Lately, I’ve found myself attend­ing a lot of net­work­ing events and meet­ings; not sur­pris­ingly, one of the results is many con­ver­sa­tions about the design ser­vices I offer through (A) Muses Media.

Per­haps though, I should con­sider an ad like the fol­low­ing:

Great stuff, right? Espe­cially that smash­ing logo at the end…

I tweeted about this ear­lier this week but given the date and the qual­ity of work, this recent redesign was worth shar­ing here as well.

As an inter­est­ing design chal­lenge, Stu­dio 360 charged the founders of Under Con­sid­er­a­tion, Bry­ony Gomez-Palacio and Armin Vit, with the task of ‘redesign­ing’ Valentine’s Day. The duo approached the project as they might any other iden­tity project and began by estab­lish­ing the fol­low­ing goals:

Clar­ify expectations.

Sim­plify visual clutter.

Update color palette.

Revamp tra­di­tions.

Trans­form Cupid.

Their solu­tion is ele­gant and thought­ful– the mark itself is sim­ple and effi­cient, and the sym­bols and new tra­di­tions they sug­gest are equally inven­tive. A more detailed sum­mary of the project is avail­able from the Under Con­sid­er­a­tion Web site here.

What do you think of their solu­tion, read­ers? Would you use the Valen­tine sym­bol? How would YOU redesign Valentine’s Day?

Image: Under Con­sid­er­a­tion

It may be almost a month before the Acad­emy Awards, but Ellen Lup­ton has already posted her picks for the Oscars of Type.

Per­son­ally I love her Best Serif pick:

Which faces made your list, dear readers?

When I was an under­grad in design school , I was one of the weak­est draw­ing stu­dents among my peers our fresh­man year. My pro­fes­sors, patient and inspir­ing though they were, seemed to remain con­cerned about my weak­nesses in the fields of draw­ing and craft; it was the final pin-up dis­cus­sions at which I shone.

When the sec­ond semes­ter of my fresh­man year came along and my draw­ing skills still fell short of my peers, one of my pro­fes­sors, who held a master’s in draw­ing, pulled me aside and gave me some advice. He gave me a few tips on how to improve the qual­ity of my work, but above all advo­cated sim­ply for prac­tice. One of the exer­cises he rec­om­mended was to draw sim­ple shapes over and over again– to draw until they were com­ing out of my ears. By so doing, I would be train­ing my hands to be more skilled at qual­ity of line and form. So for weeks I drew obses­sively– cir­cles, squares, cones, pyra­mids, tri­an­gles, lines, lines, lines; it was the mad hatter’s geom­e­try and it was explod­ing inside my sketchbooks.

By the time I grad­u­ated with my BFA, I was selected as the designer of the year, so some­thing must have clicked along the way; the mad hatter’s geom­e­try had pushed me fur­ther. Today, sim­ple forms like those from my professor’s exer­cise tend to creep into the mar­gins of my sketch­books and meet­ing notes– an uncon­scious habit, it now seems.

When I came across the above video from the Design Coun­cil, one of the first things that came to mind was that exer­cise of draw­ing sim­ple shapes over and over and over.

Why be good when you can be bet­ter? What do you wish you could do bet­ter, dear read­ers? And how do you plan on get­ting there?

Build­ing on my recent talk of sketch­books and orga­ni­za­tional sys­tems, now seems like an appro­pri­ate time to share a series which out­lines a week in the lives of thir­teen artists, design­ers and thinkers. Orga­nized by I.D. Mag­a­zine to demon­strate the ver­sa­til­ity of Moleskine’s new folio col­lec­tion of sketch­books, the series was exhib­ited this past April dur­ing the 2009 Milan Design Week.

Here are a few of the sketch­books from the series:

Designer/illustrator, Mar­ian Bantjes

Fash­ion designer, Han Feng

Graphic designer and author, Jes­sica Helfand

Indus­trial Designer, Ayse Birsel

What would a week in your life look like, dear readers?

Recently, I’ve been spend­ing a lot of time on the road hop­ping from one major city to another. When trav­el­ing, I tend to pack light and it has oft been observed by friends, that my man­ner of dress some­what brands me as a designer or artist in my ten­dency to favor mostly black. It is not my voca­tion, though that informs my choice in cloth­ing, but a desire to remain crisp, tidy and sim­ple while high­light­ing favored details– a col­or­ful scarf, play­ful shoes, a vibrant jacket. Repack­ing my bag this evening, I am reminded of Sheena Matheiken’s Uni­form Project:

What do you think of the Uni­form Project, read­ers? Do you have a uni­form of sorts? Do you think, dear read­ers, that you could under­take a sim­i­lar project as Ms. Matheiken?

For the last two days, or evenings really, I’ve been read­ing The Barn­brook Bible as my break from work. It has been an absolute delight, leav­ing me fur­ther inspired by and in awe of Barnbrook’s work and per­spec­tive. I had the good for­tune to spend some time with him at Grafic Europe in Berlin 5 years ago, but tried very hard not to be THAT per­son at the con­fer­ence– the annoy­ing fan who asks really spe­cific ques­tions about old work, celebrity clients and odd hypo­thetic situations.

Ear­lier this morn­ing, I decided to catch up on what I’ve missed in the Virus Fonts and Barn­brook Design uni­verse online. In so doing, I came across a num­ber of his motion pieces from the last few years, here is one of the lat­est breath­tak­ing pieces:

A Half-Rememebered Sen­tence from The Quiet Man

Here are a few pieces from a series of polit­i­cal pieces he did in 2004:

This is one of a series of three pieces pro­duced in 1995 for BBC Radio Scot­land:

See more of Jonathan Barnbrook’s amaz­ing work here on his studio’s Web site.

As you may have noticed, dear read­ers, the look and feel of Aman­daMuses has changed! It was time– some­thing a lit­tle more clean and pol­ished. What do you think? Love it, hate it under­whelmed? I would love to hear your thoughts, dear ones.

I have another con­fes­sion to make, Inter­net. I am ter­ri­ble at pick­ing out tables– I put it off as long as I can, I will buy a couch before pick­ing out a table, and even then it takes me six months to com­mit to a couch.

When I lived in Den­ver, I went months and months with­out a table, not even a desk! I had kitchen coun­ters and a side table, that was as flat as it got in my home.

But lo! I have found a table that I would gladly wel­come into my home; behold:

I swear my fas­ci­na­tion with this table has noth­ing to do with the year I spent liv­ing across from a ball bear­ing fac­tory. Ok, maybe just a lit­tle bit.

What’s your idea of the per­fect table? And are there any items of fur­ni­ture you find it dif­fi­cult to select?

I did not attend the AIGA bien­nial con­fer­ence, Make/Think, last week in Mem­phis. I tried, but my plan­ning efforts quickly became a logis­ti­cal night­mare; in the end, I decided to save the money for a mort­gage pay­ment instead of the agony of fig­ur­ing out travel to a town with out South­west ser­vice and over­booked hotels (despite the fact that this is THE most impor­tant national graphic design conference).

While catch­ing up on what I missed (which should take a quite a while con­sid­er­ing how densely they pack the pro­gram­ming for the AIGA bien­nial con­fer­ence), I thought I’d share a few of the early high­lights I’ve unearthed:

AIGA Make/Think inter­views with golden nuggets of tasty advice and enter­tain­ment for all, but mostly stu­dents. from drift­ing cre­atives on Vimeo.

Charles Brock’s, of Face­out Stu­dio, look at the Kin­dle as a book designer.

Did you make it to Make/Think, dear read­ers? I’m still dis­ap­pointed about miss­ing Deb­bie Mill­man, Jill Green­berg, Ste­fan Sag­meis­ter (even if I’ve heard him speak before) and about a hun­dred other inter­est­ing peo­ple.

Pop­pytalk Hand­made has just launched their lat­est monthly online “street mar­ket.” Begin­ning today and run­ning through Fri­day, Sep­tem­ber 18, this month’s theme is “School Days: A back to school market.”

If you haven’t already taken a look this month’s good­ies, here is a peek at some of the things that caught my eye:

Uncle Ruther­ford by Matte Stephens

eblouie 2 by Labokoff

Leap by Yardia

Num­ber 16 by Bueller

Alpha­bet Soup by Mod­ern­pop

Set of 12 post­cards by Tri­cia McKellar

My Friend print by Tutti stu­dio

Branch neck­lace by Florid­ity

If you haven’t checked them out before, Pop­pytalk curates a monthly online show­case of inter­na­tional design tal­ent; beau­ti­ful hand­made items are avail­able in this fun and diverse mar­ket­place. Go check it out!

Images: Pop­pytalk Handmade

Despite three 1000 mile plus moves in the last four years, I STILL have a stack of these that I really should get around to selling:

Designed and pro­duced in 2004, A wolf in sheep’s cloth­ing was a win­ner of the annual Swedish National Paper Screen Print­ing Com­pe­ti­tion that year. It has been exhib­ited at Kul­tur Huset in Stock­holm dur­ing the spring of 2004 and at the 100% Cen­ten­nial Exhi­bi­tion at the Miller Gallery in Pitts­burgh, PA in 2006. It is a 2-color, lim­ited edi­tion A1-sized screen­print on clear plex­i­glass that was hand printed in Swe­den while I was still liv­ing there.

Want one? I’ll be post­ing them on Etsy soon, I hope. But in the mean­time, PLEASE feel wel­come to com­ment or e-mail and I’ll be happy to make arrange­ments with you personally.

As a designer, a for­mer res­i­dent of Scan­di­navia and one who claims par­tial Finnish her­itage, I am, not sur­pris­ingly, a fan of Marimekko. While I have never owned one of their clas­si­cally sim­ple Olka­laukku bags or one of their col­or­ful dresses, I have often enjoyed the vibrant and play­ful pat­terns from this uniquely Finnish com­pany. Dur­ing the long Swedish win­ters, a visit to the Marimekko shop in Stock­holm would often brighten my day with play­ful palettes and jubi­lant forms.

Years ago, when I saw Kirsti Paakka­nen speak at Future Design Days I became trans­fixed with the play­ful graphic style Marimekko pro­duced and admired Ms. Paakkanen’s fear­less approach to busi­ness and design.

So this after­noon, I thought it would be fun to share a few sam­ples of Marimekko’s new bags:

I just love the stark graphic pat­terns; there is a whim­si­cal nature to them that remind me of work from the late 1950s and early 1960s; Harold and the Pur­ple Crayon comes to mind. All of the bags in this col­lec­tion are made of Ital­ian patent leather and the famil­iar can­vas of other Marimekko prod­ucts. Even the look and feel for the Web site and ads for this col­lec­tion have a humor­ous feel that just makes you smile; a sunny treat for a rainy day.

Images: Marimekko

Wall­pa­per has never really been some­thing that appealed to me very much, but I may have to recon­sider after dis­cov­er­ing the beau­ti­ful papers avail­able from Trove. The inven­tive designs and col­or­ful repro­duc­tions are stun­ning. Here are my favorites:

I LOVE this last one — mag­pies and crows are such lovely birds, trick­sters with beau­ti­ful pro­por­tions and graphic style; they always made the win­ter and spring in Swe­den so much more enjoy­able to watch…

What do you think? Look­ing at these gets me think­ing about wall cov­er­ings and treat­ments with a new per­spec­tive. What are your favorite wall treat­ment ideas lately? Do tell.
Images: Trove

For as long as I can remem­ber, art has been a pro­found source of joy and is some­thing for which I main­tain a healthy appetite. The por­tion of my brain rel­e­gated to art is no doubt the major­ity which might explain my dis­taste for all things trigono­met­ric or vacuum-related. Any­way, I tend to spend a lot of time seek­ing out new work, artists and sources of inspi­ra­tion. While I visit muse­ums and gal­leries as much as pos­si­ble, there are so many online sources from which to derive inspi­ra­tion these days that it is almost staggering.

Lately, I’ve been look­ing at illus­tra­tion more and more. Today the work of Iveta Abolina, also know as OneSwee­t­Or­ange has caught my eye. I tripped over her by way of Etsy.com and imme­di­ately found a num­ber of her pieces that I would love to hang in my home. The graphic qual­ity of her work and the organic flow of the com­po­si­tions excites my eye. Here are a few of my favorites from her Etsy shop:

At $20-$50USD, most of her work is ter­ri­bly afford­able; the only ques­tion is, which to buy? Take a look at Irena’s Etsy Shop and more of her illus­tra­tions and design work at OneSweetOrange.com.

Images: Iveta Abolina/OneSweetOrange

Theirs:
Scream­ing Trees/ Sweet Obliv­ion

Mine:
Prick/ Prick (unpub­lished front & back cover)

Can you tell what it says?