas, but the Spindletop
team is lean: two designers, a designer/developer and
two founders. As such, there’s minimal hierarchy, and
Earles and Blanco place a strong value on teamwork
and open communication. “In our creative process,
we regularly step into and out of various roles, and
projects are handed off many times through team
members to explore ideas,” Earles says. “We encourage
Who
11
1
2
4
3
1. Spindletop helped The Printing Museum
craft a new name, brand strategy and visual
identity. 2. Invitation for The Printing Museum’s
2014 Gala, The Gutenberg Dinner. 3. Visual
identity and packaging for Amaya Roasting Co.
4. Brand system and packaging for Billy Twang
Mercantile. 5. Website design for Workhorse
Printmakers, Spindletop’s partnering letterpress
print shop that specializes in design-centric
print projects.
5
12
Summer 2016 / HOW
everyone’s participation
and ideas, no matter how
‘out there’ they may be, and
let the best solutions rise to
the top.”
The work environment
is also structured to encourage conversation and interaction as much as possible.
A renovated mechanic’s
shop in an historic innercity neighb orho o d, the
studio is a wide-open workspace. “It’s a continual
work-in-progress, as we
frequently rearrange to better suit our always-evolving
JOHN EARLES
process,” Blanco says.
Camaraderie is another
essential ingredient for a
team that both props up
and pushes one another.
Although the firm takes its
work, client relationships
and outward presentation very seriously, internally
they revel in the absurd. “Our interoffice banter is a
stream of puns, nonlinear discussion and general
goofiness that, if you were to listen in, would be completely at odds from what might be expected,” Blanco
says. “It’s also been an important part of our culture,
as it’s created a space where everyone feels comfortable sharing and has become a source of some of our
best ideas.”
WE NEED TO BE TRUE TO OUR COURSE
AND REALIZE THAT EVEN THE SMALLEST,
SIMPLEST IDEA OR PROJECT CAN HAVE
LARGE, SWEEPING IMPACTS. EVERYTHING
IS AN OPPORTUNITY.
SOUL FEEDING
Since founding the firm in 1999, Blanco and Earles
have been interested in experimenting with concepts
for publications or publishing platforms for content
they generate. But like the cobbler and his shoeless
children, they’ve pushed those goals to the side for
some time. This year, they’ve set out to tackle them.
One project they plan to launch is a zine or mini publication about the outdoors, which will have both a print
and web component, utilizing the firm’s multidisciplinary strengths. “We relish working collaboratively
NEIGHBORLY APPROACH
One thing that sets Spindletop apart from most design with other people and are excited about some of the
studios is that it partners and shares common areas opportunities that it could present,” Blanco says.
Earles and Blanco say they’re not quite sure what
with the neighboring print shop, Workhorse Printmakthe future will hold for Spindletop long term. In many
ers. “This means we have access to a full production
print shop with letterpress printing, foil-stamping, ways, they’ve always flown by the seat of their pants.
die-cutting and a range of other specialty production “We do certainly hope to be publishing more of our
techniques available,” Earles says. “It’s a resource that own content,” Earles says. “And, of course, we hope to
gives us the ability to create internally driven print continue to work with forward-thinking clients and
institutions that are interested in new ways to engage
production pieces without budget limitations, which
the public and tell their story.”
is not something available to most designers.”
S e e more work from Spindletop D e sign at
Since printing is part of the firm’s lifeblood, the
The Printing Museum, whose mission is to promote, www.spindletopdesign.com.
preserve and share the knowledge of printed communication and art in Houston, is a natural client fit Sarah Whitman is a freelance writer and editor specializfor Spindletop. “Advocacy for design as industry, cre- ing in design, creativity and career advice. Prior to launchative pursuit and agent of social change is incredibly ing her own business in 2013, Sarah served as an editor
important to us,” Blanco says. “Smart, effective design for HOW magazine for 16 years, and briefly held the
solutions not only add value to the organizations that editor title for Print. You can find her portfolio online and
utilize them, but have the ability to define and reshape connect with her via LinkedIn. @SarahMWhitman
the culture around them.”
www.howdesign.com
Who
13
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INFOGRAPHIC DESIGN
WEB DESIGN
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#HOWLive
wheels4water:
how creatives
are bringing
safe drinking
water to
thousands
Justin Ahrens and a few friends use their
design skills—and a whole lot more—to
help clients working for social change.
n a cool spring day in 2014, graphic designer
Justin Ahrens and photographer Brian
MacDonald found themselves clad in Spandex, knee-deep in a muddy pond outside of Sturbridge, MA, diving through the muck in a panic as a
SteriPEN ever-so-slowly drifted out of sight. It was
an unusual way for a designer and photographer to
spend their day. But Ahrens and MacDonald are a
little different.
O
16
Summer 2016 / HOW
The two were riding their bikes 1,200 miles from
Boston to Chicago to raise funds for Lifewater International, which provides safe drinking water to hundreds of thousands of people throughout Africa. They
dubbed the effort Wheels4Water.
As a show of solidarity with those they sought to
help, they had decided to filter all of their own drinking water along the route. That’s how they landed in
muddy water on the outskirts of Sturbridge on the
PH OTO: W HEEL S 4WATER
Words Scott Kirkwood / Photos Rule29
LEFT :
Justin Ahrens
and Wheels4Water
co-founder
Brian MacDonald
picking up their
Cannondale team
bikes for the first
Wheels4Water ride
in 2014.
TOP RIGHT , BELOW :
One of the long, rainy
days riding along the
coast of California in
one of the customdesigned Pactimo
riding jerseys from
sponsor Appleton
Coated.
BOTTOM RIGHT ,
BELOW :
Ahrens and
MacDonald testing
the water-filtration
setup before the first
day’s ride.
second day of their journey. MacDonald dove in to
rescue the SteriPEN—a hand-held, UV-powered water
purifier—and appeared close to hypothermia when
his colleagues fished him out of the soup emptyhanded. Fortunately, ride sponsor CVM, Inc., was able
to purchase a new SteriPEN and get it to the team the
next day.
“Looking back now, it’s funny,” Ahrens recalls.
“Back then we weren’t laughing. But no matter how
hard it was for us to filter water on that trip, it was a
lot easier than it was for the people we were trying
to serve.” By the end of their first ride, Ahrens and
MacDonald had raised more than $100,000 for Lifewater—enough to provide a lifetime of clean water to
2,500 Ugandans.
GETTING READY TO RIDE
Ahrens is founder and leader of Rule29, a design firm
located just outside of Chicago, and MacDonald has
spent more than a decade collaborating with Ahrens
on ad campaigns and creative projects for big companies and nonprofits alike at the helm of Wonderkind
Studios. Converse engineer Ryan Connary and Tony
Narducci of O’Neil Printing supported logistics for the
Wheels4Water expeditions.
In 2013, Ahrens and MacDonald were visiting
Uganda to see Lifewater’s work firsthand, in advance
of a rebrand for the organization, when they saw how
www.howdesign.com
Who
17
18
Summer 2016 / HOW
bikes can literally change people’s lives there
by improving access to safe water, facilitating
small businesses like taxi services and simply
enabling people to haul items from place to
place. There they learned that for $40, Lifewater can provide one person with safe water, sanitation and hygiene education for life. Shortly
after, they decided to raise money for the cause,
cycling across the U.S. to raise awareness and
rally communities to support them via donations at $40 per mile—and taking their relationship with the client much deeper than
they’d ever expected.
Last year, the pair did a second ride 450
miles through Northern California to Lifewater’s headquarters in San Luis Obsipo, raising another $60,000. This year, in response
to requests from graphic designers and social
media connections, they’re opening up rides
to anyone who’s willing and able to pedal 50
or 100 miles in Chicago July 9, or 80 miles
in Phoenix Oct. 8; you can also pledge any
amount you’d like and ride in your own city.
(Learn how at www.wheels4water.org.)
In spite of all the miles spent pedaling for
Lifewater, Ahrens and Rule29 do most of their
social change work sitting behind a desk. It’s a
subject Ahrens discussed in May 2016 at HOW
Design Live in Atlanta, where he encouraged
more designers to do the same.
“Working on social change has always been
part of the DNA of the design world,” Ahrens
says. “An agency might support a charity
OPPOSITE :
2015
commemorative ride
poster by Rule29.
ABOVE : 2014 ride poster
created for Artcrank
and Neenah Paper.
LEFT : A sampling of
promotional materials
explaining the goals
and impact of the ride.
www.howdesign.com
Who
19
DESIGN IS THE PERFECT VEHICLE
FOR TELLING STORIES IN THEIR
SIMPLEST FORM, AND WITH
NONPROFITS, THE IMPACT IS
ALMOST IMMEDIATE.
JUSTIN AHRENS
dinner or a one-off campaign, possibly for free. At
Rule29, we wanted to see if we could do more. We
wanted to use our day-to-day to make an impact outside of selling golf clubs or insurance or whatever our
other clients were selling.”
20
Summer 2016 / HOW
Ahrens is quick to point out how much he loves his
for-profit clients, but he’s drawn to the ways that mission-driven organizations can use story to persuade
people to take action. “Design is the perfect vehicle
for telling stories in their simplest form,” he says, “and
with nonprofits, the impact is almost immediate.”
MacDonald adds, “I think everybody should have
some sort of commitment to social change, no matter what their job title is. Not everybody can visit
Africa or take two weeks off work and ride their bikes
halfway across the country, but if you’re in a creative
field and you have messaging skills, there’s always
someone who needs design help.” MacDonald jokes
that he spends most of his time “shooting for a trash
can,” because so much of his print work lands there,
creating a relatively minor impact. However, the still
photography and video production work he’s done for
World Relief, a humanitarian organization that offers
assistance to victims of poverty, tells the stories of
refugees, which linger in viewer’s minds. “If you’re
trying to help a company sell fried chicken, it’s not
very easy to make that story engaging,” he says, “but
with most nonprofits, it’s possible to craft a really compelling narrative, and I get a lot of satisfaction from
that process.”
GETTING RESULTS
In 1995, Ahrens started collaborating with Alice Cooper’s Solid Rock Teen Center, which was working to
provide an outlet for kids living in low-income neighborhoods in Phoenix. The agency’s work helped Cooper raise funds to construct a teen center, showing
how quickly creatives could prompt tangible change.
“Life in Abundance was the first client that led us
to visit Africa, and it shifted my whole life,” Ahrens
says. Life in Abundance is a religious group that helps
provide economic and educational resources to marginalized communities. “Until I was there, I never
really understood this concept of extreme poverty,
and that’s because I was born in America. Once I was
able to travel to Africa and see the impact of our work,
I realized that hundreds of kids were going to be in
better shape because of the work we’d done.” Rule29
rebranded Life in Abundance, a step that took the
group from a few hundred thousand dollars in donations to more than $3 million annually.
“Working like this shifts your whole team in a really
wonderful way,” Ahrens says. “I used to make fun of
some of my team, and say, ‘Why are you so upset that
the client doesn’t like PMS 186? It’s not like we’re saving lives here.’ And then I found myself sitting in a
meeting in the middle of Ethiopia where our client
told us a program had just been funded, in part, due
to our creative work, and I realized, ‘Wow, we really
are saving lives.’
“People often ask me ‘How do you do this work?’
which always surprises me. Yes, there are nuances in
ABOVE :
Ahrens with kids at the school in the Democratic Republic of Congo
where Wheels4Water helped implement sanitation and hygiene education.
OPPOSITE : A Ugandan man using his bike to collect water.
understanding how to activate a donor versus getting
someone to buy a particular product, but whether I’m
designing for Nike or UNICEF, it’s just design—it’s
just great storytelling. If we’re helping someone give
food to someone who needs it versus helping a shareholder make more money on their investment, the
end result is different, but we have to stop looking at
design for good as so alien to everything else we do.
And the idea that there’s no money in nonprofit work
is a farce—there are a lot of good organizations out
there with healthy budgets and a story that needs to
be told, and they’re doing things to make the world a
better place.”
Scott Kirkwood writes about nonprofits, design and more
from Denver.
B EC OM IN G A D O - G O O D E R
If you’ve never worked closely with a nonprofit, it might seem intimidating. Ahrens and MacDonald have a few suggestions
for creatives looking to give back.
Start small. “A lot of designers tell me, sheepishly, that they don’t have a strong interest in Africa or global poverty, but
that they just want to support their local community, and I tell them, ‘That’s great—we do local work, too. Just start with
something you’re passionate about and go from there.’”
Be professional and be human at the same time. “If you’re not emotional about some of these subjects, then you’re
not really reading the brief,” says Ahrens. “Although we’re very process- and strategy-driven, if you try to remove the human
element, you’re removing some of the beauty of what we can do as creatives. We’re built to understand story, and that’s an
important thing to focus on when your client starts relying too much on statistics.”
Focus on value more than money. “As creatives, we don’t generally want to be giving our work away,” says MacDonald.
If a nonprofit can provide some kind of budget, I always try to work with it; other times, I’ll decide I’m going pro bono. I’ve
been in business 25 years, so I have more flexibility than a younger photographer. But if you’re younger, odds are you’re not
busy every day of the week, so you might volunteer your skills to add something to your portfolio and do some networking.
It’s a great way to hone your craft, and the satisfaction of helping people out is a form of payment, too.”
www.howdesign.com
Who
21
timothy goodman:
the [creative] kid
from cleveland
iro
ap man
h
n S od
lle Go
E
y
ds
th
or imo
W T
t
Ar
22
Summer 2016 / HOW
t
imothy Goodman pushes the
limits of what being a designer
is. He’s not limited by traditional definitions. His website,
www.tgoodman.com, doesn’t
look or feel anything like a typical design firm website. There
are no explanatory captions,
no jargon about “strategy ”
or “how we help our clients
achieve their goals.” It’s all
images, and you just get it.
Sure, there are client projects like Time magazine covers and Oreo holiday packages
that look like pillows you’d
want to sleep with. But, look,
there’s a video of Goodman
kneeling on the floor during
a Las Vegas trade show with a
Sharpie in his hand, lettering a mural of Tupac Shakur
lyrics. There he is leaving wallets with money on park
benches all around New York City. And there he is
leading the “Build Kindness Not Walls” protest in front
of Trump Tower while the major networks broadcast
it live.
And there he is, reaching down deep, telling his
issues and fears to a relationship therapist and making content out of them. There he is confronting his
biological father for the first time. It’s content that
strikes a lot of chords with viewers and fans. For
example, while everyone else was just talking about
the new rules of dating in the age of Tinder and Snapchat, Goodman was broadcasting his experiences
through www.40daysofdating.com, where (in case you
haven’t heard or seen) he and designer Jessica Walsh
dated and journaled about it for 40 days, with Walsh’s
commentary on the left side of the page and Goodman’s on the right. This experiment gained 5,000,000
unique visitors, worldwide press coverage, became a
book, and was optioned for a feature film by Warner
Brothers, which also reportedly acquired Goodman
and Walsh’s life rights.
No wonder he speaks with such clarity and confidence. Yes, he’s perfected his “story” through talks
and interviews, but there seems to be a real honesty,
a fearlessness to dig deep and reveal the insecurities
that plague us all, and that we’re usually too scared to
talk about, much less make a website or book about.
Goodman presents them publicly on custom websites
that combine text, handlettering, drawings, photography, screen shots from Twitter feeds, video, music.
Everything Goodman does—and there is just so
much—seems to have ridiculously high production
values, like the best cable network reality shows.
At the same time, he writes, “Now that I’m getting
older”—he’s 34—“I take vitamins, exercise, and go to
sleep at 11 p.m.” How does he do it all? I met with him
in the offices of Collins in New York’s Greenwich Village, where he rents studio space, to find out.
Tim, this is the “creativity” issue of HOW, so I’d
like to begin with your definition of creativity. Is
it inborn or can it be cultivated? Once you “have
it,” do you have to keep working at it?
Life can be harsh, and we all need to do whatever it
takes to get some pleasure out of it. That’s why we go
to the movies, follow a band, root for a sports team,
travel. And some of us make things. We all need something to distract us from the fragility of life. I don’t
know where creativity comes from, but I do find that
creative people seem to constantly chase “the new.”
It’s like the first sip of a cold beer or the first date you
go on with a girl who isn’t quite sure about you. I love
that feeling between anxiety and excitement.
Here you are at Collins, one of the world’s hottest
agencies. And you’ve been all over the news. In
case readers haven’t followed your story, where
were you born and raised, and how did you get
where you are today?
I’m a good old Midwestern boy. I was born in Cleveland, OH. I went to the School of Visual Arts in New
York, but honestly until that time I was a dead-end kid.
I was raised by a single mom in a broken, low-income
home. I was only interested in girls, stealing, partying
and experimenting with substances. I’m still proud of
my bruises and scars.
What kind of bruises and scars are you getting
these days?
Self-inflicted emotional bruises and scars. I’m interested in exploring my behaviors and fears. I still
work with my hands and also with my feelings, metaphorically and physically. I don’t want to hide or run
or destroy or prove anything. I just want to see and
be seen.
Even as a self-described dead-end kid, were you
making art in high school? Getting any notoriety?
Nope. I had no direction. I was only interested in having fun and getting away with doing as little as possible. My grandmother is an artist, and she was always
taking me to museums and buying me books, but I
had no interest. Later, when I started taking classes
at Tri-C community college in Cleveland, I was truly
thankful. At first I wanted to do interior design, but
then I started getting serious about looking at colleges
and art schools in NYC to pursue a graphic design education. I was able to chat with my grandmother about
Who
23
I LOVED BEING
A CHAMELEON
AND LEARNING
FUNDAMENTALS
FROM ONE TEACHER
AND ABOUT
EXPERIMENTATION
FROM ANOTHER.
ABOVE :
In 2014, Ford
asked Focus owners
to share memories,
some of which
Goodman handillustrated on a
new Focus.
OPPOSITE : Stills from
12 Kinds of Kindness.
the decisions I wanted to make. I probably wouldn’t
have that initial interest and passion if it wasn’t for her.
Do the current bruises and scars come from the
pain of dredging up the memories and virtually
doing therapy in public? Or when someone tweets
something like, “oh, you’re nothing but an exhibitionist,” do you ever wonder, why do I open up
myself to this?
I like to take the pain and make work out of it. Miles
Davis says, “You have to play a long time before you
can play like yourself.” A lot of that comes from going
through personal adversity. Criticism always comes
when more eyes see you and your work, but I never
doubt the work I do, nor do I have any regrets. I find
that all our stories are universal and I’m interested in
sharing my vulnerability with an audience. It makes
me feel less alone.
Tell me about working with your hands.
Before I moved to New York, I worked for a home
improvement company in Cleveland. My boss, Dave,
became my father figure and mentor, and is to this
day. I owe my life to him. Luckily, he saw potential in
me and didn’t fire me (even though he should have
a hundred times). From him I learned stuff like wallpapering and cabinet-making and faux-finishing. He
had patience and allowed me to grow and mature.
From him I learned to believe in myself and to be
audacious.
Was there a moment when you realized that you
really had the potential your grandmother and
Dave saw? What was happening, exactly? Were
24
Summer 2016 / HOW
you faux-finishing a wall and Dave said, “Kid, you
could be a real artist”?
With Dave, it was almost the opposite. He saw potential in me, but he was also very hard on me. He said
I had “Kool-Aid dreams” about making it in NYC as
a designer. I wanted to prove him wrong. But when I
went after my dreams, he supported me along the way.
He taught me an unruly work ethic. Now I realize how
fortunate I am to be doing what I love, and how lucky
I am to do it in New York. I try not to take any of this
for granted. But I’m still that kid in many ways. I feel
like I snuck in through the back door.
When you were looking at colleges, what did you
see as the big advantage to the School of Visual
Arts, besides being in New York?
The SVA program and Dean Richard Wilde just seemed
right because there was a certain freedom to explore
and discover. I wasn’t interested in making the “perfect” portfolio to get the “perfect” job. For me, it was
about discovering who I could be, rather than fitting
into the industry. SVA allowed me that opportunity. I
soaked in everything I could, taking everything from
every teacher, every spectrum of design, every philosophy, every opinion. I loved being a chameleon and
learning fundamentals from one teacher and about
experimentation from another.
How did the “dead-end kid” afford the tuition and
the NYC living expenses?
I read the book How to Go to College (Almost) for Free
by Ben Kaplan. I learned that there are scholarships
for everything, including tall people, which I am. I
applied for over 100 scholarships. I won eight or nine
12 KINDS OF KINDNESS
After the 40 Days of Dating were over, Timothy Goodman and Jessica Walsh embarked
on a different self-initiated project. (The
romance didn’t work out long term; Goodman has a new girlfriend, a fashion writer for
Refinery29, and Walsh got married to Zak
Mulligan, a cinematographer.) Back to being
friends and colleagues, they “regretted the
way we handled things and felt sorry for the way we treated each other,” Goodman says. “We asked ourselves a lot of questions and kept coming back to one word: empathy. Each of us views the world through the filter of our own ego and tastes.
We make assumptions about people we don’t understand and surround ourselves with others who share our beliefs. But, we
wondered, with a little effort, could we learn to open our hearts and minds to become kinder people?”
That was the basis of 12 Kinds of Kindness: A 12-Step Experiment Designed to Open Our Hearts, Eyes and Minds, which
launched in mid-January 2016. Following the tenets of 12-step programs like Alcoholics Anonymous, Goodman and Walsh
undertook and filmed random and not-so-random acts of kindness, like leaving wallets with $1 to $100 around New York City
with notes to do something kind with the money, and running around during rush hour in yellow spandex suits with smileyface masks, trying to make people smile.
“From AA to gambling to food to work, there are over 200 self-help organizations in the U.S. that employ 12-step principles for recovery,” Goodman explains. “The value is in the process, so why not try it on our own selfishness? We explored
a lot of topics, such as reversing roles with someone who annoys us. However, the personal stuff we explored—facing childhood disorders, mental illness and broken family ties—led to some of the most profound experiences we’ve ever been
through. It was amazing to share this work and equally important to start dialogues with our readers.”
And open dialogues they did. Each of the 12 Steps invites readers to make their own steps, to participate and share their
stories and images on social media tagged #12kindsofkindness. Not all critics were kind—one of the steps is about dealing
with negativity, shaming, teasing and bullying on Twitter—but to the protagonists it was another opportunity to dig deeper.
And it led to an even wider expansion of their fanbase. In a high point of the exercise, Goodman and Walsh flew to Phoenix,
AZ, in an attempt to get Goodman’s biological father—who’d abandoned his three-months-pregnant girlfriend, Goodman’s
mom—to finally meet his son. In a poignant Facebook message reproduced in “Step Five: Forgive and Forget,” Goodman
asks this stranger to “grab a coffee or a bite” with a message that opens like this: “Hey Robert, My name is Tim Goodman.
I’m not sure you know who I am. You’ll remember my mother, Anne. She gave birth to me in Cleveland some years ago.”
Son and father met and talked for three hours. “Robert” wanted to reconnect. Tim wasn’t sure how much connection he wanted, but he wanted to forgive. He became a Big Brothers/Big Sisters mentor in order to give another
potentially “dead-end” kid the opportunity to interact with a male role model. And he started a website, “My Dad Is,”
to give everyone the opportunity to submit thoughts and memories. Thus, Goodman and Walsh have managed to
make cliché (“forgive and forget”) meaningful again. “Like a teacher of mine used to say, ‘It’s all in the how, not in the
what,’” Goodman says. “I think design is at its strongest when we are taking the expected and making it unexpected.”
But that’s small potatoes compared to what happened after Donald Trump made his presidential campaign promise to
build a wall across the U.S.-Mexico border to keep people from entering the U.S. illegally. On Friday, March 15, The New
York Times reported:
If there has been one constant in the tempestuous presidential campaign of Donald J. Trump, it is his mantra of a “great,
great wall” to be built on the United States–Mexico border. On Tuesday morning, Mr. Trump might have been displeased
to find a more modest wall taking shape outside his 68-story tower in Midtown Manhattan. At 7:25 a.m., a phalanx of demonstrators shuffled down Fifth Avenue and hoisted a series of 40-by-60-inch placards imploring the real-estate mogul and
Republican candidate to “Build Kindness Not Walls.” Several dozen supporters offered sporadic cheers of solidarity as the
demonstrators held their foam wall in place for nearly two hours. While violence has roiled several Trump-related protests
recently, this one remained peaceful. A team of slightly befuddled, if unamused, police officers looked on from a few feet
away, but their services were not needed. The display was conceptualized by Timothy Goodman and Jessica Walsh, two
graphic designers who have partnered previously on other social experiments like 40 Days of Dating. This latest effort is part
of a larger project called 12 Kinds of Kindness. “Kindness has definitely been lacking this election cycle, but especially from
Trump,” Mr. Goodman, 34, said. “It’s scary and horrific to see him applauding violence and exclusion in this way.”
One fan wrote: “You guys use the power of art and design as a peaceful medium.” What graphic designers wouldn’t be
proud to have those kind words on their résumé?
www.howdesign.com
Who
25
26
Summer 2016 / HOW
Goodman at his desk,
from the 2015 Adobe
“Make It” campaign.
Who
27
of them and got enough to come out of a three-year,
$130,000 education only $25,000 in debt. I also got an
RA job, so I didn’t have to pay for living either. But
the biggest thing I learned from that book was how to
write about myself. In order to win scholarships, you
have to understand your story and how to differentiate yourself.
Did you take typography classes at SVA? Were you
always interested in typography and lettering?
Yes. I had great teachers like Sara Giovanitti and Richard Poulin who taught me everything there is to know
about type. While I’m more interested in conceptual
work, their lessons still contribute to my design sensibilities now, and my handlettering.
And after you graduated?
I got a job as a book jacket designer at Simon & Schuster under John Fulbrook. In 2008, Brian Collins hired
John to be a creative director. I came with him. There
I was, the impressionable kid from Cleveland one year
out of school. Working at Collins blew my head open.
We did big, exciting work: the CNN Grills—pubs outside the Democratic and Republican national conventions in Minnesota and Denver that year—the identity,
the neon signs, the entire experience. Then we worked
on Microsoft’s first-ever store. Brian was a big influence. He told me, “You can be anything you want. You
can be a voice. You can write. You can speak. You can
do self-initiated projects.”
That’s what you’ve done. But first you went to California to work for Apple, right?
Yes, Alan Dye, who’d worked with Brian at Ogilvy, was
there, and I worked for him on a wide variety of stuff
with a great team of people—iPhone graphics, product packaging, in-store graphics, and art directing
lifestyle photography. But after a while I realized that
I really wanted to be in New York, back in the hustlebustle. I’d come to a crossroads. In California I’d been
rushing home every night and weekend to work on
my freelance design and illustration and mural work,
and was much more stimulated by that. I came back
to New York in February 2012 and hit the ground running. I had 1,200 Twitter followers at that time and
sent a unique valentine to every follower, opening a
dialogue, asking how we can take our conversation to
the next level.
Twelve hundred valentines. How did you do that?
I got it down to a science, 40 seconds per. Each was a
thank-you note—“Thank you so much.” Opportunity
comes when people know who you are. From that, I
had thousands of people writing to me. And somehow
that led to work for Starbucks, Target, Nabisco, Airbnb,
J.Crew, Google. Permanent installations, packaging,
Instagram art.
How big an influence was Sagmeister? Who were
your other influencers, besides Dave and Brian?
I’m not sure anyone is not influenced by Sagmeister.
His influence is literally everywhere. My other biggest influences were Paul Sahre, Brian Rea, Christoph
Neimann and Rodrigo Corral, guys who made imagery
that was funny and witty. They also ran their own studios, doing things on their own terms. They were my
design heroes. Now I’m mainly influenced by women
I’m lucky to call peers: my crazy-talented friends
LEFT :
3D printed art for an editorial
spread in Esquire. ABOVE : Spread from
40 Days of Dating book.
28
Summer 2016 / HOW
Jessica Walsh, Gemma O’Brien, Elle Luna and other
ladies who are killing it.
Your murals: How do you plan them out? Do you
just make rough sketches first or carefully engineer them?
It’s always different. Sometimes I do freestyle murals,
where I make a list of words and objects with the
client beforehand and just walk in and do it. When
I need to get a sketch approved beforehand, I take
a picture of the space and comp it up in Photoshop
so they know what it will look like, and I can change
and tweak the art. When I come in, I project it on the
wall, trace it with pencil, then paint. With serious corporate clients I might work on a mural for a month
before going in.
Is it fair to say you have no long-range plans other
than to continue what you’re doing: client work,
teaching, freelance, coming up with self-generated
projects that attract zillions of Twitter followers …
and see what happens?
[Laughs.] Yes, that’s fair to say. I like having space
to play. And I like to work. Working-class people in
Cleveland work. After high school, I hauled buckets
of wallpaper paste up steps for four years. Success is
about having options. I’m doing everything in my willpower to not have “a job.” I want to bend and twist and
shake and squeeze the most out of life and my work
without getting too caught up in the endgame or the
failures along the way. It’s about approaching design
as a practice, not as a profession.
Which project are you most proud of?
I can’t answer that. It’s 12 Kinds of Kindness. It’s 40
Days of Dating, which got us a book contract and has
been considered by producers and directors as a reality show, a Broadway play, featured on CNN and the
Today show, and optioned for a feature film.
When people hear the word “design,” they often
think of interior design and fashion. Do you think
that when 40 Days becomes a feature film, people
might learn something about graphic design?
Perhaps. But ultimately it’s a Hollywood story. The
characters and story will stay the same, but I doubt
the public will learn any more about graphic design
than they did about fashion in The Devil Wears Prada.
Do you have any fears about how you and Jessica
might be depicted?
Nope. I’m a product of the TMI generation. I’m interested in exploring my own vulnerability and sharing that with an audience. I have nothing to hide.
www.howdesign.com
I WANT TO BEND AND TWIST
AND SHAKE AND SQUEEZE THE
MOST OUT OF LIFE AND MY
WORK WITHOUT GETTING TOO
CAUGHT UP IN THE ENDGAME
OR THE FAILURES ALONG THE
WAY. IT’S ABOUT APPROACHING
DESIGN AS A PRACTICE,
NOT AS A PROFESSION.
After 40 Days, you moved on to 12 Kinds of Kindness (see page 25). What was most important to you
about that project?
Working the steps. Step 12: “Dive Deep.” I confronted a
lot of stuff and finally met my biological father, whom
I’d never met.
So these things are real, not theoretical?
They are real. 40 Days of Dating is really about how a
self-proclaimed commitment-phobe, me, interacted
with a woman who had serial relationship difficulties.
Those days weren’t easy. We had to honor our commitments to each other, to speak to each other every day,
to go to a relationship therapist.
And the therapist went along with this? For publicity or for real?
For real.
Once upon a time, when people were in therapy, it
was secret, almost shameful. They snuck away to
the therapist’s office, which had double doors and
white noise machines. You and Jessica brought
therapy into the open, posting in almost-real time
about what happened in your sessions and how
you felt about it. Do you think that is what most
struck a chord with your fans?
Yes, possibly. This experiment checked off boxes that
we didn’t even know were there. We had no idea it
would go viral. However, people love a “love” story,
they love to be voyeuristic, and I think we can all relate
to bad dating scenarios. I think the biggest thing that
struck a chord was how honest we were, and seeing
Who
29
30
Summer 2016 / HOW
how a man and a woman can interpret the same experience wildly differently. Which is why we designed
the website the way we did.
When you’re not designing—in all its forms—what
do you like to do?
I love the New York Knicks and NBA basketball. Going
to Knicks games is one of my favorite things to do, eating bad food with a good friend at MSG, the world’s
most famous arena. I love jazz and the history of
jazz, dating back to the 1800s. I love hip-hop, Dylan,
Tupac (see my mural of his lyrics), Kanye, Led Zeppelin, Miles Davis, Louis Armstrong. Traveling is very
important to me, and I’ve been lucky enough to do a
lot of it the last couple of years. I really enjoy flying
and I love everything about planes and airports: the
people-watching, how upset and impatient people get
in the airport, and looking out the window as we take
off and land. It’s one of the only things that makes me
feel like a little kid again. When travel is for business I
always try to turn it into a little pleasure too! I love Barcelona, Paris and LA. Barcelona is my favorite because
of the food and the people—they make me feel like life
should be truly lived. Writing is a big hobby of mine,
and it’s no wonder that all my self-initiated projects
are very heavy in writing.
Have you taken writing classes or workshops?
Where did you learn to write so well?
I haven’t taken any classes outside of a general college
writing class. Do I spell well? I don’t know if I do.
You do. You write long, well-crafted essays. How
much time did you and Jessica spend rewriting
and editing every day?
We spent a lot of time. I’ve always believed it’s important for design and writing to coexist together. I see
writing and design with the same lens: you continue
to craft and edit to fulfill your message.
Can you to describe a typical day or week in
your life? What’s it like to be Timothy Goodman?
Like hours in meetings, on a computer, designing, on social media, doing stuff with friends,
sleeping, etc. What don’t you have time for?
OPPOSITE LEFT AND ABOVE : Samples from
Goodman’s ongoing Instagram series
“Instatherapy,” tagged #instatherapy_tim, which
he prints as posters and sells in his online shop.
www.howdesign.com
My day is always different
depending on what I’m working on. Sometimes I’ve got my
head down working on client
work until 10 p.m., sometimes
I have a million meetings and
I’ve got to run to meet my girlfriend for dinner. Sometimes
it’s slower and I goof around
texting with friends. Every
Wednesday evening Jessica
[Walsh] and I co-teach at SVA.
What’s the name of your class? What and how do
you teach?
It’s a visual communications class for juniors. We mix
it up with half esoteric conceptual assignments that
are meant to be self-initiated, and half more traditional assignments.
What are you working on right now?
I’m preparing my TEDx talk for Chicago. Between
speaking gigs, workshops or doing murals or live installations for clients, I’ve been traveling a lot these days.
Your videos look like they have really high production values. Fairly large crews of people are needed
to make them, right? How can you afford that?
Those videos aren’t high-production at all! In fact,
many of them were shot on an iPhone. We worked with
one video person at a time. It was very simple and easy.
We have no backers, no budget; it all comes out of our
pockets. So we have to be as efficient and cheap as possible to accomplish our goals.
Which makes everything even more impressive.
Readers might be inspired to come up with their
own self-generated projects, like protesting with
Sharpie-lettered signs around an issue that they’re
passionate about. Is that kind of imitation a good
thing, or not?
It’s only bad if you’re literally copying. I just want
young designers to understand that there are no rules.
Obviously we all have to pay the rent, but if you can
find or make time on the side, then why not? If you
want to start writing, then write. If you want to start
drawing, then draw. If you want to make weird stuff
and put it on the internet, do it. While I do feel we
graphic designers have unique abilities to make statements and/or tell stories in ways that haven’t been
done before, we can play a role in anything we like.
Ellen Shapiro is a New York–based graphic designer and
writer who’s been writing about design trends, events and
personalities as a contributing editor of Print since 1991.
Who
31
H E A R T H AT
VO I C E I N S I D E
YO U R H E A D?
T H E O N E T H AT
N I T P I C KS A L L
YO U R N E W I D E A S ?
T H AT ’ S YO U R
M O N K E Y.
$14.99 | 160 pages
Mydesignshop.com
This hypercritical little critter loves to make you second-guess yourself. It stirs up
doubt. It kills your creativity. But it can be stopped. And acclaimed author Danny
Gregory is here to show you how.
After battling it out with his own monkey, he knows how to shut yours down.
Gregory provides insight into the inner workings of your inner critic and teaches
you how to put it in its place. Soon you’ll be able to silence that voice and do what
you want to do–create.
N OW F O L LOW H I S L E A D A N D S H U T YO U R M O N K E Y.
www.howdesign.com
33
apples of your eyes:
3 readers’ choice winners
HOW is proud to present the top two winners of the Logo Design
Awards—one for identity design and one for mark design—
plus the winner of our Poster Design Awards.
Words Amanda Aszman
rom restaurant branding and a
distinctive mark to an in-house
IBM poster, the Readers’ Choice
winners of the seventh annual Logo Design
Awards and Poster Design Awards left an
impression on judges and readers alike.
Here, we go behind the scenes of these
award-winning projects and discover what
made them stand out from the pack.
F
EAT, BRAND, LOVE
“Ri-donk-ulous.” This is how Test Monki’s
chief creative officer and principal Suzy
Simmons describes the public’s reaction
to the firm’s brand design for Huti’s 5, a
free-fire grill serving South American–
inspired cuisine. “We’ll have people who
stop in the studio to tell us about ‘this
great new restaurant’ that they just had
lunch at, and how every touchpoint was
so well thought out, not realizing that Test
Monki designed the brand,” she says.
Test Monki, a design firm that specializes in strategy, experiential marketing
and design, was challenged to bring to
life a high-energy brand that millennials
would love, around the concept of serving
fresh, healthy food at an affordable price.
The creative team pulled inspiration from
both the owner’s culinary adventures and
the beloved donkey on his ranch, the latter
of which had served as the restaurateur’s
34
Summer 2016 / HOW
PROJECT :
Huti’s 5
Test Monki, The Woodlands, TX
WEBSITE : www.testmonki.com
CREATIVE TEAM : Suzy Simmons (creative director/principal), Gabby Nguyen (design
director), Yiwen Lu (senior designer), Julie Pelosi (web designer), Brad Petak (principal)
CLIENT : Huti’s 5 Free-Fire Grill
FIRM :
own inspiration to do the hard work required to get an
eatery off the ground. With this in mind, Test Monki
created the donkey character Don Kee Huti (playing
off of Don Quixote).
The locals aren’t the only ones taking notice of this
unique brand experience. Logo Design Awards judge
Bill Gardner, president of Gardner Design, selected
this project as one of 10 best identity applications, and
HOW readers selected it to receive the Readers’ Choice
award. “I’m always a sucker for a bit of whimsy, and
any time a designer can keep a client from becoming
too full of themselves,” Gardner says. “The interactive
nature and applications of the Huti have been distributed in the restaurant sparingly but just enough to be
effective. Praise also to the design team for cost-effectively finding a way to implement the theme without
relying on costly fabrication.”
The team’s biggest challenge was setting Huti’s 5
apart in a town brimming with new restaurants. This
meant pairing an authentic story with an unforgettable brand experience—one people would connect with
emotionally, and thus want to share with friends and
family. As Gardner points out, Test Monki succeeded
by creating “an unexpected mascot and application
for a unique restaurant trying to define a new niche.”
Simmons says the project was a delight. “This project was amazing to work on not only because it was
a restaurant (and we’re all foodies), but [because] we
were involved from the beginning and consulted on
almost everything from paint colors to Don Kee Huti’s
whimsical voice,” Simmons says. She adds that in the
short time it’s been open, Huti’s 5 has received an
“overwhelming amount of brand love and awareness.”
And that is something to be proud of.
A MEMORABLE MARK
Brainstorming took place. Sketches were made. Then
art director and designer Björgvin Pétur Sigurjónsson
took the work to digital form and experimented with
different concepts until finally a logo was born. All of
this took roughly one month. A typical logo design
process, perhaps, but one that resulted in an exceptional mark.
Advertising and design agency //JÖKULÁ created a
logo for A - Z that is both bold and minimalistic, both
smartly designed and distinctive. The team had one
main goal going into the project: Because A - Z offers
a wide range of services, from finance to marketing,
the logo needed to have a neutral impact on viewers so
that they would draw no assumptions from the design
about the business’ offerings. (That information was
to be communicated via other parts of the branding.)
Logo Design Awards judge Rodney Abbot, senior
partner at Lippincott, chose the A - Z logo as one of
10 top projects in the competition. “I selected the
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PROJECT :
A - Z Logo
//JÖKULÁ,
Reykjavik, Iceland
WEBSITE : www.jokula.is
CREATIVE TEAM : Björgvin
Pétur Sigurjónsson
(art director/designer),
Sigtryggur Arnthorsson
(project manager)
CLIENT : A - Z
FIRM :
A - Z logo because of its purity and simplicity,” Abbot
says. “I appreciate the restrained use of the A - Z
letters. Their arrangement achieves more than simply spelling the name—it creates an image that has
significant meaning to the company.” HOW readers
agreed, and selected the A - Z logo as the Readers’
Choice winner.
A closer look at the mark reveals hidden meanings
in the design: zig-zags representing trails that A - Z
is prepared to traverse for its clients, and a river running from a mountain, which references Iceland, the
client’s country of origin.
“The design doesn’t rely on the reader recognizing
the visual allusions to be distinctive and memorable,” Abbot says. “It achieves that through the simple
stacking of the letters, where the crossbar of the Z also
functions as the hyphen. This is a bold design that has
symbolic meaning but is not weighed down by context.
A true example of an identity that has been designed
to last.”
While Sigurjónsson says he’s most proud of the simplicity and balance they achieved in the design, he’s
also “really proud of how the logo can be displayed on
various platforms and still keep its simplicity and be
uninterrupted.” Achieving this did not come without
challenges: The team had to simplify the letters into a
neutral composition so that they would work together,
and they had to find the right color. They wanted the
color to evoke a sense of trust and peace, while avoiding overused colors within the industry, and so they
went with a fresh value of mint blue.
“We are very grateful for all the positive reactions to
the logo,” Sigurjónsson says. “[It has] really helped our
rather newly founded advertising and design agency
to get established in Iceland.”
What
35
BUILDING BLOCKS
PROJECT :
Thinking Blocks
IBM Design
WEBSITE : www.ibm.com/design,
@ibmmakelab,
www.ibmmakelab.com
CREATIVE TEAM : Matthew C. Paul,
Patrick Chew (designers)
CLIENT : IBM
COMPANY :
In the midst of IBM’s efforts to revive the company’s
design culture established by the likes of Paul Rand
and Ray and Charles Eames, designers Matthew
C. Paul and Patrick Chew had roughly one week to
concept, design and screenprint a poster. The print
needed to be ready in time for a visit from IBM’s CEO,
and it was to be used at Think Academy—a massive
online open course for IBMers—as well as to show off
IBM Design at SXSW 2015.
“We ended up printing the first three colors the day
before the event, and finished the last color the morning of,” Paul says. “It was a blast.”
Paul notes that the most challenging part of the
project was the printing—both the registration and
color. “As we were iterating on the final details, we
both loved the subtle texture shadowing and the
playfulness that it brought to the final piece,” he
says. “This made it really tough to print on dark paper
though. We knew we were never going to hit the registration good enough if we started with a white bottomlayer, so we ended up having to double and triple pull
some of the colors to get it right.”
While he is truly proud of the final product, Paul
says he’s mostly just surprised about how long the
discussion around it has lasted. The print gave them
the chance to meet the CEO of IBM, it’s hanging up
throughout the studio and in some people’s homes,
and it played a big role in helping their team build
what’s now called the IBM Make Lab. Poster Design
Awards judge Allan Peters, partner and CCO at Peters
Design Co., selected this print as one of 10 best poster
designs, and HOW readers voted for it to receive the
Readers’ Choice award. “I felt like it matched Paul
Rand’s original vision for the branding of IBM,” Peters
says. “Good color. Simple. Great composition.”
Paul says that working as a designer at IBM has
been the biggest challenge of his career thus far.
“We’re constantly pushed to take these insanely complex problems that people have been thinking about
for years, and distill them down to the simplest, most
visceral ideas to meet the business and product goals,”
he says.
Former IBM chairman and CEO Thomas J. Watson
once said, “All the problems of the world could be
settled easily if men were only willing to think,” and
with that, Paul notes, Watson started a legacy. “But,
we’re finding out that making, in order to think, is just
as important,” Paul says. “We challenge ourselves to
find solutions that make sense at a fifth-grade level,
and embrace the simple building blocks that make it
all possible.”
Amanda Aszman is senior digital editor for HOW and
Print. [email protected]
36
Summer 2016 / HOW
12 basic principles
of animation in
motion design
Disney’s animation methods defined the way we
visually communicate realistic motion. Learn how
these same principles can help you create more
authentic, believable motion graphics today.
Words James Pannafino / Art Cento Lodigiani
ith the growing ubiquity of digital devices, motion is the 12 Basic Principles of Animation, first
moving interfaces and adapting technology, introduced in the book The Illusion of Life: Disney
motion design has become an important part Animation. The Illusion of Life was written by Disney
of a designer’s creative toolbox. When a designer animators Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas, two of
the master animators referred to by Walt Disney as the
thinks of moving a graphic, various programs such as
After Effects, Cinema 4D (3D motion) or coding lan- “Nine Old Men.” No matter the style of animation—be
guages such as HTML5, CSS3 and jQuery come to mind. it hand drawn, 3D or experimental—the 12 principles
Mastery of tools does not always guarantee mastery appear in almost any motion-based design.
The following is an examination of the 12 principles
of the craft, however. Understanding the grammar of
what molds the craft and the principles involved is key as they relate to motion design. While some principles
relate more closely than others, designers can draw
to creating a meaningful motion design.
upon each one to create more effective motion designs.
The grammar of motion has been around since long
before designers had advanced tools, and it will con- I will describe each principle as it relates to traditional
tinue to guide designers after the tools have evolved. animation and will explain how motion designers can
Perhaps the most influential work on the grammar of apply them in their own work.
W
www.howdesign.com
What
37
1
SQUASH AND STRETCH
Adding exaggeration to an object in motion gives it a
greater sense of weight and volume. Animators often
demonstrate this principle with a bouncing ball: The
ball appears stretched when it is falling and squashed
when it hits the ground. By squashing and stretching
the ball, an animator gives it a more realistic feel. In
motion design, a designer would apply squash and
stretch when objects morph from their original state.
An example of this could be a logo dropping from
the top of the screen, bouncing off of the ground and
reforming into its natural state. By giving the logo a
sense of weight and volume through the use of squash
and stretch, the logo appears to fit more naturally into
the motion design context.
design layout: Letters and words can be seen as actors
on the stage, with each role establishing hierarchy and
adding detail to the scene. The stage for motion design
is your device’s screen. As a letter or word moves on
the screen, it’s like an actor moving on the stage; it has
to move with purpose to convey meaning and direct
the viewer’s focus. In motion design, it’s often good
practice to avoid including extraneous details in the
background. This helps keep the main focus in the
center even though the scene is always moving.
3
STRAIGHT AHEAD ACTION
AND POSE TO POSE
Straight ahead action refers to the technique of drawing each pose, one right after another, which yields a
2 STAGING
fluid animation style. The animator creates each pose
Influenced by theatrical principles, staging helps “straight ahead,” working chronologically through the
establish mood, create focus and clarify what is hap- scene. In motion design, straight ahead action gives
pening in the scene. Staging is seen in static compo- an organic feel to a design. Pose to pose refers to the
technique in which an animator plans key frames
sitions through placement of content in a graphic
38
Summer 2016 / HOW
separately and then connects them, filling in the
transformation from one pose to the next. Pose to pose
usually creates a more proportional animation that
is convincing to the eye, while straight ahead action
conveys spontaneity and exaggerated action. Motion
designers might use pose to pose based on key frame
animations, resulting in more controlled movements
that have more balance.
they lend a sense of gravity to a moving graphic or
typographic element. The next time you need to move
a graphical object across a long distance and want to
give it a natural feeling, think about using an arc.
6
SECONDARY ACTION
In the physical world, we can observe primary movement in the motion of a person walking or a bird flying.
Secondary actions, such as a person swinging his arms
as he walks or a bird’s feathers rippling in the wind,
help support primary movements. Even smaller actions,
such as blinking, are also considered secondary actions.
Secondary animations shouldn’t detract from or dominate the main animation movement. Since words and
images need visual rest to be read, motion designers
can add subtle secondary actions to create interest in
the design and to express a sense of time.
4
SLOW IN AND SLOW OUT
In the physical world, objects and humans need to
pick up momentum before they can reach full speed.
Similarly, it takes time to decrease speed before an
object comes to a complete stop. In motion design,
graphic elements need to flow realistically to convey
believable actions. A motion designer can vary the
speed of objects slightly at the start and end of their
paths to keep the overall animation more interesting
and lifelike.
7
5
ARC
When an archer shoots an arrow, it rarely flies on a
completely straight trajectory. Gravity causes objects
in motion to arc between the start and end points.
Even many of the human body’s natural gestures
move via arcs, such as the arm, hand, fingers, etc. Arcs
can be a great aesthetic tool in motion design because
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TIMING
In a traditional animation, timing is an essential
aspect of the way frames are drawn. Timing also helps
establish characters’ personalities and emotions. Just
like when you’re telling a joke, the timing often matters just as much as the content. In motion design, a
simple pause or change in the pace of a word appearing and disappearing on-screen can communicate a
different mood and change the meaning of the design.
What
39
IN MOTION DESIGN,
GRAPHIC ELEMENTS
NEED TO FLOW
REALISTICALLY
TO CONVEY
BELIEVABLE
ACTIONS.
8
SOLID DRAWING
Solid drawing enhances realism by adding good form
and a three-dimensional feel to an animated work.
No matter what tool (pencil or computer) an artist
or designer uses to create a drawing, it must work in
three-dimensional space. Similarly, in motion design,
if a basic graphic element is not properly executed, the
design will seem flawed no matter what type of motion
applied. It is also important to understand that when
objects are moving, some details might get lost at a
high rate.
10
9
APPEAL
A character with appeal isn’t always attractive. An
ugly or evil character, for example, makes sense
within the story as long as his or her actions are
illustrated with the appropriate level of charisma. In
motion design, you can establish appeal before anything moves by choosing an interesting typeface, creating a visual translation, or juxtaposing images that
create an engaging montage of characters or scenery.
40
Summer 2016 / HOW
ANTICIPATION
Anticipation informs the viewer of any major actions
that will happen before they are executed. Imagine a
Slinky moving down stairs. The windup of one end
pulling up informs us that it’s going to flip over, and
then the other end will do the same thing, allowing
the viewer to anticipate that action over and over
again until the Slinky hits the floor. In motion design,
anticipation allows the viewer to predict when graphics or letters will appear in certain areas or positions.
If the viewer can anticipate when a major action will
happen, the motion designer can increase the pace of
the animation or add complexity to the overall design.
WHENEVER YOU CAN, CONTINUE TO
EXAMINE AND BUILD UPON YOUR MOTION
DESIGN GRAMMAR. WHILE TOOLS WILL
CHANGE OVER TIME, THE PRINCIPLES AND
GRAMMAR WILL ALWAYS BE THERE.
12
FOLLOW THROUGH AND
OVERLAPPING ACTION
Follow through and overlapping action is when a main
object stops moving while other elements continue to
move or overlap the main object. In traditional animation, an example could be when an animated character
stops while its hair, clothes and other parts connected
to its body continue to move, giving the character a
sense of kinetic energy beyond its main skeleton. In
motion design, the main object could be a word —such
as “Time,” for example. When the word is moving
across the screen and the base stops, the body of the
“i” could follow through by bending in the direction
of the movement, and the dot of the “i” could overlap
the other letters in the word, then spring back. This
allows the viewer to read the word in a state of visual
11 EXAGGERATION
rest while the dot of the “i” moves just enough to add
Exaggeration is a great way to create interest in an a sense of realistic motion to it.
While character animation and motion design—or
animation or motion design beyond the normal shape
or form of the object moving. In a cartoon, you might motion graphics—are distinct art forms, the 12 prinsee a character’s hand inflate to an enormous propor- ciples of animation are applicable across both of these
tion and slam the ground to make it shake. A motion processes. The next time you watch a commercial, a
designer might use exaggeration to allow a graphic movie or a motion design, look for the 12 Basic Prinshape to expand or move beyond its normal form ciples of Animation. Whenever you can, continue to
examine and build upon your motion design grammar.
or meaning. Imagine, for example, a series of circle
shapes in a line. An exaggerated motion might result While tools will change over time, the principles and
in one of the circles growing larger, forming a mouth grammar will always be there.
and eating the adjacent circle shapes like Pac-Man.
The key when applying exaggeration is to maintain James Pannafino is associate professor at Millersville
believability and not go too far beyond the reality of University. He is the author of the book Interdisciplinary
the original form.
Interaction Design and spoke at HOW Design Live 2016.
www.howdesign.com
What
41
42
Summer 2016 / HOW
CLOSE ENCOUNTERS
O F THE 3D K I ND
Digging into the history,
process and future of
three-dimensional printing
Words Jason Tselentis
h e q u e s t i o n What would you
make if you had a 3D printer?
elicits different answers depending on whom you ask. A child may want
to print toys. An artist would make art. A
war veteran missing a limb could design
and produce her own prosthetic. Additive
manufacturing, known as 3D printing, has
given us the ability to create nearly anything, which is why there’s no right answer
to the What would you make? question.
T
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What
43
In a short amount of time, 3D printing
has transformed how we conceive and
develop products as either prototypes or
finished, fully functional designs. The
next 10 to 20 years will see further innovation, perhaps going beyond our own
planet. In one possible future, astronauts
orbiting Earth, living on the moon or on
Mars wouldn’t need to have parts flown
to them using costly rockets. Data would
be transmitted to their computer terminal
wherever they are, and the part could be
3D printed. Watching Matt Damon as Mark
Watney in The Martian, I kept wondering
when he’d employ 3D printing to solve one
of the many problems he faced. Couldn’t
he have 3D printed his own potatoes using
the Foodini instead of nearly blowing himself up trying to irrigate his crops?
The Foodini isn’t science fiction. Natural Machines has made a food printer, and
it is called the Foodini. (How about them
apples, Mark Watney?) 3D printing your
own food is very much a reality—and
not only can you print food, but with the
right equipment and technical know-how,
designers are 3D printing objects as large
as a bridge in a future-forward project that
Dutch startup MX3D began in late 2015,
partnering with Autodesk. Bridges, jewelry,
cars, security cameras, book covers, typography. If you can imagine it, chances are
you can print it.
FROM SCIENCE FICTION
TO SCIENCE NOW
Once considered science fiction, what
we know today as 3D printing was called
“rapid prototyping” in the 1980s. Fabricating machines quickly produced models for
industrial design, changing the face of user
testing and putting models in the hands
of designers and clients. You rendered
a 3D model using CAD (computer aided
design) software. A CAM (computer-aided
manufacturing) process, such as the additive method of SLA (stereolithography) or
the subtractive method of CNC (computer
numerical control) machining produced
the models known as rapid prototypes.
Founded in 1985, Charlotte, NC, design
studio BOLTgroup has been using CAM for
decades. Its principal Monty Montague
recalls a time when stereolithography
machines “were very expensive,” maybe
44
Summer 2016 / HOW
PREVIOUS PAGE : Still from “By the
way,” Thomas Wirtz’s experimental
study of 3D printing typography
and material behavior.
FROM TOP : 3D printed prototypes
for Rubbermaid/Goody mirrors by
BOLTgroup, some in the original
3D color resin and some painted to
look like the final product; jewelry
by Courtney Starrett; Head of
Security, smart home monitoring
camera by Nascent Objects.
“$30,000 or more.” In the 1980s and 1990s,
few studios could afford to purchase their
own CAM tools, and many, such as BOLTgroup, outsourced the 3D production, as
Montague notes. “Prior to the 2000s, outsourcing was a better financial decision
because the technology was expensive and
changing rapidly … so if we invested in a
$30,000 machine it might be obsolete in a
couple years.”
Into the 2000s, rapid prototyping made
its way to more and more colleges and universities, where enterprising and inventive
faculty and students got their hands on
the technology. Courtney Starrett, assistant professor of fine and digital arts at
Seton Hall University, worked with it in
2003 during her MFA studies at the Tyler
School of Art. “I was mainly producing
jewelry objects and very small sculptural
forms. It was clear that we were not only
learning about new tools but working to
define a new medium in making. The ultimate challenge at the time was to produce
designs in CAD that could not be manufactured any other way.”
Starrett recounts how pro ducing
designs at that time cost about 10 times
what they cost today. The CAD - CAM
workflow took designs from inception
at the software end to completion at the
manufacturing end. “We now talk about
its significance in the new industrial revolution, how it has changed the economic
structures and business models of independent designers,” Starrett says. In her
own shop, Starrett creates intricate designs
using the technology, and in the classroom
she’s instructing the next generation of artists and designers. “I have used 3D printing
in the classroom in a number of ways over
the past 10 years. I love seeing the excitement of a student holding an object that
they made in their hands. It can be very
empowering to make things. I believe that
this technology is inspiring creativity and
imagination. I think we are only limited by
our imaginations.” She continues to work
with 3D technology at Seton Hall, as well as
with her husband Michael Gayk, to design
their jewelry and home goods line through
Plural Studios.
The immediacy that 3D printing offers
artists and designers has blessed them
with the ability to create anything and
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WITH COMPANIES LIKE 3D HUBS
MAKING 3D PRINTING MORE
ACCESSIBLE, WE’RE LIKELY TO SEE
A THREE-DIMENSIONAL DESIGN
EXPLOSION OVER THE NEXT FEW
YEARS. EVERYONE AND ANYONE
WILL USE THE TECHNOLOGY
TO CREATE THE ORDINARY, OR
IMAGINE THE EXTRAORDINARY.
everything, but Starrett suggests that not everyone will be a
designer. “I think many people are currently tinkering and trying
out a novel and exciting way to make things. I do worry about all
the plastic stuff that people are producing just for the sake of making.” Although everyone can have access to the tools, the software
is not that easy to use, making for a rather “steep learning curve
on the modeling end,” in Starrett’s opinion.
IDEA TO FINISHED PRODUCT, AND BEYOND
Designing in two dimensions is challenging enough, but add a
third dimension, and it gets even more complex, whether you’re
using free, open-source software such as Blender, or you’re a subscriber to Adobe Photoshop CC. Most people are surprised to learn
that Adobe Photoshop CC has the ability to render in 3D, as well
as features to create 3D printed designs. No matter the software
you use, having a background in 3D modeling or engineering definitely helps. You could also teach yourself how to use the tools
from the ground up. But what if the software was user-friendly
with a drag-and-drop interface, and as an added bonus, you could
make those objects look good and also do something, giving it
interactive capabilities? Meet Nascent Objects. Use any of their
modules (sensors, a camera, a mini-computer, microphone, GPS
and more), upload or create your own 3D design, use Nascent’s
software to drag and drop modules onto the design, and fashion
and print your circuitry. Plug your modules into the printed shape,
turn it on and it starts working—instantly.
It’s product design made simple, including software that
has what Nascent’s founder and CEO Baback Elmieh calls a
What
45
ABOVE :
Red WiFi Speaker by
Nascent Objects.
“WordPress-like” environment to develop
your designs using WYSIWYG software.
The products are strong enough to pass
drop tests thanks to the SLA 3D-printed
exterior forms. And they look good too.
From an entrepreneurial perspective,
Nascent Objects is less about rapid prototyping, and more about rapidly producing
a design that you bring to market quickly.
Its system is open, easy and—from a sustainability perspective—reusable. End
consumers can swap out individual items
instead of scrapping the entire product.
Consider Head of Security, a home monitoring system with a 3D printed bear head.
Don’t like the bear head? Take it off, use
its camera, and make your own security
system. Camera broken or in need of an
upgrade? Keep the housing, and merely
replace the camera.
San Francisco design studio Ammunition worked with Nascent Objects to
develop and test the system, and Ammunition also designed pilot products in partnership with Nascent, as well as designing
Nascent’s brand identity and packaging
system. Using Nascent Objects, Ammunition created the water-usage tracker
known as Droppler, Head of Security, and
a birdhouse with a motion sensor and
camera known as CouCou. Thanks to the
Nascent Virtual Incubator, more people
will have the opportunity to use Nascent
Objects to bring their ideas to market. During an eight-week program in partnership
with Ammunition, designers will receive
MORE T H A N O N E WAY TO M O D E L
Once considered merely a prototyping and testing vehicle, you can now use computer-aided manufacturing to 3D render a
finished product that is strong enough to hold up under rigorous use. Methods such as CNC (see below), which are over 50
years old, continue to be employed, sometimes in tandem with the additive methods we now call 3D printing.
CNC (Computer/Computerized Numerical Control): CNC uses a subtractive rather than additive process where computers
control tools such as lathes, drills, saws, mills, routers, grinders and even lasers, with programs dictating what the tool does.
Early control programs were on punch cards, like those developed by John Parsons, who is credited with developing the first
CNC machines in the 1940s. By the 1950s, CNC became commercially available, making its way into industrial use.
FDM (Fused Deposition Modeling): In 1988, Scott Crump invented FDM with his wife Lisa in their garage, and helped
pioneer its development with the company he founded, Stratasys Inc., now known as Stratasys Ltd. FDM builds one layer of
thermoplastic deposit at a time, from bottom to top, and works well for complex designs. The build process is analogous to
squirting hot glue onto a platform to make a positive form one layer at a time, which is similar to the process Crump used
while experimenting and developing FDM. Because the heated thermoplastic deposits are wobbly, they require support,
sometimes called sacrificial support because they are not part of the final design. The support holds up the design until the
design dries, but the support is later removed.
LOM (Laminated Object Manufacturing): Sometimes called layered object manufacturing, LOM has been used to make
large designs, such as complex models, and can use paper or plastic substrates. Developed by Helisys Inc., now Cubic
Technologies, LOM fuses multiple layers of material together using heat and pressure. When paper is used, it can produce
designs that look akin to soft wood, with similar strength. A CNC tool, such as a laser or blade, cuts the material into the final
design. Fabrisonic LLC has methods similar to LOM, but theirs uses sound waves, fusing layers of metal foil through Ultrasonic Additive Manufacturing (UAM), sometimes called ultrasonic welding.
SLA (Stereolithography): Photopolymer transforms from liquid to solid when an ultraviolet laser shines on it, with layer
after layer cured and printed until the complete form is designed. Also known as SL, stereolithography offers accuracy with a
nice, smooth finish and has been used for rapid prototyping for decades. Charles (Chuck) W. Hull, who some call the father of
3D printing, patented stereolithography in 1986 and then established 3D Systems, commercializing and advancing the technology for a variety of uses.
SLS (Selective Laser Sintering): Also known as laser melting, Carl Deckard developed SLS in the 1980s at the University of
Texas at Austin’s Mechanical Engineering Department, in conjunction with Dr. Joe Beaman, who was an assistant professor at
the time. SLS produces a strong finished product and fabricates with powders made from plastic, ceramic, glass or metal, and
works well for complex designs. The process uses lasers to heat powder in a method known as sintering, with the powder
taking on a solid form from the heat and compression. Although SLS is similar to SLA, SLS uses dry materials—the powder—
instead of a liquid.
46
Summer 2016 / HOW
individualized consultation via web-conferencing
sessions. Everything from use analysis to concept
development to 3D modeling will be covered, along
with crowdfunding, branding and app design, among
other topics. Nascent will select participants based on
a range of criteria, and at the incubator’s conclusion,
they will receive not only their design, but also a strategy to launch it.
FORM, FUNCTION AND FUN
Nascent Objects has made the 3D design and production process simple, and enabled anybody to
create products that can go to retail immediately.
But as more people learn to use the hardware and
software, what happens to the designers who have
long been the subject matter experts? Will they lose
clients? Even though many companies are getting
their own 3D printers in-house, including some of
BOLTgroup’s clients, Monty Montague insists that
they still hire BOLTgroup “for brains, creativity, process and managing the complex steps from idea to
end product.”
And the process is complex. There are a lot of variables to consider when it comes to designing in three
dimensions, no matter the object’s size or how it’s
used. You can work small, create prototypes, create
www.howdesign.com
finished products, or you can work as large as a bridge
or as complex as a car. Local Motors built their first
3D printed car, the Strati, in 2014. It “took 44 hours
to print, assemble and drive,” says their director of
public relations and content, Adam Kress. Cars in
Local Motors’ LM3D series might hopefully take 24
hours to produce, and 3D printing offers a significant
edge when it comes to automotive design, says Kress.
“The key advantage to building cars with direct digital
manufacturing (DDM) is that we can iterate on designs
extremely quickly. As we build out the LM3D series,
we expect to debut several different models/iterations per year. The fact that we don’t have to retool our
machines means we can adapt quickly to the specific
needs of the market.”
Plenty of companies, from enterprise-scale to
startups, are creating 3D printers for industries, professionals and hobbyists. Some can print a car, and
others are intended to print smaller designs. Like any
technology, there’s a learning curve. Shai Schechter,
CEO and founder of Deltaprintr, not only provides
3D printers to his customers, but he also believes in
“educating the public about the possibilities of 3D
printing,” which is a value add when it comes to any
technology, especially one as complex as 3D printing.
“At Deltaprintr we believe that our service does not
ABOVE :
The LM3D
Swim, the first in Local
Motors’ LM3D Series
of 3D printed cars.
What
47
TOP :
Still from “By the way.” LEFT : Rapid prototyped 3D cans by Like
Minded Studio (photo by Bradley Eldridge of Soap Creative). RIGHT : Book
cover design by Helen Yentus.
48
Summer 2016 / HOW
end when the customer purchases our printers
and starts using them. Many users approach us
mesmerized by the complex and exciting field
of 3D printing but don’t have a clue as to what
they can use it for. That is where we come in.
With our Ambassador Program we are aiming
to [jump-]start the next industrial revolution in
the classroom, at every school.” As printer prices
continue to drop, more people will be able to get
their own, like Deltaprintr’s Delta Go that will
cost $499, preassembled. Don’t have the money
or space for your own 3D printer? Then find one
nearby using 3D Hubs, which connects people
to 3D printers through an online service with a
network of over 29,000 3D printing locations.
With companies like 3D Hubs making 3D
printing more accessible, we’re likely to see a
three-dimensional design explosion over the
next few years. Everyone and anyone will use
the technology to create the ordinary, or imagine
the extraordinary, like art director Helen Yentus
did when designing a recent book cover. When
Riverhead’s publisher Geoffrey Kloske asked
her to design a cover for the special edition of
Chang-rae Lee’s On Such a Full Sea, he asked her
to “do something that’s never been done before.”
As somebody who “works with flat six-by-nine
rectangles all the time,” Yentus welcomed the
difficult task of coming up with a fresh and exciting book cover.
She knew she wanted to produce a futuristic
design to showcase Lee’s futuristic story, and
from the various concepts she proposed, a 3D
cover was chosen. As the project moved from the
brainstorming phase into design and production,
she felt trapped in what she called a “numbing
void.” A 3D printed book cover had never been
made. For her, the possibility of failure was high
because Riverhead would be the first publisher
to attempt it. Given three months to create the
first-ever 3D printed slipcover, Yentus’s enthusiasm and her interest in making something
unique kept her focused on the task and determined to make it look exceptional. She had the
right attitude through the entire process: “If I’m
going to do this, I want it to be unlike anything
I’ve ever seen.”
Fortunately, this wasn’t her first dance with
3D printing and she had an ally: one of the biggest players in the industry, MakerBot. The 3D
typography for Riverhead’s The Innovator’s
Cookbook (2011), another cover she designed,
connected Yentus to a company that has paved
the way in 3D printing technology and applications since 2009. MakerBot partnered again
www.howdesign.com
with Riverhead and Yentus for On Such a Full
Sea, printing the covers using the MakerBot
Replicator 2 Desktop 3D Printer. The limitededition 3D cover isn’t a true cover but rather a
one-piece slipcover revealing part of the hardcover book. Each limited-edition cover took 15
hours to print, although preliminary designs
and covers had taken up to 30 hours. The 200
limited-edition covers were hand-tuned, sanded
down in order to clear away residue left over by
the printer. The entire process involved numerous prototypes, all made through trial and error.
The 3D printed cover was made in addition to
the regular hardcover, which has the book’s title
within the heroine’s hairdo.
Having experts from MakerBot participate
in the design and production process helped
Yentus understand the possibilities of 3D printing, and more importantly, it helped her understand the constraints, since some of her ideas
were beyond the scope of the technology. All
of the work and troubleshooting proved worthwhile, with an end product appearing like it was
crafted during a dream sequence straight out of
Christopher Nolan’s Inception.
Similar in form, but different in function,
Thomas Wirtz explored typography and physical phenomena by making a set of geometric 3D
printed letters, which he then filled with fluid,
making the liquid swoosh and flow throughout
the design (see opposite page).
From books to typography, industrial design
to art, functional products to decoration, there’s
3D printing for everyone. Even cats. Jwall, the
artist behind PRINT THAT THING, designed
and 3D printed armor for his cat Bobo, who
needed protection (as well as a Halloween costume). Because, why not make cat armor? Want
to make your own? Find Jwall online. “I do plan
on teaching my subscribers how to design their
own types of armor once I learn more techniques
on Blender,” he says.
ABOVE :
The Delta
Go 3D printer by
Deltaprintr.
3D printing has made it easy to experiment
on your own and design in three dimensions,
whether you’re a novice or advanced designer,
if you have a plan or if you’re shooting from the
hip. In the very near future, when 3D printers
become a common household item, what will
you make? Maybe there’s only one answer: What
wouldn’t you make?
Jason Tselentis is an associate professor of
design at Winthrop University in Rock Hill, SC.
www.morsa.com
What
49
SPONSORED CONTENT
As lovers of brilliant design, it kills us to see genius
concepts crumpled up and tossed in the trash. In this
industry, it happens everyday: we’re told to approach
the project from a new direction, professors grade our
work and move on to the next assignment, or clients
decide not to move forward with a concept we loved.
Sometimes the most groundbreaking designs are the
ones that get passed on because they’re too bold, too
“out there.”
The Concepts We Wish Were Real Awards, born from
our weekly recurring post of the same name, will highlight and honor amazing concepts created by working
designers and students alike. Our jury of leaders in the
design industry judged entries based on branding, design, creativity, structure, and, of course, how badly they
wish the concept was real. We believe that an innovative
concept should never be wasted. We want to give these
mind-blowing designs the recognition they deserve.
We were blown away by all of the submissions we
received. Each project was evaluated carefully against
four main criteria: Branding, Design, Creativity, and
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two rounds of judging to finalize the outstanding winners.
SPONSORED CONTENT
Alu is a beverage bottle concept designed for Pepsi. A minimalist shape
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The Pawscout digital pet finder attaches to a cat or dog’s collar and
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Social GPS invokes a tracking community that automatically notifies
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—CALL FO R E NT R IE S —
Early-bird Deadline
October 14, 2016
PrintMag.com/Design-Competitions
www.howdesign.com
53
10 surprising u.s. cities
for graphic designers
Looking for a new place to call home? These burgeoning creative
communities boast great job opportunities and competitive salaries.
o you’re a graphic designer. Maybe fresh out
of school and looking for a job—any job—to
fulfill your dreams of designing, branding or
logo-ing for a company that appreciates your artistic
style and creative vision. Maybe you’ve got 10 years as
a full-time designer under your belt, but it’s time for
a change of scenery. Regardless of your situation, it’s
never a bad idea to start thinking ahead: Where do you
see yourself in the next few years?
S
54
Summer 2016 / HOW
I’m not trying to be esoteric, nor am I asking that
clichéd interview question; I literally mean where.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the U.S.
has 197,540 employed designers, and they all have to
live somewhere. Andrew Pentis of ValuePenguin, a
public data research company, published “Best Cities
for Graphic Designers,” an analysis that includes data
from 347 cities. To complete the study, researchers
focused on what they believe to be the most important
PH OTOS: RU DY BA L A SKO/ SHU T TERS TO CK .CO M;
PH OTO.UA /SHU T TERS TO CK .CO M
Words Callie Budrick
M OR E T H I N G S TO LO O K FO R
If you’re hunting for a new place to settle,
consider these factors:
Taxes: The IRS offers moving deductions to help ease the cost of relocating.
Visit www.irs.gov to see if you qualify. Also
remember that sales tax changes based on
location. Someone in Maryland might pay 6
cents on the dollar, while someone in Colorado can pay up to 10 cents. Factor this into
your cost of living.
Education: If you have a family or you’re
planning for one, make sure you look into
the schools available in your dream city
before moving. Are the schools conveniently located? Do they allow open enrollment? How do their test scores compare
locally and nationally?
Real Estate Values: There are a few key
factors that affect real estate values in the
United States (aside from location, location,
location). They’re known as the four forces:
social forces, economic forces, environmental forces and governmental forces.
Cost of Living: The Cost of Living Index
is used by the U.S. Census Bureau to compare the costs of residing in different cities.
The average city is benchmarked at 100, so
if a city has a Cost of Living Index of 160,
that means living expenses are about 60
percent more expensive compared to the
average city. You can use this number to
figure out how much you’ll spend on your
basic needs, or to negotiate a fair salary.
Population: Before you move anywhere,
know how the size of a city affects your
mental health. Do you prefer living in a
town where everyone knows your name? Or
would you rather walk down a busy sidewalk
full of new faces every day?
Transportation: It’s important to consider
whether you’ll need a car to get around town,
or whether you can take advantage of the
local public transportation system. If a car is
your best option, be sure to research the cost
of registering your vehicle before moving.
Culture: Before you relocate to a new
city, check to see if their culture vibes with
your interests. Are you interested in the
local music and art scene? Are chain restaurants OK or would you rather eat local?
What about outdoor activities? Are there
enough parks to keep you busy?
www.howdesign.com
metrics in determining the best locations for designers
in the U.S.—median salary, cost of living and location
quotient. His list has been featured across the web,
from AIGA’s website to GraphicArtsMag.com, and Animation Career Review and Graphic Design USA both
used the Bureau of Labor Statistics to determine their
top locations for designers, nearly all of which appear
on Pentis’ list.
Pentis’ top five naturally includes big-name cities like San Francisco, New York City and Los Angeles. Other major metropolises follow closely behind:
Washington D.C., Seattle, Atlanta and Chicago. But if
giving up your car and learning how to navigate a subway sounds strenuous, or the thought of including a
comma on your rent check every month wigs you out,
Pentis’ list offers a number of under-the-radar cities
for designers like you.
OPPOSITE PAGE : With
great local shopping
and more than 15
design firms in a
10-mile radius,
Minneapolis offers
great potential for
creative professionals.
LEFT : Cincinnati is
home to a rising
design scene,
including studios such
as Rockfish Digital and
Hyperquake.
CINCINNATI, OHIO
Population: 297,517
Jobs: 350
Median Salary: $51,200
Cost of Living Index: 85
Great (well, you be the judge) chili, the Flying Pig
Marathon and the Cincinnati Reds. What more could
you ask for? Cincinnati is home to a number of design
firms that just keep growing. With the revamping of
the historic Over-the-Rhine neighborbood, startups galore are bringing young professionals back to
this historical city. Here you’ll find Rockfish Digital,
Hyperquake, Jack Rouse Associates and many more.
TRENTON, NEW JERSEY
Population: 84,913
Jobs: 350
Median Salary: $57,900
Cost of Living Index: 106
Trenton, NJ, is full of unique design firms. Among
others, EFK Group and Rosetta and RMJM stand out.
EFK Group works with the belief that “fame is exciting, but fleeting.” As a result, the firm aims to connect
brands to their customers in “useful and memorable
ways,” instead of just creating a name. Rosetta chooses
Where
55
Kansas City is home to a
host of award-winning design
firms. BOTTOM : Milwaukee boasts
a booming arts scene and plenty
of opportunities for creatives.
56
Summer 2016 / HOW
PHOTOS: TO MM Y BRISO N / SHU T TERS TO CK .CO M;
HENRY K SA DUR A / SHUT TERS TO CK .COM
TOP :
to focus on consumer products, retail and technology,
while RMJM works mainly with architectural design.
bethesda, maryland
Population: 61,907
Jobs: 1,010
Kansas City Region
Median Salary: $66,490
Population: 148,483
Cost of Living Index: 157
Jobs: 1,850
One square mile of downtown Bethesda is home to
Median Salary: $50,170
three of its most successful design firms. FCI Creative
Cost of Living Index: 90
has been producing notable work for over 30 years,
The City of Fountains boasts delicious barbecue, great and Comella Design Group just celebrated its 30th
music, a growing craft beer scene and tons of impres- anniversary in 2015. A little bit newer to the game
sive design firms. Award-winning firms Willoughby
is Streetsense. Founded in 2001 with the tagline
and Whiskey Design both have offices in Kansas City. “We are an uncommon collective,” they’ve already
And we can’t forget Design Ranch, whose site boldly worked with well-known brands such as Starbucks
declares, “Creating and reinvigorating forward-think- and Chipotle.
ing brands for almost 20 years.”
Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Population: 599,164
Jobs: 1,670
Median Salary: $50,080
Cost of Living Index: 95
Milwaukee’s art scene is impressive. With opera and
ballet companies, a world-class symphony and tons
of music venues and museums, there’s something
for everyone. More than 15 design studios populate a
5-mile radius downtown. Among them are Rev Pop Inc.
and Becker Design, which boast clients with names
like Pabst Blue Ribbon, The Refinery, Chick-Fil-A,
Kohl’s and Northwestern Mutual.
Warren, Michigan
Population: 134,873
Jobs: 1,910
Median Salary: $56,090
Cost of Living Index: 95
A short drive north from Detroit, located east of Lake
St. Clair, is the city of Warren. With Detroit going
through radical changes, the demand for creative
minds is on the rise. Warren is home to Momentum,
Compass Graphx and Design Source Media. On the
weekends make sure to check out the farmers market
located in the city square.
Provo, UTAH
Population: 116,288
Jobs: 580
Median Salary: $50,270
Cost of Living Index: 97
Provo’s design scene is sharp. Maybe not as sharp as the
music scene, but they’re definitely competing. Firms
to look for: EKR Agency, whose clients include Nike,
Google, Fox and AIGA. Innovation Simple, specializing
in identity and media systems. And Red Rider Creative,
masters of client relationships and business perspective.
www.howdesign.com
boulder, colorado
Population: 103,166
Jobs: 630
Median Salary: $53,100
Cost of Living Index: 145
Beautiful mountains, blue skies and booming design
firms—all things you can find in Boulder. From the
Flatirons to the beloved Pearl Street shopping scene,
it’s easy to fall in love with this town nestled beside
the Rockies. Firms to look for? Good Apples, Oblique,
Moxie Sozo and Cast Iron Design. Clients of these
firms include TedX, Bettye Muller, Adidas and University of Arizona.
Minneapolis, Minnesota
Population: 400,070
Jobs: 104
Median Salary: $53,800
Cost of Living Index: 104
Minneapolis houses more than 15 design firms in a
10-mile radius. Wink, Sussner Design Co. and Duffy all
have offices located in bustling downtown. The Twin
Cities are full of farmers markets for those who like to
shop locally, and too many restaurants to count.
bridgeport, connecticut
Population: 147,216
Jobs: 1,000
Median Salary: $69,750
Cost of Living Index: 143
Bridgeport is perfect for designers with families. An
exciting downtown area with plenty of unique bars
and restaurants meets seaside parks with summer and
sports camps. Graphic designers will feel at home with
firms like The Bananaland, PB&J Design and Designsite … not to mention a ridiculous number of architectural and environmental design firms.
Callie Budrick is a writer, editor and social media enthusiast whose insights most often grace the websites and
pages of HOW and Print.
Where
57
the future of creativity
Learn how to survive in the new creative economy by facing these
three key factors that will shape the future design professional.
Words / Art Neil & Jen Baker Brown
hen standing at the cliff ’s edge above a slot
canyon, the best course of action is to not
look down before willingly stepping off. A
short 150 feet to the canyon floor, the only way out
of this predicament is to rappel down. We are in the
vast high desert outside Moab, UT. Four months into
what quickly became more than six months on the
road, this unplanned excursion was born out of one of
those daring “If not now, then when?” conversations.
W
58
Summer 2016 / HOW
To answer your inevitable question: No, we are not
independently wealthy, nor the heirs of oil tycoons,
and we are definitely not YouTube stars. But we have
found ourselves—for the past several years—operating within a rapidly changing labor market as creative professionals with constantly evolving careers.
Our work has become increasingly location-agnostic,
our presence required only in meetings via phone or
Skype. It was within this context that our ever-nagging
inner nomads took over and we embarked to discover
as much of the U.S. as we could in six months, in our
meticulously packed sedan.
This was not a trip of pure adventure or self-actualization, but an expedition to discover the future of the
creative industry and the future of work. We sought
to define the opportunities rising on the horizon
and move beyond those that are setting. Interviews,
meetings, debates and lots of coffee led to a developing thesis for the future. Since the onset of the third
millennium, we have all sensed and felt shifting
tides within the creative economy—the storms, the
lulls and the prevailing winds. Turbulent economic
deviations in 2008 and onward left many of us shaken
and perhaps slightly scarred.
But these fluctuations sent
many not crawling back to corporate America, but to build
something new in entrepreneurial America.
We packed up our car and
set out to meet with individuals and organizations across
an array of industries who
are playing a significant role
in the revitalization of America’s urban centers— some
small, some large, all of great
importance. These are creative
thinkers, catalysts of change
who have established clothing brands, arts and culture
programs, design shops, furniture companies and socially
minded businesses. They are
creating jobs and revitalizing
cities like Providence, RI, Kansas City, KS, East Palo Alto, CA,
Cleveland and Atlanta.
The creative industry at large is playing such a
significant role in societal development that UNESCO’s Creative Economy Report from 2013 lauded
the global creative economy as “not only one of the
most rapidly growing sectors of the world economy,
but also a highly transformative one in terms of
income generation, job creation and export earnings.” UNESCO argues that creativity and culture
are so interconnected with the development of
new ideas and products that the fiscal and nonfiscal benefits are “recognized as instrumental to
human development.”
Back, Looking Forward: Arts-Based Careers and Creative Work,” it’s not hard to see why researchers Steven Tepper and Elizabeth Lingo refer to artists and
creatives as agile “catalysts of change and innovation”
who are adept at navigating diverse domains. Those
of us who operate within the creative industries are
historically familiar with nontraditional work scenarios: contract with a retainer, full-time freelance,
part time, project-based, and a host of other situations. Recent economic downturns may have caused
interim pain, but they ultimately forced our change
agents and prophet-artists to envision a new future.
With the rapid increase of independent contractors
and on-demand labor, online talent platforms and
the automation of skilled jobs,
we are disrupting the creative
industries from the inside
out. It is not only the tech
elite of San Francisco, Austin,
TX, New York and other cities that are creating change;
as members of the creative
economy we are fundamentally altering the course of
work and life.
Which brings us back to
our accidental rappelling
adventure in Moab. All the
docile photography tours were
booked the weekend we arrived.
Naively we assumed the
available “beginners canyoneering tour” would involve a
mere stroll through the canyon
floor, perhaps a small stream
crossing, and most importantly
the chance to capture epic photos of the Mars-like landscapes.
All but the last of our assumptions were significantly
underestimated. Once we discovered the only way off
this cliff to the floor of the canyon was to dangle from a
thread, we embraced the challenge and yes, the photos
of the vistas were epic.
Change and the challenges it brings are inevitable. We can embrace the beauty in disruption and its
innovative opportunity, or get left behind. A recent
study by the Oxford Martin School estimates that
nearly half of U.S. jobs will be automated within two
decades. Online platforms Persado, Percolate, Canva
and Visage have accelerated the democratization of
the production of creative assets. Individuals with
limited skills can now more easily execute, manage,
distribute, design and create an infinite variety of
deliverables through the power of their web browser.
It is reminiscent of Mac and Adobe revolutionizing the
OPPOSITE : Sunset in
Canyonlands National
Park, UT.
ECONOMIC
DOWNTURNS
MAY HAVE
CAUSED INTERIM
PAIN, BUT THEY
ULTIMATELY
FORCED OUR
PROPHET-ARTISTS
TO ENVISION A
NEW FUTURE.
EMBRACE THE DISRUPTION
Today, the way we work, and ultimately how we live,
has been wholly upended. In their essay, “Looking
www.howdesign.com
Where
59
ABOVE :
Exploring
the Lower Antelope
Canyon, located on
Navajo land near
Page, AZ.
entire design industry, across all disciplines. While
many workers will lose their jobs to automation, it
is incorrect to assume or believe that automation
reduces the number of available jobs. The inverse is
true. As more and more tasks become automated, it
actually increases total job opportunity and naturally
the individual capacity of a worker. This newly realized job opportunity will, however, demand new skills,
and the slow transition over time will prove exceptionally challenging for many.
REDEFINE VALUE
Winding our way down the majority of the California
coast—relishing each and every curve of Highway
1—we leisurely meandered to Los Angeles where we
met Petrula Vrontikis, creative director and professor at Art Center College of Design. Over the last two
years, she has been diligently researching an emergent
trend and group she calls the New Creative Nomad.
Her thesis is focused on this group of neonomadic
individuals, their work and life, and the opportunities
60
Summer 2016 / HOW
that emanate from them. Vrontikis proposes that “Millennials are returning to our previous nomadic ways,
meaning individuals move based on environmental
changes and shifts. It involves agile ways of thinking
about place and space. This lifestyle questions ideas of
home, identity, family and nation.” She believes these
individuals develop an unconscious competence that
will be an asset in the on-demand economy. “These
are resilient qualities that young people are cultivating
in a landscape with very few borders or boundaries.”
The unconscious competencies developing within
this neonomadic Millennial paint an accurate image
of the complex, shifting value system of the creative
economy. Imagine a world where the value of creativity is tied to the outcomes its ideas generate, rather
than the cost to produce the assets to support its ideas.
This future state will require significant remodeling
and permutations in the typical creative skills, requiring the creator to carry greater responsibility and
accountability. This future creative must redefine their
understanding of value and value creation.
TAX RETURNS
BY YEAR
YEAR INDEXED
TO 1989 TO 1989
TAX RETURNS
BY
INDEXED
130
120
110
100
2014
2013
2012
2011
2010
2009
2008
2007
2006
2005
2004
2003
2002
2001
2000
1999
1998
1997
1996
1995
1994
1993
1992
1991
1990
1989
90
1099 MISC RETURNS
W2 RETURNS
RECESSIONS REPRESENTED
INDEPENDANT CONTRACTORS
EMPLOYEES
DEFINED BY NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH
Source: Internal Revenue Service, Office of Research; Analysis by Bay Area Council Economic Institute
In the middle of Salt Lake City, a unique startup
academic endeavor—the Multi-Disciplinary Design
program at the College of Architecture + Planning—
has been established at the University of Utah. Students in this program are being groomed to become
multidisciplinary product designers, design researchers, product development experts, directors, practitioners, visionaries and leaders. Ultimately, students
are learning to value the outcomes their solutions
generate, rather than an ephemeral artifact they have
crafted over many likely sleepless nights. This is a
clear indication of the future creative mindset and a
new perception of value.
Keith Diaz Moore, dean of the College of Architecture + Planning, says “I would argue at the root of this
program is its constant attention toward the impact
design can, should, and needs to have in addressing
the challenges of this century. It does so in a way that
confronts prevailing assumptions about design, and
embraces the challenge of preparing the creative mind
for the future.”
www.howdesign.com
Challenging to understand and even
more complicated to define, the proper
perspective on value creation is a critical
function for survival in this new economy.
As creatives, we are taught early on that
our value is tied directly to our craft and
the time to execute our skill. This is a rudimentary equation at best and supports a
system designed to center on the subjectivity of aesthetic. Is our lust for aesthetic
merit (and its accolades) the very means to
our devaluation?
Imagine a future state where thoughtful, empathetic, human-centered design is
ubiquitous in our world—a world wholly
saturated in “good design.” It is a world
where “good design” is fully democratic,
instantly available to anyone with the
privilege of owning a handheld device subsidized by a mobile phone retailer. In this
hypothetical (soon-to-be reality) modern
THE
EMOTIONAL
DEBATE OF
AESTHETIC
SUBJECTIVITY
WILL BE
SILENCED.
Where
61
BELOW :
Emerging from
the slot canyon in
Moab, UT.
world, the emotional debate of aesthetic subjectivity
will be silenced.
Value creation is inextricably woven together with
the achievement of specific outcomes—economic,
social, environmental, etc. Value is realized (or captured) by those responsible for delivering such outcomes. As creatives are able to shift their singular
perspective that the artifact created by commission
holds the exclusive value to a more enlightened view
oriented toward outcomes, an entirely new world
unfolds. The opportunity at hand is to foster exponential value through strategic partnership, ownership
and shared risk in order to participate in the shared
outcomes—the ultimate reward of a job well done.
ACCEPT GREATER RESPONSIBILITY
Thriving in this new economy requires more than an
agile mindset and broadened outlook on value creation. Beneath the surface of these two prerequisites
lies the depth of the iceberg—acceptance of greater
responsibility. The impact a healthy creative economy
has on society cannot be flippantly dismissed. Art,
media, design and its milieu of siblings have great
impact on our worldview and on economic growth.
From expanding our collective empathy and understanding for others to providing a platform that speaks
to the full breadth of our senses, the participants in
the creative economy nurture a diverse culture that
drives innovation.
Jumping into this new reality puts one at greater
risk, but with the hope of greater outcomes. Not
every creative professional is an entrepreneur, yet
the role of the creative professional is evolving dramatically. As technical skills are becoming more and
more automated there is an ever-increasing need for
creatives to step into decision-making roles that also
bear greater accountability; to use their soft skills
of empathy, agility, prognostication and aesthetic
prowess to forward innovation. The more the creative thinker is involved in the process of innovation and responsible for its consequences, the richer
our world.
Walking along the canyon floor that day in Moab,
we could not help but marvel at the landscape. The
delicate stone arches and towering cliffs etched by
erosion; water and wind slowly carving a beautiful
work of art. What used to be sea is now desert, and
yet delicate plants give root in this arid environment
despite all odds. Had we focused on our current situation in that moment at the cliff ’s edge and given in
to fear of the unknown, we would have missed the
breathtaking view one can only experience dangling
high above the canyon floor. The view of prevailing
reality is narrow; it gives way to misconception, a
desire to hold on to the past, and a desperate search
for security in the present. Look beyond the horizon—opportunities in the future of work and life
are boundless.
Neil and Jen Baker Brown are design futurists, navigating the adventure that is life for the last 12 years in marriage and partnership across a variety of entrepreneurial
endeavors and experiments. You can consistently find
them on the road and online: www.bakerbrownco.com;
@bakerbrownco.
62
Summer 2016 / HOW
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berlin:
city of design
Exploring the creative culture and local
design scene in Germany’s capital,
from iconic studios to hot spots
for creatives of all kinds.
Words Nadja Sayej
his year, Berlin celebrates its 11th anniversary as a UNESCO City of
Design. The party kicks off with an all-night design celebration, where
studios, boutiques and agencies open their doors, presenting their work
to the public. As the German capital celebrates its creative culture, one can’t help
but look closer at the overall local design scene that not only helped garner that
title, but is constantly evolving.
Berlin is so much more than the Wall that divided it 40 years ago. Since the
1989 reunification, the city has gained a reputation for being “the New York of
Europe.” It may not have the skyscrapers, but this cultural hub is filled with star
talent, creative agencies and sleek architecture, as well as edgy public works that
line the lively streets. As a cosmopolitan culture capital, some of the world’s
edgiest design agencies are set up here. From pop-ups to poster paste-ups, a
host of up-and-coming agencies are changing the city’s design scene. We spoke
to some of the city’s key designers about their work, the urban fabric and what
fuels their creativity.
T
Where
65
DESIGN
AGENCIES
PREVIOUS PAGE :
Inside
the studio loft
space at Blogfabrik.
Photo by Christoph
Neumann.
ABOVE AND RIGHT :
Inside the office of
MoreSleep.
and Intertextile Shanghai Apparel Fabrics, one of
SLANG
The SLANG design studio was founded in 2000 by the world’s biggest fashion textile trade shows. Koch,
the French-American duo of Nat Hamon and Flo- who lived in Berlin from 1990–1995, has seen the city
rent Moglia, who have brought fresh energy to the art change since she moved back.
“I am still a bit melancholic regarding the golden
world. “Our practice is often a mix of art and graphic
design, exists in between cultures, and is expressed days right after the Wall came down,” she says. “These
in three languages,” Hamon says. “Our focus lies in were truly free, creative times! There was a big music
and club scene, but there was no real commerce. That
contemporary art and cultural exchange.”
With a studio located beside the former Ber- has changed, along with the many new arrivals from all
lin Wall’s no man’s land, it has become a go-to hub over the world. You can see things pick up a bit in speed,
becoming a bit more like New York—in certain parts of
for visual art exhibitions—so much that you might
call the duo artists themselves. The studio recently the city, that is.” AHOY is based in the district of Prenzlauer Berg, which is lined with cafés and boutiques.
launched a photo exhibition and book of interviews
with homeless youth, which was created in collabo- “You just step out of the building and you are surrounded
by a very casual, yet refined vibe,” Koch says. “I guess
ration with a social organization, and it recently
that spirit resonates in our designs as well.”
launched a magazine, The Scenic Route, which is based
on the sense of touch. The duo has also been working www.ahoystudios.com
toward the logo, communication materials and exhibition design of the “Politics of Sharing — On Collective
Wisdom,” a forthcoming show at ifa-Gallery in Berlin and Stuttgart, as well as developing a website for
the Goethe-Institut, which will be a blog platform for
youth from Europe and Central Asia. “Berlin provides
an inspiring environment,” Hamon says. “It’s a center
of contemporary artistic activity and has an international, dynamic population.”
www.slanginternational.org
AHOY STUDIOS
MORESLEEP
Connie Koch and Aline Ozkan first met at art school If you go to the jobs section of MoreSleep, you’ll see
in Berlin before co-founding their agency in New York a peculiar sentence at the end of each job posting:
in 2000. Today, they have three offices (New York, “Before you hit send, you should know that music (and
Berlin and Zurich) and that international outlook Benji B) is quite a big deal in the office, so share a track
has become a metaphor for their work. With clients you are playing on repeat at the moment—doesn’t
including United Nations, as well as key players in the
matter what it is, as long as it’s good!”
art and design worlds, “there’s a continuous exchange
This design agency was co-founded in 2006 by Torwhich keeps inspiring our colorful, bold and interna- sten Bergler and Frederik Frede, who say, “MoreSleep,
tional style in a synergetic way,” Koch says. Some of Less Headache.” Set in a loft in the heart of Berlin’s
their work includes a rebranding of Advertising Week Mitte district, their approach is what some would call
Europe’s Official Guide for the 2016 event in London, relaxed. “The studio is very open with no hierarchies
66
Summer 2016 / HOW
ABOVE : Berlin Food
Week 2014 assets
by upstruct.
FROM LEFT : Posters
for the Alwan 338
Festival, Bahrain,
by Eps51; sculpture
and photography for
SLANG’s publication
The Scenic Route.
www.howdesign.com
Where
67
and feels more like a big co-working, living place
rather than an office,” Bergler says.
The team has worked with Adidas, Absolut Vodka
and BMW, while running their own widely recognized
lifestyle blog, Freunde von Freunden. More recently,
they’ve started working on the rebranding and corporate identity for a hotel group in Georgia. They’re
also working on content strategies for Visit California
and launched a website for the world’s third-largest
solar company, Aleo Solar. This year, we can expect to
see the relaunch of their blog and a brand new print
magazine, as well as a new loft concept space in Kreuzberg. “Berlin is becoming more and more international
with all the people moving into the city,” Bergler says.
“There is still a lot of space and freedom of expression.
Those people and the spaces are very inspiring and
bring in a lot of input.”
www.moresleep.net
UPSTRUCT
Famed designer Charles Eames once said, “The details
aren’t the details—they make the design,” a motto that
upstruct lives by.
“We’re not happy before everything is perfect,”
says Toni Harzer, who founded upstruct in 2005.
Since working with Lars Trautmann in 2008, the
team, which also works with freelance designers and
an intern, focuses on web design, branding, graphic
design and illustration. The studio’s projects range
from film festival posters in Norway to software interfaces and working with JONES Ice Cream, a locally
operated food truck. What sets it apart: The team creates their own annual, limited-edition screen-printed
THERE ARE MANY STARTUPS AND
PEOPLE STARTING PROJECTS
AND SEARCHING FOR DESIGN
IN BERLIN. SOMEHOW THE
INDICATION OF ‘DESIGN FROM
BERLIN’ SEEMS TO MAKE THE
THINGS MORE INTERESTING FOR
PEOPLE. … BERLIN IS A GREAT
PLACE TO BE A DESIGNER.
TONI HARZER, UPSTRUCT
68
Summer 2016 / HOW
Ad campaign for
WolfGordon by
Ahoy Studios.
Artwork by
Charlotte Mann,
photo by
James Shank.
calendar, which is essentially a work of art in itself. But
while Berlin is a creativity-fueled city filled with artists, the studio makes one clear distinction: Design is
about solving problems. “‘We’re not only artists’ is one
of our strongest competences,” Harzer says.
The city drives them to stay motivated. “A lot of
things are happening in Berlin—that’s why you see
and experience a lot of impressions—but this also
means we have to compete with a lot of other great
studios and designers,” Harzer says. “There are many
startups and people starting projects and searching for
design in Berlin. Somehow the indication of ‘design
from Berlin’ seems to make the things more interesting for people. So generally, we think Berlin is a great
place to be a designer.”
www.upstruct.com
EPS51
After doing projects abroad from the likes of Cairo and
London, Ben Wittner and Sascha Thoma founded this
design agency in 2008. With a focus on type and bilingual design, it spawned from their first big project, a
book called Arabesque 2: Graphic Design from the Arab
World and Persia, published by Gestalten.
Then, as Wittner recalls, “we sort of fell into being
self-employed,” and now work in a Kreuzberg studio,
which is part of a building filled with artists, dancers
and designers. There are so many creative people in
Berlin that Wittner calls it a “creative ghetto.” “The
Berlin design scene has grown immensely over the
past years; sometimes it’s almost too much,” he says,
adding that it “has for sure brought forward some
great designers and fantastic work.” Their client list
includes L’Oréal, Heineken, Nike and the Victoria &
Albert Museum, but more recently, they’ve worked on
the lookbooks for fashion designers Michael Sontag
and Vivian Graf and taught a class in editorial design
at the University of the Arts in Berlin, where they created a 128-page prototype book with 19 design studios
in 10 different languages.
www.eps51.com
PLACES TO
CHECK OUT
Dentist Gallery
by Pop Up
Fashion Berlin,
a commissioned
artwork in a dental
office by KEF!.
www.howdesign.com
Where
69
LETTERS ARE MY FRIENDS
This concept shop and art gallery showcases typography and technology in all forms, from digital and
analog type to motion and interaction design. “We call
it type and tech,” says Bärbel Bold, who co-founded
the space with Ingo Italic (both pseudonyms) in 2011,
as the duo used to be a VisualJockey team who called
themselves the “Telefunken Express.” They founded
a type shop simply because there wasn’t one in the
city. “There are so many great concept stores in Berlin,
but there wasn’t a physical space dedicated to the love
of letters in combination with new media and emerging technologies,” says Bold. The space is a prototype
and workshop studio, as well as a showroom with
curated exhibitions.
Letters Are My Friends hosted a workshop at this
year’s OFFF festival in Barcelona, where crab-shaped
robots raced with letters on their backs to a finish line.
And it hosted a warm-up party on May 11 with TYPO
Labs in Berlin, which hosts TYPO Beyond Design in
Berlin, a TED Talks–type gathering for international
design talks, which ran May 12–14. “Berlin is very
open, and at the same time it lacks a bit of ‘quality
to control,’” says Bold. “In other cities, you probably
can’t afford to dedicate yourself to an artistic practice
and try out new stuff for a long time without knowing
where it will end. So we feel very lucky here!”
www.lettersaremyfriends.com
Sweaty Feet typeface
by Letters Are My
Friends projected
on a wall.
designers, photographers and bloggers—and one can
rent a desk and pay with creative content instead of
cash, be it video, photos, design work or writing. It’s a
symbol for the city.
“Berlin is a highly creative city, but its pace is much
slower than, for example, in London,” says communications and project manager Maria Ebbinghaus. “This
empowers its inhabitants to create in a nurturing, lowstress environment. People come here from all over
the world to express themselves and produce creative
content of all kinds. At my job at Blogfabrik, I feel this
creative energy every day. People want to network,
brainstorm and develop projects together—this collaborative atmosphere is very much Berlin. You will
always find good people to team up with.”
www.blogfabrik.de
POP UP FASHION BERLIN
Co-founding entrepreneurs Mark Hunt, a photographer and filmmaker from London, and Katrina
Ryback, a German-American with a background in
fashion, are curators of this multifunctional, everchanging space that features fashion designers, artists, graphic designers and jewelers. Initially a roving
pop-up at Berlin Fashion Week last year, it is now a
concept store with three locations in the Bikini Berlin
concept mall, which is constantly changing.
“Its growth is a reflection of this vibrant and creative city,” says Hunt. “The project has become a
collaborative store concept, giving young designers,
artists and startups a platform to present their work
in a professional and curated retail context.”
A few examples of design in the space include
works by street artist KEF!, clothing by South Korean
label AssembledHalf and a neon sign design company
called Sygns that lights up phrases like “Deeper Please,”
“POW” and “Solitude.” The co-founders of Pop Up Fashion Berlin are working on new collaborations and are
considering new locations. “Berlin, as a city, not only
profoundly influences our work—we would say our
work is a product of Berlin culture,” Hunt says.
www.popupfashionberlin.com
BLOGFABRIK
For the online media junkies who can’t help but check
in and hashtag their every move, look no further. This
studio loft space set in the heart of Kreuzberg is the
core of the elite Berlin blog mafia, which is larger than
most other European cities. Founded last year as a hub
for content creators, it’s essentially for those who want
to work, network and collaborate.
A project of the Melo Group, which focuses on
logistics for publishers, this location started as a
thinktank that came up in a workshop about online
distribution. This team of eight has roughly 50 people
working onsite, be it writers, magazine editors, graphic
70
Summer 2016 / HOW
BETAHAUS
Free wi-fi? Look no further. This co-working space,
café and networking hub is a must-visit in Berlin, even
if you’re just passing through. The community here is
rich, diverse and ever-changing—some of their events
include niche meetups, coaching seminars, networking brunches, tax workshops and even “Tupperware
Tuesdays,” where everyone lunches at a long table.
Don’t miss the wooden treehouse on the main floor
café, which is the perfect hideaway to get work done
and people watch.
www.betahaus.com/berlin
Bayer. The museum was initially
founded in Berlin in 1971 by Walter Gropius after brief stints in
Darmstadt and Rosenhöhe. Aside
from their permanent display
of the Bauhaus collection, their
current exhibition is “ Textile
Design Today. From Experiment
to Series,” which presents colorful fabric patterns and runs until
Sept. 5. Stay tuned for programming for the Bauhaus centennial
in 2019.
www.bauhaus.de/en
ABOVE :
Betahaus, a
co-working space,
café and networking
hub. Photo by
Danique van Kesteren.
CENTER : Photos from
DMY Festival, by
Gali Sarig.
DMY INTERNATIONAL
DESIGN FESTIVAL
BAUHAUS ARCHIVE
MUSEUM OF DESIGN
Design nerds will drool at this museum, which is
devoted to one of the most influential modern design
schools of the 20th century. Artworks, design pieces,
architectural models, drawings and documents—all of
the items on show here are from the Bauhaus School,
which ran from 1919–1933 in the German towns of Weimar and Dessau.
Alongside showcasing the history of design, there is
a library, exhibition space and several models, pieces
of furniture and photographs by designers like László
Moholy-Nagy, Paul Klee, Josef Albers and Herbert
www.howdesign.com
This annual festival has been
shaking up the design scene with
new, groundbreaking work for the
past 14 years. By showcasing new
and established designers, DMY
has become the go-to for premiering new works, as well as discovering new creatives at their New Talent Competition
for young designers. This summer, the festival is open
to all disciplines, including industrial and furniture
design, graphic design and architecture. The festival
runs from June 2–5 at Kraftwerk Berlin. Be sure to also
check out Berlin Design Night on June 3, which is a
late-night, open-doors event showcasing design agencies, studios and boutiques.
www.dmyberlin.com
Nadja Sayej is a Canadian reporter, broadcaster, photographer and cultural critic based in Berlin.
www.nadjasayej.com
Where
71
LEFT-BRAIN BUSINESS
SKILLS FOR RIGHT-BRAIN
CREATIVE THINKERS!
Remaining relevant as a creative
professional takes more than
creativity—it takes a real business
and marketplace understanding that
design school doesn’t teach.
Let Creative Strategy and the
Business of Design show you the
strategic language and business
skills every creative needs to survive
in today’s market.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
$21.99 | 208 pages | 9781440341557
Mydesignshop.com
DOUGLAS DAVIS enjoys being one of the variety of voices
needed both in front of and behind the concept, strategy, or
execution. He is the principal of The Davis Group LLC and
an associate professor within the Communication Design
department at New York City College of Technology in
Brooklyn. In addition to client work, Douglas contributes
to HOW University and the advisory board for New York
City’s High School for Innovation in Advertising and
Media (IAM). Douglas holds a BA in graphic design from
Hampton University, an MS in communications design
from Pratt Institute, and an MS in integrated marketing
from New York University.
www.howdesign.com
73
Looking to update your design portfolio? Try out
these projects to help you explore your creativity,
build new skills and perfect your personal style.
Words Roberto Blake
74
Summer 2016 / HOW
R A D IM M A L IN I C / W W W.BR A N D NU.CO.UK
the designer’s
summer
bucket list:
projects for
your portfolio
any designers struggle to decide what to
include in their portfolios to keep the variety fresh, cohesive and exciting. Personal
side projects are a valuable way to focus your graphic
style, add breadth to your portfolio, and give potential employers or clients a stronger sense of what you
bring to the table both professionally and creatively.
Try out a few of these projects to test your skills, boost
your creativity and produce some awesome design
work for your portfolio this summer:
M
HANDLETTERING
If you’re a talented illustrator with a flair for handdrawn work, lettering projects can be an impressive
asset to your portfolio. These projects demonstrate a
combination of skills and can showcase the range of
your creativity. Because traditional illustration skills
are rare in a world that puts a priority on digital talent,
showcasing your artwork can help your portfolio stand
out from the crowd.
DIGITAL PAINTING
Designers often don’t consider digital painting to be
a vital aspect of their creative toolbox, but developing this skill set allows you to produce custom assets
when stock resources or editorial photography are
not an option. High-quality digital artwork illustrates
the depth of your artistic skills.
VINTAGE-STYLE ARTWORK
By exploring graphic styles from different periods, you’ll show clients and employers a practical
understanding of design culture and history. Adding vintage-style work to your portfolio can create an
interesting contrast against your more contemporary
work and prevent it from feeling flat or boring.
L EF T: W IL L PATERSO N / W IL L I A MPATERSO N DE SI GN.CO M;
PAU L D OUA R D W W W.BEH A NCE.N E T/ D OUA R DP;
A R TEM MUSA E V/SH U T TERS TO CK .CO M
CONCEPT ART
Concept art and design mockups add practicality to
your body of work. Including functional design applications in your portfolio takes some of the guesswork
out of the equation for clients, which gives you a better
chance of being chosen for a real-world project. Experiment with incorporating your work into conceptual
billboards, packaging or annual reports.
TYPOGRAPHIC POSTERS
Typographic posters that demonstrate a strong understanding of design principles, history and unique
stylistic elements can help you attract the interest of
those who want to present a sophisticated brand.
www.howdesign.com
How
75
PHOTO MANIPULATION
& RETOUCHING
Photo manipulation is one of the most widely used
techniques in the advertising industry, whether it’s
simple composite artwork or something more elaborate. Having a bit of fun with clever photo manipulations is a great way to show off your creative eye and
your technical abilities.
INFOGRAPHICS &
INFORMATION DESIGN
Information design is popular on the web because it
helps users visualize and understand complex data.
The ability to synthesize and communicate data visually is not only a benefit for designers, it’s also an attractive skill for clients who want to share information with
their customers, especially in the corporate sector.
3D ARTWORK
3D capabilities in design applications like Photoshop
and Illustrator have come a long way since the horrible bevel and emboss effects of the early ’90s, and
so has our appreciation for 3D artwork and rendering.
If you incorporate 3D art—or better yet, 3D printing—
into your design work, it can add dimension (pun
intended) to your portfolio, and it can open up a world
of potential clients interested in cutting-edge design
work. (For more on 3D printing, see page 42.)
MIXED MEDIA &
MULTIMEDIA ART
Many artists draw a line in the sand between mixed
media and multimedia, but the two are becoming part
of the same conversation as tools and techniques evolve
to eliminate the gap. It’s not uncommon today to combine traditional and digital media in new and interesting ways. Are you great at oil painting and video editing?
Perhaps you’re a musician and a web design master.
Consider adding some clever projects to your portfolio
that demonstrate the full range of your traditional and
digital skills, while reflecting your personal style.
Roberto Blake is a designer focusing on brand development and advertising. He creates tutorials on YouTube to
help creative professionals and businesses, and he spoke
at HOW Design Live 2016. www.robertoblake.com
76
Summer 2016 / HOW
APE X INFINIT Y GAME S/SHUT TERS TO CK .COM;
ED D IECLOU D/SHU T TERS TO CK .CO M
UX/UI DESIGN
User experience and user interface design are not
just the domain of web designers—user experience
crosses over to every design medium. User interfaces
are everywhere: on our mobile devices, at kiosks, and
now even on our television screens. UI and UX design
demos in your portfolio can show your understanding
of the role of design in a digital, connected world.
solve the
problem:
a design
tutorial
Working on a shoestring
budget? Here’s a step-bystep tutorial for making
low-quality images work
in editorial design.
Words / Art Jandos Rothstein
ll great photographs are excellent in their own
way. But bad photographs tend to share a subset of common problems: color balance issues,
harsh lighting, unfortunate exposure, low resolution,
and distracting and irrelevant backgrounds.
Whatever problems a photo has, they tend to compound when the designer is tasked with getting one or
more poor-to-indifferent images to work together on
a single page or as a single concept. Imagine a picture
A
www.howdesign.com
of Angela Jolie taken under artificial light against a
step-and-repeat backdrop covered with logos—next
to a picture of Kim Kardashian walking past a large
outdoor crowd. It doesn’t take a lot of wildly variant
images thrown together before noise overcomes signal, and a once carefully organized page becomes a
cacophony of competing colors and ideas.
So when someone comes up with a workable
solution to the problem of bad and clashing images,
How
77
one that can be pulled off in-house—and allows for
a large variety of striking narrative and conceptual
outcomes—you end up with a trend that designers at
publications from Esquire to The Atlantic to the New
York Times have jumped onto.
The basic technique is to separate the subjects of
each photo from the background, then convert them
to monochrome (which obfuscates a whole universe
of photographic sins), and finally put them into a
unifying colored and/or textured background. Common variations such as tinting or applying filters to
the images or background—or adding other narrative
elements—expand the range of what can be achieved.
In the example below, from my own Washington
City Paper, I combined Darrow Montgomery portraits
of politicians into a D.C.-red-and-white background to
get a boxing poster-esque effect.
You’ll often see the same or similar approaches
in a variety of publications, such as Rolling Stone,
wherein the technique is used to create effective conceptual illustrations using stock and Creative Commons images. Despite the range of possible outcomes,
these results are achieved with a surprisingly small set
of techniques.
To demonstrate, I thought I would imagine a concert featuring Beyoncé and Britney Spears. It wasn’t so
many years ago that legally usable pictures of celebrities cost serious coin, but in the oversharing times
in which we live, it’s usually possible to find free use
(if not always wonderful) photos of public figures.
Beyoncé comes from Wikimedia Commons and was
uploaded by Lucas Secret. Rhysadams took the picture
of Spears. Both are distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution License.
I chose to do the entire job in Adobe Photoshop,
but it would be nearly as simple to composite the
processed images with Illustrator or even InDesign. I
would probably choose InDesign if I were going for a
less rectangular composition with more interaction
between elements and text.
Here is what I started with:
78
Summer 2016 / HOW
T H E F I R S T S T E P I S T O S E PA R AT E T H E S U B J E C T S
from their original backgrounds in Photoshop. I
picked the pen tool as it’s usually the fastest method
for eliminating unwanted pixels. After outlining, I
selected Spears and “jumped” to a new layer using the
(Mac) Command-J key combination. When I gave the
image a temporary white background, it became obvious that it had a problem often associated with subject
isolation: the colored spotlights were putting a purple
highlight on Spears’ arm, which didn’t make sense out
of context. Bright backgrounds can also contaminate
light-colored hair, glass or reflective surfaces. If this
image were to be printed as-is on a white background,
it would have required a bit of retouching work to
make the arm look natural.
Another issue was that a head was blocking one of
Spears’ legs. I decided to incorporate it as part of her
body with the pen tool, estimating the rough shape
it would have. One of the nice things about this technique is that you don’t have to be all that careful about
getting the individual pieces precisely isolated. But,
because this image would be converted to grayscale,
nether the colorcast nor the dark edge on the uplifted
arm (which was evidence of less than 100% perfect
isolation) mattered.
I S O L AT I N G B E Y O N C É W I T H T H E P E N T O O L meant
losing a lot of her billowing hair, but that’s also normally irrelevant for a project like this—there’s usually
enough going on in the final image that the reader
won’t detect anything missing. Another issue is that
Beyoncé’s hand was in motion—which isn’t ideal, but I
could work with it because these images are otherwise
relatively compatible. Despite my optimism, both of
these issues became problems that had to be solved
in the final.
A COMMON NEXT STEP IS TO ADD VISUAL INTEREST
THE NEXT STEP WAS TO MAKE THE IMAGES APPEAR
when using these techniques, but more complex
scenes are often appropriate. For this scene, it makes
sense to give the suggestion of a stage and lighting
behind the singers. I downloaded a few stock images
to experiment with. I ended up choosing a vector version because I like the colors, but it has an artificial
plasticky look I’m not crazy about.
to the figure by coloring the subjects or giving them a
gradient overlay. I made two gradient layers, picking
the colors somewhat arbitrarily: an orange-yellow for
Beyoncé and blue-yellow for Spears, both of which
I ended up keeping—but I might have changed that
if these colors had not worked with the background.
When you first make the layer, it covers the whole
scene but (if it is one layer above the target layer) you
“clip it” to the layer below by option clicking on the
line between the layers in the layers pallet. It then only
covers colored pixels. I brought down the opacity of
the gradient layer enough so that the original tones
on the lower layer came through. One could choose
to clip a solid color or a painted layer just as easily.
Here I used the standard blend mode, which gives the
I T H E N C O M B I N E D T H E T W O by importing Spears
look of a duotone. For a more saturated look, keep the
into the original Beyoncé image, and then flipping
Spears through a Transform operation so the two sing- gradient at full power and try the color blend mode.
ers look like they are interacting at least a bit. I also Various other modes will also create interest effects,
made the canvas extra large with the crop tool so I’d so play with it.
have enough room to figure out the final composition.
SOLID-COLORED BACKGROUNDS ARE COMMON
G R AY S C A L E . I went to Image > Adjustments > Desaturate for both layers to make them appear monotone
without actually converting the file to grayscale. Once
grayed out, I added adjustment level layers to get the
tones of the singers’ outfits a little closer to each other.
www.howdesign.com
How
79
B E N - D AY D O T S A R E E S P E C I A L LY P O P U L A R for this
approach—I think because a little grunginess just
suits the look. For this one, I rasterized the cyan layer,
painted a little on top of it, and then applied the color
halftone filter (Filters > Pixelate > Color Halftone).
OF COURSE, THE FULL-COLOR ARMS LOOK OUT
in the composition, and as a comment on
the artificiality of big choreographed rock shows, I
thought I would make the crowd look extra artificial
by making it seem as if the arms had been printed on
paper, like the Washington City Paper politicians. I
flattened the arms to a single layer, copied them to a
new document, converted them to grayscale and then
converted them to a bitmap using the round-dot halftone option. As with the color halftone filter, it usually
takes a few Undos and reconversions to get the look I
want. I did it this way because I specifically wanted
the look of a black-and-white halftone, which the color
halftone filter cannot provide.
OF PLACE
THE NEXT PROBLEM IS SPEARS’ MISSING LEG.
Using an idea swiped from a similar illustration in
Esquire, I called upon her fans (and a stock image of
an arm) to solve that problem for me. I just copied
and pasted a variety of arms, putting them at various
angles and sometimes flipping them, to make it look
like there’s an excited crowd at the base of the stage.
I BROUGHT THE ARMS IN, SWITCHED THE BLEND
to Multiply to remove the white background,
and then crudely traced around them with the pen
tool. With the path selected, I made a new white solid
color layer (the selection creates a mask). I added a
drop shadow to the layer to make it look like a piece
of paper casting a shadow on the background. Unfortunately, the results were overly complex, and I didn’t
think my intended meaning was clear. But, you see
this basic cut-out technique used successfully in many
women’s magazines, particularly on product pages.
MODE
WHEN I’M WORKING WITH
A BUDGET OF ZERO—OR
IF DOING A FEW IN-HOUSE
SPOTS LETS ME SPLURGE
ELSEWHERE IN THE ISSUE—
THIS IS AN OPTION I’D BE
HAPPY TO TAKE ANY DAY.
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Summer 2016 / HOW
F O R T U N AT E LY , I H A D A L S O S AV E D M Y O R I G I N A L
flattened grayscale group of hands with a transparent
background. I brought that one in instead, and applied
a very slight cyan color overlay to it.
In the end, I was happy with the hair but I decided I
couldn’t abide the blurry hand, so I masked it completely out and added another hand that was part of
one of the stock images used to make the crowd. I
also readjusted the levels on Spears’ layer, concluding
that I had previously made her too tonally flat. They
still weren’t quite matching, so I used the burn tool to
darken the shadows.
BEYONCÉ’S HAIR LOOKED TOO MUCH LIKE A
abstract sculpture with the hard edge from
the vector mask, and the blurry hand wasn’t great
either. Although I would normally want to avoid this, I
created a layer mask for the singer and painted in some
gentler transitions from foreground to background. My
goal was not to make it look “natural” (not that that
would even be possible), but to make those problem
areas less of a distraction from the overall composition.
CEMENT
F I N A L LY , I D E C I D E D T H E A R M S W E R E A L S O D I S -
from the overall composition because they
were all the same—I want the reader to think “audience,” not “step and repeat” (though I might have lived
with the one-note crowd if I were in danger of hitting
my daily stock download limit). I left the originals in
to give the crowd depth and volume and added a few
different gestures on top, which also hint at a range of
accessories and dress. I left the blue layer clipped to
the original hands but not the new ones, to enhance
the subtle sense of depth at the bottom of the scene.
TRACTING
Now, would I rather commission a Fred Harper original for the theoretical pop story this illustration might
run with? You bet, but when I’m working with a budget of zero—or if doing a few in-house spots lets me
splurge elsewhere in the issue—this is an option I’d be
happy to take any day.
I masked out the blurry hand and replaced it with another
one from the stock images used to make the crowd.
www.howdesign.com
Jandos Rothstein is an associate professor of graphic
design at George Mason University, creative director
at Washington City Paper and an Adobe Educational
Leader. His book, Designing Magazines, was published
by Allworth Press in 2007.
How
81
Summer is the perfect time to flex your creative muscles with justfor-fun projects and exercises to help you fuel your brainstorming
sessions and find inspiration. We gathered 30 exercises from some
of our favorite creative authors to keep your mind sharp and your
ideas fresh. Try out a few and share your work with us on Twitter
or Instagram @howbrand with hashtag #CreativityExercises!
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Summer 2016 / HOW
SPACE ZERO CO M /SHU T TERS TO CK .CO M
30 creativity exercises
EXPLORE ART
CREATIVE
EXPLORATION
Feeling active? The best way to fuel inspiration
is to get up from your desk and find it in the
world around you.
Visit a museum or gallery. Find a painting that
appeals to you. Move close to it, so close that
there’s nothing in your peripheral vision to distract you.
And then let your mind leap through a dimension and into that piece of art. Stop studying the
canvas from a distance and allow your imagination to slip inside the painting. See the light and
colors surrounding you. Feel the atmosphere.
Touch objects. Wander around the scene. Stay
in there as long as you like. Afterward, sketch or
write about your experience.
—SAM
EXPERIENCE NATURE
Vincent van Gogh was both inspired and calmed
by nature. He looked outside for small details
to sharpen his visual creativity and ease his
sometimes erratic mind. Art historian Anabelle
Kienle points out that in his letters, van Gogh
often refers to “a blade of grass,” “a single blade
of grass,” “a dusty blade of grass.”
The creative challenge: Go outside today
and focus on one small work of nature—a leaf, a
stone, a blade of grass. Study it. Sketch it. Write
about it. Let its shape and color inspire you. Let
it help you put aside for a few minutes the pile of
problems back inside.
—SAM
HARRISON
STORYTELLING
EXERCISES
A great design begins with a great story. Master the art of storytelling to generate fresh
ideas and more meaningful design work.
DESIGNER MAD LIBS
You know that game Mad Libs, where you fill in
the blanks with words? Create a simple Mad Lib
for any design project that describes your concept. Your Mad Lib could be phrased like this: My
______ is like ______ because ______. Try writing different words in the blanks and see what stories
emerge. Or ask random people to fill in the blanks
and work from their ideas.
— D AV I D
HARRISON
STORY DAY
Spend a day seeking out stories. Life stories.
Personal stories. Funny stories. Sad stories.
Meaningless stories. Your challenge is to get real
people to tell you real stories. Children and coworkers. Clients and customers. Cashiers and
cab drivers. You learn firsthand about people by
hearing their stories. And what you know about
people feeds your creativity. Don’t share a single
one of your stories today—instead, urge people to
share their stories. And listen. Really listen.
—SAM
HARRISON
CREATE A VISUAL METAPHOR
OR ANALOGY
Think of a metaphor or analogy for your client’s
product. Use visuals of the metaphor or analogy instead of images of the product. The point
of this exercise is to seduce the viewers, not hit
them over the head with what the client’s selling.
Examples:
1. To show that all people can’t be nurtured
the same way, make a visual analogy to the care
of different plants.
2. To show how rough certain materials can
be, use a cactus as a metaphor for something
scratchy and rough.
—ROBIN
LANDA
S H E R W I N , C R E AT I V E W O R K S H O P
How
83
DRAW IT
In six panels, tell the story of a brief encounter
between a duck and a dog.
—ROBIN
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Summer 2016 / HOW
LANDA, NIMBLE
EXPERIMENTING
WITH OBJECTS
For these exercises, gather supplies from
around your house—paper plates, pens, pencils, a sketchbook and miscellaneous items.
SHRINE ON A SHELF
Got a few—or a bunch—of keepsake items floating around your home or office? Travel souvenirs, letters, cards or craft projects? Interesting bottles, shells, game pieces or well-used children’s toys? How about looking through drawers, closets, the attic and your basement to come
up with a cache of these kinds of things for this activity?
1. The plan here is simple: Search for and collect items of the above-mentioned variety and
arrange them in a shrine-like way on a shelf, a countertop or anywhere else where you can let
the assemblage remain for enjoyment and contemplation (as well as for future additions and
revisions). Arrange your objects in a compositionally compelling way as you mindfully aim
for conveyances of passion, whimsy, nostalgia or whatever else suits your fancy: You are both
client and creator for this project.
2. Got space on a bookshelf that you can allocate to a shrine built from an array of personal
precious materials?
3. Attend to details both large and small. Add a variety of beads, stones, marbles, jacks, dried
plants and other miscellaneous items to your assemblage to contribute to the shrine’s visual
intrigue and its thematic conveyances.
KRAUSE , D 30: EXERCISES FO R DESIGN E R S
PH OTOS: JIM K R AUSE, D3 0: EXERCISES FOR DESIGN ERS
— JIM
www.howdesign.com
How
85
MAKE A FACE
Here, we’ll be making letters from things.
Good sources of things include kitchen drawers, clothes closets, jewelry chests, craft supply
boxes, sewing kits, hardware stashes, office supply caches and garage shelves. As far as a camera
goes, use the best camera you have—whether
that’s a smartphone camera, a pocket camera or
a DSLR. Are you at home? At the office? Perfect.
Chances are, everything you’ll need for this project is on hand. The instructions for this activity
are simple: Build a letter of the alphabet (uppercase, lowercase or both) using material from
sources like those listed above. Snap a picture of
the letter and then clear your workspace and start
on another character. Create an entire alphabet
this way. Use the same material for each letter or
build each from something different: It’s entirely
up to you. Consider your options, gather building
materials for a few minutes and then get started.
KRA U SE , D 30: EXE R C I S E S F O R D E S I GN E R S
PH OTOS: JIM K R AUSE, D3 0: EXERCISES FOR DESIGN ERS
—JIM
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Summer 2016 / HOW
BEAUTY OF CHANCE
REIMAGINE A USE
FOR A PAPER PLATE
Here’s the scenario: Your client owns a warehouse full of ordinary paper plates; however,
he doesn’t want to sell them as paper plates nor
does he want to invest in reconfiguring them. He
is hiring you.
Invent a new use for the paper plate. Your client will sell the paper plate “as-is with instructions.” You can cut and bend and staple and tape
it—do whatever you need to do when thinking,
prototyping and testing, but the customer will
receive only a paper plate(s) and your instructions with a photograph of the end product.
The customer will have to construct whatever
you’ve conceived.
—ROBIN
LANDA, NIMBLE
LANDA, NIMBLE
ZEK K A /SHU T TERS TO CK .CO M
—ROBIN
Place a big piece of paper on your desk or the
floor. Tear up other pieces of paper. Drop them
on the big page, then adhere them to the page just
as they fell. Draw around, over and next to them.
Draw automatically as it comes to you, without
premeditated concerns.
www.howdesign.com
How
87
PRISON CAKE CARE PACKAGE
BRAINSTORMING
Need to generate some fresh ideas? These exercises will get your creative juices flowing.
BLANK BUBBLES
While working on a new project, sketch your
target audience like they’re in a cartoon, complete with empty speech balloons and potential activities that they might be taking part in.
Add dialogue to the speech balloons, just like
you’re writing a comic book. What kind of story
is this person telling you? This also works well
if you put a picture of your intended audience
in a photo frame on your desk, then place sticky
notes around it with possible things they are saying to you. You can keep the photo for the life of
the design project, changing the dialogue as the
project evolves.
— D AV I D
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S H E R W I N , C R E AT I V E W O R K S H O P
Summer 2016 / HOW
Alas, your significant other has been sentenced
to jail. It happens. As luck would have it, you’re
a professional baker. This is fortunate for your
significant other because the prison is testing a
new contraband policy: If it can fit in a cake, it
can come in. Time to figure out what you could
sneak in.
Your challenge is to write down as many items
as you can conjure that you could covertly pass
to your incarcerated loved one. The goal is to
provide items that he or she would want or need
inside the joint. There’s no limit to what could
be sent. If it gets past the guards, it’s no longer
considered illegal contraband. You’re tasked with
writing down as many items as you can in three
minutes.
When you’re done, count the number of ideas
you generated in three minutes. How many ideas
did you generate? Most likely, you came up with
more than 10. This is significant because one
of the most prevalent excuses creatives use to
explain a lack of ideas is time. In just three minutes, however, you were able to generate a large
number of ideas, so time really isn’t the issue.
When you are motivated by the restrictions of
the problem you are solving and you respect the
process of idea generation, you generate novel
ideas in greater quantity.
— S T E FA N
M U M AW , C R E AT I V E B O O T C A M P
ALL THE WORLD’S A PATTERN
Everything is a pattern. Even random can be
a pattern if random is repeated (boy, that was
deep). Our world is full of pattern; it just takes a
keen eye to recognize it. Have you checked your
eye lately? Is it keen? Sweet! You’re ready to find
some patterns. Or, better yet, make some.
You and two partners will each take a picture of something in your own personal space.
The more random the image is, the better. After
snapping the pictures, print them out and lay
them on the table. The task is to collaborate to
create a pattern out of the parts or the whole of all
three pictures. You can either use the pictures in
their entireties to make the pattern, or you could
take elements of the pictures and combine them
together to make the pattern. Print up multiple
copies of the images, and either arrange or cut
up the images to make your repeating patterns.
— S T E FA N
MAKE A SOUND
Attribute (the illusion of) sound to a word, composition or visual. The point of this exercise is
to demonstrate that visual art can appeal to our
other senses.
Examples:
1. Choose an onomatopoeic word, like “hiss”
or “cluck.” Design it so the word imitates the
sound or action it refers to.
2. Take a visual and make it seem as if sound
is emanating from it.
—ROBIN
LANDA
M U M AW & W E N D Y L E E O L D F I E L D ,
C A F F E I N E F O R T H E C R E AT I V E T E A M
ADVERTISING CHALLENGE
27TH LETTER
Select a print ad from before 1980 that you
admire, then redesign it in a contemporary style
as a full-page color ad for one of the following
magazines: Wired; GQ; Better Homes and Gardens;
O, The Oprah Magazine; Dwell; Vanity Fair; or US
Weekly. Feel free to reinterpret the photography,
illustration, copy and typography as necessary to
match today’s design idiom. For further inspiration and samples to draw from, explore Taschen’s
Golden Age of Advertising series. There are also
stock libraries that can serve as research tools.
Consider creating something new when the old
just won’t do. The English alphabet consists of 26
letters—A through Z—plus a plethora of numbers
and symbols. While these letters, numbers and
symbols serve their purpose well, there is always
room for improvement. You are charged with the
task of creating a new “27th letter” of the Western
alphabet to be used in both regular communication and texting. Think about what’s missing
in our current language. Is it a single letter to
replace a complex sound such as sh, ing, ion or
ient? Or is it a sarcasm mark for texting? Perhaps
it’s a mark to replace a commonly used word just
as the ampersand (&) replaces the word “and.”
Set a timer for 30 min and brainstorm. What
could you use in the course of your daily communication? Begin sketching ideas. Once you have a
few solid ideas, choose a typeface after which to
model your new mark. Do this to work your mark
seamlessly into communication. Focus on stress,
stroke and serif of each individual mark, all of
which contribute to the overall look, personality
and readability of a typeface. If you are creating
a texting mark, choose the same typeface your
phone uses. Create your final rendering either by
hand or in the computer, then name your mark
and write a few sentences as to why it is needed.
— D AV I D
S H E R W I N , C R E AT I V E W O R K S H O P
OLYMPIC LOGO
You’ve been asked to submit an identity design
for the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo. The initial sketch of your logo must be composed from
a single, unbroken line. Once you’ve placed your
pen or pencil down on the paper, you can’t take
it off the page until the logo is complete. Don’t go
back for corrections—embrace mistakes!
— D AV I D
S H E R W I N , C R E AT I V E W O R K S H O P
—DENISE
BOSLER
How
89
MAKE YOUR OWN TYPE CHART
Using the same set of typefaces again and again
makes your work predictable and less creative.
Save time and keep your work fresh by creating
a customized complementary typeface chart of
your own.
1. Pick out 10 serif and 10 sans serif typefaces.
Choose your favorites and mix in some classics
too.
2. Type each out as a headline (24 pt) and
text (9 pt).
3. Compare each serif with each sans serif.
Look for similar qualities and make note of which
work well together.
4. Create your chart and keep it near your
workstation for quick access.
5. Add to it as you acquire new typefaces.
CREATIVE TOOLBOX
Complete these exercises to generate helpful
creative tools for future design projects.
EMOTIVE COLOR PALETTES
Choosing colors can be agonizing. Create a
library of color palettes to simplify the process.
1. Start with the basics. Choose five to 10 hues
for each color of the rainbow. Pick a range from
light to dark and make sure the hues vary. For
example, the blues can range from cyan to navy
to teal.
2. Select a variety of emotive adjectives. Here
are a few to get you started: energetic, quality,
corporate, caring, natural, serene, fresh, empowered, intelligent, delightful, festive.
3. Put together palettes that express the chosen adjectives. Pick three to five colors for each
palette. Choose colors that work well together
and “feel” like the adjective. Don’t necessarily
pick expected colors. Throw in a pop color here
and there.
4. Try to create three or more palettes for each
emotive quality.
5. Name the palettes for easy reference.
6. Use the palettes as-is, or as a jumping-off
point for your next project. Continue developing
palettes with each new design.
B O S L E R , C R E AT I V E A N A R C H Y
ENERGETIC
SERENE
N AT U R A L
FESTIVE
FOLDING LIBRARY
Recreate each of the folds diagrammed below.
Bring them out each time you need to work on a
design that requires a folding format. Handling,
folding and unfolding physical samples helps to
visualize the final concept. Consider all the ways
information can be arranged on the different
panels, and choose the best fold for the job.
B O S L E R , C R E AT I V E A N A R C H Y
—DENISE
FRENCH FOLD
90
BARREL FOLD
Summer 2016 / HOW
TRI-FOLD
G AT E F O L D
PA R A L L E D F O L D
BOOKLET FOLD
B O S L E R , C R E AT I V E A N A R C H Y
Z FOLD, LETTER
Z FOLD, LEGAL
IM AGE S: D EN ISE BOSL ER, CREATIVE ANARCHY
—DENISE
—DENISE
WHAT’S YOUR STYLE?
ALL ABOUT YOU
These exercises are meant to help you
establish a more unique graphic style and
strengthen your personal brand.
You may have a style and not even know it. Here’s
how to find out.
1. Pull out your work from one, three, five or
more years ago. Select your best work and spread
it out.
2. Examine your work closely. What similarities do you see? Look for elements that were
driven by you, not the client.
Do you tend to use certain types of colors or
typefaces? Do you gravitate toward clean lines or
chaotic layouts?
Are you inclined toward a certain type of photographic or illustrative quality? What makes
these designs yours? This is your style.
3. Further develop your style by creating personal projects that spotlight your aesthetics.
Create a gig poster or an interest-based website.
Expand and push your style to be distinctively
your own.
—DENISE
B O S L E R , C R E AT I V E A N A R C H Y
TAKE-AWAY
What is the “take-away” you want people to
have after meeting you? On this take-out carton,
sketch your take-away.
LANDA, BUILD YOUR OWN BRAND
DA N IL A L EO/SHU T TERS TO CK .CO M
—ROBIN
www.howdesign.com
How
91
WHAT’S IN A NAME?
Invent five different names for yourself: a stage
name, an alter ego, a pen name, a nickname, a
music industry or sports persona, or whatever
you like. Which typefaces would work for each?
Handlettering?
—ROBIN
LANDA, BUILD YOUR OWN BRAND
CELEBRATE FAILURE DAY
You’ve had a few failures during the past few
years. Haven’t we all. Maybe you overcame some
of those failures. Maybe you hid some away.
But today’s the day to celebrate at least one
major failure. Turn it into a flag and salute it.
Throw a party and honor it. Raise a glass and
toast it.
Pull that failure over to a quiet corner and listen to it. Learn from it. Use it. See what you can
do to make it a friend. Because the only failure
that’s fatal is the one you let bury you.
—SAM
HARRISON
For centuries, wine label designs were really
basic and rather boring. Not any more. Today’s
wine labels are all over the map, and in many
cases, they greatly influence buying decisions. Go
online (check out the wine/champagne section of
www.thedieline.com) or head to your local wine
store and inspect the vast array of wine labels. Let
them inspire one or more design projects.
Try this creative exercise: Assess your personality and talents. Describe your personal brand to
yourself. If you were to place those attributes and
characteristics in a wine bottle, what would you
name it and what would your label design look
like? Write it up and sketch it out.
—SAM
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Summer 2016 / HOW
HARRISON
RO M A N SA M O K H I N /SHU T T ERS TO CK .CO M;
RO B ER TO C A S TI L LO/SH U T T ERS TO CK .CO M
LABEL YOURSELF
DESIGN A ROOKIE CARD
You’ve waited your whole life for this moment. All those sweat-drenched days training. All those exercises.
All the fonts you’ve looked through. All the Pantone books you’ve pored over. They all have led to this
moment, the day you’ll finally get that one item that makes all the hard work worth it, the thing that will
announce to the world that you’ve arrived: your rookie card. This is the first, the one people will collect for
years to come. You’ll be right there along with the superstars. You’re a pro. And you deserve a trading card.
That’s your task. You are going to be making trading cards. First, take the names of everyone in your
team and draw them out of a hat so you receive the name of someone other than yourself. Your task is to
create the trading card for this person. It can start with a photograph and you can draw around the photograph, you can do it digitally, or you can just sketch it out. Your task is to take who the person is and what
he or she does and make a trading card out of it.
You’ll also need to create the back of the card, with the person’s career stats, background info and
highlights. Make it all up, or get pieces of real information if you like. When you’re all done, let the trading
begin! How many rookie production assistants are worth one creative director?
— S T E FA N
www.howdesign.com
M U M AW & W E N D Y L E E O L D F I E L D , C A F F E I N E F O R T H E C R E AT I V E T E A M
How
93
TRADE-A-BOOK
COLLABORATIVE
EXERCISES
For these, you’ll need a friend or two. Grab a
creative cohort and have fun!
UNCAPTIONABLE
Captions to images help a lot, especially when
the image is a bit vague. Given time, you could
figure out most pictures, but there is the occasional image that, simply put, is unexplainable.
As simple as it may seem, that will be your task.
Grab a partner. The two of you will be setting up and capturing three pictures that can’t
be explained. These shots need to be something
that, without a caption, have no meaning, but
with a caption, still have no meaning. Like a guy
in a tux holding a blender in front of a delivery
truck that overturned into a river. How do you
explain that? The answer is you can’t. Create
three images that can’t be explained.
—SAM
HARRISON
M U M AW & W E N D Y L E E O L D F I E L D
RI CH A R D PE TERSO N; M EGA PI X EL /SHU T TERS TO CK .CO M
— S T E FA N
Declare a trade-a-book day at your workplace. Or,
if you’re a freelance designer, reach out to those
in your social networks. Make posters, distribute
flyers and send emails to let people know when
it is and how to participate.
Everybody brings a book (it doesn’t matter if
it’s fiction, nonfiction or a design book), with a
cover sheet telling in 50 words or less what they
like about the book and how it contributed to
their creativity. When the time comes for the big
trade, you can have folks draw numbers—or just
turn it into a free-for-all.
For a much-less-organized Trade-A-Book
Day, simply grab an armload of your books, make
rounds to co-workers and friends and ask if they
want to trade books. People almost always say yes.
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Summer 2016 / HOW
IT’S ALL IN THE CARDS
Since the 12th century, folks have been playing
games with cards. From solitaire to Texas Hold
‘em, we love card games. One of the reasons, of
course, are the cool suits. What’s not to love about
hearts, diamonds, clubs and spades? But, it’s time
to add some spunk to playing cards.
You and three partners will be redesigning a
deck of playing cards. Choose a theme below as
your design guide:
• Rock ’n’ roll
• Video games
• Baseball
• Junk food
• Ugly
• Childhood toys
• Ancient Egypt
• House party
• Tacky
• Cartoons
• Wildcard (pick your own)
Each person gets a suit based on the overall
theme you’ve chosen. Design what the ace and
five card of your suit would look like. If you’re
feeling snappy, design new suit icons as well,
ditching the traditional ones.
— S T E FA N
M U M AW & W E N D Y L E E O L D F I E L D ,
C A F F E I N E F O R T H E C R E AT I V E T E A M
CAPTURE OPPOSITES
Is it possible to capture opposites? For instance,
can you bottle both sweet and sour tastes? Sure
you can. Can you be both wet and dry? Of course.
Can your wallet have both lots of money and
none? Um, well, no. At least not that you’ve ever
seen. Grab a partner and a couple of digital cameras, and see if you can capture opposites.
Each of you is to go out into your local community and capture three images of each of these
opposites:
• Light and dark
• Hot and cold
• Good and evil
• Life and death
• An opposite theme from your partner.
The idea is to find three examples of each of these
topics so you’ll return with 15 pictures. When you
return, share what you found and talk about why
they represent both ends of the spectrum.
— S T E FA N
M U M AW & W E N D Y L E E O L D F I E L D ,
C A F F E I N E F O R T H E C R E AT I V E T E A M
Hungry for more creative exe
exercises? Dive into these books referenced throughout.
• Creative Anarchy by Denise Bosler
• Nimble: Thinking Creatively in the Digital Age and Build Your Own Brand by Robin Landa
• IdeaSelling by Sam Harrison
• D30:Exercises for Designers by Jim Krause
• Caffeine for the Creative Team by Stefan Mumaw & Wendy Lee Oldfield
• Creative Boot Camp by Stefan Mumaw
• Creative Workshop: 80 Challenges to Sharpen Your Design Skills by David Sherwin
www.howdesign.com
How
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A
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A
DESI G N
CONF E R E N C E
THE S H A P E
OF N O W
O CTOBE R
1 7–19, 2 0 1 6
L AS VE G A S
S P ON S OR
P R ES E NT I NG
D ESIGN
CON F E R E N C
E.A I G A . O R
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R E G I S T ER
NOW
@ A I G A D ESIGN
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CA
G R A P H I C ?
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Showcase your top-tier logo
and identity design.
Readers’ Choice winners featured in HOW +
All winners featured online
Early-Bird Deadline: Oct. 7, 2016
HOWdesign.com/design-competitions